I suspect many in the cohorts of iconoclasts destroying the statues, memorials and icons of our country’s history are bent on their destruction because they have no vested interest in modern America.
Past generations struggled to form this “one nation under God.” People from across the Atlantic and the Pacific came to the shores of the new world, enticed by the hope of living under a government that was dedicated to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And they paid a price for that dream.
Wars, economic depression, social philosophies that would undermine freedom were frequent threats to the hopes, dreams and promises which made up the American spirit. And the cost of protection and preservation was high.
Perhaps because the current generation of iconoclasts received rather than earned the peace and prosperity that the United States preserves, they can easily find fault with and eagerly dismantle the gift they have been given.
No thinking American can deny the nation’s many faults and failings. Slavery, racial discrimination, and unjust legislation have pockmarked the face of the nation. Many of the historical memorials and statues have reflected both America’s failures and defeats, but each is preserved to record a stage in the development of what many of us nonetheless consider “the world’s best hope.”
I suspect that part of the effort to blot out our history (damnatio memoriae) by destruction of icons is the result of a loss of historical perspective and personal investment in the home of the free and the brave. Education is failing us.
It is so much easier to destroy than to build.
And two other corollaries may also come into play: 1) Those filled with hate can’t think straight; and 2) as historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., once opined, “We suffer today from too much pluribus and not enough unum.”
