R.E.Lee, unperson
Behold: How good it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! But there’s a catch—that little word unity. The Arkansas House recently approved a bill, by a vote of 6611, to divide those of us who venerate the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. from those of us who still worship at the shrine of Robert E. Lee.
The Hon. Asa Hutchinson, a governor who seeks to avoid a fight, especially over principle, signed the bill to divide the holiday while its sponsor, state Representative Grant Hodges of Rogers, stood by his side. Governor Hutchinson said he can remember the time only a couple of years ago when it was proposed that the joint holiday be split. Where was he back then? “I stayed in my office upstairs,” he confessed to the legislators who had gathered to re-fight The War once more. “I had other priorities in that session, and I did not lift a finger to help …” As usual, the past had to take a back seat to the present, which is one way to make sure the whole scenario will have to be replayed. As it is being replayed even now. For it’s still true that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
This time, the Guv put the best face he could on his ducking his responsibility in the past. But now, he says, things are different. “It is a healing moment for our state.” So he re-opened this old wound and called it healing.
Meanwhile, the solution to this problem is staring us in the face. Why not follow the example of totalitarian states like Soviet Russia and still Communist China? Just declare Robert E. Lee an unperson and wipe his name out of the history books. Airbrush him out of all those official portraits. Smash the many statues erected in his honor. And then grind the rubble into dust. Make his name meaningless, one that will have to be whispered by those of us who still remember him. All in the name of the brotherhood of man and respect for our neighbors. But be quiet about it because Big Brother has his agents everywhere.
Leading the demolition crew the other day was Jim Hendren, majority leader of the state Senate, who can be as unctuous as Dickens’ fictive Uriah Heep when he is intent on pouring it on. “The fact is,” he told his colleagues, dubbing his own opinion fact, “that these holidays are joined may not be offensive to you. The fact is, you should know that it is offensive to many of your colleagues and your friends, and I think we have a duty and an obligation to put them first.”
To translate from Senator Hendren’s treacly idiom: Fiddle with the facts so future generations won’t have to bother with them. Cover them up for the children’s sake! “I think this bill is overdue in coming,” he told his fellow legislators. “I think that nitpicking about method is petty and looking for an excuse to kill this bill. I think we should all leave here with a purpose that we are not just going to honor and respect each other, but we’re going to do a better job of teaching our youth to do the same.” As for doing a better job of teaching future generations to honor their history instead of blotting it out, Fuggedaboutit! Senator Hendren’s memory of the past may be imperfect, but his forgettery is mighty near perfect on occasions like these.
Reactionary types we will always have with us, thank goodness—and there is much to react against these days. To quote an unreconstructed rebel out of Hot Springs, Robert Freeman by name, who testified when the public was asked to comment on re-segregating the King and Lee holidays: “To
remove for no other reason than socialist political correctness Robert E. Lee’s birthday from its position on the calendar where it was established in 1947 by an act of the Arkansas Legislature of that time would degrade the importance and supreme patriotism of one of the truly great men of the United States and reduce his name almost to insignificance in the eyes of our current citizenry but also future generations.” The thought police are no doubt on his trail even now and should have picked him up by the time you see these words in print.
Leave it to a state representative from Greenbrier, the Hon. Stephen Meeks, to start citing some inconvenient truths about The War and its divided legacy. Such as this one: There were also black slaveholders in antebellum times. “I don’t want this to become about black vs. white,” said Representative Meeks. “I want this to be about what’s best for everybody—for the state.”
What’s best for the state, improbably enough, might be just what the state is doing now—continuing this free and open, not to say rambunctious, discussion. Instead of acting under the delusion that we can declare history finished with our generation, with some names exalted and others edited out of it, or at least sent to the back of the bus. That ain’t the way history works and, let’s hope and trust, will never work in these perpetually (dis)United States of America. For we have only begun to fight. Each other. Call it liberty.