One man's mass murder is another's savior.
USS Cortez? Really?
- Thread starter DevilEyes
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In a sense, yes.
Some of these people did do bad things, I'm not denying that. But does that invalidate all the good they did? Does the fact that Truman ordered nukes to be used, mean that everything else he ever did as president is to be ignored? Where does it end? If you're going to pick nits like this, then who's bloody LEFT to name ships after? Sooner or later you'll run out of saints.
Mass murder is bad, right?
As I've said before, I think it depends on whether or not the good a person did outweighs the bad they did.
I don't think a reasonable person can claim that the good done by Hernán Cortés or Christopher Columbus outweigh their bad deeds, for instance.
How inspiring. On general principle I'll have to tinker with a few names in one of my own works. How about the USS Barrack Obama discovers the shattered wreck of the USS Ronald Reagan shipwrecked on a planetoid after its ill-conceived attempt to deliver advanced Starfleet weapons to Cardassia?
In my own fanfic, I've been experimenting a little with having alien ship names. Haven't done a whole lot of ship naming on the Federation side (most of mine are Cardassian, and I am NOT concerning myself with where the names come from in the vast majority of cases, except for the ones that our heroes are going to name), but I did name one the USS Petraeus. And I seriously do NOT give a damn what anybody thinks about that--I'm not changing it.
Even assuming your objection is valid, why would anyone in the Federation give a damn about FDR's treatment of the U.S. constitution? I mean, obviously they don't care about--say--Crazy Horse's flagrant violation of U.S. law or policy. They didn't care about Galileo's having been branded a heretic either... and why should they? Starfleet honors historical figures for historical reasons, not because of some misplaced echo of rightist patriotism in some provincial nation state that doesn't even exist anymore.
Nah, more like the only remaining ship is the USSeless Barrack Obama having casued a costly civil war inside the Fed as the ship sided with the Borg AND the Dominion to create some perverse unknown entity in place of the Fed's rules of law.
That's fine, it is a fictional sci-fi show. It can be written as it wants to be.
I said I would object to the names as I am still very much a modern proud American. And in MY fanwriting the hero ship is named after a personal hero and GREAT American president.
Naturally... after decommissioning the USS George W. Bush and court-martialing its captain for selling half of Starfleet to the Ferengi and leading the other half into a Cardassian Ambush.
If I was lame enough to Gary Stu my own personal tastes into historical figures revered by the Federation, the USS Ronald Reagan would be the third ship of the Oliver North class prison barge.
i think i made the right choice with my original fic:
Earth's starships aren't named after people. the frigates are named for capital cities, the cruisers for abstracts - Freedom, Endaevour, Valiant, Defiant, etc. and the battlecruisers for predatory creatures - Mamba, Viper, Tiger, Cougar, Barracuda, Eagle etc.
Earth's starships aren't named after people. the frigates are named for capital cities, the cruisers for abstracts - Freedom, Endaevour, Valiant, Defiant, etc. and the battlecruisers for predatory creatures - Mamba, Viper, Tiger, Cougar, Barracuda, Eagle etc.
^ Agreed to that, except I would also add famous naval vessels, reflecting the place they were built Constellation, Enterprise and Lexington were constructed in yards in North America, while the exploration vessels Shokaku, Hiyru and Soryu were built in Yokosuka Fleet Yards.
Since so many have some sort of "moral issue" with there being a USS Hitler, could we at least put him in charge of a ship?
That's cool. It's a neat sounding name, Petraeus. I always thought he should be able to turn into stone or something.
That said, I don't know why you guys are going out of the way to defend ship names. It's already established that the Federation doesn't care, or at least care very much, where its names come from.
Other than the one named after the HMS Revenge I wind up picking ship names virtually at random. USS Bismarck (although I'm not a Prussian imperialist), USS von Braun (although I'm not a Nazi), USS L'Orient (although I'm not a French revolutionary), or USS Shangri-La (although I think it was a silly thing to name an aircraft carrier)--just random names to the Vulcan or Andorian or probably even the Human in charge of Utopia Planitia, as developed in some Starfleet Command committee made up of senile admirals expendable enough to be assigned the rather low priority task of thinking up ship names.
I try to think about what the Federation would name things--and the Federation has displayed a nearly absolute lack of historical sensitivity when they name things after Cortez or Zhukov. The only category of personal achievement they seem to care about is science. Is there a USS Mengele? Okay, probably not. Most everything else appears to be named after a ship that already did exist, somewhere and somewhen.
This is probably a good thing. Why should the naming committee of the military arm of an interspecies, interplanetary government care about what must to them look like tribal squabbles that happened four hundred to a thousand years before they were born?
If anything, you'd reckon there would be a more pronounced trend toward naming ships after commies. Yet I haven't seen a USS Lenin yet. I wouldn't be surprised though. I'm sure there was a Soviet Lenin, and, like I said, the UFP doesn't really appear to care. You have to be at least 0.9 Hitlers--or genetically engineered--to be remembered in the future, apparently.
I agree with you, an extreme approach for its time is worthy of comment many years later, but all actions must be taken in context.
Cortez was a product of his time, and sadly there was little respect for other human beings back then. The past is full of nasty, and modern liberal attitudes cannot be applied to it.
Everybody is a product of their time. Hitler was, too, so why not have a USS Hitler? Had he not lost the war, he might have ended up as a celebrated German historical figure, most of the Nazi crimes would have been swept under the carpet of history, and 400 years later few would care...
So much straw going around.
Hitler was abborent even in his time. Cortez was not. Simple as that, really. "Product of his time" means that the moral deficiencies of a person were common to people of that time. As the risk of continuing that Godwinning going on, is it really THAT hard to see the difference? Hitler and his actions wouldn't have been welcome in humanity in most periods of history. Cortez was a conquerer, yes, but also liberated what is now Latin American from the evil of the Aztecs.
To deNazify this a little, we could see a USS Julius Ceasar, but a USS Caligula would be obviously out of the question. We all know that Julius was far from a perfect role-model, particularly when applied to the moral standards of 2009. Caligula was never accepted as a hero, for obvious reasons.
Along that vein, we likely won't see a USS Pol Pot, or USS Stalin, or even a USS Lenin. But a USS Goberchev? Even a USS Kruschev could be possible. Of course, we DID get the USS Soyuz and USS Gagarin, so it's not like the Soviet Union is being ignored anyway.
Hitler was abborent even in his time. Cortez was not. Simple as that, really. "Product of his time" means that the moral deficiencies of a person were common to people of that time. As the risk of continuing that Godwinning going on, is it really THAT hard to see the difference? Hitler and his actions wouldn't have been welcome in humanity in most periods of history. Cortez was a conquerer, yes, but also liberated what is now Latin American from the evil of the Aztecs.
To deNazify this a little, we could see a USS Julius Ceasar, but a USS Caligula would be obviously out of the question. We all know that Julius was far from a perfect role-model, particularly when applied to the moral standards of 2009. Caligula was never accepted as a hero, for obvious reasons.
Along that vein, we likely won't see a USS Pol Pot, or USS Stalin, or even a USS Lenin. But a USS Goberchev? Even a USS Kruschev could be possible. Of course, we DID get the USS Soyuz and USS Gagarin, so it's not like the Soviet Union is being ignored anyway.
Look, Ronald Reagan is the only President awesome enough to visit the Star Trek set. This is significantly more awesome than even Obama, who needs to pop by for the next Trek movie if he wants to solidify his awesome-ness.
The rest of this really depends on somewhat contestable value judgements as to where one draws the line between good and not so good historical figures. Apparently the reason Sci thinks Churchill gets a pass and Reagan doesn't is Churchill had Hitler to kick around and make him look good (which is fair enough). But would Stalin then qualify? Perhaps not, when you compete with Hitler for horrific death tolls even he can't give you P.R.!
And to Vance, Cortez gets an out of jail free card and Lenin doesn't, because I suppose Lenin was not enough 'of his time', however one chooses to define that. It's terribly flexible, this.
The rest of this really depends on somewhat contestable value judgements as to where one draws the line between good and not so good historical figures. Apparently the reason Sci thinks Churchill gets a pass and Reagan doesn't is Churchill had Hitler to kick around and make him look good (which is fair enough). But would Stalin then qualify? Perhaps not, when you compete with Hitler for horrific death tolls even he can't give you P.R.!
And to Vance, Cortez gets an out of jail free card and Lenin doesn't, because I suppose Lenin was not enough 'of his time', however one chooses to define that. It's terribly flexible, this.
There is a certain amount of flexibility that's allowed, sure. But then you have to compare the character's significant contribution to history. Lenin gave us the Soviet Union, but that's it, really. He merited very little in overall contributions. Cortez, at least, was a bona-fide explorer and warrior.
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