** Lincoln under attack. Again.
In the string of events of erasing history, Abraham Lincoln’s name will be removed from a high school in San Francisco, California, after a committee recommended the action.
And just what did Lincoln do, or not do, to earn this slap in the face? He did not demonstrate that black lives mattered to him.
“Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building,” said Jeremiah Jeffries, chairman of the renaming committee, and also teaches 1st grade in the school district.
This seems a little weird, even for California, where very little that happens surprises us these days. Lincoln, America’s 16th president who abolished slavery, became known as the Great Emancipator, and was an inspiration to his successors. Those included President Barack Obama, who used the Lincoln Bible for his inauguration in 2009.
“Lincoln conducted a war, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and got shot in the head for black lives, but this wasn’t enough to keep him from being unceremoniously ditched by modern social justice warriors,” wrote Jarrett Stepman in The Daily Signal.
Another area of discontent followed a Sioux uprising in Minnesota, where 303 tribesmen were sentenced to death. Lincoln reviewed their cases and removed the death sentence for 265 of them. The other 38 were hanged.
But some saw that saving only the great majority of the Sioux warriors as a Lincoln failure.
This criticism of Lincoln earned a comment from Sherry Black, who worked for more than 40 years in Native American economic and community development: “Considering the time period, it’s so difficult to understand how things were at the time. How do you make these decisions?”
That is a question that the cancel folk apparently cannot answer, and is likely a subject that has never entered into their narrow minds.
So, what are they going to name the school? Perhaps “Saul Alinsky High School.”
** Governors and mayors doing crazy stuff
As the lockdowns and other heavy restrictions continue, millions are out of a job, thousands of employers have had to permanently close their businesses, and many more may meet that same fate, if things don’t soon change.
While the intentions may be good, the results often are not. The virus can be horrible, even deadly. But, people being out of work and out of money, and other lockdown problems, have also led to much suffering, including suicides.
And kids need to be in school. Safely, of course. But they need a productive learning environment, and virtual learning falls well short.
Restrictions often are not sensible. People can protest in large groups, shop in large stores with lots of other people, but may only attend religious services in ridiculously small numbers. Some other restrictions on activities are just as foolish.
And then there are those that make rules, but do not themselves follow those rules. Arrogant “leaders” only compound the problems.
People are growing tired of these authoritarian actions, that deny their constitutional rights, and render us a bunch of hostages.
** Virtual education issues
Like many kids across the country, a 9-year-old 4th grader in the Jefferson Parish Public Schools System in Louisiana has been doing school online from his bedroom. During an online test, his computer showed some of the things in his bedroom. His teacher saw him moving a BB gun out of the floor.
That evening, the police came and searched his house, based on the teacher’s report, and the 9-year-old was facing expulsion by the school system.
He ended up being suspended for 3 days, as he would have been if he had actually brought a gun to school, and the school board is refusing to remove the suspension from his record.
During a hearing, the school board asked the young boy how his teacher must have felt after seeing the gun on the computer screen. “I know what a BB gun looks like,” said a former teacher and school board member. “And you know what it resembles? A real gun. OK? It resembles a real gun.”
Perhaps this former teacher and board member does not know that owing BB guns, and other guns, is legal in our country.
An attorney representing the boy’s family, called the imposition of school-ground rules enforced in someone’s actual home as an “injustice”: “This is an injustice. It’s a systemic failure. They’re applying on-campus rules to these children, even though they’re learning virtually in their own homes.”
The state legislature passed a law named after the boy that charged that the school behaved improperly, but the school board still refused to remove the suspension from his permanent record.
The teacher, the school, and the school board have no authority to tell people what they may or may not have in their homes. The reporting of this family to the police is outrageous, and the entire affair should cost the school system a pile of money.
Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
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