By Edwin Cooney
If you were born during the forties, the fifties, or even the sixties, adoration for America wasn't a conclusion you reached, it was a state of mind that was expected of you! From the days of Plymouth Colony through the Colonial Period, the Revolutionary War, the Alamo, the Civil War, and well into the Twentieth Century, America was only about its achievements. Those achievements have been indoctrinated into us. Only since circa 1970 have American studies forced an increasingly resentful citizenry to look both the past and the present in the eye. It's that simple. In other words, we've been kidding ourselves into believing, somehow, that those whom we've enslaved, robbed, swindled, gone to war against and even murdered, should naturally forgive us because they have become us. Besides, if they haven't become one of us, then they are hopelessly stupid and, worst of all, unworthy of us! Only those of us who are 100% white Anglo-Saxon Americans have earned the right to try and identify with our ancestors because that is just plain good old patriotism!
Over the years, only the cynical have been comfortable with the reality that history is written by the successful amongst us. It’s no wonder that we have just begun to understand that good people have been forced to endure the existing slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
The old Confederacy is the most obvious point. You and I have grown up to admire the strengths and virtues of Abraham Lincoln as indeed we should. We can afford to do so because 'Honest Abe" was...well...honest! Unlike Union soldiers, we never faced the results of the treachery of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Jeb Stuart, or James (Stonewall) Jackson. Once they were defeated, we allowed monuments to be built, named forts, colleges and universities after them, and put statues of them into our National Hall of Fame treating them as reverently as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt! We've also glorified movies such as "Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind" and we've created such modern testimonies of our love for the Confederacy as "Dukes of Hazard" and more. (I admit that I am somewhat guilty of this as I have come to enjoy "Gone With the Wind" because I believe its characters adequately reflect the time with its delusional racial relationships. For instance, Rhett Butler openly ridicules "our glorious cause" to Scarlett O'Hara pointing out that if our leaders hadn't made the cause “glorious,” there would be no “cause” worth fighting for!)
What is almost, but not quite, criminal about this is best expressed with an example.
Since we glorify the Confederacy, what would our parents, teachers, preachers and policemen have thought after World War II if Truman or Eisenhower had allowed West Germany to erect statues and name colleges and universities after Hitler and other
Nazi leaders? In the wake of the Revolutionary War, there was no chance Philadelphians would have constructed a Benedict Arnold Boulevard!
The next question to consider is which statues should come down and which should stay. I believe that any statue honoring a confederate's service in the 1861 rebellion should come down. Robert E. Lee's statue at West Point should stay as he served as Superintendent of that academy. George Washington and other slaveholding presidential statues should remain because they were more than mere slaveholders. As for one of my favorite controversial heroes, Sir Winston Churchill, he was way more than an imperialistic racist. However, note that Churchill’s racism is not celebrated. He is celebrated for preserving Britain from Adolf Hitler long enough to let Franklin Roosevelt complete the job.
At the very least, any soldier or statesman's statue erected in celebration of his or her fight to maintain slavery should be removed. Otherwise, if we’re going to celebrate those who insist on committing treachery, instituting slavery and even murder, we might as well drive down Al Capone Avenue instead of Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Equally disrespectful would be the naming of Timothy McVeigh Way in Oklahoma City, John Hinkley Avenue in downtown Santa Barbara, California or, even worse, driving by Mark David Chapman's statue in front of the Dakota in New York City. (That one would be gone before they got around to unveiling it!)
It is long time past the point when we can or even ought to afford to insist making heroes out of determined fools. As for fools in the Baseball Hall of Fame, they are not being celebrated as persons as much as for being outstanding performers on the baseball diamond!
Even as we remove or destroy these monuments of our foolish past, let us remember
that it's always easier to destroy than to create. As President Harry Truman once observed: "Any fool can go out and start a war!”
It may well be that once we start celebrating people and institutions of value, we'll actually begin putting together a police force that knows how to wisely use force only when it can't be avoided.
As Americans we're more than justified when we feel pride in our legitimate institutions and achievements such as our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution as well as for the overwhelmingly good things we've created and shared with the rest of humanity.
As for our faults, it's way past the time we ought to acknowledge them. With regard to our history, it's time to take it more seriously!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY