As near as I can tell, some peaceful (albeit nerdy) libertarians were arrested for dancing(!) at the Jefferson Memorial.
If there is a judge worth his salt in Washington, this case will be dismissed, the charges will be dropped, and the cops responsible will throw a barbecue - at their personal expense - for the offended parties. Hell, they can get it catered if they're lazy. Old Glory Bar-B-Que would be appropriate and delicious. But there should be a birthday cake for Mr. Jefferson. And they should serve moonshine, just because.
What makes this story so repugnant is the location. How can you arrest somebody for that THERE?
I consider the Jefferson Memorial to be hallowed ground. Let me tell you why.
The first time I remember visiting, it was during Halloween weekend in 1999, my junior year at Boston U. I spent a day on the Mall with my high school friends Brendan and Andy, who went to Georgetown and Brandeis, respectively. We played frisbee and walked around. It was unseasonably warm. At one point, we trekked it over to the J-Mo. Great place to chill out. The marble was cool to the touch. A breeze wound around the pillars. I started reading the inscriptions chiseled into the stone. There were quotes from the man himself on subjects like "God," "Truth," and "Law." And then I noticed a quirk of the design. In the round building, with your back to the wall, it was impossible to view all of the quotes at the same time. It dawned on me that this was the perfect representation of Jefferson's own mind. F. Scott Fitzgerald held that genius was the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the head at the same time while retaining the ability to function. Well, Jefferson had two plus ten.
It is too coarse to call him a simple hypocrite. A man devoted to liberty? Yes. A man who owned slaves? Yes. But he was also a man for whom this glaring contradiction posed the greatest of intellectual puzzles. It is easy to point out in retrospect - with help from Martin Luther King and his demands that America's promissory note be paid in full - that the early Republic did not live up to its standards. It is more difficult to recognize that these individuals were throwing off the shackles of the Old World (the corruption of its offices, the bigotry of its religions, the entitlement and greedy depredations of its gentry) while asking themselves to spurn the temptation to recreate those shackles here. They kept each other mostly honest, but, because people are people, many of those conditions persist in one form or another. This is the conundrum, the national cognitive dissonance we live with every day. A country that decries the violence in Tibet and the slaughter in Darfur with its voice, but that tortures its own citizens at Guantanamo Bay and massacres the innocent in Haditha. The optimists (and the vapid cheerleaders over at Fox News) say we are the former America and our values are not to be questioned. The pessimists say we are the latter America and our values are not to be trusted. But, of course, they're both wrong. We are both Americas simultaneously. Jefferson knew it. Lincoln knew it (hell, doesn't "better angels of our nature" imply we've got our demons, too?). And just because most of us, including me, can't wrap our heads around that fact doesn't make it any less true.
Let me close by relating two quick anecdotes. The first happened just after I noticed the architectural oddity of the memorial and I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. A little boy, no more than two or three, wearing a red, white, and blue pair of overalls, ran up to the big, black chains that surrounded Jefferson's statue. He looked at them for a minute, as if he were sizing up their weight. Then he reached out, unabashed, with both hands and began shaking the ever-lovin' shit out of them. It was very noisy and his young dad was a bit embarrassed. He went over and grabbed his son and brought him away to what he thought was a safe distance. The kid's feet were moving before he hit the ground. He ran right back up to those chains and let freedom ring. I was laughing and loving every minute of it.
Fast forward to 2003. Willis and I were making our way down the east coast on our seven-week, cross-country road trip. We left New Jersey in the afternoon and were rolling through D.C. around midnight. It wasn't on the itinerary, but Willis had never been, so we stopped to walk around the Mall. I recommend that everyone do this once in their lives. There are no crowds and no distractions. No veil between you and the feelings those monuments were meant to evoke. If one were so inclined, one could build a city every bit as impressive and imposing dedicated to our failures as a people. But I wouldn't visit. I see its skyline every day. I hear its traffic and smell its refuse on the nightly newscast. Every so often, it is good to remind yourself what it is we're aiming at here, the elusive union we're endeavoring - perhaps in vain - to perfect. We made it over to the J-Mo, wreathed in night, lit from within. Willis couldn't help himself. He jumped over the barrier and sprawled himself across the feet of the statue. I snapped a picture. We made some ridiculous and bawdy jokes that most people would consider to be at odds with the ostensible solemnity of the setting. People other than Ben Franklin, that randy old coot. But we knew what we were doing. There's freedom in laughter.
We did not, however, get the last laugh. When we walked back to the car, we noticed a parking ticket under the windshield wiper. I think it ended up being a $50 fine. Thank God we weren't dancing.
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