Wednesday, March 1, 2017

A Modest Proposal: Recreating/Renaming the USA


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  • Because Thomas Jefferson was a slaveowner, the document he drafted, the Declaration of Independence (1776), should be declared null and void.
  • Because at its foundation the "United States of America" was a slave country, it should be abolished.
  • Because the USA's first president George Washington was a slaveowner, the city named after him should be abandoned.
If these steps are considered too drastic, then the USA; the Declaration of Independence; and Washington, D.C., should be renamed. 

I propose that the renaming process be headed by the Yale academic, John Witt, a professor of law and history, who chaired a Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming at his distinguished university.  

Question to the professor: Was the Party (sorry, I meant Kommittee) named in honor of George Orwell?

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P.S.  "Renames," humbly suggested by a non-member of the Kommittee:
  • Declaration of Dependence
  • Untied States of America
  • Ash-ington (meant to suggest the imperial capital should be blown up by a nuclear attack)
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--Silly thoughts from yours truly inspired by the article, "Yale: The History We Can’t Erase."

1 comment:

Pierre Nicholson said...

Soviet Union used to be described as "a country with unpredictable past." Which prompted Orwell's famous Ingsoc maxim, "who controls the past, controls the future." What scares me most is that the renamers at Yale refer to the renaming of Stalingrad as a model to be followed. If the United States begins to fight its past, it will annihilate its present and future. But I am relieved to know that the statue of John Calhoun is still revered in the National Statuary Hall...