Because learning history is not something that comes only from a history book. Calling out the significant parts of our history and embedding them in the world around us is how we communicate what our history is all about. Washington is central to the founding story of our nation, and so we see “Washington” all around us. Take that away, and we confine history to what we learn in history books, and I think that takes away an important human value, which is to celebrate our common past. We are humans, after al, not Vulcans.
But then we also subject history to the politics of the day, and end up fighting over which names should be purged from our public sphere and which should not. The last thing we need is yet another thing to fight over, politically.
It’s not, actually. You’re probably thinking of the Constitution. The DoI was a middle finger to King George, but doesn’t actually have any legal significance.
Anyway, I think you’re missing the larger point, here, which isn’t, “Only ever honor people who did no bad things,” but rather, “Don’t honor people specifically for the bad things they did.” We didn’t name our capitol after George Washington because he was really awesome at owning other humans. We named it after him because of his role in founding the first modern democracy. If he’d never owned a single slave in his life, we’d still have named the capitol after him.
Most of the Confederate generals, you can’t really say the same thing about him. Robert Lee got stuff named after him specifically for waging war against his own nation for the right to own slaves. If he’d never been a Confederate general, there’d be no statues of him. So that’s a different kettle of fish entirely, as I see it.
Not to mention that “it’s bad to do X” is entirely subjective in this instance unless it can be demonstrated that “doing X” results in bad things happening. Since that has not been demonstrated, I think we can leave it at:
Don’t name anything after Washington if you think it’s bad to do so.
If you don’t think it’s bad to do so, go right ahead and name things after him.
For instance, we have seen that bad things come from celebrating the Confederate Battle Flag, and at long last even folks in the South are starting to wise up to that fact.
DC? District of Columbia? Named for Christopher Columbus, heavily involved in the transatlantic slave trade and the genocide of the natives of Hispaniola? Better change that part as well. And of course the whole “USA” part has to go–Amerigo Vespucci profited from slave trading.
Virginia, of course, was most likely named for the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, while neighboring Maryland was named for Queen Henrietta Maria, who kept a pet dwarf. Delaware better get a new name–Lord De La Warr was a veteran of “scorched earth” warfare against both the Irish and the Powhatan Indians.
I’ve already pointed out that I’m all in favour of celebrating lots of good things, so it’s not like I’m saying get rid of historical references. I can turn that same argument back on you; by reducing matters to Just Washington, or Just Jefferson, as a focus for celebration, that’s removing significant parts of your history, too.
And I think an important human value is to understand and remember our common past. Not just celebrate.
Again, I’m not subjecting history to the politics of today. I’m subjecting politics of today to the politics of today. We, today, should not celebrate slave owners. And please, even if you disagree with the difference I’m drawing, could I request you to not hyperbole up “which names should be purged from our public sphere”? I’m not suggesting that Washington’s name should be scrubbed from the history books, be made a dirty word that people fear to speak outside of academic circles. I’m just saying he shouldn’t be celebrated. I am all in favour of him being remembered, spoken of freely, debated, and discussed, much as I am doing now.
Ah, ok. Giving King George the middle finger seems relatively reasonable, to be fair. It can stay.
If you’re under the impression that I thought you had named your capitol after Washington because of how gosh-darned great a slave owner he was, you are wrong. I’m kind of curious what I’ve said that led you to think that. It’s fairly stupid.
No, I’m agreeing with that larger point, and then taking it further; namely, “Don’t honour people specifically for the bad things they did, and, if possible, don’t honour them at all if they did bad things if you can honour the good things they did individually”. That’s the helpful thing; we aren’t limited to lionising a person and ignoring those details of their life we’d prefer not to lionise. We can just celebrate the great things they did. Celebrate Washington’s fine and noble deeds, and then you don’t have to include his slave ownership at all! Nothing of value is lost; to the contrary, we’re cutting away the fat.
When you don’t have anything named after slave owners?
I’m honestly surprised this apparently seems like a slippery slope. I don’t really want to celebrate slave owners. Not even in the face of tradition. “Gosh, but it’s been like that for so long, honestly can’t we just not worry about it” is not an argument that holds much water with me. It’s kind of a big deal.
Will you rename Washington and the District of Columbia separately, or will one new name suffice? Also, will the other countries of the Americas be consulted, or will we in the US just take responsibility for renaming the continent?
Why limit it to slave owners, though? How about including religious bigots, authoritarians, chauvinists, traitors, and anybody else whose actions hurt others?
Then think about who would be left. What historical figures can we name anything for?
Yeah, he did- after the Feds made clear and definite threats of what would happen if he didn’t abjure them. It was under threat, not due to a change of heart.
Let us not be guilty of the crime of Presentism, where we judge the heroes of the past by the standards of today.
Be very sure that 200 years from now, our descendants will claim we were all rat bastards for eating meat, making slaves of the noble Dolphin and our hideous experiments on our brothers the Chimps.
But by yesteryears standards the Confederates were traitors, not to mention war criminals.
Now you’re getting into practicalities, and I’ve already said this isn’t something that’s ever actually going to happen.
[QUOTE=slash2k]
Why limit it to slave owners, though? How about including religious bigots, authoritarians, chauvinists, traitors, and anybody else whose actions hurt others?
Then think about who would be left. What historical figures can we name anything for?
[/QUOTE]
I’ve focused on slave ownership since that seems an “obvious” bad thing to support, whereas the things in your list seem like they’d have people less sure about how bad they are. The key thing too is what they did or said. Given the times I would imagine that a lot of people around at the time of Washington would have been chauvinists, or example, but absent some big deed or words supporting it, who knows. And personally I don’t know that there’s anything inherently evil about traitorousness (or authoritarianism, for that matter). But sure, in theory.
Presentism has actually already been brought up in the thread, so on that basis I feel like I’m not needlessly restating my point; I’m not judging historic people by the standards of today, I’m judging us by the standards of today. Should you, or I, or anyone, celebrate a slave owner? I don’t believe so, regardless if they were a heroic, intelligent, brave slave owner. We, today, should not do that.
And if in 200 years from now people look back on us with contempt, that’s fine by me. I have no issue with being looked back on as a backwards, unintelligent person who didn’t understand the world around him. It’s practically inevitable.
It says that even though we fought a brutal civil war, when the war was over the winners chose, to a certain extent, to reconcile rather than smear the loser’s faces in the mud. For people to live together harmoniously, a certain amount of respect is needed, even it is sometimes less than gratifying for one side.
Lincoln chose not to treat the losing side like traitors for the same reason.
Interesting though, that we don’t seem willing to extend that respect to people who don’t see the defenders of slavery as fitting honorees for public properties. Somehow, we let the losers decide that their war for slavery was honorable and let them rewrite history, but now we can’t question that revisionism for some reason.
“What I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take 'em all around, they’re a pretty ornery lot. It’s the way they’re raised.”
– Huckleberry Finn
George III was actually a pretty nice guy as kings go, what what? It was really his Government and Parliament that were to blame for the American colonists’ grievances – but, nobody in the colonies had any traditional quasi-religious reverence for Parliament, only for the king, so the DOI had to put everything squarely on him.
