Is anyone worthy of timeless exaltation?
Stipulate that placement of statues, monuments is not permanent and rationally consider their fate
A rational conversation appears to be emerging from the recent toppling of statues and monuments. It’s overdue but in need of a framework.
When in doubt, go biblical. When things get tough, go Old Testament. When all else fails, turn to the commandments. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath.”
This wisdom extends well beyond religious worship. Today’s struggle with the public display of historical likenesses is our contemporary graven image problem. These statues and monuments are secular statements of public veneration, if not for worship, then at least for exaltation.
What should be done with monuments that pay homage to individuals who now may come up short in the constant rethinking and rewriting of the national drama? The question has been framed. It now requires serious attention.
Individuals and events
We identify with individuals. They provide life and breadth to our sense of an era or the genesis of an idea. Does any public likeness merit permanent status? Unthinking obeisance to permanence in the name of preserving history is misguided. It is all temporal.
We also remember through events, whether by celebration of independence or recall of tragedies. The 9/ 11 memorial is a timeless remembrance that will undoubtedly withstand any future scrutiny.
There are no statues of those who brought about the horrible mistake that was the Vietnam War, no statues to Robert Mcnamara. There is, however, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It does not glorify the conflict. It honors those who gave their lives.
We cannot fail to preserve the memory of events.
There are no statues of those who brought about the horrible mistake that was the Vietnam War. Franklin D. Roosevelt has been conspicuously unscathed in the recent round of iconoclasm, but his record on race is hardly commendable.
They must be deconstructed and reassembled. Historians have been all too aware of the French Revolution, where liberty, fraternity and equality devolved into chaos, debauchery and an endless procession to the guillotine.
There are very few statues of Alexander Hamilton. There is one, commemorating his death from the duel with Aaron Burr, the final irrational outlier among Hamilton`s incredible contributions to our political and economic institutions.
Individuals give a human face to the events that define us, but we are all flawed.
Our enduring institutions give permanence to our better angels.
The Bill of Rights gives substance to limited government.
Checks and balances give substance to limiting out-of-control executives. But institutions are abstract and harder to summarize in an image.
Hamilton never achieved the presidency. He was not a general. He crafted words and institutions. Those institutions are timeless and worth celebrating.
Among institutions absolutely worth preserving is due process of law. It not only protects the rights of individuals in any encounter with government, it also constrains the process by which public decisions are made, with objective criteria and a transparent process.
Due process and equal protection have served as the basis for much of the progress in the struggle for equal rights.
They imply a transparency that provides order to our decision making. We dishonor what is best about us when we short-circuit our institutions. We also shirk our responsibilities when we endlessly defer decisions and default to the status quo.
Education over veneration
It’s clearly time to stipulate that public placement of statues is not permanent and to rationally consider their fate. Some are better placed in a setting that is clearly designed to educate rather than to exalt.
The review should not be about the totality of a figure’s life so much as about the context of the placement. What about the person is being honored?
When and why was the structure erected? Likenesses of Washington, Adams and Jefferson will fare better than will those for Robert E. Lee and especially Nathan Bedford Forrest.
In the history of rhetoric perhaps few entries are so revered as George Santyana’s:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It all needs to be remembered. Let’s celebrate what withstands critical examination and understand the rest in context.
William Lyons worked as a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee and served for more than 16 years in a number of policy-related roles for Knoxville Mayors Bill Haslam, Daniel Brown, Madeline Rogero and Indya Kincannon.