Statues, Zealots and Parsing History

In the late 18^th century the French Revolution swept over Paris.  A large part of the revolution was centered on the power exercised by the Catholic Church, which was the state sponsored religion of France and, therefore, linked to the monarchy.  In the usual zeal of mob rule, the higher purpose of the revolution was soon subverted to the basest form of violence.  No one was safe.  Eventually the mob (as mobs always do) turned on its own and executed one of its architects, Maximilian Robespierre when they decided even he was not “pure” enough. 

            One of the victims of the revolution was the great Cathedral of Notre Dame.  The interior of the church was looted because nothing speaks to your dedication to truth and justice like stealing something.  More that two dozen statues on the church façade were decapitated, because nothing speaks to your dedication to due process like vandalism.  The mob massacred and jailed priests and nuns during the September Massacres of 1792 and then announced that public worship was illegal.  Evidently nothing speaks to your dedication to freedom like denying it. 

But we’ve learned a lot since the 1790’s.  Or have we.

I have absolutely no problem with removal of Confederate statues.  I also have no problem with public places banning the Confederate flag (if you love your “heritage” fly the flag of your state before the Civil War, none of which showed the stars and bars of the Confederacy).  I also think that the habit of naming schools and public buildings after Confederate heroes to be indefensible.  The simple fact is these men were in violent conflict with their homeland which makes them traitors.  They were also motivated by NOTHING other than the preservation of slavery, which is reprehensible. 

So, having agreed on the Civil War perpetrators, let’s get on to the infinitely less defensible attack on the statues of our President’s and other historic figures.  That list even includes the statue of King Louis IX outside the St. Louis Art Museum for reason that I am not quite sure anyone involved could articulate. 

The people attacking these statues seem to have no litmus test beyond whether or not the person pictured was a slave owner.  This becomes a problem when you consider the fact that slavery has been ubiquitous across this planet.  Prior to any contact with those nasty Europeans, all of Africa and every tribe of Native Americans in North America (which the exception of the Inuit) practiced slavery.  Many used slavery as an adjunct to genocide.  Do we blast away at the pyramids because they were built by slave owning Egyptians?  What about Cahokia mounds?  Mesa Verde?  The Crazy Horse Monument?

But what if you say that slavery should only be condemned in the modern context.  Okay, that means that you have to take on the Muslims.   When thousands of Yazidi women were taken prisoner in norther Iraq in August of 2015 they were used and sold as sex slaves by the Islamic state.  All of this was justified by passages in the Koran which allow slavery.  The prophet Mohammed was both a slave owner and a slave trader.  When the Atlantic slave trade finally came to a halt in the 19^th century, Islamic slave trade simply moved to the east where it was still thriving in Asia. 

Now here is the nut of the problem.  If you decide that you want purity in your historic figures you are going to have to erase a great deal of history.  People are not pure.  Historic times, because they reflect the values of the people at that time, are not pure.  Only a weakling is afraid to look at both the good and bad of their cause, their being, their values.  We learn from the mistakes of the past.

If you want purity, look to God.  If you want justice look to your current and future legislators and leave the artwork to the critics. 

 Preserve Notre Dame and keep the faith.