Letter to the Editor: Kimball Shinkoskey

Confederate statues have taken a beating lately. But this is not the first time a democratic movement has objected to statues for a good reason.
Ancient Israel made a law against statues and other images of political heroes. They understood that the best and brightest leaders could still go astray. Israel impeached her own lawmaker Moses and exiled him by not allowing him to enter Canaan with the people.

Kings and usurpers of the law love to erect statues of themselves and put their images on coins. Israel prohibited both of these practices, and America did the same for quite a long time.

Heroism in a democracy is supposed to be plain vanilla. Everybody is required to get educated and act heroically for all (“e pluribus unum”).

As another way of keeping politicians humble, authentic democracies limit the terms of elected officials. Many plain old vanilla citizens rapidly rotate in and out of leadership positions so there is no ruler for life.