The Enforcers of Cultural Monuments: How Sacred or Elevated Entities Maintain Power Through Their Protectors
The Anatomy of Cultural Monument Protection
Cultural Monuments do not survive through their inherent value alone—they endure because they possess dedicated enforcers and protectors who treat these monuments as sacred objects worthy of defence. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s allegorical tale “Earth’s Holocaust” provides a masterful examination of this dynamic, revealing how those who benefit from Cultural Monuments will fight desperately to preserve them, even when their utility or original purpose has clearly expired.
Language as Cultural Monument: The English-Only Movement
The recent executive order from the Trump Administration designating English as the official language of the United States exemplifies how Cultural Monuments operate through enforcement mechanisms. This policy functions as more than administrative efficiency—it serves as a Cultural Monument that creates clear ingroup and outgroup boundaries.
The language reveals the monument’s true purpose: “A nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society” and “create a pathway to civic engagement.” This framing positions English not merely as a practical tool, but as a sacred requirement for authentic American identity.
The Enforcers Emerge
Like the defenders in Hawthorne’s tale, the enforcers of the English-language Cultural Monument emerge predictably:
Government officials who position themselves as guardians of national unity through linguistic conformity.
Citizens who conflate language with patriotism, viewing multilingualism as a threat to cultural cohesion rather than a national asset.
Institutions that benefit from linguistic gatekeeping, using language requirements to control access to services, employment, and civic participation.
These enforcers don’t simply prefer English—they treat it as sacred, making criticism of English-only policies feel like attacks on America itself.
Hawthorne’s Insight: The Psychology of Cultural Monument Defense
In “Earth’s Holocaust,” Hawthorne demonstrates how each Cultural Monument produces its own class of protectors who cannot conceive of existence without these structures. When the crowd burns the emblems of nobility, a “gray-haired man of stately presence” emerges to defend the very system that elevated him:
“People, what have you done? This fire is consuming all that marked your advance from barbarism…We, the men of the privileged orders, were those who kept alive from age to age the old chivalrous spirit.”
The Sacred Relic Phenomenon
Hawthorne understood what drove William the Conqueror to use sacred relics to bamboozle Harald Godwinson: objects become powerful not through their material properties, but through the reverence people invest in them. The sacred relic- the fingernail clipping of a saint, for example, has no inherent power. It didn’t matter whether Harald was able to view the clipping or not, since the supposed sacred relic was only a side story. Likewise, the nobleman’s pedigree has no inherent power—its strength comes from generations of people treating it as sacred- by simply recognising that there is a difference between the elites and the bourgeoisie, the elites have won the battle.
Similarly, the English language gains Cultural Monument status not from linguistic superiority, but from centuries of cultural programming that equates English fluency with American legitimacy.
The Enforcement Mechanism: Making Criticism Feel Like Sacrilege
Cultural Monuments maintain their power by making rational criticism feel like emotional betrayal. Hawthorne shows this when critics of various institutions are dismissed not through logical argument, but through appeals to tradition and sacred duty.
The hangman defending the gallows in the story mirrors modern defenders of English-only policies: “You are misled by a false philanthropy; you know not what you do. The gallows is a Heaven-ordained instrument.”
Contemporary Enforcement Patterns
Modern Cultural Monument enforcers use similar tactics:
Conflating practical criticism with cultural attack: Questioning English-only policies becomes “anti-American” or perhaps ‘woke’ rather than policy debate.
Invoking sacred tradition: “English has been our language since the founding” transforms historical accident into divine mandate.
Creating existential stakes: Language diversity becomes a threat to national survival rather than cultural richness.
The Intergenerational Transmission of Sacred Objects
In my book The DNA of Disaster: Catastrophe by Design I showed how the Australian Aboriginal tribes created Uluru to transmit Cultural DNA via Cultural Monuments “far into the future.” This “future proofing” connects to Hawthorne’s deeper insight: the most durable Cultural Monuments are those that successfully create multi-generational enforcement classes.
The English-language Cultural Monument works precisely because it creates parents who feel they must “protect” their children by ensuring English dominance, teachers who see bilingual education as cultural threat, and employers who view accents as competency indicators.
The Self-Perpetuating Cycle
Each generation of enforcers creates the next by:
Framing protection as love: Teaching children that English mastery equals success becomes parental duty rather than mere cultural programming.
Institutionalising the sacred: Embedding language requirements in laws, policies, and social expectations makes enforcement feel natural and authentic.
Creating identity investment: Making English fluency central to American identity ensures that criticism feels like personal attack.
The Dark Stranger’s Warning: The Heart Remains Unchanged
Hawthorne’s most profound insight comes through his “dark-complexioned personage” who warns that burning external symbols accomplishes nothing fundamental: “There is one thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into the fire…the human heart itself.”
This applies directly to Cultural Monument enforcement. The English-only movement doesn’t actually address the underlying fears about cultural change, economic displacement, or social transformation that drive linguistic anxiety. Instead, it creates a symbolic battleground where deeper issues can be fought through proxy.
The Illusion of Control
Cultural Monuments offer enforcers the illusion that preserving symbols can preserve social stability. Making English “official” feels like solving immigration, economic, and cultural challenges without addressing their root causes.
The monument’s power lies not in its practical effects, but in providing a focal point for anxieties that would otherwise remain diffuse and unmanageable.
Recognition and Resistance
Understanding Cultural Monuments and their enforcers allows us to recognise when we’re being invited to treat symbols as sacred rather than engaging with underlying realities.
The language ‘Monument’ asks us to treat English as sacred rather than examining how linguistic diversity actually affects communities.
The enforcement mechanism transforms policy debate into identity warfare, making rational discussion nearly impossible. Recall how the native Australians told tourists to
“Get off the Rock!” claiming that Uluru is a “very sacred place, [it’s] like our church”
“People right around the world… they just come and climb it.”
The sacred framing prevents us from asking practical questions about multilingual education, immigrant integration, or cultural adaptation.
The Path Forward: Hawthorne’s Final Wisdom
Hawthorne suggests that lasting change requires addressing “the heart” rather than burning symbols. Applied to Cultural Monuments, this means recognising that enforcers defend these structures not from malice, but from genuine fear of social dissolution.
Rather than attacking the monuments directly—which only strengthens their sacred status—we might instead address the underlying needs these monuments claim to serve. What does linguistic unity actually provide? How might cultural diversity strengthen rather than threaten social cohesion?
The most durable Cultural Monuments are those with the most dedicated enforcers. Understanding this dynamic helps us recognise when we’re being invited to become enforcers ourselves, and when resistance might require addressing deeper questions about what we actually need from our symbols and institutions.
Cultural Monuments maintain their power not through their inherent worth, but through the devotion of those who treat them as sacred. Recognising this distinction is the first step toward engaging with these structures as human creations rather than divine mandates—and perhaps finding better ways to meet the genuine human needs they claim to address.
-Devin Savage
