The Importance of Statues
Suddenly people are talking about how important statues are to our history and culture. So we might wonder, how important are statues to our history and culture? There are ways to measure this. For example we could randomly ask people on the street. Like “What are your favorite statues?” Maybe quite a few people might name the Lincoln Statue at the Lincoln Memorial. Others might name the Statue of Liberty, but just don’t ask who that is a statue of. Some might say George Washington and you could then ask “Which statue of him?” Expect a puzzled stare. There is, I think some building in Washington that has pictures or statutes or both of every President. We could go there and then ask someone looking at a statue of, let’s say Benjamin Harrison, “having seen this statue what part of American History or culture do you understand better and in what way?” We could do all this but do we really want to spend the day annoying others? We know the answers.
Another approach would be to ask Scholars of American History where they learned their knowledge. I suppose they will mention all the college courses they took, or maybe their many hours spent in various historical museums, or maybe the many books they have read or the many articles on the internet. That seems to make a lot of sense, and I would be surprised if they said, “Well I learned most of it from looking at statues in parks.”
When I hear some fired up southerner emotionally explaining how these statues represent our history and culture I always want the reporter to ask when is the last time they have been to a history museum, or how many courses they have ever taken in American History or culture, or what was the last book they read on American History or Culture, or what were the best articles on the internet they read about American History or Culture.? Don’t be surprised if the answer is: “What are you, some sort of smart-ass?” Then you might ask “Don’t you think the battle over slavery is over and done with?” They will respond, “Who’s talking about slavery? I don’t got no prejudice against anyone, I get along with blacks on the job just fine.” And maybe they do. “Well, if you are not using this statue to celebrate slavery what are you celebrating?” “I am celebrating independence, the south was fighting to be free from the oppression of the north”. “Okay, aside from the loss of freedom to own slaves, what other freedom did the south lose?” Once again, now is likely the time we then get punched in the nose. But the person could answer that “Slavery was just the beginning of our loss. Then the coons got the right to vote, next thing we knew they could be in the same school as our kids, sit anywhere’s on a bus, eat at a lunch counter, use the same bathrooms. For Christ’s sake, it never ends, today even gay people have the right to marry. What kind of country have we become? What is anyone giving me? Don’t I matter anymore?” It won’t do much good to point out that no one has taken any rights away from him, just given others the same rights he has always had. Human nature is consistent. “If it weren’t for this or that group I would have a better job, make more money, have a higher standard of living, and have more job opportunities. See that nigger over there, the manager of that store—were it not for people like that I could be the manager. But no, they got to prove something or whatever and he gets to be manager. Nobody cares about me.” This person is not totally wrong.
In a planet now suffering human overpopulation, tolerance for human diversity is going to plummet. We have more and more people seeking a bigger piece of a pie that is not growing in size. There are not enough natural resources available today for all people to live the kind of lifestyle myself and others live.
The Statue of Liberty came to represent the American message of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free”. Most of our forefathers came here to escape a bad situation elsewhere. But times have changed with human overpopulation. There are currently 75 million homeless refugees living in varied refugee camps across the globe and the numbers are growing at an exponential rate as overpopulation turmoil grows in more and more nations. Nobody wants these refugees. Of course not. If we took them in our population would grow from 320 million to 395 million people. That would be a 23% increase in our population and it would be populations who don’t speak English, mostly have no occupational skills, no money to buy a home, or rent one, or money to go to college, etc. We need another statue, one that projects an image of “Enough is enough”. What is the world to do with these 75 million people? In 5 years it may be 600 million people. Twice the number of our own citizens. Very few people are willing to face the human overpopulation problem. Hell, a good number of people can’t even accept climate change as a future problem.
In the broadest possible sense, too many people—in our own country and around the world—are discontented with their lives, just frustrated with their situation in life—and while the cause of individual anger differs widely—we can see the expressed results of this anger in various expressions. We have angry voters—and thence Trump—we have the emotional pain from life situations and heroin addiction, we have terrorism, we have Black Lives Matter, we have this sudden attention to statues, we have increasingly unsafe streets, we have rising tensions between the have’s and the have not, anger at immigrants, anger at minorities, religious anger at shrinking membership, and like it or not, beneath any outward civility toward each other is a simmering cauldron of anger beneath the surface seeking some way to express itself. Not good.
The reality is that statues don’t really mean that much to us. They are there mostly for decorative purposes. Perhaps we might be better to listen to someone like Robert E. Lee. When his fellow southerners began to raise money for his statues, he pleaded with them to cease. He told them, “The war is over. We lost. It is time to heal and unify the country.” I am not aware that historians, north or south, have any disrespect for Lee. He was a product of the south at the time. Lincoln himself said the north had no monopoly on moral principles, that had he been raised in the deep south maybe he would view slavery different. What hasn’t changed over time is the inherent nature of human ethics “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” This Golden Rule is universally seen as a basic moral principle. Lincoln, as he so often did, condensed the whole conclusion of the Civil War with these words: “With Malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us starve on to finish the work we are in: to bond up the nation’s wounds; to care for him sho shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” That is how Lincoln ended the war, not much different as on the same note Lee did.
Lincoln never changed. It is well to remember exactly how he viewed the war when it started: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Common sense and the Golden Rule should be used to end this statute issue. If I were to own a team and decide, for whatever innocent enough reason to nickname the team ‘Red Skins” and bunch of American Indians came and said they felt insulted by this, I would simply pick a different name, not insist I mean no harm and therefore their feelings don’t matter. Many of these statutes are standing in what are now black neighborhoods. From what both sides say when interviewed it really is about race, not history or culture. What is equally clear is that indeed slavery and the Civil War is part of our history and past culture. History and culture of the past are learned in courses, from books, from movies, from the internet, and from Museums. That is where these statues should be. Then they become more meaningful to the person in the museum trying to learn about past history and culture. It seems the people of the North and the South should heed the advice of their leaders at the time of the Civil War. Lincoln was the hero of the North and Lee was the biggest hero of the South. Both said we need move on.
Finally, it need be remembered that whether Lincoln had engineered the end of slavery in this country or not, someone else would have done it later down the road. The U.S. was one of the last countries to do away with slavery so even now our country cannot brag about being in the forefront to end slavery. It took a war in which more Americans were killed than in all subsequent wars for us to end slavery. Will we ever let it go? Today, it is not slavery which is the biggest challenge, but how can responsible reproduction be mandated on a global basis. We, nor anyone else, has effectively addressed this problem nor is their any indication any nation anywhere has gotten a handle on this. If we think the Civil War was human catastrophe in terms of deaths, if Mother Nature is left to solve this overpopulation problem, the death rate is going to be a doozy.
