The Patriot Post® · Life Is for the Living. The Names on Public Buildings Shouldn't Be.

When he died in 1959, John Foster Dulles was justly admired. He had been one of America’s most renowned statesmen, a leading architect of US foreign policy after World War II, a Medal of Freedom recipient¹, and, though a lifelong Republican, a trusted adviser to presidents of both parties. Three years after his death, at a dedication ceremony presided over by President John F. Kennedy, a new airport outside Washington, D.C., was named Dulles International Airport.

But if some Republican members of Congress get their way, Dulles’s name will be stripped from the airport that has borne it for 53 years. Under a bill² introduced by Representative Addison McDowell of North Carolina and several cosponsors, the nation’s fourth-largest airport would be renamed “Donald J. Trump International Airport³.”

In Boone County, Ky., meanwhile, a new state legislator, T. J. Roberts, wants a 12-mile stretch of Kentucky Route 18, commonly called Burlington Pike, to be designated the Donald J. Trump Highway⁴. A resolution offered by Roberts pronounces Trump “worthy” of being honored in that manner because of “all the things he will do for our country over the next four years.”

These are lamentable proposals — not because of Trump’s party, politics, or personality but because naming government facilities after living people is always unwise.

I have long been opposed⁵ to naming public facilities for politicians. More than once I have fulminated⁶ that the fetish for slapping political figures’ names on things they didn’t create or pay for is a national pestilence. It is also an obsession that crosses party lines and political ideologies.

Reluctantly, I concede that the practice of naming airports⁷, aircraft carriers⁸, schools⁹, and rest stops¹⁰ after presidents and other politicians¹¹ is too deeply entrenched to be abolished. The US Navy named a warship “George Washington”¹² as far back as 1798, and the first transcontinental road for automobiles was christened the Lincoln Highway¹³ in 1913.

But perhaps it is not too late to halt the unsavory practice of naming public infrastructure after people who are still alive.

It ought to be a hard-and-fast rule: No government-owned, -funded, or -operated facility shall be named in honor of any living person.

To begin with, naming a park, a bridge, or a convention center after a living person carries the risk that the person’s reputation may later be tarnished by scandal or criminal behavior.

Just ask Central State University. The historically Black institution in Wilberforce, Ohio, dedicated its mass communications building in honor of entertainer Bill Cosby — and then was compelled to reverse itself¹⁴ when Cosby’s career and reputation collapsed amid charges that he had sexually assaulted numerous women¹⁵. Similarly, California lawmakers in 1971 named a state highway in the Los Angeles area the Richard M. Nixon Freeway to honor the incumbent president. After Nixon resigned in disgrace a few years later, they renamed it the Marina Freeway¹⁶.

Of course reputations can degenerate even after death, as recent controversies — like those involving Woodrow Wilson¹⁷, Christopher Columbus¹⁸, or Tom Yawkey¹⁹ — make clear. But public officials are less likely to blunder if they don’t rush to emblazon public facilities with the names of living individuals.

Besides, it is unseemly in a democratic republic for the government to glorify active members of society by imposing their names on buildings, roads, and programs in which all citizens have an interest. In our system, all citizens are meant to be equal before the law. The Constitution flatly bars hereditary privilege and titles of nobility. Naming public facilities after living persons amounts to a de facto ennobling of those persons, exalting them as a class above the rest of us. It is a form of veneration that undermines the (small-d, small-r) democratic and republican ideals of equality, modesty, and restraint in governance. It should discomfit us all.

If nothing else, a standing rule against naming government properties for people who are still alive would make it much harder for egotistical politicians (or their sycophants) to lobby for their own glorification. Individuals who yearn to see their names chiseled in granite can pay for the privilege themselves: The private sector offers countless opportunities for generous donors to make lavish financial gifts in exchange for naming privileges. But such honors have no place in the public sector.

There is ample precedent for such a prohibition. Living people are never commemorated on US postage stamps²⁰. Statues in the United States Capitol may depict only distinguished individuals who have died²¹. Some states have enacted this standard into law: A 2009 Minnesota statute²², for example, specifies that “laws may not name councils, buildings, roads, or other facilities or entities after living people.”

Why not adopt that standard nationwide? No more naming of government facilities after living people. Public landmarks should honor enduring values, not fleeting egos.