Monuments

The European Commission had a thought on the occasion of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, that while not explicitly about monuments is related:

The European Union was built on the common values of human dignity, fundamental rights, rule of law and democracy, and on the rejection of extreme nationalism.

We must never take these rights and freedoms for granted. We pledge to fight for them every day.

Extremism, nationalism, xenophobia and hatred can still be heard in public speech in Europe. Keeping these memories alive is not only a tribute to the victims but also a way to ensure that these ideologies can be forcefully rejected and such atrocities never happen again.

We stand firm in our defense of democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights, in Europe and worldwide. There is no place in the European Union for extremism, intolerance and oppression.

These remarks dovetail tightly with a suggestion by Vice President Mike Pence:

I hold the view that it’s important that we remember our past and build on the progress that we have made.

I’m someone who believes in more monuments, not less monuments.  What we ought to do is we ought to remember our history, but we also ought to celebrate the progress that we’ve made since that history.

And

When I walked back in 2010 across the Edmund Pettus Bridge…we remembered Bloody Sunday and the extraordinary progress of the civil rights movement, and I can’t help but think that, rather than pulling down monuments, as some are wont to do…we ought to have been building more monuments[.]

Hmm….

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