Have you ever visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington? It's quite moving how people who lost a loved one in that war have a place -- a large, serious place set aside by the government -- to bring flowers or otherwise make a tribute in memory of their loss.
Far more people have lost loved ones to crime over the decades, and they deserve a serious memorial on the National Mall to commemorate their tragedies. We also have a Victims of Communism Memorial, a Holocaust Museum, and and increasing number of ethnic victim remembrance sites under the names of museums. It's time for a tasteful, somber memorial to all the people whose losses disappear down the memory hole because their loved ones were random citizens brutalized by criminals.
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49 comments:
How about just engrave the names of victims on the side of MLK statue? It will save space and money.
Guaranteed result of pushing for this:
A Hate Crimes Victim Memorial
You can be assured it will reflect the biases afforded by the old media.
Why is there a holocaust museum? The USA was not responsible for it. Is there one for the Armenians? Ukrainians? Rwandans? Cambodians?
This is a transparent attempt to sow racial hatred by showing the disproportional levels of black violent crime.
I can see the rationale in having a monument to Martin Luther King - I see it, however I do not agree with it.
However, I see no reason for the capital of the United States to have a Holocaust memorial or a monument to the victims of communism. Those were historical crimes that primarily affected some other people, not my own. It's their place to have or not to have a monument - as they see fit.
But to ask Americans to sponsor such a thing is just an imposition and an insult. It is telling us, in effect: "Your history is not important. Ours is. Your past should be allowed to die. Ours must be remembered for all time."
Then again, I no longer consider Washington D.C. to be the capital of my country anymore. It is a foreign city and the capital of some foreign empire, whose interests and intents are alien and hostile to me.
"Far more people have lost loved ones to crime over the decades, and they deserve a serious memorial on the National Mall to commemorate their tragedies."
This is one joke that really misfired. We already have far too many public tributes to African-Americans.
How about instead of yet another monument or museum celebrating and elevating black victimhood, we offer an expedited route in the US Patents and Trademarks Office so that people wishing to trademark their loved ones' names can do so more speedily?
Now that should be good for a laugh.
...all the people whose losses disappear down the memory hole...
Would it include an exhibit documenting the Scots-Irish and their ethnic cleansing of the Kulaks?
A better memorial is to erect a prominent gallows in the main public square of the town - and actual have the guts to use it.
Suffice to say that public guillotinings in Paris occurred right up to the 1930s.
Although Tyburn was closed early in the 19th century, public hanging in England persisted until the 1860s - right up to the era of exagerrated Victorian prudery and effete-ness.
But criminals are victims too, driven to desperate acts by poverty. They are crimtims.
Communist memorial is a joke. Neocons undermined it from within cuz they didn't want anything to compete with Holocaust and because many commies were Jews.
and by state paid criminals.
In theory, it's a good idea but in reality it will quickly morph into a tool for the left to push for more gun control laws to harass law abiding citizens; domestic violence laws to give wives even more of an advantage in divorce; etc.
Symbolism is not a useful tool for the Right since the Left controls the media.
Brilliant!
No one but immediate family and friends gives one hoot about war memorials. Once in a while they are used as props to make political points. Laugh and the world laughs with you..........
Parolees might stalk the place to get retribution against witnesses. It is DC after all.
Statues of crime reenactments or another list based thing?
Here's a very funny video I think iSteve readers would enjoy. "How Whites Took Over America":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tacvR87FzBU
Thankfully, there is a memorial to police officers killed in the line of duty tucked away near the DC Courthouse north of the mall.
Honoring all crime victims might be awkward, given the sheer number. By my crude calculation, after the Warren Court revolutionized the criminal justice system in the mid-1960s, just the increase in the homicide rate represented an extra quarter million dead Americans hitting the pavement in the next 30 years, more than four times the deaths in the Vietnam War.
Perhaps we could have a memorial dedicated to Court-Assisted Homicide Victims, placed in front of the Supreme Court, opposite the Capitol.
OT: I don't know whether this is shadenfreude (isn't that what we do here? That, and whining?) or mishandling, but, the One Laptop Per Child has failed to produce results.
Let's make sure it amply documents the criminals. With pictures.
I boycott Washington D.C. The whole silly grammar school pilgrimage thing, legitimizes the thievery.
Besides, I'd have to ignore Derbyshire's points 10a,b,f.
Alas, most of the memorialized would also be criminals.
"Police link shootings in Tulsa, Okla.; 3 killed":
http://news.yahoo.com/police-shootings-tulsa-okla-3-killed-130553271.html
someone appeared to be "targeting black people to shoot."
"I'm on edge for my people," Blakney said ... detectives interviewed people Friday afternoon in the neighborhoods where the shootings happened and believe a white man driving a white pickup truck may have been involved.
Ladies and gentlemen, make your bets. White man in a white track (remember, NOT a white van!)
I'd hire the sculptor who built the MLK stone god memorial and have him recreate a famous crime in bronze.
You could do worse than Jack Ruby shooting Oswald.
http://pdxretro.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/oswald-being-shot-by-jack-ruby.jpg
Something in terrifyingly bad taste-- in subject, design and execution-- so it fits in with what they like to build these days.
Can you imagine the length and the height of such a wall?
I say have a memorial for all those brave souls who "see the truth", have written or spoken openly about it, and have been deprived of their jobs, reputations, etc. by the PC Powers That Be. Steve Sailer and Pat Buchanan's names would be on that memorial and the most recent addition would be Derbyshire. Does anyone have a list of those who would be on such a list?
This will be one museum or monument where blacks won't cry about being underrepresented.
"I no longer consider Washington D.C. to be the capital of my country anymore. It is a foreign city and the capital of some foreign empire, whose interests and intents are alien and hostile to me."
My thoughts and sentiments exactly.
You should have at least let the Derb comments exceed 200'-- as a tribute-- before posting again. The tone of Lowry's post is not ambivalent, Derb is most definitely Done.
This is sadder than Buchanan; Pat might lose exposure but I doubt he will ever have to borrow $10 until the beginning of the month.
Communist memorial is a joke. Neocons undermined it from within cuz they didn't want anything to compete with Holocaust and because many commies were Jews.
Ain't that the truth. The Communism memorial is a statue on a traffic island in the middle of a busy plaza. How are pedestrians supposed to reach it?
Meanwhile, You Know Who gets a large, lavishly-funded museum on the National Mall, next to the most famous memorials; the five million (or more) gentiles killed in the Holocaust go scarcely mentioned in this outrageous temple to ethnic group pressure politics.
The ignorance of the scope of Communist brutality -- and the extreme, willful ignorance of Jewish involvement therein -- are atrocities against the study of history.
The Next most likely memorial is GAY MEMORIAL.
Memorials are useful in showing who has the real power. Those with power hand out the awards, receive the award, build memorials, and have memorials built about them.
Memorials have to be funded, supported, approved, and sanctified. It takes a lot of power. So, though the Holocaust Memorial is officially about Jewish powerlessness, it is actually evidence of great Jewish power.
Jews are very good at that: masking their power as powerlessness through historical symbolism.
The Next most likely memorial is GAY MEMORIAL.
I thought they already did that one in Zoolander.
Anonymous said...
Memorials are useful in showing who has the real power. Those with power hand out the awards, receive the award, build memorials, and have memorials built about them.
Memorials have to be funded, supported, approved, and sanctified. It takes a lot of power. So, though the Holocaust Memorial is officially about Jewish powerlessness, it is actually evidence of great Jewish power.
Jews are very good at that: masking their power as powerlessness through historical symbolism.
It has been said more succintly: When Victims Rule
According to NRO, Derb is Done.
And so am I, with NRO.
I've been to the Museum in DC and I do feel guilty, I was born to late to save the Scotch-Irish. I should have been born decades earlier, I should have done better. All of us born after 1950 should have done better, our preborn selves were passive observers to evil, the most passive of all as we didn't exist.
I had a great-uncle who died in France, but is that really enough? No, and thankfully his descendants have been taxed down through the decades to make up for the fact that he, lazy man, only died once to save the Scotch-Irish.
Oh: not only is Derb done at NRO, but the posting of comments on that post - and only that post - appears to be blocked.
Yet another addendum: posting comments at any of the Derb related posts appears to be banned. Furthermore, Lowry couldn't even be bothered to use Derbyshire's full name, referring to him throughout as simply "Derb."
If conservatism had bothered listening to men like John Derbyshire we would have avoided most of the mistakes of the Bush Administration. With men like Goldberg, Lowry, et al we got the Bush Administration...and Obama as an encore.
National Review is finished.
How about a memorial to victims of highway carnage, either in Detroit or in St. Louis, the home of Anheuser-Busch? And a lung-cancer victims' museum in Raleigh-Durham?
I dunno - in normal times, the Lowry thing would be pretty infuriating - but I actually find all of this stuff strangely liberating.
I imagine that The Derb probably feels much the same way: He may now be broke, and dying of cancer, but at least when he gets up in the morning, and looks at himself in the mirror, he no longer has to feel any twinge of shame.
It really is remarkable [& wonderful], that new-found sense of freedom.
Plus I'm kinda itching for a fight, and things really are coming to a head finally.
one two three four five six nine and ten said...
OT: I don't know whether this is shadenfreude (isn't that what we do here? That, and whining?) or mishandling, but, the One Laptop Per Child has failed to produce results.
From the article you linked to:
It spent $225m to supply and support 850,000 basic laptops to schools throughout the country. But Peruvians’ test scores remain dismal.
Are such results really unexpected?
Do 850,000 computers at $100 apiece add to $225m?
The Holocaust Museum was Jimmy Carter's typically pathetic attempt to win over Jewish voters who thought he was too evenhanded during the Camp David peace Accords. The Accords signed in September 1978, Carter's EO creating a President's Commission on the Holocaust followed less than two months later.
I suppose that museum was the last detail needed to secure a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel (excepting the billions in annual aid of course) then its probably worth the effort. But I doubt it was, more likely Carter was just being a loser (about this same time he created a separate Dept of Education to make the teachers happy, swell).
Many victims of homicide aren't particularly innocent themselves. Although I guess the same could be said of anyone who enlists to fight in a war. Tragic from a utilitarian perspective nonetheless.
Propeller Island said...
Can you imagine the length and the height of such a wall?
Perhaps it could be constructed in a circle around Detroit.
Put housing projects and halfway houses on every vacant space in the mall area. The monument will be performance art. The aura of these places will instill a true sympathy for the victims of crime. Especially in our rulers.
Can you imagine the length and the height of such a wall?
They can use advanced lithography to write the text in micron-size. Could have magnifying glasses for reading conveniently tethered at intervals.
Now it's shaping up like a scene from Idiocracy II. Could have a gag where all the tethers have been unburdened of their magnifying glasses.
A monument is there to remind us of events or people. Most monuments are erected after the fact; the war is over, the great man is dead. A monument to victims of crime would have to acknowledge that there will be more victims tomorrow, and the day after that. It would need to portray an ongoing loss, and yet provide relief for those mourning their loved ones.
I do think it´s a grand idea, but quite a challenge for the artist!
I think it's about time for a monument on the Mall for Americans who slipped and fell in the bathtub. Surely there are even more such casualties than there are casualties of the Vietnam War? Why has the nation ignored them all these years.
"Do 850,000 computers at $100 apiece add to $225m?"
You don't understand. When implementing a new technique, one also has to hire a bunch of people with expensive purses to talk to other people about how great the new technique is. They have to be trained at some resort for a couple of weeks where they have to be flown first class. They also need much more expensive laptops of their own and ipads as well to spread the word and educate teachers effectively. Consultants have to be flown in... It ain't cheap.
I'm not an "M". This "Blogger" is taking liberties with me.
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