Public Statues Violate Our Civil Rights
Why Public Statues Violate Our Civil Rights
Public statues or monuments to individuals that are paid from taxation are a violation of our civil right of freedom of speech or expression for these two reasons:
A statue of an individual (mostly a political or military figure) cannot help but impress people about that person’s qualities. After all why would anyone get the privilege of having one’s statue put up in a public place unless that person is seen as having made worthy contributions to our country?
But statutes of individuals don’t just send a message about them, but also about what they stand for politically, economically and socially. People whose reputation are improved by placing their statue in a park have their ideas taken more seriously. I can just visualize a southern school child seeing a statue of Robert E. Lee on a horse and deciding to read about him in a book or the internet, and influenced by his political ideas. A tax-supported public statue is a form of socio-political-economic expression.
For the above two reasons, taking people’s money by the force of taxation to pay for the expressions of others violates the freedom of expression of the people paying the taxes. Forcing people to pay for the expressions of others is the same as forcing them to express those ideas, whether they agree or not. In fact forcing people to express ideas that they do not agree with is even worse than preventing them from expressing their own.
Tax payer funded public statues are in the same class as federal subsidies to National Public Radio. They tax people to give someone else more prominence in expressing their views. And in a country where freedom of speech is highly valued, many people disagree with the political expressions that NPR or the statues represent.
In any case, even aside from the taxation, it should not be the business of government to do things to favor some ideas over others. And for this purpose it does not matter whether the ideas agree with the majority. Our civil liberties, like freedom of speech, are not subject to majority opinion or votes.
Candidates and elected officials, of course, have to express their particular personal ideas. But the government, as an institution, must remain neutral regarding how it uses its public discourse resources as required by the “equal protection of the law” clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
To the extent that, as some claim, statues are supposed to tell us our history, it is not the role of government to do that either, specially promoting a particular historical personality. Our history should be taught by private published, books, magazines, museums, internet websites, television documentaries, and by schools and universities.
These are the reasons why tax-payer funded public statues are a violation of (a) the first amendment prohibition against government denying people their freedom of speech and (b) the Libertarian Principle against the initiation of force.
The Special Case of Statutes to Southern Confederate Leaders
Statutes to leaders of the Southern Confederacy, such as generals and politicians, like Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee, or to its soldiers, were built between about 1880 and the 1960’s. This was a period during which most black citizens living in the states of the former Confederacy had their voting rights taken away by intimidation, threats of violence and actual violence from government officials, police and thugs. Therefore, they had no political power to oppose the construction of the statues.
Black citizens could not vote but they did have to pay taxes. Therefore, these statues were built with help from taxation without representation, one of the driving cries against British rule leading to the American Revolution.
In addition, Robert E. Lee himself clearly opposed any statues related to the Civil War. In 1869 he wrote a letter rejecting an invitation to a ceremony on the start of the construction of a Civil War Memorial on the site of the battle of Gettysburg. He explanation for rejecting the invitation included this: “I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered”.
These “feelings engendered” by Civil War statues and monuments should be committed to oblivion because they are very different feelings for different people, good feelings for some and bad feelings for others. And governments should treat everyone equally, therefore, not build public symbols to make some people feel good at the expense of offending others.
All of these reasons make these the first statues that deserve removal.
What Should be Done With the Statue
Pass a law, resolution or executive order (whichever applies in each jurisdiction) to sell all government-owned statutes of persons to the highest private bidder. The buyers would remove the statues from its public place to a private property or melt them down to sell their metal.
The proceeds of the sales of the statutes to Confederate leaders should be donated to a fund to pay for scholarships to private schools for poor black children in under-performing public schools. This is in recognition for the money stolen from blacks by taxation without representation; money used for statutes that promoted the people who favored slavery for black Americans.
I am opposed to mobs tearing down any statue. Respecting an orderly process is essential to a good result. The end does not justify any means. The process affects more than just the immediate goal. A process that tramples over the opinions of others has unrelated adverse consequences. I believe that getting there through persuasion, while respecting everyone’s rights produces much better overall results.
Note:
The following article from the Cato Institute on this same subject appeared on July 9th 2020. It makes the same basic argument that I make here, in different words.
By Ricardo Mejias, July 10th 2020.