Conservatives speak of our intellectual inheritance. As a child may receive his grandfather’s pocket watch or the family farm, so all of us have received as our inheritance the literary and historical treasures of the American experience. America’s literary works, its ideas of human dignity and individual rights, and the boundless social mobility and opportunities we have in the United States are all treasures akin to the family estate we’ve received by virtue of living, working, and learning in America. This heritage continues to shape us by having formed the country we live in and constituting the freedoms we enjoy now.

This month, that intellectual inheritance was vandalized. Videos spreading like wildfire across the internet show tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters in Washington, D.C., defacing statues of the Marquis de Lafayette, Andrew Jackson, and Benjamin Franklin. The statues were most likely chosen because of their location near the city’s most important landmarks — the White House, for instance — and in areas that could house the tens of thousands of protesters quite possibly bused in from across the region. The statues were certainly not chosen because of the associations each of them has had with the cause of freedom and liberty in the United States and elsewhere. 

Take the Marquis de Lafayette, for instance. A French nobleman serving in the American Revolution, Lafayette counted among his friends George Washington, James Monroe, and Alexander Hamilton. He played a significant role at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, the battle that ended the war in favor of American independence. He is still considered a hero today in both the United States and France for his support of the causes outlined in the Declaration of Independence — yet would he have approved of the graffiti on his statue? 

Andrew Jackson’s legacy is more mixed. Born somewhere on the Carolina border, Jackson made his fortune as a lawyer and soldier on the Tennessee frontier. Jackson commanded the stunning upset over the British at the Battle of New Orleans, so that, despite the war’s end, Jackson cemented his reputation as America’s best soldier, a man willing to sacrifice it all for America. 

Yet few Americans are more controversial. He is more responsible than more Americans of his time for destroying the culture of Native Americans — the Trail of Tears was practically his idea — and he owned upward of 300 slaves over his lifetime. His legacy is that much more mixed since he also helped to found the Democratic Party, serving as the popular candidate for the Democrats while northern political machines like Martin Van Buren’s Albany Regency protected slavery in exchange for the political support of the South. Such a history has long been removed from the website of the Democratic Party, although irony abounds in that people calling for the cancellation of Andrew Jackson today almost universally come from the party Jackson himself founded.  

Still, as president, Andrew Jackson styled himself as the voice of the people and the champion of their liberties. He moved to dismantle the Bank of the United States, arguing that a state-sponsored bank was unjust and unconstitutional. In his estimation, the bank did nothing more than enrich well-connected partisans, and Jackson talked of “killing” the bank in terms reminiscent of Captain Ahab hunting Moby Dick. Believing that the White House was also the people’s house, he opened his 1829 inauguration party to whoever wanted to attend. Ordinary people filled the White House, spilling drinks and ruining furniture as they vied to catch a glimpse of their champion. Having invited the first rabble to the White House, would he have approved of the tens of thousands of protesters descending on the nation’s capital?

Lastly, there’s Benjamin Franklin. Few Americans were as ardent, genuine supporters of liberty and of the common man than was Franklin. Born in Puritan New England, Franklin fled to free-thinking Philadelphia where he set himself up as a printer. A talented writer and businessman, Franklin may have been the quintessential American, a man whose accomplishments included inventing the lightning rod, the library, the fire department, and bifocals, as well as those principles of electricity demonstrated in his famous kite experiments. He also rarely collected monetary payments or put patents on his inventions, believing instead that the good he did for his countrymen was enough. 

Beyond these practical, tangible benefits to the American people, Franklin participated in the writing and ratification of almost all our founding documents. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, and he penned his name to the famous petition to Congress offered by the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1790. Given his labors for the cause of liberty, would he have approved of the motivations behind the protests in the U.S. capital? 

In the end, it doesn’t matter if the Marquis, Jackson, or Franklin would approve. The individuals who gathered in the nation’s capital and spray-painted graffiti onto the statues of these individuals operated on a much longer time frame than most Americans. Their actions demonstrated in no uncertain terms that they have little respect for the institutions protecting them as they vandalized such property. 

Our nation’s landmarks were desecrated in support of a cause the protesters link with the destruction of Israel. The past and future of Israel have long been intimately linked with our own. Since the days of colonial America, the United States was a safe haven for large numbers of Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. While there were still many lamentable instances of anti-Semitism in America, there were also many more uplifting stories of Jewish people finding refuge and safety more so than any other country in the world.  

Americans seem to know little about our intellectual inheritance, the figures who gave their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor so that we may be free. It is for those of us alive today to respect and safeguard our inheritance so we may have something to pass on to our children — a free nation composed of a free people with the character needed to keep our republic. Or else we may lose that nation in the same manner a person goes bankrupt: slowly, then all at once. 

Check out Winston Brady’s first novel, The Inferno, which examines the values and virtues of the United States and how these ideals were tarnished through a series of interviews, set in Hell, with those responsible for the problems America faces today.