WASHINGTON -- It was my old friend and mentor, Luigi Barzini, who
asseverated: "Americans talk too much." He was sitting in the
elegant library of his home in Rome. The year was 1978, though I
cannot recall the contemporary controversy that aroused him.
Luigi's point was that we were wrangling again fortissimo con
brio, and he thought our jabbering was again obscuring
careful thought. He was a great friend of America. He had been
partly educated here. He wrote in both Italian and superb
English. In fact, at the time he was finishing one of his many
fine books, The Europeans. It contains a friendly
chapter on the USA full of shrewd insights. He believed we often
argued garrulously about things that were not worth arguing
about.
A case is about to be tried in the Supreme Court that fits
Luigi's diagnosis. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a
suit in 2001 demanding that a seven-foot cross erected in the
California desert in 1934 commemorating sacrifices endured by our
soldiers in World War I be taken down. At some point after 1934
the land on which the cross was erected became federally
protected, and thus the cross became a fit issue for the ACLU's
squalling about the separation of church and state. The creation
of this World War I monument was -- get this! -- part of a 1930s
medical program to help World War I veterans recover from
shellshock. Physicians treating them thought that their work in
the desert heat would be therapeutic. In 2004 the Ninth U.S.
Court of Appeals agreed with the ACLU, but veterans groups
objected -- thus the case's journey to the Supreme Court.
Now it would seem to me that the cross is a historic monument
that need not be subject to contemporary fashions in thought, to
wit, the fashion of hunting down religious symbols and
eliminating them from government property. The cross simply
represents the feelings of soldiers from a bygone era. There are
religious symbols on public display from the past elsewhere. For
instance, there are religious symbols on the Supreme Court
building. If I recall, I have seen a carving in the Court's
chamber of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God. There
may even be a picture of God up there. Viewing the 1934 cross
today might give curious Americans a sense of what our country
was like back in those days before the ACLU was spreading
goodwill around the country by harassing people of faith.
Yet that is not the way the battleaxes at the ACLU see it. One of
its learned lawyers, Peter Eliasberg, told the
Washington Times, "For us to choose the principal symbol
of one religion that says Jesus is the Son of God and He is
divine and say that is an appropriate way to reflect the
sacrifice of people who don't believe that…is excluding by its
very nature." Well, "we" did not choose the symbol. Veterans from
what was once called the Great War did, apparently with the
consent of their physicians. This is an interesting historic
memorial that the ACLU would deny us.
Veterans groups that are opposing the removal of the cross
disagree with Eliasberg. Their members argue that the cross
represents the "Fallen Soldier Battle Cross." That is a rifle and
crossed bayonet that is driven into the ground to honor a fallen
comrade. Will the ACLU oppose this too? Jim Sims, of the Military
Order of the Purple Heart, told the Times the
controversy is "about thousands of veteran memorials and
monuments around the country. This is about the issue of honoring
veterans."
It is trendy in our noisy public discourse to see "the right"
being accused of injecting religion into politics. Actually very
often "the right" or more specifically "the Christian right" is
merely defending settled manifestations of religion that go back
decades in our history, occasionally centuries. As I see it the
ACLU would have us rewrite American history, eliminating all
references to God, the Bible, and other such artifacts. Of
course, for people of faith these artifacts are reminders of
faith. So maybe the ACLU could begin a campaign to disallow
people of faith from lapsing into prayer in front of such
reminders. Possibly the ACLU's next campaign will be to eliminate
religious symbols from public buildings, starting with the
Supreme Court. As Luigi noticed, some Americanos are too
disputatious.
topics:
Religious Persecution, Religious Freedom
