 |
| Addison McDowell |
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby published the reasons McDowell's bill is a really terrible, horrible, no-good, unprecedented (because it's totally outside what this Republic has always believed) attempt to glorify a man whose criminal career is just getting fully started:
...it is unseemly in a democratic republic for the government to glorify active members of society by imposing their names on buildings, roads, and programs in which all citizens have an interest. In our system, all citizens are meant to be equal before the law. The Constitution flatly bars hereditary privilege and titles of nobility. Naming public facilities after living persons amounts to a de facto ennobling of those persons, exalting them as a class above the rest of us. It is a form of veneration that undermines the (small-d, small-r) democratic and republican ideals of equality, modesty, and restraint in governance. It should discomfit us all.
Evidently some MAGA-adjacent activists agreed fully with Jacoby's reasoning. The Patriot Post, "the nation's leading digest of conservative news and opinion," republished Jacoby's essay. That's where I saw it.
This may be the most hypocritical thing you've posted.
ReplyDeleteSenator Robert Byrd's name is on everything paid for with a public dollar in West Virginia. Hell, you can't lift the seat in a public toilet there without seeing Byrd's name stamped on the bottom.
Don't be silly. Designations by the state of West Virginia is something they have to answer for (if indeed you're referring to renamings that happened before Byrd died -- are you gonna do the research on that?), but the U.S. government does not do that, at least hasn't done it until now. Living people don't get shit named for them. As soon as Ronald Reagan was dead, however ... you bet!
ReplyDelete