They would hem and haw a bit, make Jim Halpert faces into the C-Span cameras, It might rustle McConnell’s jowls a tad, Rand Paul would object over the cost then flip his vote at the last minute to approve.
There is something about Mount Rushmore that I find mildly distasteful. I guess its the notion of carving up a perfectly beautiful rock and sticking some guys heads in there. Seems disrespectful to the land somehow. Shrug.
It also has the audacity of hiding the Templars’ treasure. /s
This is the first thing I thought. If certain States are already hacked, you can much more easily win this way.
Yeah. It’s really awful to carve up natural landscape to idolize politicians. The conventional monuments are bad enough. But Rushmore is the worst. The whole system of founder-worship should be totally dismantled. These people were for the most part extremely flawed, native-american-killer Washington most of all, but of course the slave-owner Jefferson and retro-racist Lincoln too. And Roosevelt, despite being one of the few respectable Republican presidents in all of history, was not merely profoundly flawed, but historically speaking insignificant compared to the others.
I don’t know that mountains should have faces carved into them generally, and especially on Indian land, but
is a bridge too far IMO, at least in its implication that he is therefore unworthy to be memorialized.
Lincoln’s views on race were complex and hard to pin down. He never was full-throatedly for social equality the way Radicals like Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner were; but had he been, he never would have secured the nomination for President.
He continued to learn and evolve right until JW Booth put a bullet in his brain, gradually discarding his unworkable colonization fixation. To say that Lincoln held racist views as most white Northerners and Westerners did in the 1860s doesn’t change the fact that he actually executed emancipation, and that he quite literally gave his life to defeat the Confederacy.
No one put it better than Frederick Douglass, who (like many abolitionists) was initially deeply disappointed in Lincoln.
I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.
I think within miles of Mt. Rushmore there is another mountain being carved into the likeness of an Indian Chief, I forget which one, on Indian Land.
And somewhere in the south (Nashville?) there is a confederate carving in a mountain.
He said “likeness”. Not face.
Crazy Horse which is in the same national park region as Rushmore
and Stone Mountain in Atlanta
Yeah I make no judgement on the merits or not of the men carved into mountains. I just think the act itself if an ugly one and in my eyes diminishes rather than enhances those depicted.
If they went and carved a political hero if mine (say Aneurin Bevan) I would be against it too. Its just an ugly thing to do, to the beautiful land.
I think the one in Atlanta is by far the largest scar, regardless of the subject, as just that huge mound of stone is beautiful by itself.
What is the deal with the Crazy Horse monument? They have been working on that since at least when I was a kid. I remember seeing it when we visited Rushmore.
Like Rushmore it is being done by private donations and dollars. I think Rushmore got some money during the depression from the feds but that eventually dried up and the original carver died.
I think the Crazy Horse work is being done now by the second generation as well.
Strongly agree.
Brilliant!
I agree with the act itself but I am not sure about the other. How does it diminish any president on Rushmore, or Crazy Horse? If anything it may have made TR more of a legend than he was.
I have a solution!
Make his carving in the urinals.
Jesus fuck dude.
Well in both those cases I would suggest that gouging into the land is not the best way to honour men who loved the land and nature. But like I say, I respect it varies person to person. Obviously I can never know but I would hazard a guess Gautama Buddha would not have approved of say the The Buddhas of Bamiyan.
I guess by diminishes I suppose I meant, none of these men (as far as I know) asked for these carvings. It came later by people who (mistakenly in my view) thought it would be a way to honour them.