Strange Doings
Awhile back the folks out in Seattle got in a dudgeon when they learned that their county, King, was named after William R.D. King, who was elected Vice-President in 1852. They wanted the world to know that the county was ever after to be considered as named for The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. It seems that the earlier, non-Revered Doctor, Mr. King was a bigoted slaveholder.
Let’s suppose it is true what they say about Mr. King. Should we not change the name of Washington State, which is, after all, also named after a racist slaveholder? Should we change it to Lincoln? But, alas, dear readers, Lincoln was a confirmed racial bigot (like everybody else at the time), so that won’t work either. It is going to be hard to find any prominent person in earlier American history who was not a racist by 21st century standards. The State of Mandela? The State of Obama? The unwelcome fact is that almost all white Americans well into the 20th century were white supremacists. And in the 18th and 19th centuries slaveholding was widespread and commonplace.
Actually, the original Mr. King was not, I think, a particularly bad fellow for his time. A congressman from North Carolina, Senator from Alabama, U.S. Minister to France, and apparently quite a learned man for a politician at that time (not to mention THESE TIMES). Curiously, he was elected Vice-President on the ticket with Franklin Pierce, but died before being sworn in. There was no Vice-President for four years, and nobody seemed to mind.
I doubt if the people of Washington State outside Seattle are quite as excitable or as addicted to profitable victimology as the big-city folks, but I have to tell them that they have at least five other counties named for slaveholders, and who knows how many named for racial bigots. Their Left Coast neighbours in Oregon have them beat, with, at my count, eight. Of course, the names of counties simply tell us what part of the country prominent national figures at the time came from, especially those prominent national figures who were friendly to the settlement of the West. I doubt that there are any politicians and not many professors out there these days who can identify the counties I mean, and I ain't about to tell them.
And speaking of county names, the Midwestern States, especially Illinois and Michigan, are even more egregious offenders than the Pacific ones. But I ain't telling about that either.
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We have several parishes here in Louisiana named after slave holders: Jefferson, Jeff Davis, Washington, Madison, Allen, and several others, including one carpetbag parish, Grant Parish.
Perhaps these Seattle folks are upset with Mr. William King because he is learned and accomplished! Or perhaps because there exists no evidence that he was a serial adulterer?
As much as I am reluctant to consider it, each day brings new evidence that Spengler was correct in his assessment of the West and his prediction for its future.
Clyde,
Thanks for this. I am distantly related to William Rufus King (my grandmother on my mother's side was a King, a grand-niece of William R., from southeastern North Carolina before marrying; William R. was from a branch that settled early in Sampson County). By the way, here in North Carolina we have a "Lincoln County" a few miles beyond Charlotte, but as you probably know, it is NOT named for Father Abraham! We also have a Macon County, which I am much prouder of...as it is named for arguably North Carolina's greatest statesman, Nathaniel Macon, the real "father of States' Rights."
Clyde, I've always wondered what you made of all the gay stuff about Wm R King? It seems to be more convincing than any of the other antebellum people that the gays talk about. Why didn't anyone tell this to the people of Seattle when they changed their official naming ordinance in 2005? They probably would've left it under Wm R King. But would it even really matter? After all, the old white King was a scheming Whig/Unionist "moderate".
What is it about American cities and left-liberalism?
Yes, I know why leftist revolutions have historically started in cities: large mobs gathered together in cramped and often appalling quarters are hot fuel for excitation.
But in the Paris of 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy got a majority of the votes, and the wealthiest and whitest districts lean right. In New York City, by contrast, the wealthiest and whitest borough, Manhattan, is also the most heavily Democratic.
We've discussed this on these pages before, but it seems to be a peculiarity of the American social structure that cultural refinement and material wealth are expected to be proportionate to liberalism (both economic and moral leftism with refinement, usually only moral leftism with wealth).
There is a certain intellectual snobbishness on the part of the academic left in Europe, of course, but in France at any rate they cannot claim a monopoly on well-developed thought to anywhere near the same extent that they can in the States. As for the wealthy, the French industrial bourgeois class, while not always the most uplifting example, is not only decidedly right-leaning (on the 21st century political spectrum at least) but also more likely than the general population to send their children to Catholic schools. Given that most Catholic schools here charge only a nominal fee and that there is no lack of nonconfessional international/bilingual "elite" schools in this country, this cannot simply a question of having the means to send one's child to a "good" school. (The Catholic schools in question are state-funded and therefore inadequately Catholic in the vast majority of cases, but still, this trend must mean SOMEthing.)
(Note that I am talking about the industrial bourgeois class and NOT the scion of the old French nobility, who are to this day unmistakably right-wing, Catholic and often Traditionalist, especially in the western part of the country.)
I can't speak for the rest of Europe but I suspect it is similar elsewhere.
Dr. Wilson, what are your thoughts on these trends? Might it have anything to do with the example set by the scion of the New England Puritans - incapable of anything resembling nobility - trying to ape English aristocratic countryside life?