COLUMNISTS

The Idol and the Republic

Martin Luther King Jr. (center) and Bayard Rustin, right, in 1956, when they were leading the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. They are shown with the Rev. Ralph Abernathy (left).
Martin Luther King Jr. (center) and Bayard Rustin, right, in 1956, when they were leading the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. They are shown with the Rev. Ralph Abernathy (left).

— It is that time again, mixing mourning and gratitude, to mark the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. And this year Americans can gather at his still new-and still controversial-memorial in Washington.

Washington is a city of monuments, and as a national capital it should be. And was meant to be from its beginning. Its original layout in the elegant French style was a work of art as well as architecture-a radiating pattern of streets, avenues and grand boulevards. Its design was meant to capture the spirit of the new Republic and a new order of the ages: Novo Ordo Seclorum, as it still says on the dollar bill.

That motto proved even more farsighted than its founding generation could have envisioned. People around the world still look to America with hope. Just look at how many are trying to get here. Lady Liberty still holds her lamp beside the golden door.

One 18th Century pamphleteer-his name was Thomas Paine-did understand the whole world’s stake in the outcome of the American Revolution. Even if the crowned heads of Europe may not have realized it. They tended to look on our war as just a sideshow next to their never-ending struggle for power over the center of civilization.

But to Tom Paine, the decisive role this new America would play in the world was only Common Sense, as he titled his call to arms. “The cause of America,” he realized, “is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. . . . ’Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now.”

A new order of the ages indeed. The city’s intersecting avenues left room for monuments to come. Each of those now familiar memorials would reflect the trials and triumphs of a republic whose cause is still humanity’s, though humanity may not always realize it. Each monument reflects its time, and the legacy its time would leave to the next. Like an architectural text that goes from Early Federal to Blank Modern.

The Washington Monument rises, as Washington himself did, over the whole of the enterprise, whether making war or peace, creating a republic or nation, struggling on behalf of a revolutionary cause or framing a constitution that would unite, inspire, grow and endure over the years-over centuries now.

Washington’s monument reflects his own towering vision-and faith. It wasn’t just that his countrymen believed in him, he believed in his countrymen. His eye, like that atop the pyramid on the reverse of the Great Seal, still seems to watch over us. Like his faith and vision.

The Jefferson Memorial is a graceful testament to the other pole of the American experiment. In the spirit of the 18th Century, his memorial is a temple dedicated to Reason. And the quotations selected for it do well to reflect the mind and soul of the most eloquent and seeking of the Founding Fathers: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’’

The most sublime is the Lincoln Memorial. No one can stand there at midnight, gazing up at Daniel Chester French’s great yet intimate image of the seated Lincoln, and doubt that stone can be turned into compassion. Or not sense the immensity of the sacrifice this Father Abraham was called on to make for freedom-the sacrifice of his children.

There was no more fitting place for a black preacher out of the deep South in the midst of the country’s second great struggle for emancipation to declare that he still had a dream for America, not just for his children but for all our children:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. . . . I have a dream that one day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. . . .” Black and white together, equal in humanity, equal before the law and in the eyes of God.

One could sense Father Abraham looking over Martin Luther King’s shoulder that sweltering late-August day, not just approvingly but with understanding. The understanding that sacrifice always lies ahead in freedom’s road.

Each generation leaves its own marker on that road, its own monument. Whether it is only a simple pillar of stones in the desolate earth that proclaims: Surely the Lord was in this place, and we knew it not. Or a graven image that proclaims only earthly vainglory. Each reflects the spirit of its times.

For there is an architecture of the spirit, too, and to go from the Lincoln Memorial to the newest addition to Washington’s monument row, the King Memorial, is to see a sad commentary on what has happened to the national spirit.

The great graven image that is supposed to capture Martin Luther King’s legacy doesn’t. It just glowers. Arms folded, its features are expressionless, blank. Like any other idol, it has eyes but does not see, a mouth but does not speak. It radiates not peace but menace. Maoist art has come to America.

The designers couldn’t even get the monument’s most prominent quotation from Dr. King right, twisting his words to make them celebrate himself rather than his cause. They took a passage from one of Dr. King’s speeches that disavow any sense of self-promotion and turned it into a celebration of self: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.”

Or as Maya Angelou put it in a moment of perception, they’ve made him sound like “an arrogant twit.” This isn’t editing, it’s butchery. Any newspaperman knows how that works, or rather doesn’t.

For a time it wasn’t clear whether the quotation was going to be corrected or just removed. Either would have been a decided improvement. At last report, it was simply going to be effaced. Good. If only we could efface the whole monument and start all over again. Neither this great, unfeeling idol nor its vivisected language reflect Dr. King’s spirit but that of our own spiritless time. In that sense it’s an accurate representation. Damningly accurate.

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Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. His column today is based on one published January 15, 2012.

Editorial, Pages 12 on 01/15/2013

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