Statuary a part of our history
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Editor,
During the summer of 2001 a librarian acquaintance was outraged that antique Buddhist shrines were carved out of rock in Afghanistan by the Taliban. She was ready to go to war over the wanton “political” destruction of these artifacts. More recently, we witnessed the Islamo-fascist destroying millenniums-old Syrian city and the archeologist with it.
And now, it’s happening in this nation.
Nazi/fascist thugs (ironically, dubbing themselves “anti-fascist”) have attacked, defaced and attempted to destroy confederate statuary – largely erected by slave-supporting Democrats. But it’s gone beyond that; In Baltimore thugs have defaced a 220-year-old statue of Columbus. I have no idea what that has to do with the Confederacy. What’s even stranger, a statue of Abe Lincoln was defaced in Chicago.
And Hurricane Harvey news has over-shadowed the continuing riots and vandalism throughout the nation.
I can understand the antipathy toward Confederate artifacts in the public square. Some of these images represent some rather despicable individuals. On the other hand, these statuary our part of our history, which unfortunately is all-too-frequently neither taught to nor understood by today’s youth (I must give kudos to at least some of our local schools' history teachers in that regard – Polson schools still have some outstanding history teachers and I’ve known others in Lake County schools as well).
President Lincoln laid the foundation for our tolerance for these artifacts in what scholars contend was his greatest speech, his second inaugural address before the Civil War actually ended. It was a succinct and healing speech, neither blaming nor exalting the Union victory. The Confederacy was to be brought back into the fold and treated as Americans. Eventually, Confederate and Union soldiers, live and dead, were to be treated the same.
Glenn Timm
Polson
