Since about 2023 nine U.S. Army posts were renamed, the culmination of a process that began in 2019. Perhaps the single most recognized renaming was Fort Bragg-to-Fort Liberty, North Carolina, home of the storied 82nd Airborne Division. The overall renaming implementation was the work of the Naming Commission, called for and established by the national defense authorization acts of 2020 and 2021. Five years later, with the unquestioned need to rectify a serious military manpower shortage and rebuild combat readiness in a demoralized, weakened defense department, the best way forward may be a bit murky. The Trump 47 administration and the present Congress have work to do.

The Naming Commission was a revolutionary-styled purity crusade to change the names of defense department assets “commemorating the Confederacy or an individual who voluntarily served with the Confederacy.” The commission’s scope included every post or facility, building or structure, or defense department “asset” linked to the toxic entity “Confederacy.” It’s as though the word confederacy was hate speech. How many today are aware of the fact that in the first half-century after ratification of the U.S. Constitution, citizens sometimes used the term “confederacy” to describe rightly the nation’s governing framework? In 1830, a group of Camden, South Carolina, citizens who knew the Constitution wrote to their congressman regarding “the Sabbath laws of several of the oldest States of the confederacy.” Yes, the United States (a plural term) were a confederacy. It was a fine term to employ.

Back to the 2020s. The congressional renaming initiative was the most visible attempt by leftists in Washington to send down the Orwellian memory hole any popular remembrance of once-honored Southern military leaders, those who served under them, and perhaps even the morality of those willing to defend their homes and families – even against long odds – from an invader. Unfortunately, the word “treason” has been used ignorantly and irresponsibly by some – including at senior military grades – and their legacy media allies seeking to justify the wokeists’ attempted annihilation of Southern honor, history, tradition, and culture. Quoting Megyn Kelly: “Do a little research.” Read some history, not a childish fantasy of “Lee and Me.” Doing so could prove a humbling and beneficial experience, as one begins to realize that patriotic, accomplished, honor-bound Americans held differing, studied convictions regarding the Constitution itself, a matter they were willing to fight for.        

Some yawn, asking why does any of this matter today? First, because the United States now has “peer competitors;” and second, the U.S. Army faces a recruiting crisis several years in the making. Especially from 2020/2021 to January 20th, 2025, the Pentagon treated Southern white males as a problem. The sad spectacle has been witnessed in a number of measures but particularly in the disgraceful, demoralizing hunt during 2021 for so-called extremists in the ranks. Although the hunt netted a statistical zero, it carried hidden costs.