Public Art

Nelson's Column, Monttreal

Okay, people are saying they are offended by statues. 

The remedy is the same as with freedom of speech: if you disagree, put up your own statue. Just as, if you disagree, you do not try to silence the other, but counter his argument.

Like many other places in the former British Empire, Montreal has a Nelson’s Column, commemorating the great British admiral.

In Dublin, they blew theirs up, to express their distaste for English rule.

The Quebecois, surely, had more reason to feel offended, since, after all, it was France against which Nelson won his victories. But they hose the civilized Canadian way. Instead of tearing Nelson down, as they surely could have any time in the past hundred years, they put up another statue nearby, of Vauquelin, a French naval hero of the Seven Years’ War. Both ethnic groups get their heroes. 

The Confederate statues, like them or not, are important memorials for some Americans of their history. If seeing them offends some, it is equally true that seeing them come down offends others. Mutual respect requires that they stay.

But by all means, all other groups ought to feel free to fund and erect their own public statues, then, of Malcolm X, or Martin Luther King, or John Brown, or Nat Turner, or Sitting Bull, or Pontiac, or, really, anyone else..

More public art is good. Less public art is bad. More free speech is good. Less free speech is bad.

This is not complicated.