Some people want Olson Highway to become Reagan Highway, to celebrate how wrong the communists/socialists were and how right Reagan was to destroy them and elevate us. I want to know more about what naming does, first. Is a name a reminder? If so, are people going to forget Reagan, without the change? It seems likelier they'll forget Olson. Are names properly a reflection of what the current majority thinks, so that with each election all the street signs should change? That's good news for sign painters but bad news for travelers. Are names endorsements, so that if everyone hates what somebody did, we should not call anything after that person? Maybe. But does everyone in the City of Lakes really hate it that Floyd B. Olson preserved all that lakeshore as public land? I don't think so.
People forget about precedent, when they have power. They also don't have much use for history. I should think it would be especially useful for Republicans to remember that Minnesota has an old and lively socialist tradition that once elected a governor.
Posted by shea0017 at August 29, 2004 10:32 PM