Disregarding its own citizens panel’s recommendation, last week the body voted 7-5 to remove the monument to Confederate soldiers that sits near the parish courthouse. Given that the parish does not even have certain ownership of the parcel hosting the object, it has decided to set sail in decidedly choppy political waters.
At best, the argument to move it rested on emotion, not fact or logic. Listed on the National Register of Historical Places, it marks a historically important venue – the place where the last capital of Louisiana as a rebel state operated and eventually gave up. It doesn’t celebrate the Confederacy but local soldiers killed in action, regardless that they fought for a mistaken regime, and stands more for what it said about local attitudes about the war at the time of its erection and decades after than any ideas behind the rebellion. Given its siting in a lightly-trafficked area, unless somebody makes some effort to bring it to attention, few in the community even notice it, much less try to figure out what it is.
Some supporters of removal, such as Commissioner Steven Jackson, ludicrously suggest it symbolizes “injustice” because it “undermines a basic principle … the 14th Amendment right to due process and justice under the law.” How one gets from depiction of a soldier, four generals (two from Louisiana), and the muse of history to Jackson’s interpretation takes quite an imagination. Using his same “logic,” no doubt he would wish to obliterate half of Mt. Rushmore because two of its honored faces belong to men who owned other humans, thus symbolizing violation of the 13th Amendment.
Less ridiculously but equally intellectually unsustainable came the explanation from Commissioner Matthew Linn that the monument’s presence caused “pain” to some, justifying the erasure of history. By that standard, any representation connected to government that caused a negative visceral reaction, no matter what the reason and no matter how well grounded in reality, by someone makes it forbidden for government sponsorship (if needing a certain a minimum number of people who accepted offense before censoring the depiction, Linn did not say).
Both views also beg the question of why people would wish to give a symbol such power over their lives. The view of the citizens panel, which was to add context by introducing other objects, precisely allowed citizens to shape these kinds of symbols to mean as they like without making history merely a product written by legislative majorities. But the commission unwisely rejected that stance, preferring its Islamic State solution.
Yet the monument will go nowhere soon, courtesy of a suit brought by the claimed owners of the plot, the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. While no certain government record exists of the transfer from the parish to the organization, a contemporary legal notice does. The best outcome for the parish, confirmation of its ownership of the entire courthouse area, still will cost legal fees plus expenses from moving the object, which requires special care. Taxpayers can count on paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to see all of that through.
And that won’t be forgotten. Already this year, as the parish sits on nearly $50 million in reserves, voters turned down four tax renewals for the parish. These levies begin going off the books in 2019, and the commission’s latest action has dimmed the chances for a majority affirmative popular vote prior to then.
Although no polling has determined public opinion
on the issue, more likely fewer favor moving the obelisk than want it to stay
put. When the renewals come, their opponents ceaselessly will remind the
electorate that, if the parish would throw away money on removal, voters needn’t
hand over more money to a government rolling in dough so foolishly spending it.
The decision to eject the statuary did not serve the public interest. Parish government must hope enough voters have short memories of that or else it will start going on a diet in a couple of years.
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