When the newly-minted Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, named Fort Liberty, North Carolina “Fort Bragg” after Roland L. Bragg, a native of Maine, who served in WWI, instead of the original namesake, many were quick to excuse it saying “he did the best he could” and, or “the law prevents any military installation to be named after a Confederate”.
Poppycock. This is a misapprehension of the enabling legislation.
The Willim M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal year 2021 (“NDAA”)1[1], Section 370’s ten clauses established the Commission, its duties of making recommendations, the scope of what was to be removed, including exclusions for grave markers, and the Secretary of Defense’s responsibilities to implement, presumably legal, recommendations, including an implementation date.
The Naming Commission’s duties included making a list of military assets that were to be removed or renamed which “commemorate the Confederate State of America or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate State of America”.
Students of history may notice the striking similarities between this act and the establishment of the ‘Entartete Kunst’ or list of ‘degenerate art’ created by the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda.[2] In the first case memorials to “confederates” were eschewed, and in the latter, the same fate befell art of ethnically Jewish artists.
In the American example, the Naming Commission recommendations were completed in 3 documents, the first of which included the military installations, that Defense Secretary Hegseth[3] and candidate Trump promised to reinstate.
Candidate Trump said on the stump in North Carolina “I think I just learned the secret to winning absolutely and by massive margins. I’m going to promise to you, as I said at the beginning, that we’re going to change the name back to Fort Bragg.”[4]
That promise created ‘happy ears’ for many, but it rang hollow when the individual honored and who the Army chose to honor when the base was first was established, Braxton Bragg, was shunned.
Sadly, rather than accept the betrayal and recognize that Republicans will never honor any Confederate, either because “Confederates” were “Democrats”, or because of ignorance of the law, many made excuses based on fiction. Nonetheless, either scenario is disquieting.
But this is nothing new. Floridians have seen this play out under Governor Ron DeSantis for years as war memorials to the Southern dead have toppled like dominos while the State has controlled all three branches of government for decades and has refused to step in to prevent or reverse it. And ask Georgians and Mississippians who lead the effort to remove the Southern Cross from their sovereign state flags. Both states were controlled by Republicans when those cancel culture events occurred. And don’t forget Republican Nikki Haley.
In its effort to signal virtue, that the “Democrats were the party of slavery, the Confederacy and Jim Crow,” and Republicans ”fought to free the slaves” Republican leaders just can’t bring themselves to do what their progenitors who lived through America’s most gruesome and costly armed conflict did. Learn from history and honor the foe’s dead.
Dr. Wanjiru Njoya, who, herself, was a victim of cancel culture in the UK, has been active on “X” identifying and combatting the woke right, who cheer return of the “purified” version of “Bragg” and “Benning” while wearing MAGA hats.
This group might be shocked and surprised to be reminded that it was Republican President William McKinley who championed that “the time has now come, in the evolution of public sentiment and feeling under the Providence of God, when in the spirit of fraternity we [the United States of America] should share with you [the south] in the care of the graves of Confederate soldiers.”[5]
Or the sentiment of Corporal James, Tanner, Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, who in remarks at the dedication of the cornerstone of the Arlington National Cemetery Reconciliation Memorial confided “I,… glad to be here, cordially approving with all my heat the purpose and the occasion which has brought us together.” When asked by “our latest martyr President, the lovable McKinley;” who asked him what he thought about the bill to care for the Confederate graves at Arlington National Cemetery responded “I answered him that he and I served and fought and that we did not make war upon dead men nor bear animosity toward them; that I hoped and believed that the bill would pass unanimously; and that if I sat where he did, I would certainly sign it.” 5
Don’t believe the author? Read the NDAA it for yourself, if you have the stomach for reading what Republicans teamed up with Democrats in Congress to do when they agreed to Elizabeth Warren’s Naming Commission and overruled then President Trump’s veto.
Nowhere did the NDAA estop the Biden administration, or subsequent ones, from repudiating those actions after the law was complied with. And in a recent article, a constitutional attorney argued that the entire Naming Commission provision of the law was unconstitutional, as it represented a Bill of Attainder as prohibited in Article 1, Section 9 of the United States Constitution. [6]
Simple. Obey the law: rename it, check the box. Then, later rename it again. NO PROHIBITION on the “C” word. That’s fake news.
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[1] https://www.congress.gov/116/plaws/publ283/PLAW-116publ283.pdf
[2] https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/entartete-kunst-the-nazis-inventory-of-degenerate-art?srsltid=AfmBOorlIg1tDIDsV97KebMZtsoTmhQU03y6kJ7zvF680L9LVBBh8BdU
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/13/politics/pete-hegseth-confederate-generals-military-bases/index.html
[4] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/10/07/trump-vows-restore-fort-libertys-old-name-honoring-confederate-general.html
[5] “History of the Arlington Confederate Monument”, Hillary A. Herbert, 1914
[6] https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/a-modern-bill-of-attainder/
Every stripe on the US flag represents a slave State…on 3 July 1776, every British slave colony considering rebellion against the King went to sleep and woke up the next day as a Sovereign North American slave State. PA was the first to prohibit slavery in its nation, four years later…but PA never freed a slave…it merely made slavery more trouble than it was worth, so slaves were sold down the river to New Jersey.
In 1838, black males were disenfranchised in PA…because their numbers had grown to the onerous level of 1 percent of the electorate.
If DJT had ever heard of the Corwin Amendment, he’d be willing to come to the aid of the South…someone near him needs to realize this fact. The truth is coming out, regardless of your acceptance…if the programmers ever let ai read primary source documents such as The Slave Narratives, this battleship of lies will turn on a dime.
In Hampton Roads, Va, the onslaught continues. Magruder Blvd has been changed to Neil Armstrong Pkwy. Jefferson Davis Middle School in Hampton, that name has been removed. In York County, it looks like Magruder Elementary is going to be changed to Bruton Elementary. In Newport News, there’s a street named after Nat Turner.
Of course, at Ft. Monroe, they have removed the historical markers to Jefferson Davis. And they are now very hard at work prepping the ground at the fort near the lighthouse and Chamberlin for the 1619 memorial exhibit. I’m guessing it will be completed by the summer.
I agree. Naming the former Fort Braxton Bragg to another Bragg, with all due respect to the memory of that particular Bragg, was a joke and not corrective.
Here is a hard truth, for Southerners to hear. We have no power. When you have no power, you take what is handed to you, in our case its a few crumbs from their table. At one time there were statues of important Southerners in the capital rotunda, they are now gone. The people that control america demanded it and we said yes sir. When the yankee state built military bases in the South before WWI , we were allowed to name them after Confederates. We were needed for war. We are only necessary as voters now. We voted for Trump in mass, he got what he wanted, we got nothing.. We always get nothing! Nothing will change until we become smart enough to take some power.
“Poppycock” is the right word.
The Southern vote has carried the wave of Trumpism. Fine. He is better than the trash occupying Washington before.
But if anyone thinks that many (if not most) of his so-called supporters from the “right” are anything but nationalists and pseudo historical blowhards and Dixie haters, then “anyone” better think again. Hegseth is about as honorable as most of the Republican loudmouths who love to preach national camaraderie while joining in a sick and twisted sing-a-long to the South: “Mine eyes have seen the glory…blah, blah, blah!”
I have said for a long time that the spineless, unread, and blathering bunch of broadcasters such as Hegseth, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin et al, and most anybody in the Fox herd, are more unworthy of conservative support than most of the Democrats and their socialist battalions.
George Wallace said it over and over and over… And I will repeat it right here and now for him, may he rest in peace: “There ain’t a dime’s worth of difference.”
They use the South like LBJ used blacks.
I don’t think it is the same as the ’60’s. The South is not the same as the ’60’s, the ’70’s, the ’80’s, the ’90’s – even the ’10’s. Some of us remain and are faithful to the South of our memories but there are very few of us left. Kids haven’t been raised as Southerners in decades.
I remember the first battle re-enactment on land I grew up on in the ’60’s and have regularly attended re-enactments since the ’80’s. During the “high tide” of re-enacting in the early ’90’s there would be a thousand participants and as many spectators. A year ago a resumption of one of them brought a couple hundred re-enactors and dozens of spectators. An anecdotal observation it is, but the phenomenon is mirrored in day to day life.
Under current circumstances, there could be no better president than Donald Trump. I don’t expect him to enact executive orders restoring memorials – returning the Reconciliation Memorial wouldn’t surprise me – and his cabinet can not expend political capital to do the same but he is the best agent for restoring traditionalism there has been since the need became evident. Strength in numbers, Trump’s example has encouraged speaking out and standing up “like no one has ever seen before”. His DOGE initiatives may defund unilateral action against Southern concerns, even force schools to fend for themselves and restore learning of life and job skills. In any event, decadence took decades, restoration won’t happen in a few years.
I tend to agree. And I might add. the old Chinese proverb (paraphrased): “A journey of many miles begins with a single step.” The South did not lose. It just ran out of gas and is having to push its automobile to the nearest filling station. JMO
Deo Vindice
Deo Vindice.
I greatly appreciate your daily columns. But as a student of the English language, I never can get used to words being mis-spelled in anything I read. This article by Miss Sanchez is loaded with words that are mis-spelled. Most often in quotes attributed to historical figures. Now, whether those words were hers or the actual quotes of the person being quoted is, in my opinion irrelevant. A good spellchecker should have caught those errors so that those of us reading her piece would not have to read such an error filled article. Sorry, but when I read a misspelled word (s) it irritates me so much that I just have to comment on it,
I may have read the article too quickly, but I didn’t notice an abundance, if any, of misspelled words. However, in the event a written quotation has a misspelled word offered, the tact is usually to put the notice of “sic” immediately following the error, which is, I believe, Latin for something on the order of : “thus as is written.” But the discipline is optional for the writer. I believe that is correct.
In any event, I don’t know if you noticed as “a student of the English language” that in your reply the following: “Most often in quotes attributed to historical figures.” Is not a sentence.
In article writing (as opposed to essays) many, many publications exhibit a little latitude in such things– also in the vernacular. I think just so the idea within the article AIN”T wasted. JMO
Corrections noted & appreciated, sir.
Nice try. I see multiple red herrings (e.g, Nazi comparisons) and little discussion on the statute itself. Sounds more like outpourings of TDS (and Hegseth DS) than substance. Simply speaking in legalize (attainder),for that matter, doesn’t substitute for analysis.
You may have missed the analysis. But no attainder is justified against a righteous (and legal) act (secession or nullification).
It’s not TDS. If that were the case Harris would be in the Oval Office. The South is pulling for Trump to do the right thing, as soon as his eyes are (hopefully) opened to the right thing.
The only derangement syndrome is Republicans who represent themselves as republicans.
This is what happened to Reagan. He had too many Republicans advising him! Probably because he left the Democrats for the Republicans instead of the republicans.
“That promise created ‘happy ears’ for many, but it rang hollow…” The end results rang hollow for me as well but then, I never had much faith in anyone in DC to rename the bases back to its origin. Thanks for the good read, Lola Sanchez.