(August 17) To change the names of places or to remove historic statues or memorials is almost invariably an enterprise fraught with controversy. Some of us take more neutral, case-by-case approaches than do culture warriors on both sides.
Everybody, however, should be disgusted at the cheap trick Gov. Jeff Landry is playing with the naming of the once-and-future Camp Beauregard, the large National Guard training facility in Pineville, adjoining Alexandria. New research by the Illuminator news outlet makes even more obvious how inappropriate that particular renaming is.
To be clear, for those of us with a reverence for history, the benefit of the doubt relating to monuments and place names should go to keeping things the same. Nonetheless, the presumption in favor of stasis should be rebuttable, and some monuments and names clearly should be jettisoned.
Some names and some monuments really do belong not in places of honor but in museums — which, by the way, is exactly what this newspaper reported last week is being done with the controversial Battle of Liberty Place Monument, now destined for an exhibit in Los Angeles.
The question becomes how to determine which is which. Obviously there is no foolproof formula. While there is ample room for differing judgments both ethical and historical, certain situations involve basic common sense and common decency.
The reversion of Louisiana National Guard Training Center Pineville back to the name of Camp Beauregard, especially in the manner Gov. Landry did it, is one of those patently obvious violations of common sense and decency.
Until 2023, the training facility was known as Camp Beauregard, in memory of flamboyant Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard.
In general, I am an admirer of Gen. Beauregard. But read on, to see why this is not about him at all, and why what Landry did is so cynically wrong….. [The full column is at this link.]
