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Order Daniel Greenfield’s new book, Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left: HERE.
For 125 years, a monument was supposed to rise on what is now a traffic circle by Arlington National Cemetery. Now, President Trump has proposed a 250 foot tall ‘Independence Arch’ (one year for every year of America’s existence) to mark the nation’s 250th birthday.
Democrats however have rallied in defense of the traffic circle in the name of the Confederacy.
After President Trump’s reelection, the demolitionist party that had cheered the toppling of monuments, the vandalism of the statues of Columbus, Lincoln and Francis Scott Key, suddenly became born-again preservationists, clutching their pearls over the White House ballroom, the Kennedy Center renovations and now the even more suddenly sacred traffic circle.
Calling for the preservation of a traffic circle, one that doesn’t even have BLM stenciled on it, is an uphill battle, especially since the ‘preservationists’ suddenly interested in it had never expressed any prior interest in the particular traffic circle. It’s not that they really care about the traffic circle, but that they don’t want a triumphal patriotic arch taking its place.
And so the same movement that had been tearing down Confederate statues has been reduced to arguing that putting up a patriotic arch would be wrong because, in the immortal words of the Washington Post, it “could obstruct views of Arlington House, the former Lee estate that sits on a hillside in Arlington National Cemetery.” That’s the same estate that the newspaper was campaigning to rename a mere four years ago because its very existence was offensive.
Now, when campaigning against the Independence Arch, the Post complains that “a large arch would significantly alter past lawmakers’ and architects’ ambitions for Arlington Memorial Bridge, which was intended as a bridge between the North and the South in the wake of the Civil War and to connect memorials for President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.”
That might be a better point if the radical faction doing the complaining hadn’t been running around tearing down and renaming Confederate monuments and sites only to turn around and plead for the historic importance of them to stop President Trump from building a memorial arch.
The original intent of the Lee Estate, or more blandly, Arlington House, commemorating national reconciliation, was overturned after the BLM era and the estate exists to talk about slavery, targeting not only Lee, but George Washington’s family. (Washington had no children, but he adopted his wife Martha’s children as his own and the family named a number of their children ‘George.)
If the Washington Post and its born-again preservationists had been concerned about the integrity of the original intent of bridging North and South, and honoring Lee for his work for peace between both sides, it had years to protest. Not only didn’t it protest, it backed it.
The objections to The Independence Arch are no more about Lee than they are about the traffic circle. The opposition is not about what is there now, but what they don’t want to see there.
The Independence Arch is not offensive because it interferes with ‘sightlines’ (everything built around the ‘Mall’ interferes with sightlines, but that didn’t stop them from cluttering it up with genuinely ugly works like the MLK Memorial in which an oddly white and Asian version of the civil rights leader sternly glares down at people out of a rock.
The Smithsonian’s modern contributions to D.C. architecture include hideous nightmares come to life like the Hirshhorn Museum (picture a horrible combination between an office building and a giant vanilla cake) and the American Indian Museum (a horrid Science Fiction dystopia come to life) which completely clash with the city’s traditional architecture and yet were praised by the same ‘experts’ and ‘scholars’ booing the proposed Independence Arch.
Unlike so much of what has been built in D.C. in the past 50 years, the Arch of Independence would actually fit the traditional look. It’s not another of the brutalist and modernist monstrosities.
Build something asymmetrical, disproportionate and hostile to form and proportion, that fits into D.C. like a pig in a pageant, and trendy architects, critics and other professional enemies of beauty will flock to lavish praise for its subversive daring, but something like the Ronald Reagan Building, which actually fit into D.C., was the subject of endless ridicule and criticism.
Traditionalism in art and politics is hated, and the proposed Independence Arch brings together both. It suggests that the function of monuments is soaring ambition and vision, rather than a grim view of life as an impossible aberration in a universe that makes no sense.
Worse still, Independence Arch is a paean to American glory, and completely at odds with the feverish ‘recontextualization’ that has befallen every monument at least a century old, that insists visitors view it through Howard Zinn’s misanthropic version of American history as a testament to the racism, capitalism, sexism, and other ills they say were America’s original sins.
The Independence Arch suggests that America’s birthday is something to take pride in, not mourn, that the United States is great and that we are great by being part of it, that patriotism is meaningful, rather than despicable, and that what we build should also be meaningful. All of this is a direct reversal of every political, artistic, academic and cultural trend in generations.
Opponents of the Independence Arch would much rather that it remain a traffic circle to perhaps one day be supplemented by a fitting statue of a drag queen or an ayatollah, but certainly not some gold and marble arch that celebrates Americanism as our ultimate unifying identity.
In a city where there are museums for seemingly every single group, patriotic monuments have long gone out of style. There have been some decent memorializations of individuals, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, and even of past wars, the WWIII memorial, but little that speaks to the union of our past and present ambitions.
That is why the Independence Arch is needed. Its message is not simply about the past, but the future, it tells us not, like so many of the city’s memorials, what we have lost, but what we can do. Anyone can mourn, but not everyone can build. The Left is happy to leave us our cemeteries, but what it wants to take away from us are our pride and our hope.
Wiki Reports:
“CBS reporter Ed O’Keefe asked him: “Who is it for?” Trump replied: “Me. It’s going to be beautiful.” O’Keefe asked if it would be called “The Arc de Trump”, a nickname that was immediately adopted by the media.”
“… would be surmounted by two eagles and a golden winged figure variously described as an angel or a suggestion of Victory. Trump said it represented Lady Liberty.
First off…
“Lady Liberty” is satanic… a reference to a Greek Goddess…
…
However… just think of how much money the USA will save by not having to cut the grass in that circle… lol…
Regardless… I say build it… but get rid of the two eagles and Lady Liberty… and… don’t have the Island Boy’s name attached anywhere.
Wiki, lol? Wouldn’t a Greek goddess be pagan, rather than satanic?
Grok only goes so far in explanations – mr sums clearly didn’t have the inclination to step outside his boundaries.
I don’t like the idea of this particular structure. Triumphal arches, historically, are associated with emperors, from the Roman Titus, Constantine, etc. through to Napoleon.
Yes, something a little less empire-related, but still classical in feel, might be better. And the juxtaposition with the graves actually works, reminding us all that we achieved our independence and have maintained it for 250 years due largely to the sacrifices of so many.
An arch is classical architecture, mathematical beauty. It’s not new that Dems hate that, Dems won’t celebrate our 250th because Trump is president. They’re that petty. They’d blow billions celebrating(mostly our sins), if only a dem was in the WH.
Really? Explain the one in Paris France.
Well, that was my point. I don’t want to be like Paris.
Building gallows where we could hang all the traitors from the Obama and Biden administrations on Independence Day would be even better than an arch.
OF COURSE they are!…..ANYTHING to oppose Trump….
They are truly haters of America and all she is supposed to be….
Stop voting for democrats…they are the enemy.
It is anathema to “progressives” to build any form of classical architecture anywhere. That is why the Grande Arche in La Defense is such a vapid counterpoint to the Arc de la Triomphe. That is why the post-presidential erection on the Chicago Midway is such an eyesore. That is why the Cathedral of Our Lady in Los Angeles looks like a pretentious library instead of a religious hall of worship.
Some rare modern memorials, ennoble the viewer. Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial is a triumph of design and an apt, multilayered tribute to the fallen of that war. The USS Arizona Memorial is similarly fitting and profound. Some are sad disgraces, such as the clunky Police Officers memorial in Houston and the National Memorial Museum in Oklahoma City.
Should a triumphal arch be built in Arlington, let us hope that future generations will continue to enjoy the freedoms for which our founders fought, enlightened as they were by the wisdom of ages past and the Truth that set us free.
Why not an Arc de Trump? DJT has triumphed over so many attempts by Democrats to “stop” him. Besides, the play on words, Trump/triomphe is so satisfying.
Arc De Triumph, over all the anti-America haters in DemonRot garb. From DemonRot States.
Our government has still been unable to find out who destroyed the Kit Carson Memorial Obelisk on August 31st 2023 in front of the Federal Building in downtown Santa Fe, NM despite the fact that the vandals had to leave their ramming pickup truck there after being blocked in by a city worker. No suspects have been named. But the leftist mayor had called for the monument to be removed because it was “racist”.
I completely agree with Greenfield that the left’s sudden “concern” for a traffic circle is transparently thin. However, as we look toward the 250th anniversary, I’m curious about the digital infrastructure behind these new national projects. Since the arch is meant to be a symbol of our sovereignty, how can we ensure that the contractors and digital platforms involved aren’t tied to offshore entities or unregulated markets? For instance, I was reading a technical audit regarding transparency and licensing at https://GuiadeDoradoBetPeru.com and it made me wonder—if we can’t even get clear corporate data on simple service providers in the private sector, how do we vet the tech firms that will inevitably handle the logistics and promotion for a monument of this scale? Does anyone know if there are strict domestic-only requirements for the digital side of the Independence Arch to prevent foreign influence?
Some idiot Biden appointed Judge will issue an injunction against the construction, and that will be it. Just like the “New White House Ballroom” that will now never get built. Just continue to entertain international dignitaries in a Tent on the White House Lawn, rainy days or whatever. How proud are we for that? You Democrats are disgusting!
Don’t forget the porta-potties. Real class there for visiting dignitaries!
I too have noticed leftist ‘art’ seems to be judged worthy by the extent of its’ violation of the natural mathematical beauty of curve and proportion.
Just this week friend was telling me I don’t like abstract art, but that’s not true. I just don’t like ugly abstract art, and much of it is.