Much has been made of late regarding monuments and statues. The fight is framed as one addressing heritage, history and fatally flawed leaders, along with heroines and heroes defined by human frailties and moral mistakes. It seems as though some are bent on banishing the lessons of history into oblivion by tearing down statues, while others are attacking monuments in order to undermine America’s founding, founders and foundational documents. It is all a monumental mistake.
That which we ignore or forget our children will not know, and what our children do not know our grandchildren will not possess. This is true of the principles of freedom and the attributes that constitute human greatness. Conversely, forgetting horrific moments of weakness, cowardice or prejudice likewise doom future generations to repeat painful patterns and embrace evil attitudes.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Defacing, tearing down and hiding statues and portraits is today’s version of Puritan book-burning. Our children need to know their country’s past, its normative figures and their virtues and vices. That’s how we learn and pass on our story.”
Human beings are incredibly complex. Understanding even those personally closest to us is difficult at best. Truly and accurately understanding figures from another time and place is nearly impossible. All people consist of a cosmic mixture of human and divine. Pure motives to do good and purely political motives for personal power have combined to drive many extraordinary leaders throughout history. Saints and sinners are often found within a single soul.
Cardinal Dolan continued, “As a historian by training, I want to remember the good and the bad, and recall with gratitude how even people who have an undeniable dark side can let light prevail and leave the world better. I want to keep bringing classes of schoolchildren to view such monuments, and to explain to them how even such giants in our history had crimes, unjust acts and plain poor judgment mixed in with the good we honor.”
The critics and cynics attempting to wipe out any good that has come from less-than-perfect people have such a right to protest or call out attitudes or actions of historic figures. They should be careful, however, or they may end up sawing off the limb of the tree on which they are standing.
Tad Callister, emeritus general authority for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says it this way in his op-ed, “The Founding Fathers — heroes or villains?”: “The reason the critics can freely criticize, protest, vote for change, run for office, and exercise freedom of religion or irreligion as they choose is for one reason and one reason only, because the Founding Fathers made it so. America is the greatest democracy the world has ever known. Do the critics believe these liberties came about by chance or that they were spawned by evil men?”
Imperfect? Yes! Evil? No! Learning the nuanced lessons of history is challenging. Those lessons contain the most important and insightful instruction we can glean from our past.
Of course, there is a difference between erecting a monument to someone who led a rebellion to destroy the union while fighting to preserve slavery and someone who pledged life, fortune and sacred honor while laboring to bring about a free nation and to frame a new republic while simultaneously holding slaves.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an admittedly flawed yet heroic leader for the ages popularized the notion that, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
The long arc of history is difficult to see, especially for us living on our precarious moral perch here in 2020. The complexities wrapped up in people — who were products of their time with their own mental, emotional, spiritual and physical frailties — are unlikely to be discerned or understood through dismantling monuments.
Author and historian Jon Mecham recently was asked whether statues of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson should be removed. Paraphrasing Dr. King, Mecham said, “We should judge our historic figures by whether or not, on the whole, they were bending the arc of history toward a more perfect union.”
Mecham also noted that he actually liked the fact that the monument and statue of Dr. King looked across the tidal basin in Washington, D.C., directly at Jefferson and his monument.
It is worth noting that Dr. King chose not to tear down Jefferson or his monument for being a slave owner, but instead used Jefferson’s inspired and inspiring words to challenge a nation to live up to the ideals put on paper in the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
The Bible carried across the ocean by early colonists and settlers sparked not only the hope of freedom but the confidence that God could do wonders with flawed human beings. It has been noted from the Bible that Peter had a temper, Jonah ran from God, David had an affair, Paul was a persecutor, Noah got drunk, Miriam was a gossiper, Martha was a worrier, Matthew was a sinner, Thomas was a doubter, Moses stuttered, Zaccheus was short, Abraham was old, and Lazarus, of course, was dead. Each was flawed, each worthy of a monument.
America is made from the many foundational principles etched in our history and engraven on our monuments by the founders and by those who have followed. Our heroines and heroes are representative of one of the most redeeming attributes of our nation — that America, at its core, is a redemption story.
Over and over and over again, this nation has been renewed, restored and redeemed. That should provide us, individually and collectively, hope for better days ahead.
Failing to remember will lead us to a precarious place of forgetfulness. To arrogantly, by choice or cowardly by vandalism, tear down, disfigure or destroy monuments to those critical, complex and courageous figures in our nation’s history is indeed a monumental mistake. Our redemption story captured in statues and monuments should always remind us that less-than-perfect people drive, change and elevate America today and will for generations to come.