A recommended list of "asks"
If Congress asks us what the Confederate heritage community specifically wants it to do, here are my recommendations.
A few years ago, when I called a Congressional staffer to complain about what the Naming Commission had done, they testily asked “OK, what do you want?”
I appreciated that. Good politicians try to give their constituents what they want, presuming that (a) it won’t hurt the politician and (b) it’s not hard to actually do what the constituents want.
If you don’t have a ready list of “asks,” you can’t blame the politician for concluding that you’re not serious. It’s like going into a store and wandering aimlessly through the aisles. The salesman can’t sell you anything if you don’t know what you’re looking for or can’t articulate what you want to buy. The politician, or his/her staffer, might conclude that you simply called them to vent.
If, however, you present a politician with a list of plausible “asks,” i.e., a list of things that they can reasonably do—-then you put them on the spot. You put them in a position where, if they say no to your requests, they need to justify saying no. Many politicians will take the easy way out, pick one or two things off your list, and do those things.
But first, you have to have a list. Here’s my proposed list.
VERY EASY THINGS TO DO.
These things are easy for Congress and the Trump administration to do, for these reasons:
They cost little-to-no money
Only a few people will see them. Thousands of people see and know the names of U.S. Army bases. As for these things, though, people will only see them if they go to specific locations that do not typically draw lots of public attention.
They can be sold as reasonable adjustments to some of the excessive recommendations the Naming Commission made. They can be defended by asserting that these recommendations by the commission, when they were first implemented, made Americans look petty and too-easily offended. They made it look as if we’d actually succumbed to wokeism and cancel culture. Undoing these actions will demonstrate that we aren’t a nation of woke, culturally-brittle people.
I suspect that the rational progressives will conclude that they’d look silly if they opposed us publicly on these particular “asks,” so they’ll quietly let us implement them.
The very-easy-to-do asks are:
Restore the Confederate battle streamers to Army National Guard colors
Put Lee AND Grant’s portraits back up in the library at West Point.
Allow the West Point Class of 1961 to restore “Reconciliation Plaza” at West Point to the condition it was in before the Naming Commission’s recommendations were implemented.
Restore the plaque with Lee’s quote to Honor Plaza at West Point. The plaque contained a quote from Robert E. Lee, and identified him not as a Confederate, but as a former superintendent of West Point. Naming Commission researchers, in an inspiring display of honorable public service, determined that Lee actually said that quote while he was in Confederate service. So, the Really Smart Decisionmakers on the commission determined that the plaque should go.
Restore John Mosby’s name to the Ranger Wall of Fame at Fort Benning, and return his portrait to the Ranger exhibit in the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning.
HARDER THINGS TO DO
It will be harder for Congress to satisfy these asks, because they will cost more money and/or generate more controversy:
Return the Reconciliation Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery.
Renounce these judgments in the Preface, which can be found at the beginning of Part I of the Naming Commission’s report, OR formally and specifically affirm that Congress agrees with them:
Congress has determined that “Confederates” … “no longer warrant commemoration” by the Department of Defense.
“[D]uring the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century, the South and much of the nation came to live under a mistaken understanding of the Civil War known as the ‘Lost Cause.’ As part of the ‘Lost Cause,’ across the nation, champions of that memory built monuments to Confederate leaders and to the Confederacy, including on many Department of Defense assets. In every instance and every aspect, these names and memorials have far more to do with the culture under which they were named than they have with any historical acts actually committed by their namesakes. (All emphasis is added).
Hold a hearing on the Naming Commission. There appears to be lots of controversy over what Congress actually wanted the commission to do, or how Congress handled and supervised the commission’s operations. For example, one Congressional staffer has told me that it would have been illegal for Congress to try and prevent the implementation of any of the commission’s recommendations. I still have that staffer’s email…but I must have misheard. It simply can’t be that a Congressionally-created commission would be set up in such a way that would compel Congress to accept the commission’s judgements. (What if the Naming Commission had recommended that the plaque with Lee’s quote be replaced with one that quoted Mein Kampf?) Let’s have a hearing and clear it all up!
Name at least one Army base for Robert E. Lee. I’m confident that the Confederate heritage community would be satisfied if, say, Fort Pickett were renamed for Lee. Petersburg, which is the community outside the gates of the old Fort Lee, is majority African-American. I can’t imagine modern-day Petersburg ever accepting a military base named for the Confederacy’s most famous general. (And, to be honest, I would understand why they would feel that way). Fort Pickett, though, is in rural Central Virginia. Good politicians make compromises. Renaming Fort Pickett for Robert E. Lee would be a compromise that good politicians should be able to sell.