Take Down Their Names

He's not good enough for San Francisco

We have sailed past the destruction of Confederate iconography to the villainization of anyone who had any connection to slavery. Fine, but what are the reasons for tearing down those, like Lincoln, who were on the "right" side of history? The San Francisco school district Names Advisory Committee explains: [bold added]

According to the committee’s assessment of history, Lincoln, who led the North in the Civil War and whose name is on a Sunset District high school, wasn’t a true abolitionist because the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to states attempting to break away from the United States while some slave states remained in the union.

The report also says that Commander-in-Chief Lincoln allowed more than 35 American Indians who took part in an 1862 uprising in the Minnesota and Dakota territories to be hanged...

The committee’s criteria for removing a name includes the person being directly involved in the colonization or genocide of people, owning slaves, exploiting workers, oppressing or abusing women, children, gay or transgender people, engaging in human rights or environmental abuses or espousing racist beliefs.

The latter-day Jacobins are parading everyone to the guillotine:

Junipero Serra: “colonizer and slave owner”

Paul Revere: “settler-colonial history”

Francis Scott Key: “slave owner and wrote pro-slavery verse in national anthem”

Herbert Hoover: “accepting of white supremacy”

James Madison: “slave owner — worked at colonizing Native Americans”

James Monroe: “slave owner”

Daniel Webster: “wrote stringent fugitive slave laws”

Commodore John Sloat: “stole California from Mexico, colonizer”

John Muir: The naturalist, whose name is on a Hayes Valley elementary school, may be revered as the “Father of the National Parks” and cofounder of the Sierra Club, but, according to the committee worksheet, and more recently the Sierra Club itself, he was also a racist. The sheet also says Muir was “responsible for theft of native lands.”

I personally can't wait to see whose names do meet the criteria set forth by the Committee of Public Safety . They must truly be paragons of perfection.