In Memoriam
As I have expressed on a prior occasion,
I am not sure if public memorials serve any real function. But at
the same time, in the wake of Fred Korematsu’s passing (which LYLee
pointed out to me), my heart warms to the idea of a memorial for the Japanese internment. Particularly, in these days when civil liberties are under increasing attack.
**
I’m also deeply disturbed that Majority Leader Frist is conflating
the use of the filibuster to block Bush’s conservative judicial
appoinments to the civil rights movement, “The filibuster was once
abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people
of faith.” In the 50s, Strom Thurmond used the filibuster to
block civil rights legislation that would have ended segregation.
Blocking judicial conservative appointments does not do anything to
“restrict” the rights of people of faith. Rather, it protects the
rest of us from their (the Religious Right’s) attempts to break down
the wall between church and state, and their attempts to restrict our
individual rights (i.e. the right to privacy). One reason why Reagan’s conservative nominee Robert Bork got borked
was not only because he wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade, he also wanted
to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut, the case that guarantees your
access to contraceptives.
badxmaru
April 15, 2005 @ 7:04 pm
I think monuments and memorials are only as useful as long as we as a society resolve to remember and uphold those ideals to which such things stand.
If it’s to be used to remember, then yes.
If it’s used as a political tool to make people aware, then no.
Y.
April 18, 2005 @ 3:33 am
I’m not so sure. Isn’t the point of remembering not to repeat the same mistakes? And if that’s the case, the monuments become political tools to make people aware of past mistakens and ostensibly to prevent future ones. Now, I’m not sure how effective they are at doing this, but that’s another story.
echan
April 18, 2005 @ 3:11 pm
Whenever a memorial is built on the soil where “tragedy” occured by the
same entity that perpetrated the “tragedy,” the memorial also serves as
an apology. For instance, the Holocaust Museum in DC only offers up an
apology (I’m not going into the “memory” or actual memorial function of
these edifices here) for the boats of Jewish refugees that FDR turned
away. The concentration camps in Europe serve as German recognition of
the mass genocide took place. An internment camp memorial would be an
additional apology by the U.S. that taking away civil liberties during
war time (based on nationality and skin color) was indeed wrong.