I dont have any particular fondness for statues in general though I do appreciate their beauty as art and their reminders of our history, both good and bad.

I was told that the recent tearing down or defacing of statues was first about police violence towards black communities. That didnt make a lot of sense since none of these people memorialized were police and Im not trying to over-simply this issue but what does that have to do with the police? Then we heard the focus would be on Confederate statues.

Now that makes a little more sense as the Confederates fought to keep slavery in place, but wouldn’t we want them to remind us of our past as well as how far we have come? And with all our flaws, no one can argue that we haven’t come a very long way from our early history. Next we saw the destruction of Union soldier memorials but those people fought and died to end slavery so again, thats confusing. We read that the mayor of Baltimore agreed to take all their statues down but even that wasn’t good enough.

Later this week it was announced that the statues must also be completely destroyed. Now, almost nightly, we are seeing random statues toppled, destroyed, vandalized or demand that they come down including The Jefferson Memorial, Teddy Roosevelt, Christopher Columbus, the Confederate Soldier frieze at Stone Mountain in GA and even the Emancipation Memorial with Lincoln that was introduced by Frederick Douglass.It seems to me this statue removal has no longer become about police violence or even Black Lives Matter but about any statue the mob turns their eyes upon.

This is the problem with mob rule. Where does it end? Where do WE end it? Do we destroy all our monuments? Shall we erase our history, both good and bad? Surely we all recognize that if the lessons of our history are “vanished down the memory hole” we are most certainly destined to eventually repeat them. If some statues in states need to come down, let it be by a vote of the people of that state. If they dont want it there, remove the statues.

But our federal statues should be preserved and people who damage or destroy them should be prosecuted. A better solution than trying to erase history would be to call for new statues put up alongside the old ones. Statues of people of color and indigenous people who have positively contributed toward our progress- and there are plenty.

Promote books that celebrate them… Put them on our currency… Continue naming more streets, buildings etc. after them, make more holidays to recognize them. This combination of old and new, side by side would provide both a cautionary tale as well as hope for our future. If we destroy our history in marble, when do we start burning the paper books? When do we abolish the names of states, flags or raze named buildings and schools?

What about our money?If ever there was a “slippery slope” we have certainly started on that downward slide and frankly, I find it appalling.