It's a disservice to airbrush history

It seems that hardly a week goes by without somebody calling for the renaming of an institution, highway, or park because the prominent person it honors held a view that's no longer acceptable.

Franklin Roosevelt once said, "[America] is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and the Jews are here on sufferance," turned a blind eye to the Nazis' treatment of Jews and forcibly moved over 100,000 guiltless Japanese-Americans into interment camps.

In 1856, Abraham Lincoln said, "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races." He always opposed racial intermarriage and promoted the idea that blacks should leave the U.S. to settle in Africa or South America.

We can choose to revile both of these men of their times for holding now discredited views and tear down their memorials, or we can choose to acknowledge their contributions to making possible the country that we have today.

The difference is between an airbrushed view of our past or one that depicts us honestly, as Cromwell reputedly instructed his painter to render him - "use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me."

Bob Foys

Inverness