Here’s a radical concept that will save us a lot of virtue signalling by politicians like Nancy Pelosi in the future: Privatize all statues.
Remove all statues from government property and never again use government money or land to put up another one.
Statues to leaders and heroes, as we’ve seen, are inherently political. Leaders and heroes are humans and therefore inherently flawed and imperfect and prisoners of their times.
Washington owned slaves. Woodrow Wilson was a racist. FDR appeased the racist Southern U.S. Senators from the Solid South.
If the Daughters of the Confederacy want to put up a statue of some racist defender of slavery on a horse, or if the VFW wants to erect a statue with some crazy general in a tank, let them buy a piece of land and build it there themselves.
City Halls, halls of Congress, military cemeteries, government property of every kind should not be places for statues honoring anyone — sorry. That includes George Washington, FDR, Ike and even St. Obama. Governments shouldn’t pay a dime for them either.
Of course, this policy will never happen, but if the statue-cancelling spree continues maybe we’ll get lucky and there will be no statues left.
It’s 2020. Statues should be reserved for Greek gods and great animals like Secretariat and Balto, the heroic sled dog who took the diphtheria antitoxin to Nome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_XVvtO8cYY
But of course the BLM graffiti is OK.