Trump Requests Smithsonian to Install George Washington Statue and Create Center for American Heroes
A President Is Not the Nation’s Curator
When the executive gives a museum “days” to replace a sculpture with his preferred hero, the question is not taste but trust: by what right does one man command the nation’s memory?
I begin with the bare facts as they are reported, for in politics, as in medicine, one must know the case before prescribing. A public ruler has publicly demanded that the Smithsonian, a national museum, remove a “strange modernist sculpture” called “Infinity,” which has stood outside the Museum of American History since 1967, because it “says nothing about America.” He has urged that it be replaced with an eleven‑foot statue of George Washington, previously shown at a motor race, and has pressed for a long exhibit and even a “Center for American Heroes,” with only “days” allowed for the museum to submit. Taste is one question; power is another. I am concerned with the latter.
When I wrote the Second Treatise of Government, I defined political power as the right of making laws with penalties, only for the public good. This power, I argued, is held on trust, by consent of free and equal persons, for the preservation of their property in the large sense—lives, liberties, and estates. It is one thing for a ruler, acting with the legislative, to provide funds and charters for public institutions of learning; it is quite another to step into the gallery and point to this or that work, saying, in effect, “Take that down, put this up, and do it at once.” The former may be government; the latter comes perilously near to usurpation of a different office altogether.
A museum is a curious thing to my seventeenth‑century eye, yet its political character is clear enough. It is a public space where a people’s past and ideals are set before the understanding, not by force, but by evidence and selection. Such an institution exercises a kind of authority over memory and identity, and that authority is properly bounded by rules, procedures, and the judgment of those fitted by study for curation. If the executive may, by mere social proclamation and a short deadline, direct which statue stands and which story is told, he makes himself judge in his own case as to what “America” is, and subjects the public mind to his private standard.
Some will answer that the object proposed—honoring George Washington and a “Center for American Heroes”—is evidently good, and so needs no further justification. I do not deny that eminent men, who faced great dangers, defended their country, and helped a nation better to live up to its founding ideals, are fit subjects for public honor. Indeed, the reported language—telling the stories of such Americans—is fair and noble in itself. But in government, the goodness of the thing desired does not sanctify every means. Prerogative, as I argued in the Second Treatise, is a power to act for the public good without a rule, yet it remains revocable, and must be manifestly for the people’s benefit, not for the enlargement of one man’s sway over all things.
Here, the chain of evidence is thin. As far as is reported, we have a demand, a preferred statue, a proposed schedule tied to the three‑hundredth anniversary of Washington’s birth, and a rebuke that the museum gives “too little attention” to the Founders. What we lack is any serious showing that the public, whose museum this is, has consented to this specific displacement; any deliberation by their representatives who hold the purse and the laws; or any impartial process by which curators, guided by their science and by public reason, weigh whether “Infinity” indeed “says nothing about America.” In my Essay Concerning Human Understanding, I urged that assent be proportioned to the proofs; here I see assertion in abundance, proof in scarcity.
Let me also mark what this dispute is not. The ruler has not, so far as we know, imposed penalties upon those who dislike Washington, nor compelled any man’s private belief about the Revolution. Jurisdiction over conscience and the inward persuasion of the mind is not yet claimed. This remains a contest about public symbols, not private worship. Yet even in civil things, when a magistrate presumes to fix the very image that shall stand for the nation, without visible consent and due process, he creeps nearer to that power over opinion which no man ever had a right to transfer. A single such act is not yet a long train of abuses, but it is of a kind with them.
What then is to be done? I would not have the museum set itself as an independent kingdom against all branches of the government; it exists by public support, and must give reasons to the public. Nor would I have the executive stripped of any power to propose, to persuade, to fund new works, or to invite the commemoration of worthy deeds by lawful means. But I would have every public institution, and every citizen, quietly insist upon this: that no man, however high, may by sudden command and short ultimatum dispose of the common store of symbols as if it were his private estate. Where reasons and consent are wanting, the people must withhold their inward assent, and where arbitrary power is pressed further, they retain always their appeal to heaven.
From the works cited
- Second Treatise of Government — Political power defined narrowly as the right to make laws, with penalties, only for the public good — anything beyond that definition must justify itself or stand condemned.
- Second Treatise of Government — Prerogative as revocable emergency discretion — legitimate exactly as long as the public visibly benefits and no longer.
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding — Assent must be proportioned to the evidence; believing beyond one's proofs is a failure of duty, not a mark of faith.