When an admirer once asked Harry Jaffa, the political philosopher who died earlier this month at the age of 96, what led to his interest in Abraham Lincoln, he answered without a moment’s hesitation, in a ferocious bark: “Plato!”
After the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts approved a revised design for the Eisenhower memorial last month, a New York Times reporter asked Anne Eisenhower, Ike’s granddaughter, whether the controversial design could now, at long last, get built, despite the objections of her own family and countless…
All of us at The Weekly Standard were shocked and deeply saddened by the terrible news last week of the death in a cycling accident of our friend Jake Brewer, at age 34. The husband of contributing editor Mary Katharine Ham, Jake was not only a person of great achievement and remarkable promise,…
Washingtonians and visitors seeking to attend Veterans Day ceremonies or to pay their respects to the fallen at Arlington National Cemetery this year will need to allocate extra time in getting there.
The effort to design, fund, and build a monument to Dwight Eisenhower has been underway for 15 years now. So, unsurprisingly, while money has been spent and headquarters have been staffed, ground has not yet been broken. For that matter, the proposed design of the monument has, as Hannah Hess…
National Park Service director Jarvis said he discussed closing the open-air monuments and memorials with the White House, as well as the secretary of the Interior Department:
Since first writing about the conduct of the National Park Service yesterday, events have accelerated somewhat.
In a letter sent yesterday to Jonathan Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, 94 members of Congress question the federal government's decision to close open-air memorials during the federal government shutdown.
Another open-air memorial in the Washington area is closed and barricaded off: the Iwo Jima Memorial, just across the bridge from D.C. in Rosslyn, Virginia. A source sends along this picture of the barricade set-up at the memorial, which is also called the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial:
Bill Kristol, with Molly Ball, Jon Favreau, and Jake Tapper, yesterday on CNN:
John McCormack reports that the barricades at the World War II memorial are wired shut today:
At least four National Park Service workers are erecting a barricade around the World War II memorial, John McCormack reports:
John McCormack reports on Twitter that a World War I Memorial is closed due to the federal government shutdown. However, a sign posted by the National Park Service says that despite the memorial's closure, there is an exception "for 1st Amendment activities."
Barack Obama is attending a memorial service for the victims of a massive fertilizer plant in West, Texas. But the president didn't visit the damage from the ground; instead, he opted only for a flyover.
Vice President Joe Biden made a joke today at the memorial service for slain MIT police officer Sean Collier:
Americans have long had to fight City Hall, but now they have to fight an almost endless list of government bureaucracies at both the state and federal levels. Occasionally, however, the little guy still wins.
For three years, a private citizen named Steve LeBard has led the effort to build a privately funded memorial in Orcutt, California—a tranquil small town located on the Golden State’s gorgeous Central Coast—to honor military veterans. And for the better part of those three years, he has run into a…
The controversial proposal for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial now has a new component: a smartphone app, which, according to the memorial’s designers, visitors will be able to use on-site to “contextualize Eisenhower’s impact” and view historical and biographical content. Postmodern…
Earlier this morning at the Pentagon, President Barack Obama delivered the following remarks in rememberance of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001:
William Kristol: "The 9/11 Generation."
Two lasting memories. The first, from the White House on the evening of September 11, 2001:
The memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed by architect Frank Gehry fails miserably to capture the essence of our 34th president. Bruce Cole’s article “Doing Right by Ike” in a recent issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD makes this point, coupled with this indisputable plea: Let’s give Ike the memorial…
Jill Hanson, an impressive and successful behind-the-scenes Republican political operative, passed away earlier this month after suffering from throat cancer. A memorial service for Hanson is scheduled in Washington, D.C. for Friday, June 29, at at the Capitol Hill Club, 300 First Street SE,…
In the midst of the current controversies over the Martin Luther King and Dwight Eisenhower memorials in Washington, it’s worth examining the human impulse toward memorialization, so that we can appreciate what is at stake in the inevitable battles—aesthetic and moral—over the shapes our collective…
You may have heard a bit about the recent controversy over the Eisenhower Memorial here in Washington, D.C. The design by Frank Gehry centers on a minuscule statue of Dwight D. Eisenhower as a boy in a park surrounded by 80-foot-tall images of a stark Kansas countryside. But you might wonder, why…
Lots of words have been and will be written for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, but Wilfred McClay has set a very high standard of courage, clarity, and eloquence with his "Memorializing September 11th." It's in the forthcoming issue of National Affairs, and is now available on their website. Here's…