Imagine the furor–or should I say fuhrer?–if the National Portrait Gallery had a “Struggle For Justice” exhibit featuring a statue of Heinrich Himmler.
Well, they don’t, but they’ve got the next best thing–a bust of Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood as an integral part of something that she called “the Negro Project,” aimed at ridding the world of “inferior races” (http://www.christianpost.com/news/black-pastors-protest-smithsonian-bust-of-planned-parenthoods-nazi-like-founder-margaret-sanger-in-civil-rights-exhibit-143901/). In other words, her position was the same as Himmler’s, but lacking the kind of resources he had at his disposal–the SS, concentration camps, etc.–Sanger sought to accomplish the same end by different means: to wit, abortion.
Meanwhile there’s all this foof about tearing down Civil War statues, which commemorate things that stopped happening 150 years ago, but this statue, which honors a thoroughly wicked thing that’s still happening today, stands.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t approve of erasing history, and I don’t want Sanger’s statue destroyed or hidden. But to leave it under any roof pertaining to anyone’s idea of “justice” is way too rich for me. This Himmler in skirts is part of history; we ought to know about her; we ought to know she intended abortion as a means of practical genocide; and in fact, we’d better not forget her. Because it’s dangerous to forget history: it has a way of turning back and biting you.