If I, with no accomplishments to my credit, nevertheless have the moral authority to pass judgment on and condemn the greatest heroes of the past, what a superior person I must be!
You who used to honor those heroes, bow before me, the breaker of statues!
3 comments:
Yes, there is an implied self-righteousness that we would never do such things ourselves.
I assent to the abstract idea that we should take care who we honor in our culture, in order to promote our best values. But the reality is that heroism is hard, and not many attain it. We also do not want to honor only the milk-and-water heroes.
If we could honor only the perfect, who would be left?
I think some of these topplers have no sense of how hard it is to accomplish anything, and a very theoretical idea (more like a checklist of symbols instead) of what virtue is.
I hope all those felled statues of Lenin and Stalin in eastern Europe are being preserved. They'll be worth a fortune to the owners.
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