I am generally pretty far left, but this seems stupidly overkill. It's the kind of thing that actually hurts the cause of equality in the long run.
From the article:
I understand the French colonial empire was a big enabler of the slave trade, so we'd better ban wearing red, white, and blue, too. Oh, and the nobility liked white, so we have to ban plain white, too. In fact, let's just create a whole scheme of modern sumptuary laws, too!
Oh, wait. The authors, signers, and ratifiers of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence owned slaves too. I guess we'd better trash those tomorrow and surrender our legal, financial and economic systems to the various Native American governments.
I understand (intellectually, if not at the gut level) the many biases inherent in modern American culture. And I do want to see us live up to our ideals in the real world. At the same time, that real world is a complex place. The Left has won a lot in the last decade or two, and while there's a long way to go. The last thing we want to do is push those who disagree with us into Sun-Tzu's 'death ground'.
I have no sympathy for those who want to celebrate the evils of the past, or who try to lie about them to make them more glorious and justify evils in the present. Yet there is a spectrum with selfless defender of freedom on one end and spoiled crying infant on the other. This seems more like the actions of someone drunk with (potential) power than that of someone whose primary interest is freedom and equality. In other words, it makes me think of the French Revolution's worse aspects, just a little.
