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Comment by afarrell | Hacker News Reader

I'm no fan of slavery, but far too many things are named after Columbus, Washington, Caesar, Alexander and the others in history who have taken and held slaves.

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1 thing is 1 too many. All should be renamed. Yes, that's a lot of things.

Nothing can ever be named after anyone then, because all humans are flawed.

A silly straw man. No one said things should only be named after flawless humans.

Indeed. I would not mind if naming things after individual humans was seen as profane and never done. But I have a far, far lesser goal: ending the naming of things after humans who have claimed to own other human beings.

Where does one draw the line then? Clinton has done plenty of awful stuff; I can totally imagine that in the future plenty of people will name stuff after her if she has a decent presidential term.

No, because a while back we passed a law that all things must be named after Reagan. I'm just waiting for the Ronald Reagan Memorial Lavatory to show up at a highway rest stop...

One draws the line wherever one draws the line. You have your own line, no doubt. mlinksva is stating his/hers. Intelligent people can disagree. It's completely subjective.

I think the objection being implicitly raised by GP here was rather of the problem of 'at what human flaw should we stop toppling statues and celebrations as we update our morals over time? '.

It appears to be a valid question, in that slippery slope is not always a fallacy.

An interesting modern trend is deconstructing heroes of the past - Jefferson, Edison, the Wright Bros, etc., and elevating forgotten figures to heroic status - Tesla, Sacajawea, Gustav Whitehead, etc.

I don't think there's really a right and wrong here, it's just the fashion of the times. Who knows who will be rehabilitated 100 years from now and who will be stricken from the monuments :-)

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