Bickering about Stone Mountain and blasting sculpture off it is part of our American heritage!

Should we really abandon this fine tradition?

Let us quickly review the history:

The success on stage of Thomas Dixon Jr's adaption of his novel The Clansman inspired D. W. Griffith's film Birth of a Nation glorifying the KKK, which in turn inspired William Simmons to re-start the klan by marching a handful of friends to the top of Stone Mountain to burn a cross there on Thanksgiving 1915 -- and that inspired the 1916 proposal (by one of the United Daughters of the Confederacy) for a confederate memorial there. Arrangement being made with the klan brothers who owned the mountain and operated it as a granite quarry, Gutzon Borglum agreed to carve a scene of Lee leading his troops

Various delays followed, after which Borglum got to work -- before falling out with his sponsors, who around 1925 replaced him with Augustus Lukeman. Lukeman eventually blasted Borglum's work away and proceeded with his own vision until 1928. Then funding ran dry, so the klan-brother-owners backed out. Nothing more happened until the civil rights movement became visibly successful, when conservatives suddenly discovered a new interest in confederate heroes. In 1958, Georgia re-started the project, which was finally dedicated in 1970 (during the presidency of Richard Nixon) and finished in early 1972

Nixon, of course, is remembered as the political genius who realized that bringing Southern racists across the aisle into the GOP camp could help win the election and that very few modern Republicans would be upset by that -- and after he's been dead long enough, he'll also be remembered as the fellow who left us many Oval Office tape recordings filled with authentic Nixon quotes, such as “Henry, let's leave the n*gg*rs to Bill and we'll take care of the rest of the world.” And nowadays, who from the party of Lincoln can resist a good confederate monument? So although Nixon himself was unable to attend the 1970 dedication, he sent VP Agnew in his place. In retrospect, Agnew seems an excellent choice, not just because he was racist but also because of his strong conservative principles and good manners: Agnew very conscientiously objected to paying his full share of taxes but politely pretended to do so anyway, in order not to offend Federal prosecutors -- who, when they finally discovered this, might have remembered to "Look away! Look away!" if only they had been properly raised in the genteel Southern style

Well, I didn't mean to rattle on so long. But there sure is a big slew of heritage there to pick and choose from, and maybe one of the finest moments in the Stone Mountain carving story is that bit about blowing up Borglum's stuff, and maybe we might ask ourselves whether we should perhaps do something like that again