Monday, November 29, 2004
Mission Statements
When a wordsmith such as I visits a place such as Washington, D.C., the first thing he notices is that words are carved in granite everywhere--on the sides of buildings, over the doors of buildings, on the inside walls of buildings. The words we carve into the buildings of our national capital represent mission statements about who we are and what we value. If they were less meaningful or significant, the thinking goes, we wouldn't bother with such permanent inscriptions in such important places.
But when you carve words in granite, their very permanence makes them just another decorative feature after a while, like the cornice of a building. Carving words in granite elevates them to a plane above the mundane--and therefore, we turn them into safe and sanitized platitudes everyone can agree on, instead of thinking of them as the living ideas they once were.
I first thought about this while walking through the FDR Memorial last Friday with The Mrs. and our nephews, age 11 and 8. The memorial is the most quote-heavy of the major memorials on the National Mall, with more than 20 inscriptions, including his greatest hits ("fear itself," "arsenal of democracy," etc.) and some others that should be:
One of the most anomalous quotes on any wall in Washington is at the Lincoln Memorial, where Lincoln's Second Inaugural is inscribed. More than anything else at the Lincoln Memorial, the volume of text dates it to an era earlier than our own--a time before visuals reigned supreme. Nevertheless, I saw many people at the Memorial trying to read the entire address, but I wonder how many of them really understood what it says. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural is the most fearsome speech any American president ever gave. Instead of offering certitude about the Civil War, it offered only questions. And instead of offering comfort and faith in a happy ending, Lincoln suggested something else entirely:
Thomas Jefferson is the most malleable of the Founding Fathers. Both liberals and conservatives can invoke him frequently, because Jefferson's own head was often divided by contradictory ideas, sometimes in ways that defy logic. But it's hard to read the Jefferson Memorial's most prominent quote as anything other than a slam at those today who would repeal the Enlightenment: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." You can say such a thing now--but prepare to be accused of anti-Christian bigotry. (Jefferson himself faced just such an accusation.) Nevertheless, the inscription’s power--both to offend and to galvanize--seems to have been robbed by its elevation to granite.
This isn't to suggest that we should stop honoring our nation's heroes as we do, only to recognize that monuments, by being carved out of stone that's supposed to last forever, can't help removing their subjects from the realm of the real. But if we remove their ideas from the realm of the real, we lose the benefit of their wisdom--and if there's one place wisdom is often in short supply, it's Washington, D.C. If the words we carve in granite really do represent deep and lasting statements of our nation's mission, maybe our current crop of leaders are an anomaly, and someday we'll awaken again to our better selves. Maybe. But we won't, if we forget that those mission statements aren't just decorations.
When a wordsmith such as I visits a place such as Washington, D.C., the first thing he notices is that words are carved in granite everywhere--on the sides of buildings, over the doors of buildings, on the inside walls of buildings. The words we carve into the buildings of our national capital represent mission statements about who we are and what we value. If they were less meaningful or significant, the thinking goes, we wouldn't bother with such permanent inscriptions in such important places.
But when you carve words in granite, their very permanence makes them just another decorative feature after a while, like the cornice of a building. Carving words in granite elevates them to a plane above the mundane--and therefore, we turn them into safe and sanitized platitudes everyone can agree on, instead of thinking of them as the living ideas they once were.
I first thought about this while walking through the FDR Memorial last Friday with The Mrs. and our nephews, age 11 and 8. The memorial is the most quote-heavy of the major memorials on the National Mall, with more than 20 inscriptions, including his greatest hits ("fear itself," "arsenal of democracy," etc.) and some others that should be:
The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.Take FDR’s name off of these quotes (and remove his cadences from them), put them in the mouth of a modern political candidate, and you’d have a significant portion of the American electorate ready to vote against that candidate as being unfit to lead the post 9/11 world (quote 1), trapped in a pre-9/11 mindset (quote 2), and failing to recognize who's responsible for the nation's prosperity (quote 3). Yet some of those very same voters walk around the FDR Memorial reading and nodding, immunized against the meaning of those words by the fact that they’re in granite. (The Mrs. suggests that new members of Congress be bused out to the FDR Memorial and made to read the quotes before being sworn in.)
We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
One of the most anomalous quotes on any wall in Washington is at the Lincoln Memorial, where Lincoln's Second Inaugural is inscribed. More than anything else at the Lincoln Memorial, the volume of text dates it to an era earlier than our own--a time before visuals reigned supreme. Nevertheless, I saw many people at the Memorial trying to read the entire address, but I wonder how many of them really understood what it says. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural is the most fearsome speech any American president ever gave. Instead of offering certitude about the Civil War, it offered only questions. And instead of offering comfort and faith in a happy ending, Lincoln suggested something else entirely:
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."Were it translated into modern English, people would be shocked by it:
If this war is our punishment for a great national sin, how can we be surprised? After all, we believe God punishes sinners with perfect justice. We want this war to end, but if God wants to use it to destroy us, then destruction is clearly what we deserve.No American politician would dare deliver such a speech today, even in a country as godly as this one is supposed to be. And even if someone did, nobody would inscribe it on a wall commemorating him.
Thomas Jefferson is the most malleable of the Founding Fathers. Both liberals and conservatives can invoke him frequently, because Jefferson's own head was often divided by contradictory ideas, sometimes in ways that defy logic. But it's hard to read the Jefferson Memorial's most prominent quote as anything other than a slam at those today who would repeal the Enlightenment: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." You can say such a thing now--but prepare to be accused of anti-Christian bigotry. (Jefferson himself faced just such an accusation.) Nevertheless, the inscription’s power--both to offend and to galvanize--seems to have been robbed by its elevation to granite.
This isn't to suggest that we should stop honoring our nation's heroes as we do, only to recognize that monuments, by being carved out of stone that's supposed to last forever, can't help removing their subjects from the realm of the real. But if we remove their ideas from the realm of the real, we lose the benefit of their wisdom--and if there's one place wisdom is often in short supply, it's Washington, D.C. If the words we carve in granite really do represent deep and lasting statements of our nation's mission, maybe our current crop of leaders are an anomaly, and someday we'll awaken again to our better selves. Maybe. But we won't, if we forget that those mission statements aren't just decorations.
