Mt. McKinley to Revert to the Older Name of “Denali”

The Feds have decided that Mount McKinley in Alaska should revert to its older name of “Denali.” The State of Alaska had already abolished the McKinley name back in 1975, so the latest move merely recognizes local usage.

Some lawmakers from Ohio (McKinley’s home state) are mad about it, apparently. They’re pretty gung ho, it seems, about defending a man who invaded the Philippines and brutally suppressed a rebellion there, leading to the deaths of over 100,000 men, women, and children through battle and disease. McKinley, a religious zealot who claimed that God told him to annex the Philippines, also thought it fitting to kill tens of thousands of Catholics in order to “Christianize” them.

And lest we think that McKinley was merely reflecting the prejudices of his time, let’s remember that McKinley’s war faced significant opposition in the US, including opposition from William Jennings Bryan, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Ernest Crosby, and other members of the American Anti-Imperialist League. The opposition also included American engineer and entrepreneur Edward Atkinson who urged American soldiers in the Philippines to mutiny against their officers. McKinley was a brutal colonialist even by the standards of his own time and place.

McKinley was also a protectionist who supported raising taxes, and he, like Theodore Roosevelt after him, favored greater federal regulation of business.

For Ohio politicians, however, none of that matters, nor does it matter what Alaskans want to call their own mountain, which is about three thousand miles from the Ohio border. It’s up to Congress to decide what every mountain in the US is to be called, the Ohioans say. After all, without government, who would name the mountains after war criminals?

(Next, Pikes Peak in Colorado should revert to its older name, “El Capitán.” The Arapaho called it “Heey-otoyoo.” A Comanche, Ute, or Cheyenne name would work well, too.)

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9:48 am on August 31, 2015