If factually spurious
theories about America
If factually
spurious theories about America ’s
founding were turkey? Thanksgiving Day tables would groan under overcooked
piles of them. You know: stuff that everybody knows to be true, but which
isn’t.
Then there’s the
history of the nation as it actually unspooled.
Eighty miles from
my front door, situated in an affluent but otherwise unprepossessing Massachusetts neighborhood overlooking Plymouth (as in “Plymouth Rock”) Harbor,
towers the massive but obscure “National
Monument to the Forefathers” (NMTF). It’s an 180 ton, eighty-one
foot high, one-hundred-twenty-four-year-old monolith that honors 1620′s
hardy,Mayflower settlers; in the process, bearing exuberant testimony to the nation’s
Judeo-Christian roots. More and more, Americans are distressingly unaware of
those roots — just as so few know about this majestic stone carving.
Kirk Cameron’s
excellent 2012 documentary Monumental brought it some long
overdue attention, but too often this Forefathers
Monument remains like America ’s
actual, historical record: For those bothering to pay attention it offers
overwhelming evidence of the spiritual — yes, religious! — principles which
molded the Republic for centuries; but, more likely, it’s obliviously — even
studiously — disregarded.
