The March 14th edition of the Taipei Times printed a story on the front page about the campaign to remove references to the KMT from the Taiwanese army songbook. The Republic of China was for so many years a one-party state that there was little differentiation between the KMT political party and the state; to swear loyalty to the one was to swear loyalty to the other.
Naturally, KMT legislators are not agreeable to the change:
That decision drew criticism from KMT Legislator Shuai Hua-min (帥化民), who strongly criticized this action for being akin to "forgetting one’s origins."
While I often have some degree of sympathy for this type of reasoning, the need to insist upon the military’s political neutrality in a democratic state completely outweighs the conservative argument in this particular case. American Democrats would be entirely right to protest if West Point officers-in-training were required to sing "The Battle Hymn of the Republican Party".
Maybe when this is done we can change the names of the streets so don’t idolize a fascist butcher or remind us of some ugly Chinese city that noone wants to go to?