Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday signed off on an independent commission’s recommendations to remove from U.S. military facilities, “all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederacy.”
“The installations and facilities that our Department operates are more than vital national security assets. They are also powerful public symbols of our military, and of course, they are the places where our Service members and their families work and live.” Austin wrote in a memo to senior officials on Friday.
“The names of these installations and facilities should inspire all those who call them home, fully reflect the history and the values of the United States, and commemorate the best of the republic that we are all sworn to protect.”
So, beginning on Dec. 18, 2022, the Department of Defense will begin renaming bases across the country, including hundreds of streets, buildings and other assets.
Among the changes is the renaming of nine Army posts: Forts Benning and Gordon in Georgia; Forts Lee, A.P Hill and Pickett in Virginia; Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Rucker in Alabama, Fort Polk in Louisiana and Fort Hood in Texas.
According to the commission’s report, Fort Benning will be named Fort Moore; Fort Polk will be renamed Fort Johnson; Fort Bragg will become Fort Liberty; Fort Gordon will become Fort Eisenhower; Fort Hood will become Fort Cavazos; Fort Lee will become Fort Gregg-Adams; Fort Pickett will become Fort Barfoot; Fort Rucker will be renamed to Fort Novosel.
Navy ships USS Chancellorsville and USNS Maury will also be renamed. Carlos Del Toro, the secretary of the Navy, will decide on the new names.
The federally mandated Naming Committee estimated the undertaking to cost as much as $62.5 million, according to Stars and Stripes.
The Rush to Destroy the Past
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/the_rush_to_destroy_the_past.html
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, apparently is in favor of renaming military bases named for Confederates.
Gen. Milley may be intimately familiar with the history behind the names of all military posts in all of the branches of the services, and in the case of those named for people, their individual histories.
That would put him into a pretty exclusive category: most civilians in the states where such bases are located don’t know much about the people for whom bases are named, even those who work on them.
The same can probably be said for many, if not most, of the military members stationed there, though they have a much higher likelihood of knowing at least the person a base was named after.
I’m pretty sure that most members of Congress don’t know who the bases in their districts were named for, though they no doubt have staffers who do, or can find out quickly if needed.
Even among people who might know full names, they probably couldn’t tell you much about them, what war(s) they served in, or whose side they were on if they even guessed “Civil War” correctly. Until a few weeks ago, nobody cared a whole lot.
History is what happened. It isn’t judgment, it is a statement of fact about events that happened at a time and place, and participants in those events. People decide, often later and in a different context, how to interpret those facts, if need be, and if they so desire, to judge for themselves what the facts “mean.”
Denying them doesn’t change the events; trying to erase or bury them doesn’t either.
It simply means that other people no longer have access to the facts about those people, places, and things that shaped the history that is examined by others at a later time (because once an event has occurred, every examination of it happens later, and is colored by the perceptions of those who do the studying).
Whatever might be learned — good, bad or indifferent — is lost once references to the past are erased, and as historian George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (often quoted in different forms, which is quite ironic).
The most repressive regimes in history like to destroy the past, so that people have no basis to refer back to in order to see if history is repeating itself, for better or for worse.
If you don’t know any better — because there isn’t anything to remind you — then you are pretty much forced to play along with whatever the current regime tells you.
Orwell’s 1984 was nearly prophetic in our modern era, as the past is erased or constantly rewritten, and the only thing we have is the present.
Anyone who thinks differently is guilty of wrongthink, and thoughtcrimes are to be punished as severely as possible. It seems as if this is happening widely, swiftly, and alarmingly.
If we are going to get rid of all symbolism that doesn’t conform to the current dogma and judge all past actions of everybody by the feelings of the moment, we will destroy society. Statues are being torn down; flags banned; alternatives to the National Anthem actively sought; institutions shuttered or defunded, and critical voices effectively silenced. A generation ago — a decade ago, even less — this would have been unthinkable. Now, it is wrong not to agree with such thinking, and one criticizes it at one’s own peril.
If we are going to engage in the rename game to cleanse society of any reference to anything the thought police find objectionable, military bases will be joined by almost anything else that has a name. Watch out, Jefferson City, MO! How about Lincoln, NE, or Jackson, MS? And let’s not forget the most egregious of all: Washington, D.C. (for District of Columbia!), which is a double whammy. The list is not endless, but it is extensive.
What should be done with our nation’s capital? Rename it Floydsville, District of BLM? How about renaming all offensively named cities for martyrs of whatever the popular movement of the day is? And doing it every few years as certain movements fall out of favor and new ones arise?
We probably need to rename anything that smacks of cultural appropriation, so anything that carries a Native American or other indigenous people’s name must be renamed. Goodbye Kansas City Chiefs!
If people can no longer buy a house with a “master bedroom” or “master bathroom,” what new terms will people have to learn for most things that could possibly have any sort of objectionable connotation? Finally, what shall our country be called, because “America” cannot be allowed to remain?
I don’t know when, or if, any wisdom will prevail, and the insane rush to destroy the past in favor of an ever-shifting present will subside, but I fear what the aftermath will be in either case.
I fear for the future, because a future with no foundation in the past, however sordid or insufficient it was, is not a future where I will have a place.
July 25, 2020
Rep. Gohmert goes full Alinsky to make Democrats play by their own rules
Democrats are dismantling anything in America that has ever been connected with slavery.
Statues are felled, school names are changed, and institutions are rebranded. Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and others are gone because of their connection with enslaving blacks.
Rep. Louis Gohmert from Texas had been paying attention,and gotten the message. The new rule is that slavery, which ended in America over 150 years ago, is so wrong that anything associated with slavery must be banned.
On July 23, 2020, Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) introduced a Privileged Resolution calling upon Congress to ban any political organization or party that has ever held a public position supportive of slavery or the Confederate States of America.
It also calls for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to remove from the House wing of the U.S. Capitol or any House office building any item that names, symbolizes or mentions any political organization or party that supported slavery or the Confederacy.
Rep. Louie Gohmert released the following statement:
“As outlined in the resolution, a great portion of the history of the Democratic Party is filled with racism and hatred. Since people are demanding we rid ourselves of the entities, symbols, and reminders of the repugnant aspects of our past, then the time has come for Democrats to acknowledge their party’s loathsome and bigoted past, and consider changing their party name to something that isn’t so blatantly and offensively tied to slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination, and the Ku Klux Klan.
As the country watches violent leftists burn our cities, tear down our statues and call upon every school, military base and city street to be renamed, it is important to note that past atrocities these radicals claim to be so violently offensive were largely committed by members in good standing of the Democratic Party.
Whether it be supporting the most vile forms of racism or actively working against Civil Rights legislation, Democrats in this country perpetuated these abhorrent forms of discrimination and violence practically since their party’s inception.
To avoid triggering innocent bystanders by the racist past of the Democratic Party, I would suggest they change their name. That is the standard to which they are holding everyone else, so the name change needs to occur.”
Gohmert has mastered Saul Alinsky’s Rule 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” (Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, 1971)
The resolution opens by noting that the House has voted to remove all statues from the building honoring people who “served as an officer or voluntarily with the Confederate States of America or of the military forces or government of a State while the State was in rebellion against the United States[.]”
The resolution continues by saying these statues were just adjuncts to the real horror in the House. Even with the statutes gone, the House continues to contain:
[T]he most ever-present historical stigma in the United States Capitol; that is the source that so fervently supported, condoned and fought for slavery was left untouched, without whom, the evil of slavery could never have continued as it did, to such extreme that it is necessary to address here in order for the U.S. House of Representatives to avoid degradation of historical fact and blatant hypocrisy for generations to come.
What is this obscenity that lives on despite the statue purge? It’s the Democrat party itself. Gohmert details the horrific sins that the Democrat party committed against African-Americans, beginning with its 1840 platform and continuing to the Democrats’ 75-day-long filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the way the party lionized Robert Byrd, a onetime KKK recruiter. The resolution also references:
- the 1856 Democrat party platform saying that there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent either existing or new slave states;
- the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850;
- the 0% support Democrats gave to the 14th Amendment, giving slaves citizenship, and the 15th Amendment, giving them the right to vote;
- the 1902 Virginia Constitution that disenfranchised 90% of black men and nearly half of all white men, effectively suppressing Republican voters;
- the 1912 decision Democrat President Woodrow Wilson made to segregate U.S. government employees; and
- the 1924 Democrat National Convention in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, which cheerfully hosted a massive KKK presence.
Given all the historic wrongs associated with enslaving and oppressing blacks, the resolution concludes that it’s only right and proper to resolve as follows (emphasis added):
1. That the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall remove any item that names, symbolizes or mentions any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery or the Confederacy, from any area within the House wing of the Capitol or any House office building, and shall donate any such item or symbol to the Library of Congress.
2. That any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery or the Confederacy shall either change its name or be barred from participation in the House of Representatives.
Folks, Representative Gohmert’s resolution is probably the best argument I have heard yet for preserving our history.
If we are going to purge all the bad things mankind has ever done throughout history, then it must apply to all.
Do so, and there would be no history left.
Have they all forgotten the words, “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone”?