Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance.
The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.
Daniel 2:31-33
Defining Terms:
- Revolution: A sudden, radical change.
- Thomas Kinkade: A kitsch painter whose works never offended anyone.
- Revolution-Kinkade: The belief that all public depictions of truth must be free from sin or else be destroyed and replaced with something unoffensive.
A Short Polemic Against 21st Century Iconoclasm:
Dear reader,
Today I went and cleaned the graffiti off the toppled George Washington Statue in Portland, Oregon and while I have the temperament to discuss the issues of slavery, colonialism, Native land theft and BLM with an interlocutor, these iconoclasts appear unreachable.
What is happening today goes far beyond the “Well, imagine how you would feel…” style of argumentation. We’re dealing with a group now who would knock down the Roman Colosseum under the justification that it was built by Jewish slaves. Gone is nuance, contemplation and conversation. What’s left is only each of our individual views of history from the vantage point of our modern moral sensibilities. Gather enough passionate folks together of this ilk and you can start destroying monuments.
What I find so pernicious about mentality is the real lack of any ideological force behind it. At least when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamyan in 2001 it did so because the Quran condemns idolatry as it wants a person to enjoy eternal life both physical and spiritual in heaven with Allah. Here we find that the destruction of monuments is rooted in what believers perceive to be the most important aspect of your life. Does anything run so deep for our leftist brothers today? Not likely.
My interpretation of these current events and the destruction of Ulysses S Grant, who led the Union Army into defeating the Confederate States is that a sizable portion of the movement has lost touch with reality. The writing on the wall here is not good if our acquiesce towards allowing art to be destroyed under a democracy continues. I don’t want to see history destroyed in order to assume some “better” future nor do I ever want a censorship committee deciding what I can see, hear, read or experience. This is all a very short jump away from burning bookstores who carry Martin Heidegger.
“Selling past the close” doesn’t work. Everyone was onboard with peacefully removing pro-confederate/segregationist monuments until a “this too!” mentality began fracturing and alienating your support base from the real solutions which need to be implemented. Now the movement has drifted into the realm of spectacle, peacocking around, giving us a lot more attitude than substance. On display now is what it looks like when reason does become a slave to the passions and once reason exits, I’m not down with your revolution-Kinkade.
Stay human,
-Ian Frantz
One thing the people that you’re speaking to might object is that the use of reason has always occurred within a sphere of privilege; that there is no normative grid which is not oppressive; and the requirement of civil discourse is itself a political trap. I think one reason that kind of view might seem persuasive is that there have, historically, been no shortage of good reasons to act otherwise and better than typically we do; but the history of EuroAmerican peoples is a litany of terrors. In an important sense, barbarism is the story of our great-grandfather’s lives; and if we have made progress in terms of a wider, less self-serving conception of liberty (over and above the prerogatives of the slave owner to do as he liked with his property), it is not perfectly clear how or why these changes have taken place. What becomes very difficulty to argue, I think, is that the transformation is one of unalloyed moral expansiveness, or even reflective consistency; we seem to be products of forces to which it is difficult to locate and respond. Perhaps too often those calling for reason hold all the aces and trumps in their hands; and show no scruples in playing them as their advantage requires.
But I do not disagree that the political and the rational now largely live in different countries (perhaps they always did, I do not know), and that this divorce is harmful to both. I would suggest that one the most vital currencies for a society is the normative self-respect that a people have for themselves; and that this is something we lack today. In meantime, I continue to hope that one day we will become a people worthy of the respect of our children.
Good article Ian. These issues are mired in complexity which defies the usual tendencies of looking for answers which are already dancing on the keyboard.