As concrete guardians look down on travelers and tourists, profanity-laced shouting and the smell of marijuana fill the air. This scene unfolds day after day on the grounds of the famed Union Station in Washington, D.C. More than a tourist attraction and a hub for a nearly defunct mode of transportation, the homeless and drug-ridden Union Station serves as a profound image of our national decline.
First opened in 1907, Union Station was once a bustling center of travel and tourism. The heavy transportation load of the World War II era took a toll on the classical style hub, and as travelers shifted their gaze from the ground to the air in the post-war years, there was not enough revenue to upkeep the 200 acre station. In the 1950s the station’s owners tried to find a new use for the impressive building. Finally, in the 1960s the federal government took over Union Station in order to repurpose it as a National Visitor Center, a foreboding turn for a building that once represented American exceptionalism.
With government money keeping it afloat for decades, Union Station has remained a staple of the D.C. area. In 2022, however, over half of the station’s commercial space was empty and there were a “range of problems at the station, including drug and alcohol intoxication, overdoses and assaults,” The Washington Post reported.
Today, D.C. interns share rumors amongst themselves about a “Stabby Steve” who inhabits the station and has managed to evade justice for a myriad of stabbing sprees. Though Stabby Steve may be a complete legend, there are countless unsavory characters that appear to call Union Station home. At nearly all hours of the day and night, zombie-like people roam the Greco-Roman inspired colonnade.
Witnessing severe mental illness, drug usage and potentially criminal activity are an accepted part of a visit to Union Station.
If you can look past all of that, though, Union Station is a stunningly beautiful work of architecture. Drawing inspiration from the Baths of Diocletian and the Arch of Constantine, Daniel Burnham designed the station with the intent of connecting “Washington to Athens and Rome.” Union Station, like much of D.C. architecture, is a reflection of the aesthetic and intellectual tradition that gave rise to the American Founding. Yet, the silent guardians erected to remind bustling travelers and awed tourists of their heritage have become witnesses to the decline of both the station and the union.
There is something deeply symbolic about the image of drug-addicted and mentally ill criminals roaming the columns of a beautiful temple to Western civilization. It is a microcosm of all that is wrong in American culture.
The beautiful stone colonnade of Union Station is overshadowed by the severe disorder of soul that inhabits it. In the same way, the grandeur of the American Experiment is currently overshadowed by a severe disorder of soul. From a crisis of addiction and obesity to an out of control federal bureaucracy and budget, the political structure designed for self-governing citizens is in dire straits.
Modern America is the inheritor of a political system – an apple of gold in a picture of silver, as Lincoln put it – that relies on the people to govern themselves for the experiment to succeed. There is an ongoing debate about the merits of Liberalism and the origins of our Constitution. I am woefully unqualified to weigh in on that. It is abundantly clear, however, that John Adams was right when he asserted that the only way this model of government could possibly succeed is if the people are moral and religious. Put simply, the American system only functions when the people’s lives are in order.
The Constitutional order – though perhaps largely defunct through progressive redefinition and overreach – may indeed still be a beautiful and solid structure. But if the sad state of Union Station can teach us anything, it is that a beautiful structure inhabited by disordered souls ceases to be a beautiful or safe place.
The tradition that gave way to the American Founding, and by extension Union Station, long held that man is an incarnate creature with a soul that is capable of virtue and vice — order and disorder. The eternal and infinitely valuable portion of society is not the political structure but rather the souls that live within it. The eternal and infinitely valuable portion of Union Station is not the stone pillars and marble floors (as beautiful as they are), but rather the souls that roam its halls.
The solution to the demise of Union Station is not to level the 116 year old building. Nor is the solution the almost $9 billion modernization project that is currently in the works.
When will we learn that throwing a combination of money and modernity at genuine problems does not produce genuine solutions?
The solution is to enforce the law and give to each what he is due. For some, that may be employment, addiction treatment and the start of a new life. For others, that may look like prosecution.
To allow destitute people with genuine mental illnesses and addictions to roam about a beautiful building is unjust to both the public who uses the facility and to the people whose lives are so clearly out of control.
The structures of both the American political system and Union Station are beautiful in their own rights; both are in a crisis of disordered soul. Perhaps the solution is not to tear down either structure, but to turn our attention to the way we order our lives within those structures.
Bradley Haley is a student at Hillsdale College and a fellow in the Forge Leadership Network. Bradley is also the founder and editor-in-chief of New Guard Press, a publication for young intellectual conservatives.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
