President Trump has decided that the best way to respond to those who want to tear down our statues and monuments is to build even more.
On Friday night the president issued an executive order calling for the creation of a “National Garden of American Heroes.” The garden will honor people like Billy Graham and Booker T. Washington.
“Since the time of our founding, Americans have raised monuments to our greatest citizens,” the president said. “In our public parks and plazas we have erected statues of great Americans who, through acts of wisdom and daring, built and preserved for us a republic of ordered liberty.”
The president said the statues must be lifelike, not “abstract or modernist representations.”
The statues will honor authors, artists, intellectuals, teachers, judges, and teachers:
- The Founding Fathers
- Heroes of the Underground Railroad
- Heroes of the United States Armed Forces
- Congressional Medal of Honor recipients
- Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
- Civil Rights leaders
- Missionaries and religious leaders
- Pioneers and explorers
- First Responders killed or injured in the line of duty
- Labor leaders
- Advocates for the poor
- Opponents of Socialism
“None will have lived perfect lives, but all will be worth honoring, remembering, and studying,” the president said.
The president said the National Garden will include statues of John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Billy Graham, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, Dolley Madison, James Madison, Christa McAuliffe, Audie Murphy, George S. Patton, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson, Betsy Ross, Antonin Scalia, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, and Orville and Wilbur Wright.