When protesters tore down a statue of Edward Carmack, a 1900s politician who openly advocated for lynchings, outside of the Tennessee Capitol building last week, it didn’t seem like a great loss. To be sure, decisions about which statues go where should be made in a civilized manner, not by mobs armed with paint, ropes, and brute force. But in a reasonable and suitably democratic process, I would argue against keeping a statue honoring a man who believed in and called for such lawless violence.
I had a similar feeling about Jefferson Davis’s statue in Richmond. But then, Philadelphia protesters went and defaced a statue of Matthias Baldwin, an abolitionist who had attacked slavery, fought for black people’s right to vote, and founded a school for black children that he ran largely out of his own pocket. He did more to advance the principles of equality and justice than most people alive today, yet protesters slandered his memory with the words “colonizer” and “murderer” spray-painted in bright red across his face.
As if in a frenzy of self-parody, protesters have similarly defaced memorials to Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill (the man is honored for defeating the Nazis), and even Charles de Gaulle.
This is where it becomes clear that the Left’s iconoclasts do not care for the facts or the history. If their concern had anything to do with removing memorials to racism and white supremacy, they would not have touched Baldwin’s statue. But they did — because Baldwin is a white man who existed in the past. As such, he must be considered part of the problem.
America’s entire history deserves condemnation, according to the Left. America’s founding wasn’t a testament to liberty but rather an act of injustice, they argue. Likewise, even abolition and the civil rights movement can’t be separated from the larger concept of white privilege and systemic inequality. The things we’ve accomplished as a nation, including the unprecedented harmony we enjoy amid racial diversity, do not matter as much as the flaws of the past do. America is slavery, inequality, and injustice, and it can never be anything more than that — see, for example, the 1619 Project.
When you think about America in this light, you’re inclined to hate everything about it. And that means that this won’t end with Carmack, Davis, or even Baldwin. Our founders, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the many other men who built this nation, must also fall. So must our entire system of governance because it is all a testament to America’s original sin. There is no room for calibration, distinction, or nuance. It all must go.
The problem with this way of thinking is that it neglects an important truth: It was only because of this country’s foundation that progress was and still is possible. Frederick Douglass famously encouraged slaves and abolitionists to rely on the Constitution in their fight for equality because the problem was not with the document itself but with Americans’ application of it. “I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it,” Douglass said. “Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.”
We should honor the men and women who fought for liberty, equality, and justice and learn from the failures of those who did not. And by all means, let us reexamine the statues we’ve erected in remembrance of those who don’t deserve it. But we must first assign this debate a reasonable set of standards: Should we judge historical figures by their worst actions or their best? Do we judge them by today’s standards or those of their own day?
These are important questions that need answers. Because without them, those who hate this nation’s history will try to do away with all of it.
