Bob Barr

Modern-day Monuments Lack Majesty
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

June 14, 2006

Washington is a city of monuments; in fact, the monument that serves as a tribute to the city's namesake is one of the grandest of them all, renowned the world over for its simple majesty. And the Lincoln Memorial — who but the coldest heart cannot stand at the marble feet of the president who was assassinated for saving the Union and not succumb to the sense of awe the statue was intended to convey?

Even the Capitol building, itself a monument to representative governance, is topped by a heroic Statue of Freedom gazing out not only over the people of this land, but across the ages as well. These and other monuments — including the dozens of bronze horses and riders at the centers of Washington's many traffic circles and public lawns that bear tribute to military heroes — are appropriate reminders of the feats of history's great achievers.

Yet in recent years, the construction of monuments in America has become something different. As memorial after memorial become a public work project of massive proportions and controversy, one has to perhaps wonder what monuments and memorials are becoming.

Rather than serving to commemorate a figure or event of truly historic importance — a great World War, a great president or an inspiring leader — monuments are becoming edifices of sorrow; sites designed not to inspire awe but to instill sadness; not reminders of greatness but of tragedy.

Take the controversy surrounding the proposed memorial at ground zero in New York City. No brick or piece of granite has yet been laid, but already the complex is estimated to cost $1 billion — nearly a thousand times the Washington Monument's cost.

Political figures regularly debate and argue over the ground zero memorial project — whether the state or the city will pay for this or that portion; how many waterfalls should it have, how many levels, how many pools, how many galleries? This is a tribute to the victims of Sept. 11?

At the Pentagon in Virginia, things are progressing a bit better, though still the process is perplexingly complicated. The memorial to be constructed at the site of the third terrorist-orchestrated plane crash on Sept. 11, 2001, is to cover nearly two acres, cost some $22 million and contain 184 cantilevered and lighted benches, each representing one of the victims on the ill-fated plane or on the ground. The area will be surrounded by a wall that reportedly will rise in height to represent the age range of the victims.

The construction of the complex design will take a planned 2 1/2 years — nearly twice as long as it took to construct the Pentagon itself during World War II.

Travel a short distance from the Pentagon to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial and you can, again, readily see the change from America of ages past, when monuments were simple, majestic structures rather than the "experiences" akin to theme parks they are now becoming.

The monument to the second Roosevelt covers some 7 1/2 acres and tries to present something for everyone — nine sets of bronze statues, a likeness of the former president's dog, a walk-through depiction of the Great Depression, touching walls, everything one might expect at a theme park.

Though Roosevelt was an avid cigarette smoker, and was often photographed with his characteristic cigarette holder containing a lighted tobacco product, memorial designers were careful to leave off such a politically incorrect device.

Similarly, out of sensitivities to visitors who might take offense at reading one of the wartime president's most famous quotes — the speech to the Congress in which he declared that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was a "date which will live in infamy" — the memorial purposely omits that language from the many quotes of Roosevelt's scattered among the memorial's many structures.

Whether in Washington, New York City or Oklahoma City, modern memorials in America reflect less of what America used to be — proud, heroic and straightforward – and more what it has become – a nation dwelling in the past, focusing on victims rather than heroes, mired in political correctness and armchair psychology.

I'll take the simple majesty of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial or the silent grandeur of the Lincoln Memorial over the theme-park designs of modern American memorials any day. I prefer to stand and look up to monuments reflecting America's greatness, not down at the ground to ponder tragedies that have befallen it.

Mr. Barr occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation.