Posted on 08/04/2012 9:44:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
This was a question that I put out to a number of my friends and contacts last week, on Twitter and across a couple of e-mail lists. Imagine for a moment that Mt. Rushmore had never been built and the mountain still stood today as a natural rock outcrop. Could we come together as a nation and build such a monument in 2012? There are a number of questions to be wrestled to the ground on this one. Who would pay for it and how? Who would oppose it and why? And – perhaps most contentious of all – which faces would adorn it?
I received a number of interesting responses. One of the more surprising ones came from John Hawkins at Right Wing News, who opined that we couldn’t, but with a rather unexpected twist. His take was that environmentalists would block any such construction under the guise of protecting the environment. (Presumably the yellow necked sand tit would lose half of its nesting grounds. Or something.)
A less popular opinion came on the spending front. One liberal correspondent (who shall remain nameless) claimed that the Tea Party would block the project if there were any tax dollars involved in funding it. (The actual monument was, in fact, bankrolled with federal funding and the National Park Service took over management before it was even finished.)
The majority opinion was that everyone would pay lip service to the need for this type of memorial, but an immediate battle would break out over which presidents to enshrine on such a monument today. Leaving the monument “as is” with some faces from before the modern era of political schisms might be palatable to a majority, but would there be a rush to put some slightly more modern faces up there? And if so… who?
Reagan is the easy answer for conservatives. I suppose the Democrats would push for Kennedy as an easy out, though there would doubtless be a short lived push for Obama as the historic, first black president, etc. (Hey… he got a Nobel, didn’t he?) Does anyone else in the post Teddy Roosevelt era stand out enough to bump one of the current figures off the top of the hill? Or perhaps a 19th century POTUS who was overlooked before?
I might make a case for Ike, though even I would be pushing it with fairly faint praise compared to the current denizens. So, the question for your consideration this weekend is put forward. Could we do it? If not… why not? And if so, who should be there if we were to start the project from square one today?
They’re not worshipped as gods, why would they be forbidden in the Torah’s proscription of idols and graven images?
No.
Nor could we build Hoover Dam, The Golden Gate Bridge, the LA-Colorado River Aqueduct, the Interstate Highway system or a transcontinental railroad.
Not with this EPA, this President and the current army of lawyers.
They didn’t build it then, it’s unfinished. Meanwhile they are building a Crazy Horse monument, so I think the answer is yes.
I have seen the Crazy Horse monument. The only thing that is fairly finished is the head of the horse. There is still a lot to be done one it
He wished
By original spec Mt Rushmore is only about half done. But there is work being done on Crazy Horse, thus proving that America on some level still has the will to turn a mountain into a statue.
NO!
The Tennessee Valley Project?
NO!
The Erie Canal?
NO!
The Niagara Hydroelectric Project?
NO!
The Golden Gate Bridge?
NO!
The Interstate Highway System?
NO!
The Colorado River Water Project.
NO!
The Florida Keys Highway?
NO!
The California Central Valley National Vegetables Basket?
NO!
The Manhattan Project?
NO!
In short, nothing, any longer, of lasting value and benefit to people. All the monuments to industry, imagination, individual vision and effort.
All that is being adressed today, wasting forever national effort and wealth, is creating a new Royal Political Class, and promoting and growing two of the world's largest cultures of parasites : "Envoronmentalists" and welfare parasites. And both supported by a bewildering alphabet soup of bureaucratic enablers. They must all be squished out of existence without mercy or a second thought. It's either that, or the unknown void of anarchy and civil war.
People First must be the new national goal. The freedoms, safety and security of all America's productive citizens. And a restoration of the productive people as masters, and the elected and appointed bureaucracy as servants. A subservient bureaucracy, take it or leave it.
You have stated it PERFECTLY!!
ANYthing???
With foam, glass, and epoxy could build it in a week!!!
I would like to see every one in America contribute
their copper pennies to make a full size statue
of the Tienanmen Square Lady of Liberty
to be a gift to the Students
of China. How could Beijing say no?
Either that or I’m holding out for the Palin Memorial.
IMHO, the real question is SHOULD we build Mt Rushmore today (should “we” have ever built it?).
Should all taxpaying USA citizens (<50%), under threat of incarceration, be forced to pay for it?
Who decides what it should look like? The folks in power at the moment?
Google “Davy Crockett, not yours to give...”
And then...
Google® Ben Franklin, "...if you can keep it."
That is a chilling phrase, and one that inspires reflection.
May we wake up in time!
Because in those days people often did worship images. Huge expense per viewer, compared to expense per viewer of sculpture of, say, Lincoln at Lincoln Memorial.
Pshhhhh. He accomplished nothing. Oh how I wished he had lived so he wouldn't be a damn martyr to the cause of liberal idealism (He was not even an idealist! He was slime! Slime!). The rats would want FDR on there taking up all 4 spots.
Reagan, Coolidge. No one else from Wilson on deserve it. Next best are Ike and Harding.
If they were a new invention, we wouldn’t even be allowed to drive cars today.
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