Defense Secretary Hegseth is reverting Fort Liberty at North Carolina to its previous name, Fort Bragg, but not again for General Braxton Bragg of the Confederacy. The world’s largest military installation will now be a tribute to a World War II hero, Private First Class Roland Bragg.

“The naming of cats,” T.S. Eliot wrote in his poem by that name, “is a difficult matter,” and so it has become in America for everything from places to ships. Today’s hero may be tomorrow’s villain. Plotting a course that respects the past while looking to the future can be like herding Eliot’s titular felines.