One of the causes du jour is the attempt by some to remove all reference to the Confederacy and slavery from the annals of our history. They deny it even as they lobby to rename streets, schools and buildings, as they tear down statues and deface other monuments. But the results speak much louder than their words. They find something distasteful and they want it gone. It’s for the children, they claim. They don’t want them to feel uncomfortable. Sorry, but history doesn’t work that way and by removing teaching opportunities, we are sending those same children they say they want to protect on a very slippery slope to repeating those past mistakes.

Dallas has started down that slope already. It took the first step down the hill when Mayor Mike Rawlings and the city council decided not to abide by the mayor’s earlier decision to have a cooling off period before removing a statue of General Robert E. Lee from Lee Park. Now the Dallas Independent School District has recommended four schools be renamed and another 17 are on a list to be considered for renaming.

It didn’t surprise me to find Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee on the list of schools to have name changes. The naming of Albert Sidney Johnston didn’t surprise me. Johnston moved to Texas in 1836, fought in the Texas War for Independence and then served as the Republic of Texas’ Secretary of War, he resigned from that post in 1840 and returned to Kentucky. He was later killed fighting for the Confederacy.