Over Memorial Day Weekend, the once respected The New York Times published an editorial that criticized naming military bases after Confederate leaders. After celebrating the way government and military officials have marginalized the Confederate flag in recent years, it declared the campaign hasn’t gone far enough.
“[T]he [Confederate] base names were part of a broad federal sellout to white supremacy that poisoned the whole of the United States,” the Times claims. The paper especially hates General George Pickett, calling him “incompetent,” “self-regarding,” and “accused of cowardice.” It blasts Ulysses S. Grant for not having him arrested and charged with war crimes. This was, it says, a “classic act of old-boy cronyism.”
The New York Times also says that the federal campaign to rehabilitate the Confederacy inspired Nazis. “Adolf Hitler himself took notice,” says the Times, “praising the United States as the near epitome of the racist state.”
The New York Times says that preserving these names on the grounds of history is not a good argument. ...
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