Across from Jefferson's noble dome the new Martin Luther King, Junior Memorial is opening. Or did recently open. Or will soon open. It is not really clear.
So I was curious and tried to run past Washington's newest attraction. But like the FDR Memorial, serious park rangers in Hanna Barbera uniforms prevent joggers, rollerbladers, bikers, and skateboarders from entering the MLK Memorial. (I can see them keeping the people on conveyances out, but what is wrong with running? Running is just really fast walking).
I have objections to deifying anyone in stone on the public dime. In addition to trying to decide who rates a memorial, there is the cost of funding the care of the place forever. Additionally, any public effort to create such monuments seems to lack Constitutional authority. Where in the Constitution does the USG gain the ability to influence social thought through building monuments?
Even though I could not see the front perfectly, I did manage to get a decent view of the back of the Memorial. I was struck by the hundreds if not thousands of seats arranged in a field near the Potomac. Doing some Googling back in my hotel I learnt that Obama will be conducting the formal opening ceremony next week. That is why all the chairs, and lights, and stages, and fencing, and portable bathrooms, are sitting out there.
Back on the 4th of July I criticized the fact that the USG was in a corporatist relationship with Boeing to give out t shirts to rebuild the Mall. But I also mentioned that I have nothing wrong with the USG conducting appropriately sized celebrations where merited. Maybe this Obama event will be low key and affordable. With gold at nearly $2,000 an ounce and the federal debt expanding inversely against efforts to contract the size of government though, I am not optimistic.
I will say this for the foundation that is raising money for the MLK Memorial though: at least it is a private initiative started at the grass roots level. It appears this effort was pioneered by individuals, not Boeing (although there are plenty of business partners along for the ride).
If it was started by private, low level capital though, it found some USG funding ASAP. Apparently, Congress agreed to match up to $1o million in private contributions.
Not to mention the cost of maintenance in perpetuity.
I went running in another national capital recently, of a former Soviet republic. I was struck by the many neglected national monuments littering the country. It occurred to me that when a failed system collapses, some of the first casualties are the figurative pillars of the myth which justified the regime. Usually this is due to anger. People rip down statues of Lenin and Hussein (and probably soon Gaddafi) when regimes end. But some memorials, constructed to justify a certain government, are in their own way quite noble. Millions of Red Army soldiers died fighting the horrific Nazi threat. But today many of their monuments are neglected, along with far less deserving memorials. When the state is bankrupt memorials, good and bad, are neglected.
If our present system fails to return to its American roots and our economy goes the way of the USSR, we risk the same course. It will not matter then that MLK merits a memorial or Jefferson deserves a place of recognition. Along with the National Mall, the Jobs Corps, the IRS, and every other unconstitutional expenditure- they will simply be neglected.
If supporters wanted to recognize the achievements of MLK, or Jefferson, or Larry Bird, then they should have done so with exclusively private money.