Promoters pitched “The Statue of Responsibility” to Utah lawmakers recently. (“‘Utah’s gift to the nation’ — Statue of Responsibility inches closer to home in Utah,” 5/22/24.) The statue would rival the Statue of Liberty at 305 feet tall and would cost $350 million to build.
The project reminds me of a proposal to build the “World’s Tallest Flagpole” in the little town of Columbia Falls, Maine.
For a Bible geek like me, these two proposed projects recall ancient Babylon, where wealthy folks got together to build a skyscraper with a similar patriotic intent and economic motivation. The biblical text reads, “Let us make us a name, less we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
Small states tend to get lost in the shuffle of big American states doing large things. That is why Utah was so thrilled to land the 2002 Winter Olympics. That is why we want an NHL team and a major league baseball team. Utah wants to belong.
The Tower of Babel was intended to make the local culture visible, unified and strong, but it yielded the opposite result. Babel lost its language, and became weak, disunified and scattered.
What if Utah’s proposed project doesn’t produce the “responsibility” it sets out to inspire? The 2002 Olympics yielded some $5-6 billion in local economic benefit, but Utah is now rife with economic greed, divisive politics and social disintegration.
One supporter of the Statue of Responsibility opined, “They are going to be mesmerized by its audaciousness.” That is what the Pharaohs thought when they built the pyramids and Romans thought when they built the Colosseum. Both civilizations came crumbling to the ground, but the rich sure had a good time right up to the end.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross