UW-Madison students call for removal of Lincoln statue

[The Magistrate]

70. Iconoclasm Is a Dead End, Sir

It is a waste of effort.

You greatly over-rate the effect of statues, and greatly underrate the attachment of people at large to symbols of their country.

Take every statue down, park every statue in a museum, you would gain nothing. State that as an aim, and you will lose a great deal.

Note the degree of opposition you are arousing here, on this forum. There is no one here who is not to the left of many of their friends and most of their neighbors. This is true even of those some are pleased to dub centerists and even rightists; in fact these often are people much more to the left of their neighbors and friends than those who deploy such labels towards them are. If you cannot get much of an 'Amen!' from this audience, you may be sure you will get nothing but boos and catcalls from populace at large. And in a democracy, that matters. You will never be in a position to rule by fiat, you will never even be in a position to rule by crowd or mob. That latter may gain a temporary local success or two, but mobs will be broken by state power, and what they have damaged will be repaired. Outright enemies of equality, exploitative criminals and traitors, these can and will be edited out of public spaces to applause which outweighs sufficiently the complaints of 'history' and 'heritage'. Assailing national icons will meet a mixture of derision and anger, and discredit as outside the community people who engage in it. Like it or not, that is political death in a democracy.