What Will You Do During the Statue Wars, Daddy?
From Forrest to Roosevelt, Confederates to Cervantes, Washington to Whittier, a discussion of iconography politics on The Reason Roundtable.
Let's see: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, (checks notes), uh, George Washington? Ulysses Grant? Francis Greenleaf freakin' Whittier? Sometimes it's protesters, sometimes it's the museum, sometimes it's a tagger, sometimes it's a Twitter troll—by whatever form, America in monthus bizzarus of June 2020 is suddenly having a convulsive conversation about iconography.
On today's Reason Roundtable podcast, Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch nominate statues to protect, remove, and erect, while chewing over just where this tumult is heading, whether symbolically or concretely, policy-wise. The quartet also talks about President Donald Trump's weird Tulsa performance, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's weird final coronavirus presser, and which precise character Gillespie's haircut is ready to play in All the President's Men.
Audio production by Ian Keyser and Regan Taylor.
Music: "Atlantis" by Audionautix.
Relevant links from the show:
"The Rights and Wrongs of Taking Down Monuments," by Ilya Somin
"Confederate Monuments Are Participation Trophies. Thankfully, Some Are Coming Down," by Billy Binion
"Police Violence, COVID-19 Lies, and the End of Legitimate Authority," by Nick Gillespie
"7 Race-Neutral Solutions to Racially Skewed Law Enforcement," by Jacob Sullum
"What Do Recent COVID-19 Trends Tell Us About the Merits of Lockdowns?" by Jacob Sullum
"Another Round of Coronavirus Lockdowns Might Be Coming. They'll Be Far Less Enforceable Than Before," by Eric Boehm
"A Hard Day's Night: Beatlemania Revisited," by Kurt Loder