Byron York’s Daily Memo: The revolution devours all before it

THE REVOLUTION DEVOURS ALL BEFORE IT. The latest enactment of that old truth happened Tuesday night in, of all places, a Zoom meeting of the San Francisco School Board. In that meeting, members voted to strip the names of American historical figures — George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and even California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein — from schools in San Francisco.

What began in recent years as a call to remove the names of Confederate leaders from schools, roads, and military bases, and then to tear down Confederate statues, has now moved on to target all of American history.

The San Francisco Board created a School Names Advisory Committee in May 2018. Members passed a resolution committing the board to “changing the names of schools named for historical figures who engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings; or who oppressed women, inhibiting societal progress; or whose actions led to genocide; or who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The last phrase, targeting anyone who had “diminished the opportunities” of anyone else, was a catch-all that would allow the School Board to go after virtually any name it chose. And indeed, on Tuesday night, the Board voted to change 44 school names.

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Yes, there were Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Feinstein — more on her in a minute — but there was also Herbert Hoover, Paul Revere, James A. Garfield, Francis Scott Key, William McKinley, Daniel Webster, Robert Louis Stevenson, Junipero Serra (a Spanish priest who founded missions across California),William Cullen Bryant (the 19th Century writer), Francisco de Ulloa (a Spanish explorer), Adolph Sutro (a San Francisco mayor and philanthropist), Claire Lilienthal (a San Francisco School Board president), James Lick (a California philanthropist), and many more.

The Board also voted to change the name of Roosevelt Middle School, even though no one was sure whether it was named after Theodore Roosevelt or Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Better safe than sorry. By the way, the Board does not have new names chosen for the schools. It just wants to get rid of the old ones.

So what about Senator Feinstein? Well, before she was first elected to the Senate in 1992, Feinstein served as mayor of San Francisco from 1978 until 1988. Feinstein’s offense, in the eyes of the School Board, occurred In 1984, when a socialist activist from the Sparticist League and Labor Black League for Social Defense tore down a Confederate flag displayed among 18 flags in a “Pavilion of American Flags” history exhibit in San Francisco. (Much of this story comes from an account by journalist Gabe Stutman in The Jewish News of Northern California.) The exhibit had been in place since 1964, and when the activist tore down the Confederate flag, Feinstein had it replaced with another Confederate flag. The next day, the Sparticist protester tore down the replacement flag, and Feinstein relented, eliminating the Confederate flag from the exhibit. She later apologized for her actions.

Some in the School Board have resented Feinstein ever since. “Dianne Feinstein chose to fly a flag that is the iconography of domestic racism, white avarice and inhumanity toward black and indigenous people at the City Hall,” the School Names Advisory Committee chair, Jeremiah Jeffries, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “She still has time to dedicate the rest of her life to the upliftment of black, first nations and other people of color. She hasn’t thus far, so her apology simply wasn’t convincing.” And that is how Dianne Feinstein came to have her name removed from Dianne Feinstein Elementary School in San Francisco.

There’s a tragicomic kicker to the story, which is that all the schools the Board is renaming are closed as a result of the COVID pandemic. Even though evidence is mounting that schools are safe, and sentiment appears to be growing nationwide that they should be re-opened, San Francisco schools remain closed. The ridiculousness of it all was too much for the writer Antonio Garcia Martinez, who tweeted:

He was right, of course. But the School Board’s action was really the inevitable result of the bizarre anti-historical forces that have been dominating some parts of our culture recently. Of course they would not stop with Confederate generals. Of course they would not stop with George Washington. And they won’t stop with a liberal Democrat like Dianne Feinstein, of all people. The revolution continues to devour all before it.

For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe.