With nary a nay, Congress has scrubbed Thomas Jefferson’s name from a park built to celebrate one of his life’s great achievements and the way it changed America.
The famous arch on the Mississippi River’s western bank in St. Louis anchors what has long been named the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. On Thursday, however, a unanimous voice vote in the House sent to President Trump a bill to rename it Gateway Arch National Park. The bill passed the Senate without objection in December.
Those involved hasten to note that the act isn’t rooted in political correctness.
Instead, they say it’s a sound marketing scheme. Since hardly any Americans know the park’s name but practically every American knows the Arch, it is sensible to refer to the place by its most familiar landmark.
“This gives this national icon an updated and recognizable name,” Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, Democrat Hawaii, said during the House debate Monday.
The bill was introduced by the two senators from Missouri: Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Roy Blunt. The House version also had Republican and Democratic sponsors.
Robert Vogel, acting deputy director of the National Park Service, signaled the administration’s support in testimony to Congress in July.
“The name ‘Jefferson National Expansion Memorial’ does not readily identify where the memorial is located or the fact that the key feature of the park is the Gateway Arch,” he told lawmakers. “Using ‘Gateway Arch’ in the name of the site would make the name immediately recognizable to all citizens and future visitors to St. Louis.”
Indeed, increasing the number of those future visitors is more of a reason for the change than Jefferson’s parenting with Sally Hemings. In its heyday, the Arch drew 3.2 million people a year, but that number has fallen to 2.3 million for various reasons.
A name change and a private-public renovation to the tune of $380 million, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony set for July 3, are also part of this campaign.
“Not at all,” said Ryan McClure, communications director for the Gateway Arch Park Foundation, when asked if modern politics were behind the removal of a past political master.
“With this renovation, I think Jefferson’s role is highlighted even more than in the past. Jefferson’s vision is still recognized and honored in the park, and I don’t think this diminishes his role at all,” he said.
When the park was envisioned between the world wars, its primary booster, Luther Ely Smith, saw it as “a suitable and permanent public memorial to the men who made possible the western territorial expansion of the United States, particularly President Jefferson.”
The Gateway to the West refers to the Louisiana Purchase, the real estate deal engineered by Jefferson’s administration when European strongman Napoleon Bonaparte wanted money for war. With the stroke of a pen and pennies on the acre in 1803, Jefferson added 828,000 square miles to the U.S.
But much that came after that is also a part of the park. Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off on their fabled journey from a spot beneath the arch. The park also holds the Old Courthouse where Dred Scott, whose name would sound above the din of America’s bloodiest battles, first sued for his freedom from slavery.
Much of this was in President Franklin Roosevelt’s mind when he signed an executive order creating the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and when Congress gave its imprimatur in 1954.
In addition to famous names, Congress said in the chestier tones that Americans used to employ when talking about their history, the park would honor “the hardy hunters, trappers, frontiersmen, pioneers and others who contributed to such expansion.”
Some believe all this history will be lost in the name change. While relieved to learn that social justice storm troopers weren’t behind the change, Illinois lawyer David Shestokas, who has followed the name switch at his blog, wondered if something wasn’t being lost nonetheless.
“Why not call it ‘Jefferson Gateway Arch National Park?'” he asked. “That’s what all this was supposed to be about in the first place because without Jefferson there is no Louisiana Purchase.”
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That’s like scrubbing the name of Hugh Dowding from a Battle of Britain memorial…
Washington, a fiscal Conservative was financially able to free his slaves upon his death. Jefferson a fiscally loose Southern Democrat cosigned for a loan for another fiscally loose Democrat and went bankrupt and had to SELL his slaves upon his death. Lesson learned, If you want to be freed from slavery either physical slavery or modern day Debt Slavery, don’t vote for the financially irresponsible Democrat or they will get you every time. Some loose liberals actually love their debt chains and wear them openly like jewelry. Obama, Pelosi and Schumer Democrats, like Jacob Marley forge their own chains in life, but it is OUR children wear them upon their death. Enter the new aGREED upon debt ridden federal budget. Tell your children to start pumping iron. Those golden arches they now stand beneath no longer nourish their souls like a McDonalds, thanks to the government social Hamburgler’s that turn the positive aspect of a Louisiana Purchase into a politically correct History give-away, where the arched gateway to the west like the road to hell just gets paved with their meaningless good intentions.
And i hope to god trump vetos this.
The DemoRATS and RINOS should compose a song “How We Love Political Correctness”. They can have a rapper sing it. The communists love to erase history!
There’s a really fine line between what is happening in this country with some statues of historical figures being torn down and others being secretly removed in the dead of night and historical sights being renamed so as not to offend certain groups. The PC police swoop in like warriors, self proclaimed arbiters of Social Justice that they imagine themselves to be in order to appease and shield those who they’ve deemed to be so precious and helpless that the only way to save these fragile beings is by wiping away the past as if it never existed nor mattered and replacing it with their own fictitious narrative of history that is alot neater, less messy and more palatable . Eerily similar to what we saw Isis doing over in the Middle East by destroying statues and relics that have stood through antiquity and bore witness to history. There’s a reason that what Winston Churchill said about history has been repeated countless times by so many and will continue to be uttered well into the future because it bears a resounding truth for all mankind to heed and that is, ‘Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.’ SO for the SJW’s who feel that they are accomplishing something meaningful and profound by eradicating part of history what they are so blissfully ignorant of is that by not exposing people to the lessons that can be learned from history they are in effect condemning them to repeat it including all of it’s dark and sordid chapters.
Its not eerirly similar, its exactly the same. WIPING OUT history, so YOU control what people see/hear..
Memorial Arch National Gateway Expansion
MANGE
1.1 A cutaneous disease analogous to the itch in man, occurring in many hairy and woolly animals, and caused by an arachnidan parasite.
And what else do we know is caused by a parasite that gets under one’s skin, causes it to be scratched and is so irritating?
Jefferson had a common law black wife and black children.
This is true. It began AFTER his wife died due to complications of childbirth. Jefferson never denied it, and he provided well for Sally and their children.
Slowly eradicating America’s history till nothing is left.
Just what the leftists want imo.