A hideous architectural version of Mar-a-Lago face
Four years after the ending of World War I, and 57 years after the emancipation of America’s slaves following the victory of the United States against the Confederacy that killed 800,000 Americans in a nation of 34 million souls, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922.
Above President Abraham Lincoln’s marble likeness there is a dedication which reads:
In This Temple As In The Hearts Of The People For Whom He Saved the Union, The Memory Of Abraham Lincoln Is Enshrined Forever.
The crowd at the dedication was filled with combat veterans of the American and Confederate armies.
Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s son, as well as former United States secretary of war and U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, was there, as was Lincoln Memorial Commission president Chief Justice William Howard Taft.
Taft presented the Temple to the people of the United States through President Warren G. Harding, who would be the last commander in chief born during the Civil War.
The keynote speaker at the dedication was Dr. Robert Russa Moton, a black man, and president of the Tuskegee Institute.
Below is an excerpt from his speech that perfectly explains America’s history and eternal struggle for justice.
These words make clear why 50 years later, on August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King would raise his voice in a moral thunderclap that honored Lincoln, America and humanity.
King came to the Lincoln Memorial because it is a sacred space in America. It is not a religious shrine, but is a temple to freedom. It is America’s foremost alter of liberty. The thought of it being desecrated with a fascist Trump Arch menacing it with a sinister shadow from across the Potomac — on land adjacent to
Arlington National Cemetery — is an abomination.
At some level, the proposed deformity and vandalism of the National Mall is a hideous architectural version of Mar-a-Lago face. While beauty may lie in the eye of the beholder, self-mutilation of a face, or a skyline, is never pleasant to look at.
Here is what Dr. Moton said:
When the Pilgrim Fathers landed upon the shores of America in 1620, they laid the foundations of our national existence upon the bedrock of liberty.
From that day to this, liberty has been the common bond of our united people.
In 1776, the altars of a new nation were set up in the name of liberty.
In 1812, in the name of liberty we struck for the freedom of the seas.
Again in '61 when the charter of the Nation's birth was assailed, the sons of liberty declared anew the principles of their fathers and liberty became coextensive with the Union.
In '98 the call once more was heard and freedom became coextensive with the hemisphere.
And as we stand in solemn silence here to-day, there still come rumbling out of the east the slowly dying echoes of the last great struggle to make freedom coextensive with the seven seas.
Freedom is the lifeblood of the Nation.
Freedom is the heritage bequeathed to all her sons. It is the underlying philosophy of our national existence.
But at the same time, another influence was working within the Nation.
While the Mayflower was riding at anchor preparing for her voyage from Plymouth, another ship had already arrived at Jamestown.
The first was to bear the pioneers of freedom, freedom of thought and freedom of conscience; the latter had already borne the pioneers of bondage.
Here, then, upon American soil within a year met the two great forces that were to shape the destiny of the Nation.
They developed side by side.
Freedom was the great compelling force that dominated all, and like a great and shining light beckoned the oppressed of every land to the hospitality of these shores.
But slavery like a brittle thread was woven year by year into the fabric of the Nation's life.
And how shall we account for it, except it be that in the Providence of God the black race in America against its will was thrust across the path of the onward-marching white race to demonstrate not only for America but for the world whether the principles of freedom were of universal application and ultimately, no doubt, extend its blessings to all the races of mankind.
In the process of time, as was inevitable, these great forces of liberty and the forces of bondage from the ships at Plymouth and Jamestown met in open conflict upon the field of battle.
And how strange it is, through the same overruling Providence, that children of those who bought and sold their fellows into bondage should be among those who cast aside ties of language, of race, of religion, and even of kinship in order that a people not of their own race, nor primarily of their own creed or color, should have the same measure of liberty and freedom which they themselves enjoyed.
What a costly sacrifice upon the altar of freedom!
How costly the world can never know nor justly estimate.
The flower of the Nation's manhood and the accumulated treasure of two centuries of unremitting toil were offered up; and at length, when the bitter strife was over, when the marshaled hosts on both sides had turned again to broken desolated firesides, a cruel fate, unsatisfied with the awful toll of four long years of carnage, struck at the Nation's head and brought to the dust the already wearied frame of him whose patient fortitude, whose un embittered charity, whose never failing trust in the guiding hand of God had brought the Nation weltering through a sea of blood, yet one and indivisible, to that peace for which his heart yearned.
On that day Abraham Lincoln laid down his life for America—the last and costliest sacrifice.
President Harding spoke to the nation after Dr Morton.
His voice was carried across 48 states on the new invention of radio, which helped deliver a message of deep and enduring importance. The Lincoln Memorial was built for us and our children, not those of Lincoln.
Trump’s fascist arch is a vanity project, a tribute to self, a marble version of Melania, a marker of selfishness, corruption, depravity and evil.
Let his Saudi and Emirate partners in the looting of America build him his arch on Epstein’s Island, where, for all time, the depraved can know depravity was victorious over innocence. Trump’s marble tumor does not belong within a thousand miles of America’s most important shrine.
The Lincoln Memorial is a perpetual reminder that no matter how dark things may seem in America, no matter how hard the struggle may become, the United States of America will endure.
The Lincoln Memorial is a marker for all of the world that freedom will always eventually triumph in the end. As such, it is not a monument to national perfection, but rather its glorious imperfections.
It is a summons towards patriotism, Americanism and the perpetuity of union.
It is America’s Polaris.
President Harding’s remarks of that day are a message in a bottle for us.
Abraham Lincoln was no superman.
Like the great Washington, whose monumental shaft towers nearby as a fit companion to the memorial we dedicate today, the two testifying the grateful love of all Americans to founder and savior—like Washington, Lincoln was a very natural human being, with the frailties mixed with the virtues of humanity.
There are neither supermen nor demi-gods in the government of kingdoms, empires, or republics.
It will be better for our conception of government and its institutions if we will understand this fact.
It is vastly greater than finding the superman if we justify the confidence that our institutions are capable of bringing into authority, in time of stress, men big enough and strong enough to meet all demands.
Washington and Lincoln offered outstanding proof that a representative popular government, constitutionally founded, can find its own way to salvation and accomplishment.
In the very beginning, our American democracy turned to Washington, the aristocrat, for leadership in revolution, and the greater task of founding permanent institutions.
The wisdom of Washington and Jefferson and Hamilton and Franklin was proven when Lincoln, the child of privation, of hardship, of barren environment and meager opportunity, rose to unquestioned leadership when disunion threatened.
Lincoln came almost as humbly as The Child of Bethlehem.
His parents were unlettered, his home was devoid of every element of culture and refinement.
He was no infant prodigy, no luxury facilitated or privilege hastened his development, but he had a God-given intellect, a love for work, a willingness to labor and a purpose to succeed.
Biographies differ about his ambition, but Herndon, who knew him as did no other, says he was greatly ambitious.
I can believe that.
Ambition is a commendable attribute, without which no man succeeds.
Only inconsiderate ambition imperils.
Lincoln was modest, but he was sure of himself, and always greatly simple.
Therein was his appeal to the confidence of his country.
When he believed he was right a nation believed him to be right, and offered all in his support.
His work was so colossal, in the face of such discouragement, that none will dispute that he was incomparably the greatest of our presidents.
He came to authority when the republic was beset by foes at home and abroad, and reestablished union and security.
He made that gesture of his surpassing generosity which began reunion.
Let us forget the treachery, corruption, and incompetence with which he had to combat, and recall his wisdom, his unselfishness, his sublime patience.
He resented no calumnies upon himself; he held no man his enemy who had the power and will to serve the union, his vision was blinded by no jealousy.
He took his advisers from among his rivals, invoked their patriotism and ignored their plottings.
He dominated them by the sheer greatness of his intellect, the singleness and honesty of his purpose, and made them responsive to his hand for the accomplishment of the exalted purpose.
Amid it all there was a gentleness, a kindness, a sympathetic sorrow, which suggest a divine intent to blend mercy, with power in supreme attainment.
This memorial, matchless tribute that it is, is less for Abraham Lincoln than for those of us today, and for those who follow after.
Flanking Abraham Lincoln, etched in granite, are the words of the two greatest speeches ever delivered by an American president, written by Lincoln’s hand, the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural.
Let no Trump shadow ever fall over those words.
Should it come to pass that his monstrosity be built then we should all look forward to the moment when it is knocked down like his malignant ballroom.
Lincoln, watching from heaven, will recognize the significance of the moment.
He will be the first to see that a “new birth of freedom” is at hand.
He is so low a man. No concept of grace or purpose other than self-aggrandizement. I will be happy to be part of the wrecking crew to tear down whatever he has built in his name. He must be removed from all polite mentions of his name. He will go down in history as the worst this nation has produced: let that be a lesson to all of us that the experiment lives on and that it's success won't be complete until he is gone.
So easy to believe in Washington, in Lincoln, in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, in malice toward none and charity for all. So difficult to believe that our fellows would follow Trump and Miller, the lowest of men, to that same racist mirror that reflects our ugly birthmark. We’ve been taught better from our beginning, but some of us always equivocate. And so we learn again and again, but only after the lessons, written in cruelty, have been retaught again and again. And now the teaching begins once again, with a cruelty so blatant that we finally have to say no, this can’t stand. Listen to Minneapolis. We can’t speak up soon enough.