A Misunderstood Monument

[Lady Brin 0]

I am somewhat confused by this article about the Lincoln Memorial:

Four score and six years ago this Memorial Day weekend, our fathers cut the ribbon at the Lincoln Memorial at the western end of the National Mall. Lincoln's only surviving son was there, and so was William Howard Taft, delivering a speech as large and windy as William Howard Taft. Warren Harding delivered an address, too -- a compliment paid to our greatest president from our worst.

As the years recede from its dedication in 1922, the memorial has come to stand for something its designers probably didn't foresee. It's a model of a certain way of understanding American history, a way that to some of us seems as starry-eyed and innocent as a preteen crush. You can't imagine it being built today, a half-century into our wised-up era.

What point, exactly, is the writer trying to make?

[PhilO 0]

What point, exactly, is the writer trying to make?

The article goes on to say:

In truth, Mumford said, the Lincoln Memorial was a particularly clever piece of imperialist propaganda.

"One feels not the living beauty of our American past, but the mortuary air of archaeology," he wrote. "Who lives in that shrine, I wonder -- Lincoln . . . or the generation that took pleasure in the mean triumph of the Spanish American [War], and placed the imperial standard in the Philippines and the Caribbean?"

Mumford's spirit lives today in the many critics who, like him, believe they have pierced the memorial's grandeur to find its deeper and uglier truth.

This is standard modern multiculturalist PC crap, essentially, the same people who find nothing more special about the Founding Fathers than "evil oppressive white men", who bash "British imperialism" (you know, the sort that gave rise to such ugly places as the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and so forth - not a *noble* place such as a random African dictatorship starving the population.) Whatever Lincoln's flaws, he still stands as a giant compared to any politician today, and it's that characteristic that's under attack.

[Free Capitalist 0]

What point, exactly, is the writer trying to make?

That, I think, we've become too cynical to build monuments of principle or untainted and sentimental value. The next sentence has it exactly right:

When the monument opened, "there were already glimmers of this, the habitual pooh-poohing of the modern debunker." Habitual, modern debunker, that's exactly right.

[Stussy88 0]

What point, exactly, is the writer trying to make?

The article goes on to say:

In truth, Mumford said, the Lincoln Memorial was a particularly clever piece of imperialist propaganda.

"One feels not the living beauty of our American past, but the mortuary air of archaeology," he wrote. "Who lives in that shrine, I wonder -- Lincoln . . . or the generation that took pleasure in the mean triumph of the Spanish American [War], and placed the imperial standard in the Philippines and the Caribbean?"

Mumford's spirit lives today in the many critics who, like him, believe they have pierced the memorial's grandeur to find its deeper and uglier truth.

This is standard modern multiculturalist PC crap, essentially, the same people who find nothing more special about the Founding Fathers than "evil oppressive white men", who bash "British imperialism" (you know, the sort that gave rise to such ugly places as the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and so forth - not a *noble* place such as a random African dictatorship starving the population.) Whatever Lincoln's flaws, he still stands as a giant compared to any politician today, and it's that characteristic that's under attack.

Whenever someone says how ghastly western Imperialism was point them at India vs Afghanistan. India was more or less British in the bits that were important to us and as a result they got transcontinental railways and a legal code based on our own. That and rather grudgingly, democracy in 1947.

Afghanistan proved rather more difficult to sundue militarily and weren't they so much better off for it. That's not to say the Indians don't have their share of superstition and misogny but overall, India will be a serious economic power in the 21st century. Afghanistan will still export drugs.