"From the ancient Redwoods in northern California, to the thunderous roar of Niagara Falls in upstate New York. From the Empire State Building in Midtown Manhattan, to the sandstone buttes rising from the desert floor of Monument Valley, America is a massive, grand, and monumental nation. We think of a monument as a physical structure, but the word derives from the Latin term monumentum, which means a memorial or a tomb - more literally, "a reminder"."
"As a political movement, monumentalism is a policy agenda that commemorates people, events, and ideas - it conserves public memory for the next generation. The current moment, more than perhaps any other point in American history, calls for aggressive monumentalism. Since at least the Sixties, progressives have waged a multi-front war on public memory. They have undermined our system of education, rejected Christianity's presence in national life, and insisted that America is irredeemably flawed."
America contains vast natural and manmade monuments, from the ancient Redwoods and Niagara Falls to the Empire State Building and Monument Valley. The word monument derives from Latin monumentum, meaning a memorial or tomb and literally 'a reminder.' Monumentalism in architecture signals power and historical significance, exemplified by Egyptian pyramids and Mount Rushmore. Gutzon Borglum used jackhammers and dynamite to carve presidential faces and declared that American art ought to be monumental. Monumentalism as a political movement aims to conserve public memory for future generations. Since the 1960s, progressives have challenged public memory by altering education, removing Christianity from public life, and promoting a critical view of America. Activists have filled the ideological gap in schools with leftist perspectives.
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