In “Naming
rights and wrongs,” I discussed, but did not settle, a question raised by
Rick Miller of Capitol Fax, to whit, whether government facilities and entities in
Illinois should be allowed to reflect historical incidents, doctrines or
individuals that some members of the polity regard as odious. The entity he had in mind was Calhoun
County, which was named to honor South Carolinian senator John C. Calhoun, who
in his later years was an apologist for slavery and a preacher of secession.
Since then, according to Ed
Kilgore at The Washington Monthly, the state Democratic Party in
Connecticut responded to pressure from the NAACP by agreeing to change the name
of its annual fund-raising Jefferson Jackson Bailey Dinners to eliminate
references to the two presidents.
Jefferson and Jackson, like Calhoun, were slaveholders.
Jackson also championed virtual genocide against Native Americans. Jefferson
was the father of the “constitutional conservatism” that is the intellectual
foundation of the Tea Party movement. Enough, thought Kilgore, to make those two gentleman no longer apt symbols of a modern, multiracial party.
About Jackson, for exasmple, Kilgore said this in a follow-up
post
If conservatives want to worship at his or at
Jackson’s altar, then let them be the ones who have to deal with embarrassing
contradictions of their own convictions—not just their complacency about
slavery and racism but their hostility to economic elites. If we have to have
names on fundraising dinners, then they should be the names of those who can be
quoted today, right now, without fear or deception. And this shouldn’t be an
especially controversial proposition.
This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2015.
