Sitting still
On Madison, Jefferson, and what it takes to be a monument
As a name is set to be removed from a significant landmark in the District of Columbia, it is worth noting that not every President has earned a memorial or been acknowledged with a Presidential library.
■ Aside from some of the forgettable Chief Executives of the middle and late 1800s, more significant Presidents have also been left out. James Madison, for instance, has a namesake building housing the Library of Congress, but it only opened in 1980 (and isn’t exactly a “Presidential library” of the same hagiographic status as the brand-new Obama Presidential Center).
■ That probably wouldn’t bother Madison, though. He would almost certainly be content with recognition via a functional library building, considering his foundational influence on the Library of Congress.
■ Madison’s was a zealous advocate for knowledge, even pressing Congress to form a national university “on a scale and for objects worthy of the American nation”. Though no comprehensive university of the type was ever built, it’s interesting to consider what that might look like today. As important as bricks-and-mortar residential college life can be, a truly national university today would have to contain a very large online learning component.
■ And despite the rarity of higher education in the late 1700s, there is no better advertisement for the value of very broad access to educational opportunity than the progress of the country since Madison’s time. We live vastly richer in a material sense in large part because so many people in so many ways over so many years decided to get a little bit smarter than they were before. Compounding effects matter in human knowledge, too. America doesn’t need more places to stand in the way.
■ A worthwhile monumental program for our 250th anniversary as a country could easily include some incarnation of a national university. We don’t need vanity renaming projects or more opportunities to sit still: We need people who are eager to keep moving towards greater and greater goals.