{"id":12424,"date":"2020-06-12T14:40:27","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T21:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12424"},"modified":"2020-06-12T14:40:33","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T21:40:33","slug":"on-name-changing-and-statue-toppling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/on-name-changing-and-statue-toppling\/","title":{"rendered":"On Name Changing and Statue Toppling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>General David Petraeus wrote an impassioned article in the&nbsp;<em>Atlantic<\/em>&nbsp;this week about the need to change the names of military bases that for over a century have been named after Confederate generals and to recalibrate iconic remembrances such as statues commemorating Robert E. Lee at West Point \u2014 points of reference he reminds us that have been central in his own experience and career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His relevant points were twofold and ostensibly rational: Commanders such as Bragg and Benning (Petraeus proposes the renaming of other eponymous bases as well) were not especially effective commanders worthy of such majestic base commemoration. In some cases, as Petraeus notes, they were not even highly regarded by their&nbsp;peers. No one, certainly, would wish to defend the worldview of a Braxton Bragg. And, as Petraeus put it, as \u201ctraitors\u201d they fought for an ignoble cause that perpetuated slavery. (Of course, the logic of renaming should then apply to the northern California community of Fort Bragg, also named after the&nbsp;unattractive&nbsp;Braxton Bragg \u2014 an idea to which some in the Democratic California legislature failed to win over the town\u2019s mayor in 2015).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think Petraeus is in many ways correct about his anguish. Yet, the bases were named not so much to glorify overt racists as for a variety of more mundane, insidious reasons in the late 19th and early 20th centuries \u2014 from concessions to local southerners where many of these bases were to be located, to obtain bipartisan congressional support for their funding, and to address the need in the decades-long and bitter aftermath of the Civil War to promote \u201chealing\u201d between the still hostile former opponents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We should note that not all Confederates were quite the same in terms of our current moral reexaminations. General Longstreet differed from, say, a General Nathan Bedford Forrest, not necessarily on the basis of their undeniable respective competency or even clear culpability in perpetuating the war, but on their quite different efforts at postwar outreach and healing. But then again such assessments would be to assume that we are all mortals and not deities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/on-name-changing-and-statue-toppling\/\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review General David Petraeus wrote an impassioned article in the&nbsp;Atlantic&nbsp;this week about the need to change the names of military bases that for over a century have been named after Confederate generals and to recalibrate iconic remembrances such as statues commemorating Robert E. Lee at West Point \u2014 points of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3eo","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":332,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/down-from-olympus\/","url_meta":{"origin":12424,"position":0},"title":"Down from Olympus","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner David Petraeus\u2019s resignation marks the end of one of the great postwar military and government careers \u2014 his successful surge in Iraq being analogous to and as impressive as Matthew Ridgway\u2019s salvation of Korea or Sherman\u2019s sudden taking of Atlanta that saved Lincoln\u2019s and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Benghazi&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Benghazi","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/benghazi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8988,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-administration-needs-to-abandon-its-petraeus-obsession\/","url_meta":{"origin":12424,"position":1},"title":"Obama Administration Needs to Abandon Its Petraeus Obsession","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services In politically driven moods, the ancient Romans often wiped from history all mention of a prior hero or celebrity. They called such erasures damnatio memoriae. The Soviet Union likewise airbrushed away, or \"Trotskyized,\" all the images of any past kingpin who became politically\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"rfr","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/rfr-e1454252522115.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6061,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ready-for-battle\/","url_meta":{"origin":12424,"position":2},"title":"Ready for Battle","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Five generals who turned the tide. by Victorino Matus The Weekly Standard The military historian Victor Davis Hanson was in Washington, D.C., to promote his latest book,\u00a0The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost\u2014From Ancient Greece to Iraq. Considering what is transpiring overseas, the timing couldn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Literature&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Literature","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/literature\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":330,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/too-many-narratives-to-get-straight\/","url_meta":{"origin":12424,"position":3},"title":"Too Many Narratives to Get Straight?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner At some point the prurient angle of the Petraeus story that alone enticed a reluctant media into becoming tangentially interested in Benghazi-gate \u2014 in the way the deaths of four Americans never did \u2014 will die down. Then we are left with largely three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Benghazi&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Benghazi","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/benghazi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":158,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-short-history-of-amorous-generals\/","url_meta":{"origin":12424,"position":4},"title":"A Short History of Amorous Generals","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas Many were as pursuant of women as they were of the enemy \u2014 and the former rarely impaired the latter. \u201cYou\u2019re a very bad man.\u201d So yelled Dorothy at the Wizard of Oz, once the imposing, larger-than-life face on the screen was revealed to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Political Culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":326,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/oh-what-a-tangled-web\/","url_meta":{"origin":12424,"position":5},"title":"Oh What a Tangled Web","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 21, 2012","format":"gallery","excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Supporters of President Obama have dubbed those who question administration statements about Libya as either partisans or conspiracy theorists, on the premise that the administration had no reason to dissimulate. But in fact, it had plenty of political reasons not to be candid,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Benghazi&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Benghazi","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/benghazi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12426,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12424\/revisions\/12426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}