Why Is the G.O.P. Fighting to Preserve Monuments to Traitors in the Capitol?

[David Lockmiller]

Ken Burns did a video for the Washington Post today in which he stated: "Our monuments are representations of myth, not fact."

The part to which I objected was Ken Burns' appraisal of comments made by James Balwin regarding the term liberty for black citizens in America:

At the end of the video, Ken Burns states: "Baldwin's words (regarding liberty) form a searing counterbalance, that are most venerated monuments represent a mythology, [not fact] . . . ."

In my opinion, the Lincoln Memorial [one of our "most venerated monuments"] does not "represent a mythology" regarding the word "liberty" for the black citizens of the United States.

Of course, I disagreed with the assessment made by Ken Burns and posted the following comment to the YouTube video that he had made for Washington Post publication:

Abraham Lincoln has said:

1) Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God had planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you. -- Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, September 13, 1858.

2) The fight must go on. The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats. -- Letter to H. Asbury, November 19, 1858.

3) We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty . . . . -- Address at Sanity Fair, April 18, 1864.

4) Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions. The present moment finds me at the White House, yet there is as good a chance for your children as there was for my father's. -- President Abraham Lincoln Speech to 148th Ohio Regiment, August 31, 1864.

Ken Burns, when you had the opportunity to do so, did you ask James Baldwin whether Abraham Lincoln 's Emancipation Proclamation and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment legislation were or were not two giant steps in the right direction of liberty for all recently emancipated slaves? These giant steps for black citizens-to-be were paid for by the deaths of of hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers, such as Lieutenant-Colonel William McCullough of the 4th Illinois Voluntary Calvary. And, what of the loss to his own family by such sacrifice to the cause of democracy?

President Abraham Lincoln is not a myth and neither was Lieutenant-Colonel William McCullough of the 4th Illinois Voluntary Calvary.

David Lockmiller, San Francisco