Crying Over Spilt Milk
You can't take the politics out of politics.
We graduated the Class of 2025 yesterday and don’t kick off the next academic year until summer faculty development kicks off July 17. With the end-of-year crunch over, I hope to get back into the swing of writing.
Steven Taylor has already addressed Tuesday’s announcement that the Secretary Defense has ordered the renaming of Navy oiler named after gay rights icon Harvey Milk and signaled that other vessels may face a similar fate. We mostly agree on the intent here and the problematic messages it sends.
It’s also true, though, that the original naming was motivated by domestic political signaling, so we shouldn’t be absolutely shocked by counter-signaling.
When naming a ship after Milk was first floated*, way back in April 2012, I was more than a little skeptical.
He’s already been given the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously. One can debate whether this was deserved.
It seems strange, though, to even contemplate naming a naval vessel after him. To be sure, he served honorably as a naval officer in the Korean War. But he’s not a war hero. Nor did he make admiral; he left as a lieutenant, junior grade. Nor was he Secretary of the Navy; his highest political office was San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where he served eleven months.
Still, as Thompson implies, Mabus started us down this track by naming ships after other liberal heroes. Surely, Milk is as deserving as Gabby Giffords. But that’s a rather low bar.
Subsequently, I just learned yesterday from a CRS report on the matter,
On January 6, 2016, then-Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced that the TAO-205 class ships will be named for “people who fought for civil rights and human rights,” and that the first ship in the class, TAO-205, which was procured in FY2016, was being be named for Representative John Lewis, making TAO-205 one of a small number of Navy ships that have been named for people who were living at the time that the naming announcement was made. TAO-205 class ships consequently are now known as John Lewis-class oilers.
The USNS John Lewis, alas, was launched a few months after the civil rights icon’s death. Lewis** never served in the Navy and, despite a long career in Congress, never served on the Armed Services Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, or otherwise had any apparent connection to the Navy. But he was, you know, John Freaking Lewis.
The Harvey Milk was the second ship of the Lewis class, launched in November 2021, followed by the Earl Warren (October 2022), Robert F. Kennedy (October 2023), Lucy Stone (September 2024), and Sojourner Truth (April 2025). The Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman, and Dolores Huerta have been named and are in various stages of completion.
Those aren’t the only examples. The last two ships of the Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship were named after Medgar Evers and Cesar Chavez. Both of these namings took place during the Obama administration. Previous ships had been named after explorers, astronauts, and various other pioneers.
These names were obviously politically motivated, designed to curry favor with affinity groups within the Democratic base. While one would hope the likes of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and John Lewis would be unifying figures at this point, that’s certainly not the case with Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. There’s clearly some reverse “own the libs” going on with those namings.
Traditionally, of course, the response to this sort of thing is to grit one’s teeth and follow suit once one’s own turn comes about. Can the USNS Antonin Scalia, William F. Buckley, Jr., or Clarence Thomas be far from behind?
Now, Republicans will point to the mass effort to strip the names of those associated with the Confederacy from military bases and, indeed, Navy vessels that took place during the last administration. Steven covered this objection:
The libs wanted Robert E. Lee’s name off of things because he was the military commander of a rebellion against the United States and the US Constitution in service of setting up a new country built on the foundation that chattel slavery must be preserved.
The libs wanted to name a fleet replenishment oiler after Harvey Milk because he fought for the rights of his fellow human beings and was assassinated for the effort.
The libs wanted to name vessels after people like Tubman because they fought to end chattel slavery, and for Marshall because he fought for equal rights and treatment for all.
If you want to be on the side that wants to erase such honors, all the while really looking to make sure Jefferson Davis continues to get his day in the sun, you have to at some point ask if maybe you are the baddies.
But, of course, that’s just one point of view. Lee, or at least a mythologized version of him, remains a revered figure among many Southerners, and they see stripping his names off as a direct insult to their heritage. And, while one would hope Marshall’s work as a civil rights leader would be honored by all, he was certainly a controversial figure as a Supreme Court justice, including on issues like capital punishment. And, like it or not, gay rights remains a controversial issue, albeit thankfully less so over time.***
If we’re going to make politically motivated naming of things like naval vessels, we should not be surprised if those on the other side resent it. Again, the usual response is tit-for-tat rather than renaming. But we’ve now opened the door to renaming things named to send a message, as was the case for the various military bases.***
*Pun unintentiona,l but I nonetheless enjoy it.
**Despite having lived in Troy and taught at what was then Troy State University for four years, I had somehow not known or at least forgotten that Lewis was born and raised in Troy and got into the civil rights struggle, and contacted Martin Luther King Jr., over his being denied admission to Troy State.
***It’s worth noting that, while Milk’s claim to fame was as a gay rights activist, he (and San Francisco Mayor George Moskone) was murdered over an employment dispute, not his politics.
****In this particular case, I don’t think it was so much that Hegseth and company were giant fans of Braxton Bragg or Henry Benning but that they had a personal attachment to the old base names. Indeed, I went to Airborne School at Benning in 1989 (and the then-Fort Rucker, now-Fort Novosel in 1987) and, despite having a master’s in political science and being more curious than most about such things, never once questioned who the bases were named after.
[CRT TRIGGER WARNING!!!] One would be wrong to think that in a nation that elected Trump not once, but twice. The second time specifically knowing who he is and what he stands for. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to live in a better America as much as anyone. But I don’t.
It’s hard for me to care much about this one way or another since it just amounts to cultural virtue signaling.
The much bigger problem – one that is not about the culture war – is the Navy’s incompetence at managing shipbuilding projects over the last couple of decades, which directly impacts America’s ability to project power, win wars, and defend international waters.
So the issue isn’t Lee per se, but what it is about their heritage they don’t want insulted.
Always had the position that you can honor Lee, etc…. on the battlefields. You can build a 50ft statue of Lee holding a CSA flag, pointing his sword to the sky charging….on the hallowed grounds. I could care less, it’s fine. But naming US highways and Ships, Forts etc… No. Those honors should not be extended to traitors who fought against the United States of America. Now naming those things after other non traitors, with what some may deem as questionable pasts, will always be debated. Christ, Trump is a convicted sexual abuser and will have things named after him. Long and short, whatever. But, Traitors who fought against the United States, NO! Don’t care about pre civil war accomplishment, that’s wiped clean after wage war against the United States.
It is all absolutely politics.
But I maintain that in terms of normative judgments it matters what the politics in question seeks to honor.
@Joe: to me it is like “states’ rights”. The right to do what?
There are things to celebrate about the south, the heritage that Lee represents shouldn’t be one of them.
@Andy:
Agreed.
But I also think that it matters as to what signals are being sent.
And what “heritage” would that be?
@Joe: They don’t want their commitment to racist bigotry and the notion that it’s based on sound anthropological principles and science questioned. “In for a dime, in for a dollar.”.
Also something about might as well be hung for a sheep as a goat, I think. In any event, “bless their hearts!”
@Steven L. Taylor:
The point is about priorities. Yes, one can argue it matters in terms of signaling. But how important is signaling compared to developing a capable Navy? Not very IMO.
I get that culture war stuff is “important” to political hobbyists who are obsessed with politics and the culture war (I’m pointing at all of us, including me, on this blog), and I have fun debating that stuff myself. But in terms of how this matters in the real world, it’s mostly about signaling with little material consequence. I think it’s important to occasionally point out that some of this is not that important in the grand scheme. In this case, the consequences of a ship’s name pale in comparison to the consequences of an incompetently run and managed Navy. When the missiles start raining down, no one is going to give a shit about the name.
And just to be clear, this isn’t some kind of defense of what the Trump administration is doing. Quite the opposite – they are in charge and are focusing on the culture war signaling instead of the actual, material problems. Hegseth talks about making the military lethal again, but what he’s doing is mostly about owning the libs.
Like James, I’m not a big fan of the naming scheme for this class of ships, but once a ship is named, it ought to stay named absent some actually compelling reason to change it.
So, which civil rights icons are celebrated on the right?
I’d like to point out that white males not questioning who the bases were named after is kind of the point. That’s how cultural dominance works. I’m a white cis male in his 60s, but I can recognize that what matters in the real world might be different for people not born into advantage as I was.
@Steven L. Taylor: For sure. But the Trumpers think it’s *our* values that are wrong, if not simply bizarre.
@Scott F.:
My point is literal, not normative. I literally had no idea who Fort Benning or Fort Rucker were named after and never bothered to look it up. Ditto Fort Sill, where I did my artillery training, or Fort Bliss, where my dad was stationed when I was in 8th and 9th grades. I suspect that’s true of 99% of soldiers who were assigned to those bases.
While I absolutely understand why we renamed the bases, and supported doing so, the notion that every Black soldier who was stationed at them was deeply offended is nonsense. That some handful were and saw that as a sign that the Army and the Nation didn’t value them was a good enough reason for the change.
Since about 30 years ago, there was a movement to place Ronald Reagan’s name on public works in all 50 states, starting this discussion with Obama seems more than a bit off.
How many bases, bridges, ships, streets, etc. are named after Benedict Arnold, King George, Lord Cornwallis, and many other Britons or British sympathizers in a very important point of American history?
@Andy:
Well, sure. But that’s a strawman comparison.
We are going to name ships, and so the cost of naming them X or Y is the same. And so the value of the name is in the values.
The cost of an effective Navy, in time, treasure, and talent, is a whole other issue.
These are not even the same conversations.
Indeed, but that’s not the point. Like, at all.
The fact that the Washington Commanders are no longer the Redskins has zero to so with whether Jayden Daniels throws a TD at a crucial moment, either.
@James Joyner:
I understand the point, I really do.
But that doesn’t change what an impartial third party judging this would say about the motivations of the parties in question.
Let’s say in 2 or 4 years we’re trying to rebuild a national consensus. Would the center-left walk away from the table over Harvey Milk? The center-right probably would.
@Moosebreath: While they are of course political figures, and often controversial, I see Presidents as sui generis. I don’t know that we’ll ever name anything significant after Richard Nixon but, otherwise, it’s just natural that we name things after former heads of state and commanders-in-chief. Less so non-elected activists.
@Fortune:
Can you explain what that means? Are you saying that renaming the ship to “Harvey Milk” would be a deal breaker for the center right and would break the theoretical “national consensus?”
Are you saying the center-right’s position on gay issues should define our national perspective without compromise.
I am also curious if you see yourself as center-right.
@Matt Bernius: Yes, that’s what I said.
@Fortune:
Just wanted to confirm your view is that the center right are snowflakes who would break national unity over a ship name and acknowledgement of a gay person.
That’s a great example of bad faith negotiating.
Oh, I get it, the center-left made them do it.
I would also love to understand who you think the center right is.
@Matt Bernius: I asked a good-faith question about a realistic scenario.
@Fortune:
You also answered the question.
I was responding to that answer and it’s implications about how you think about the center right… Who again you have not defined in your hypothetica.
I responded that if something as small as that name is a deal breaker for your hypothetical center-right then they were never negotiating in good faith.
@James Joyner:
Let’s compare what’s named for Reagan to, say LBJ. Notice how few of Johnson’s memorials are outside Texas, whereas the activists for naming something for Reagan in all 50 states seem to have done a very good job.
@Andy:
IIRC, the renaming of a ship is viewed as a promise of misfortune and bad luck on the crews of said vessel. Bad luck and trouble, surely a touchstone of our current leaders, eh?
@Matt Bernius: And if the center-right considered it a non-negotiable in good faith? I’m not asking if you agree with the assessment, only how would your side respond.
@Fortune:
BTW, I acknowledge that someone could say that, in this hypothetical scenario, the hypothetical center left not willing to budge on the name of the ship is equally a sign that they were never negotiating in good faith.
That gets to the bigger issue with this “I am so smart and just asking questions that I’ll immediately answer” hypothetical–it’s an absurd premise to begin with, and neither side will look good. It also doesn’t mesh with the way negotiations work.
But like I said, all it tells us is that you think the center-right are complete snowflakes and would scrap national unity when it comes to the issue of symbolic recognition of a gay man. Which, as usual, tells us far more about you than it does about the center-right.
@James Joyner:
I get that. I took your literal experience and tried to make a normative point. I did not intend to suggest any insensitivity from you specifically, so I’m sorry if I did.
I just bristle at the smearing of DEI as mere cultural signaling from people who are not the intended audience for the signal. To my mind, this is akin to whites who take offense that there isn’t a White History Month. The offense comes from not recognizing that everything doesn’t have to be about them (as they have been made accustomed to as the dominant culture) and not seeing the EVERY month is White History Month.
So, I agree with you that it is all signaling and those who win the right to lead get to choose the signals. But, I don’t agree that the signals don’t matter to their targets.
@Kathy: They do tend to appreciate MLK, after his death, because of his commitment to non-violent protest.
And because he is dead and not able to comment on their other actions.
@Fortune:
That leads me to believe that (a) you don’t understand “good faith” as it’s used in negotiation context*, and (b) your view of the center right is that they are faithful snowflake homophobes.
BTW, I don’t claim to speak for “my side.” I guess you feel comfortable speaking for the “center-right.” Does that mean you think you are part of the center-right? And if not so, perhaps you can name some people you think are.
For example, you have said in the past that you preferred DeSantis to Trump. Do you consider DeSantis to be center-right?
* – For context I spent over a year and a half in a negotiation scenario where both sides were legally bound to be negotiating in good faith.
@Matt Bernius: It’s a simple model of consensus but it contains all the essential elements.
You don’t get to pick what your opponents care about, and you don’t arrive at agreement by telling them that something doesn’t matter but you’re not going to give in anyway.
@Fortune: Fine. You win on the Milk ship name, but our dealbreaker is universal health care for all citizens, paid for with taxpayer dollars (e.g. the removal of the age requirement for Medicare)
We all have deal breakers, that’s mine.
@Tony W: That’s an adult response.
ETA: I know some people struggle with reading. I mean “that’s an adult response”, not “that’s not an adult response”.
@Fortune:
You’re free to think whatever you want–including that the “center-right” would scrap national unity over naming a ship after a gay man. As I continue to share, this tells us far more about your perceptions about the “center-right,” their deep issues with gay folks, and their “commitment to national unity” than anything else.
You are also free to feel that you set up a question that demonstrates that the “center-left” would destroy the nation over this ship. Again, that tells us more about you than anything else.
Additionally, the fact you think this was a particularly insightful question or useful thought experiment again tells us more about you than anything else.
Beyond that, I’m out. There’s no point in continuing to actively participate in derailing this thread.
After 160+ years maybe we need to acknowledge that the South won the Civil War after all.
We pulled the plug on Reconstruction in 1877, then temporaily restored civil and voting rights in 1964-65, and now we’re careening backwards again using DEI and CRT as fig leaf cover for radical Right wing reactionary roll backs. Just look at how scary Harriet Tubman, Medgar Evers, Jackie Robinson, and the Tuskegee Airmen are to the MAGA base.
@al Ameda:
Yup.
Maybe we can resurrect the phrase popular when Churchill lost the election after WWII, and applied to Bush the elder in 92: The Union won the war but lost the peace.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I realize that I’m unusual in that I care more about capabilities than names. Yes, that is a different conversation, and one that I’m saying is a lot more important than naming controversies.
I get that this is a political blog that follows culture war stuff and not a defense analysis blog, and I’m not venting at you. My frustration lies in the extent to which culture war trivialities overshadow more significant issues that are often overlooked in the wider media. It’s a sign of our unseriousness as a country.
I’m just making that point, and I don’t want to try to derail the thread into a discussion on Navy procurement policy. However, I hope that people reading this will understand and perhaps consider the bigger picture.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Renaming a ship has traditionally been seen as bad luck in certain circumstances. I’d say this circumstance fits. Something like selling a used ship to another country where they name it for their Navy is more normal and not bad luck.
@Andy:
There’s been a 150 year effort to rewrite history to avoid facing the reality that the South was built on slavery, forced labor camps, and inhumanity. This historical revisionism has very direct effects right now, with regards to the white supremacy and authoritarianism that we are seeing.
What we honor in our past changes who we are. Which is why, during the Jim Crow Era, the groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy were putting up statues to racist traitors everywhere they could.
Anyway, I think we need a missile ship named after John Brown.
And maybe a Black Daughters of the Confederacy for women who can trace their ancestry back plantation owners raping the women they enslaved. Tell the history a bit closer to how it happened. Buy up plantations and put up statues of slave owners beating and raping their slaves, and police with fire hoses (maybe a water park?) releasing dogs on civil rights protesters.
@Beth: Maybe they should be renamed after Southern Abolitionists. Celebrate the heritage of the South. I think that would make everyone happy.
Here’s one:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Birney
Like a lot of abolitionists, he went through an awkward Colonialism phase, where he wanted to send all the Free Blacks to Africa, but like many others, he abandoned that idea, initially due to the sheer logistics, and slowly in the perhaps mistaken belief that White would allow them to be integrated into American society as equals.
Maybe the US should consider the British tradition of, with some exceptions (monarchs, famous admirals) not naming ships after people at all?
Some of my favourites for consideration by the Pentagon:
HMS Cockchafer
HMS Spanker
HMS Carcass
HMS Happy Entrance
HMS Buttercup
HMS Fairy
HMS Spiteful
HMS Morris Dance
and last but not least
HMS Black Joke
(That was actually a bit of a “black joke”: it was a captured slaver ship, refitted as a anti-slavery patrol fast brig, and earned a bit of a fearsome reputation.)
God bless the Royal Navy!
James Joyner:
Perhaps, but not entirely. The naming of these ships was also “aspirational.” The oldest named warship in the U.S Navy is the USS Constitution (1797). Aspirational.
To make a fair discussion of this topic, would be to compare the aspirations of Democratic Party, and those of the current Republican Party. That is where substance lies.
Both parties “curry favor” to their base, but towards what overall end?
Personally, I’m onboard with liberal democracy in progress, where all members are welcome. The current retrenchment to a more closed, endowment of monied privilege, not so much. I damn well know my family fought and sacrificed for a seat at the table. And I’m happy to make room for others. In fact, that is the arc of this country’s moral code. But apparently not for likes of Trump, Musk, Miller, Vance, Leo, et. al.
@Steven L. Taylor:
The issues are also enmeshed. To the extent that swaths of our country feel disaffected by and unrepresented in various US halls of power, efforts to increase patriotic buy-in among women, Zoomers, millennials, people of color, the Alphabet Folk, etc. also increase military readiness and effectiveness over time.
Representation matters. It’s not just symbolic: the lack thereof will have a deleterious effect on outcomes like national cohesion and national defense, especially given demographic change.
But we the American people are weak at connecting those kinds of dots, thinking long term and below surface. This shortsightedness famously includes our ongoing failure to connect lack of affordable healthcare and housing to other priorities like lower crime. This shallowness extends to the inability to consider how place names that reinforce tired old white supremacist patriarchy instead of modern American diversity do tangible harm to recruitment, talent retention, and growth in the armed services and elsewhere.
We need to be smarter as a people if the US is to keep up with the modern world. But it’s not clear we are collectively capable of the tough, complex, non-reactionary critical thinking necessary to avoid decline and soar in the 21st century.
@James Joyner:
Partly true. But it’s more the values FOX and worse attribute to us liberals than our real values.
And just to be snarky, OK, Lee was a good general, but why would anyone revere Jefferson Davis, who was not only leader of a rebellion, but a largely inept leader of a rebellion.
@gVOR10: Nonsense, he neither got executed nor served a long jail sentence. This puts him in the top half of insurrectionists.
@Andy:
This is really maddening framing. Do you think I care more about names than capabilities?
Come on, man.
@DK:
I agree.
@James Joyner:
Completely off topic, I would like to hear your take on the recent Ukrainian drone attacks. Seems to me that drones will change everything from warfare to terrorism.
@Gustopher:
I’d be OK with that – but first, you’ve got to build the ship. And the problem is the Navy is not doing a very good job of that (to understate the problem).
@Steven L. Taylor:
I can’t read your mind. What I have to go on are the topics you (and the other contributors) choose to post about, the topics you choose not to post about, and the words you write in those posts.
At the same time, people here often judge me or make assumptions based on what I choose to comment on and what I don’t comment on -including in this thread! It’s the nature of online discussion.
I’m merely expressing my opinion about what I think matters more (much more). If anyone disagrees, that’s fine. I’ve always been happy to agree to disagree with people. You really haven’t said (that I can tell) one way or another, instead it appears to me that you’re just annoyed for me bringing this up. Which again, is fine. Opinions differ.
I agree “representation matters,” I just don’t think it’s as important as people are making it out to be compared to much more (IMO) pressing concerns. If anyone cares to go back to the original thread James linked to and referenced, you can see for yourself how seriously I took ship naming.
And again, I fault Hegseth and the Trump admin for opening this box. They should have left well enough alone. But they can’t resist owning the libs, and the libs and media can’t resist the taking the bait (just as many of the regulars here can’t resist responding to the trolls in the comments). And so the cycle continues. I find it frustrating that we get stuck in this cycle, but maybe it really is unavoidable.
@Rob1: While I agree with you on the aspirational nature of these actions, others do not. In the conversation on another thread, someone was observing that there’s no common consensus to be had. This may well be another “no middle ground” issue.
The mistake was preserving a union of disparate values systems. (And your side didn’t really “win” the conflict.)
@Andy:
Statements like “representation matters” are not automatically meant as comparative statements. After all, the statement is not “representation matters more than Trump’s attacks on 5th Amendment due process guarantees.” It’s just “representation matters.” There’s no need to assume any comparison, just like Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean Black Lives Matter More Than White, Asian, and Hispanic Lives — although that’s what some hallucinate hearing.
To Scott O‘s point, I presume our hosts believe the ongoing horrors in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, and Sudan are objectively more salient than US ship name battles. Indeed, most political discussion pales in comparative seriousness. But that doesn’t mean participants in conversations that don’t bring up armed conflict feel their subject is more important. Every blog can’t be a war blog.
@Andy:
I am going to call bullshit on this.
First, you are ignoring my comment above above.
Second, the notion that because I write about X, and not about literally thousands of other things, does not equate to X is more important in every way than the things I don’t write about.
You are demonstrably a smart man, and you know this.
Note, too, the Trump administration’s bigotry is on display and in the news. I am unaware of some specific degradation of naval capacities that I should be prioritizing.
@DK:
Indeed.
Also indeed.
@Andy: Perhaps to understand why the way you are dealing with this is frustrating, please reread your sentence from above: “I realize that I’m unusual in that I care more about capabilities than name.”
First, this is an unfair framing as no one has said, or inferred, that names are more important than capabilities. I would stress again, those are two separate conversations.. They may not be fully delinked, but they are not the same topics.
Second, can you see how that sentence itself is more than a little condescending?