The People We Choose to Honor

Back in February of this year, I wrote a post titled "Who Gets the Statue?" which reported on the proliferation of statues of former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in Russia and asked why it was considered okay to erect a statue to the dictator who murdered millions of his own people* ... but why it is not considered okay to erect a statue to Adolf Hitler, who also murdered millions of his own people. The short, if unsatisfying, answer is, of course, that Hitler lost the war and nobody erects statues to losers.

I thought about the who-gets-the-statue question again when I read this amazing article that reports on the erection in Sarajevo of a statue of Gavrilo Princip ... the man who murdered Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie and set in motion the events** that led to the First World War and its bitter outcomes that still bedevil our world today.

Evidently there are still people who believe that a politically-inspired murderer whose crime was indirectly responsible for two world wars and the deaths of tens of millions of people is a hero***. Bosnian Serb head of state Nebojsa Radmanovic attended the dedication of the statue, and said, "These fighters for freedom a hundred years ago have given us the direction to follow for the next hundred years."

If this is the attitude of such people, it looks as if the next hundred years are likely to be very unpleasant.

Who gets the statue, indeed?

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Let us also not forget Mao Zedong, who also murdered tens of millions of his own people, but is nevertheless revered in China, it being too dangerous for the Communist Party to admit that its hero was a murderous dictator.

** My friend Arizona Dave points out that this is a wonderful example of the Butterfly Effect.

*** For another rumination on the subject of heroes, go back and read my post from August 26^th, 2012, Another Word for Hero.