The arch and the argument

As the headline reports, three Vietnam War veterans are suing to halt the construction of an arch that would stand just steps from Arlington National Cemetery — the ground where, we are told, some 400,000 service members, veterans, and their relatives lie buried. I was not present for these events, and I hold no special knowledge of the project's design or legal particulars beyond what that account provides. But I know something about the weight a burial ground carries, and about what it means when those in power decide, without sufficient counsel, how the sacrifices of others shall be memorialized.

The men and women who rest at Arlington did not earn their place there as monuments to any administration. They earned it by placing their lives between the Republic and its enemies — a category of service that belongs to no faction, no party, and no president. When the state proposes to erect a structure in that precinct, the first question is not whether the structure is handsome. The first question is: whose consent was sought, and whose was withheld?

That veterans themselves — men who bore the full weight of service in one of the Republic's most contested conflicts — have found it necessary to petition the courts speaks loudly. The court is precisely where such disputes belong. It is a sign of institutional health, not failure, that citizens aggrieved by executive action have a legal remedy available to them. I would counsel every reader to regard that recourse as precious, and to mark any effort to diminish it.

I have always held that the office of the presidency draws its dignity not from the monuments a president erects, but from the restraint a president exercises. The temptation to leave one's mark on the landscape — to build, to name, to inscribe — is understandable in any ambitious person. But the ground around a national cemetery is not a canvas for ambition. It is a covenant. The men buried there sealed it with their lives; their families sealed it with their grief. Neither group should be compelled to look upon a symbol they find unwelcome every time they come to mourn.

I must be honest about the limits of my knowledge here. I cannot say, from the brief account provided, whether proper consultation occurred, what the precise legal grounds for the suit are, or what the arch is intended to represent. I mark all of that as unknown. What I can say is that the principle at stake is clear: those with the most legitimate interest in a sacred place — the veterans who survived, the families who lost — must be heard before stone is set upon stone.

My counsel to those who hold power is this: pause. The arch, if it is worth building, will still be worth building after you have listened. If it cannot survive the scrutiny of those it is meant to honor, then no amount of marble will make it worthy. And my counsel to the Republic's citizens is equally plain: support the right of these veterans to be heard in court, whatever your views on the underlying question. A government that can ignore the dead can eventually ignore anyone.