Does the PC leftist lunacy ever end?

After getting a bunch of Confederate statues taken down in the name of political correctness, a proposal is going out in Texas, from something called the City of Austin's Equity Office to change the name of the city itself, all because the Texas founding father wasn't politically in tune with their times and sensitivities.

Here is what the Austin American-Statesman reports:

Known as both the “father of Texas” and the namesake of the state’s capital, Stephen F. Austin carved out the early outlines of Texas among his many accomplishments.

He also opposed an attempt by Mexico to ban slavery in the province of Tejas and said if slaves were freed, they would turn into “vagabonds, a nuisance and a menace.”

For that reason, the city of Austin’s Equity Office suggested renaming the city in a report about existing Confederate monuments that was published this week.

And the Equity Office's reasoning in its bid to dismantle Texas's heritage?

The Equity Office’s report concludes, “It is essential to acknowledge that societal values are fluid, and they can be and are different today compared to when our city made decisions to name and/or place these Confederate symbols in our community.

“It is also important to acknowledge that nearly all monuments to the Confederacy and its leaders were erected without a true democratic process. People of color often had no voice and no opportunity to raise concerns about the city’s decision to honor Confederate leaders.”

Wow. Like there's nothing to identify with in knowing Stephen F. Austin's great role in the founding of Texas, or the many reasonable things he did to keep hotheads at bay at the state's founding to ensure it happened. That he tried to keep up good relations with the Mexican government, another hot-button issue for the politically correct, counts for nothing. Apparently, nobody from the past is good enough for these PC virtue-signallers.

It sounds like these people have never heard of the guy, except for that one thing about black people and "vagabonds," which was typical of the sensibilities of the time.

And it may well be that Austin has grown so fast, as its relocation guide brags, that a whole lot of outsiders have flooded in with Monday morning quarterbacking ideas about how Texas should have done its founding different.

The proposal is loathesome, another Taliban-like bid to erase history and leave citizens adrift, lost, and best of all, easier to manipulate in the aftermath by demagogues, presumably leftist demagogues intent on building a New Texas Man. Worse still, such a move would excite leftists elsewhere. St. Francis really had a thing about converting Muslims to Christianity, to "save their souls," so will San Francisco lose its name next?

The Statesman mentions that much of the report is about renaming Austin's streets, which have some very obscure Confederate origins, certainly ones I've never heard of. (As a kid, I was very much a Civil War buff who pretty much knew all the names and birthdays, and still do.) With the forked tongues of the left, the "Equity Office" cites the cheap cost of doing so, as if leftists ever otherwise cared about staying on-budget as a rationale. They claim the chief obstacle would be the inconvenience to others.

But they don't get into the cost of renaming Austin, which could be well higher than the dollar amount.

Austin is a hipsterly city loaded with youthful leftists which has built quite a brand name. Were they to rename their city of Austin 'Leftwingia' or something, they'd lose that accumulated brand recognition. The massive tourists flows (Thomas Lifson points out that London has two direct flights to Austin) might not be so lucrative anymore. Who'd want to go to Leftwingia instead of a city that retains some of its historic personality?

Apparently, it's these new residents and youthful hipsters who would decide such a thing with a vote. Let's hope there's not too many of them, or better still, that they snap into some common sense about who they are and what their city is.