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So there are no doubt many wise scholars to whom one might turn to understand the awful iconoclasm we are facing. But because I’m a geek, my thought turned immediately to the words of a certain warrior-poet about a similar controversy:
Worf: “The only real question is whether you believe in the legend of Davy Crockett or not. If you do, then there should be no doubt in your mind that he died the death of a hero. If you do not believe in the legend, then he was just a man and it does not matter how he died.”
The attacks on the statues qua statues are meaningless in and of themselves. What is significant is the attack on the nation’s story about itself.
George Washington- our country’s father- never told a lie. He raised a legion at his own expense which marched beneath the slogan, “Appeal to Heaven” and led our revolutionaries to glorious independence.
Abraham Lincoln- the great emancipator, brilliant orator, who guided the country through the divine scourge that was the civil war, through which the country paid for its great sin of slavery and realized the meaning of its founding.
Robert E. Lee- a noble man fighting for a cause he knew was doomed because he loved his home. A southern Hector whose skill and nobility in defeat conveys all the more honor upon the victorious Union.
And countless more men and women -of various races, creeds and origins- but each tale adding to the American story, itself a tiny part of the Western canon.
So you can believe whatever you want. And maybe a statue is just a statue.
But I believe in the legend of Davy Crockett.
But I believe in the legend of Davy Crockett.
