ABSTRACT
Public monuments are assertoric: they convey messages and teach lessons. Assertion requires a language and hence every monument has a title, a label, an accompanying text. A monument of abstract or allegorical design dedicated to the memory of someone not worth remembering is a kind of lie. Often such monuments are commissioned and certified by the subject himself. Assume then that there are monumental structures that are well-designed and visually beautiful; assume that corresponding to the distinction between worse persons and wicked ones, worthy causes and ignoble ones, there is a difference between true monumental messages and false ones. Set in two open acres on the Mall in sight of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, it is a polished black granite wall, sloping, angled, sunk in a broad trench, and inscribed with the names of the 58,000 men and women who died in Vietnam.
