June 27, 2020
On a Scale of Nathan Bedford Forrest to Superman
Tim McNabb
First thing…whatever we decide to do with any given statue, we need to stop the vandalism and destruction of property, and those self-indulgent rioters should be charged with property crimes at a bare minimum. We cannot have a functioning society where we allow vandals to run amok. This is already a weapon being used for political purposes, and it will only get worse if it is not stopped.
That said, what we display in public is an expression of what we value. Statues of figures from our past are there because we once perceived virtues in that person that the people putting up the monument thought, at the time, was a virtue worth rewarding, a life worth emulating.
They were expressions of gratitude. I am grateful for the sacrifices of George Washington. I am grateful for the foresight of Alexander Hamilton. I am humbled by the quietly inexorable grace of Martin Luther King. Where monuments to these men stand are places where we can pause and ask questions. "Who was that guy? What did she do? Why is there a monument like this?†All these are valuable civic expressions that ground us to the best of things of our past.
It is fitting and proper to review these monuments from time to time to ask ourselves if these figures are truly worthy of being part of that civic reflection. On a scale of Nathan Bedford Forrest to Superman, at where on the scale does a figure no longer represent virtues worth remembering?
Forrest, whose statue was removed in 2017, was a villain by most accounts, having fought for the Confederacy, and given his founding of the Klu Klux Klan, it is likely he was not simply fighting for the right of states to self-determinat
Having those memorialized figures who are on the Nathan Bedford Forrest side of the equation moved to private property or museums seems like a good idea, especially if they make room for those who are truly worthy and under-represent
Marion Sims had his statue removed in 2018, not by a mob, but after New York City leaders voted to have it removed. The man experimented on black women, allegedly without anesthesia. Removing it seems the right thing, though putting it in a museum along with Nazi monster Josef Mengele and figures sculpted of dung of the vermin who ran the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, telling the whole truth about what these men did and why it was an atrocity is a much better approach than simply acting like these things never happened. How are we to learn from history if history is erased?
Even so, I think it is a mistake to recall people only for the worst thing they ever did. While many signatories of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves, many more did not. They further affixed their names to a document that would eventually provide the logic and impulse for emancipation and then equality. While we have work to do still yet, these flawed men set all that in motion many years ago.
Men and women not yet born will be judging us for our deeds. Given social media, they’ll have a much more detailed look into our states of mind. Let’s be thoughtful about how we judge our fathers and mothers. As the good book warns "for by whatever measure you judge, you will be judged by that measureâ€.
Once authority has calmed things down (it will not calm down on its own – vandals have to be disincentivized
First thing…whatever we decide to do with any given statue, we need to stop the vandalism and destruction of property, and those self-indulgent rioters should be charged with property crimes at a bare minimum. We cannot have a functioning society where we allow vandals to run amok. This is already a weapon being used for political purposes, and it will only get worse if it is not stopped.
That said, what we display in public is an expression of what we value. Statues of figures from our past are there because we once perceived virtues in that person that the people putting up the monument thought, at the time, was a virtue worth rewarding, a life worth emulating.
They were expressions of gratitude. I am grateful for the sacrifices of George Washington. I am grateful for the foresight of Alexander Hamilton. I am humbled by the quietly inexorable grace of Martin Luther King. Where monuments to these men stand are places where we can pause and ask questions. "Who was that guy? What did she do? Why is there a monument like this?†All these are valuable civic expressions that ground us to the best of things of our past.
It is fitting and proper to review these monuments from time to time to ask ourselves if these figures are truly worthy of being part of that civic reflection. On a scale of Nathan Bedford Forrest to Superman, at where on the scale does a figure no longer represent virtues worth remembering?
Forrest, whose statue was removed in 2017, was a villain by most accounts, having fought for the Confederacy, and given his founding of the Klu Klux Klan, it is likely he was not simply fighting for the right of states to self-determinat
Having those memorialized figures who are on the Nathan Bedford Forrest side of the equation moved to private property or museums seems like a good idea, especially if they make room for those who are truly worthy and under-represent
Marion Sims had his statue removed in 2018, not by a mob, but after New York City leaders voted to have it removed. The man experimented on black women, allegedly without anesthesia. Removing it seems the right thing, though putting it in a museum along with Nazi monster Josef Mengele and figures sculpted of dung of the vermin who ran the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, telling the whole truth about what these men did and why it was an atrocity is a much better approach than simply acting like these things never happened. How are we to learn from history if history is erased?
Even so, I think it is a mistake to recall people only for the worst thing they ever did. While many signatories of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves, many more did not. They further affixed their names to a document that would eventually provide the logic and impulse for emancipation and then equality. While we have work to do still yet, these flawed men set all that in motion many years ago.
Men and women not yet born will be judging us for our deeds. Given social media, they’ll have a much more detailed look into our states of mind. Let’s be thoughtful about how we judge our fathers and mothers. As the good book warns "for by whatever measure you judge, you will be judged by that measureâ€.
Once authority has calmed things down (it will not calm down on its own – vandals have to be disincentivized
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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