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The 10-2. The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are

hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

This fine notion was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and it's a quote I return to often when confronted with one of the many, many difficulties of history.

For instance, was George Washington an exceptional man of admirable virtue, and also a slave owner?

Was Andrew Jackson a formidable man of courage and principle, and also responsible for genocide?

The first-rate intelligence has the ability to hold these two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.

So when I confront a monument to Washington or Jackson, I try to understand that they are not

celebrations of slavery or genocide, but the opposing good these men represent.

But I have to tell you, I find most Confederate monuments different.

What are they celebrating when we see them in their rebel uniforms with rifles ready and swords

drawn?

Not victory over the British in either 1781 or 1815.

It's not a victory at all, is it? The symbolism to me is not about heritage. It's the glorification

of a wretched, lost cause and would be as horrendous as a statue of Washington buying his slaves,

or Jackson signing the Indian Removal Act.

There is no opposed idea if I looked upon monuments like those.

And on today's Saturday matinee, I also find no opposing idea in the inexplicable controversy

over a Confederate memorial in Jessamine County, Kentucky, explored in an episode from the

...