It started with the desire to tear down statues to Confederate “heroes” built in the South then expanded to statues of Rizzo in Philly and Columbus all over the US and just yesterday (June 13, 2020) to Caesar Rodney in Wilmington, Delaware.
Here’s my problem with all of this: it’s getting to the point that we are ignoring all the important, good, actions of the person and instead of weighing the good v the bad, if there is one iota on the bad side, everything on the good side is negated.
It’s easy to decide on Confederate generals and office holders in the Confederacy as their “crowning” achievement was the attempt to destroy the United States. But what about Washington and Jefferson? Obviously, they owned slaves, though Jefferson was more troubled than Washington and he actually tried to include a statement in the Declaration of Independence denouncing it. He still owned slaves until his death. No arguing about that but what about writing the Declaration? It is the purist exposition of human rights in the history of mankind and has been held up as the aspiration of the United States even as we have striven – and failed – to actually achieve its goals. How long will it be before those who strove to pull Rodney’s statue down cast their eyes on Jefferson?
Washington. The city. The monument. His face on the quarter and the dollar bill. Will we change all those even though without Washington there would be no United States?
Caesar Rodney’s statue was just removed from Rodney Square in Wilmington, Delaware because he owned 200 slaves – 200 too many – but is that the only part of his life that goes on the scales? The statue portrays Rodney on horseback, not because he was some great general but because of an increadable 70 mile ride from Wilmington to Philadelphia in 1776 to vote to break the tie and accept the Declaration of Independence. This, even though he was suffering from cancer. Without that ride there would have been no Declaration and probably no United States.
Let’s look at two, more contemporary figures: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. In Malcolm’s early life he was a pimp and a thief. While in prison he was converted and became a Black Muslim and as he rose in the ranks in the Nation of Islam he repeated the racist theocracy of the leader of the faith and his mentor, Elijah Muhammad. True, he left the faith and stopped the racist rhetoric near the end of his life but does that cleanse him of his earlier actions? If you listen to the uncompromising call of the protesters, probably not.
Then there is Martin Luther King, one of the most transformational people of the 20th century. However, he had a hidden side: he was a philanderer and had several affairs while he preached his non-violent precepts. Is that enough to require that his statues be pulled down, the roads renamed? Certainly not but if you require all of our heroes to be pure all the time, then his name and visage would have to be wiped from historic view.
What of Columbus? He was wrong in so many ways: despite the story that is so often parroted. He was not alone in thinking the world was round as the Egyptians knew it and the Greeks actually knew its diameter and any sailor knew that the “edge of the Earth” was just the horizon and they didn’t come close to an edge when they approached it. The problem with Columbus was he believed some calculations that the Earth was only 1/3 of its actual size. Why is this important? For him to sail to Asia from Europe – not knowing there were two continents “in the way,” – he couldn’t possibly carry enough water to reach Asia. This is what Ferdinand and Isabella’s “science advisors” argued in the court as Columbus made his pitch.
If there were no North and South America we’d never have heard of Columbus because either he and his crews would have died going to Asia or, more likely, his crews would have mutinied, tossed him overboard. He’d be lost to history.
Why is Columbus so big in the US? It is because of the Italian immigrant population who so strongly cling to Columbus as one of their own and he was raised up to signify that Italians are Americans, too, at a time they were being discriminated against. Their efforts were fantastically successful even though Columbus was wildly wrong and he never even saw the shores of what became the United States.
In England there are efforts to pull down statues of Winston Churchill, hero of war-time Britain as it fought to block Germany from conquering the world. Why? Because he sought, after World War II, to preserve the British Empire. But what about his efforts in World War II? Are we to ignore his efforts in rallying the British people when there were many in the upper echelons of government and society who advised capitulation? He kept England together long enough to await the United States’ entry into the War following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and – probably the worst decision in modern history – Germany’s declaration of war against the US.
Think of it this way: if England had fallen, Germany would have been clear to finish off Russia leaving the United States alone to oppose Germany’s conquest and control of the world.
What of the protesters? If Germany had won the war most of them would be dead, never born or slaves to Germany.
Then there is Franklin Roosevelt. How long before the protesters shift their eyes in his direction? After all, he kept the US military segregated and did little to protect blacks in the South. He only did the “little” he did because he was forced by threats of a mass protest via a “march on Washington.”
Then there is the German cruise ship the St Louis, where about 900 Jews fled Germany in 1939 trying to find shelter in Cuba. After the Germans bribed the Cuban government to not accept the refugees, they sought refuge in the United States but Roosevelt refused to accept them.
The ship sailed up and down the US coast until it was forced to return to Europe. The refugees were accepted in the various nations of Europe though once Germany conquered Europe, the former passengers were hunted down and most were killed – except those who were lucky enough to be accepted by England.
Why aren’t Jews demanding that all of the monuments to FDR be torn down since he denied those 900 sanctuary in the US? Because they have enough sense to understand that without FDR the US would have probably become a fascist state in the 30’s and therefore not be interested in fighting Germany and all the Jews in the world would have been wiped out. They are able to look at that scale and understand that it is important to take the full measure of a man before passing judgment.
Rizzo photo: Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto/Getty Images
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