Opinion: There is a rise of the Taliban in Tulsa.

Yes, even in this most beautiful city in the heart of the most conservative state, some wish to hide history – change the name of Oklahoma’s oldest elementary school. They want a new war, but will receive relentless peaceful objection. 

Per person, the Civil War was as deadly in Oklahoma as anywhere with Native tribes dividing North and South, clans within the tribes dividing and further as the strong families within the clans divided.  No one knows how to kill you better than your family and the destruction within the Twin Territories was devastating.

Tulsa’s Robert E. Lee Elementary goes by Lee School

What memorials remain in the names of schools or sculpture teach history. They provide specific opportunity to educate our children and remember ourselves details of wisdom gathered at great cost in blood and toil.

These details today’s Social Justice Warriors, Marxists, and Racialists can’t acknowledge lest their anti-freedom totalitarian ideology be fully revealed.

In Tulsa, I attended Francis Scott Key Elementary, Admiral Richard E. Byrd Junior High and Tulsa Memorial High School – dedicated to Tulsans who died in foreign wars defending freedom, Liberty and Western Civilization. I’m a proud patriot, but what of today’s youth?

Bamiyan Buddha

The targeting of historical icons for removal or destruction is exactly what the Taliban did in destroying centuries-old Buddhist statues and Islamic State (ISIS) violence against Christian churches.

Thus the American left, Taliban and ISIS hold in common an inability to honor history and diversity and express this lack of appreciation in violence and destruction. How very “Liberal” of them.

At the toppling of the Confederate statue in Durham, North Carolina recently, Workers World Party (Communist) member Qasima Wideman said, “If the people decide they want to remove such a statue, that should be their right,” according to CNN.

Was that statue constructed with private money and donated to the community with some understanding it would be maintained?  Should taxpayers file legal action against the criminal destruction? Are destructive mobs the order of the day in America? Is this the Rule of Law?

History removed after standing for 1,700 years

Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil said in 2001, “We do admit the relics were the cultural heritage [1,700 years old] of Afghanistan, but the part that contradicts our Islamic beliefs we would not like to have them anymore.”

Defending the name of Tulsa’s Robert E. Lee Elementary, the oldest school at 98 years in the state, is not a hill I wish to die on, but the inane justifications for change and lack of historical perspective by media is offensive. Political correctness already has it going by “Lee School” rather than the full name.

What I attended as Byrd Junior High is now named something else and I made no complaint at that time and could care less now even with admiration for Admiral Byrd’s many accomplishments – truly a bi-polar explorer.

Public education’s willingness to be ruled by trendy emotional issues of little to no substance is one reason growing numbers of taxpayers call public schools – government indoctrination centers. 

Next time the Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education fails to provide teacher salary increases while building new sports arenas they might well be reminded of this silliness.

Tulsa Today offers to find a home for any and all historical monuments that may become homeless because of political grandstanding, historical stupidity, pandering media or any other Taliban trick in Tulsa. We proudly accept this mission to defend history for the generations to come.