“A statue of the dead never brought any progress to any country. ‘Tis the living’ve got to be sculpted into shape.” – Trader Horn

While the once famous Trader Horn got the last part right, I would point out that the purpose of statues is not to bring progress, but rather to honor those who brought and represent progress, values, and who still set a standard, an ideal, for society.

When I first came to this valley, I saw statues of anonymous people that struck me as creepy and bizarre – in the nicest part of town, no less. One was a bench with a metal statue sitting on it. If it had been a statue of, say, Rosa Parks, rather than who the statue was really representing, I could have felt enriched to be part of our great history simply by being an informed and involved citizen sitting next to her, and it would have felt great to have been surrounded by other civic statues honoring our heritage and national courage.

There could have been other life-sized statues, and not the ones one might expect – like the now-controversial (after 200 years of honor) political figures of Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and Adams. These are not to be our heroes any longer. We are too evolved now, too enlightened, even though these men were considered the consummation of the Enlightenment.

There could have been statues of Martin Luther King, Washington Carver, Sitting Bull, General Eisenhower, the 100/442nd, Alexander Bell, Thomas Edison, Neil Armstrong, the Wright Brothers, Louis “Unbroken” Zamperini, the men on United flight 93, Desmond Doss or even the 1980 Olympic hockey team. Even the “American in attitude and action only” Tank Man of Tiananmen Square.

Oh, no. No, no, no. Such statues might offend the perpetually and aggressively offended, who hate particularly what is good and God-fearing.

Those so deluded as no longer to discern or acknowledge good from evil can’t fight evils they refuse to see, let alone name. This is why they promote “tolerance” and “coexistence” for what is wrong, indecent or childishly illogical.

When you spit out the truth, you must swallow a lie. To fill the moral vacuum they create, they fight imagined wrongs, which makes them feel good as they do harm.

These “truth deniers” also must then exalt the unexaltable. What we end up with are the gutless, meaningless statues that we have, and like elected officials, that we deserve. We will have statues like the one I sat down next to, statues to our highest ideals, i.e., ourselves. Statues to the post-religious liberty seeking, post-trailblazing, post-pioneering, post-civilization saving American consumer. A statue of a man whose greatest claim and highest calling is to have the time to sit and consider his dolce vita while contemplating his overpriced frappie-whappi-doopi-whoopi.

Forgive my mockery. I should have said his frappe-cappu-mocha-latte. What a figure to strive after. It’s embarrassing that more people don’t find it embarrassing.

What is wrong with statues of shoppers enjoying themselves? Isn’t this what the “greatest generation” fought for? Actually, both FDR And Churchill wrote that the battle was about the saving of Christian civilization, yet Westfield has been sued due to its security placing an American citizen under arrest in their mall for quietly conversing about religious topics – with other consenting adults.

The greatest generation failed in this: not teaching their children the principles that made the previous generation so great, and in not insisting that tax-funded schools, now hostile to Western civilization in general, and America specifically, do the same.

We have been coasting on the momentum, on the sacrifices and efforts, of the same great past generations we have been cowed into erasing from our nation’s consciousness and conscience. Do we want America to stay great, to stay constitutional? Then we’d better do more than sun ourselves by our penthouse pools and start honoring the founders who laid our foundation and the pillars that support our prosperity.

If the foundation is ill-maintained or the pillars neglected, our elevated lifestyle will fall. Put another way, we’ve been living off our seed crop, so all we can expect is an empty harvest.

Instead of representing “nothing,” I’m afraid the statues are an accurate representation of what we have come to believe is the consummation and whole point of successful Western civilization: the American consumer, enjoying himself in the land of affluence. Spending our inheritance without replenishing it for those who follow. Rights without responsibilities, a one-sided, counterfeit coin.

“Consummation of Empire” is one in a series of five paintings that Thomas Cole, founder of America’s first stylistic school of art (the Hudson River School) named “The Course of Empire.” This prophetic group of paintings is well worth researching.

History repeats itself for a reason, and not caring about that reason allows it to.

“‘Tis the living’ve got to be sculpted into shape.”

Richard Hood is a Valencia resident.