Trouble in Weirdville--Austin city council considers a name change

James Robbins:

“Keep Austin Weird” is a longtime city motto. Now the challenge for Texans may be to keep Austin Austin.

The Texas capital has been reviewing names of streets, parks and public buildings honoring major figures of the Confederacy. But last week the city’s Equity Office also suggested that a broader secondary review could encompass renaming anything honoring anyone with ties to slavery, including town namesake Stephen F. Austin. Austin, who died 25 years before the Civil War broke out, is remembered as the “Father of Texas” for establishing the first successful American settlements in 1825. Many places — cities, a county, colleges and schools — bear his name. But Austin promoted slavery in Texas and resisted abolition efforts by the Mexican government. The Equity Office considered it “within the spirit” of the anti-Dixie effort to include Austin as someone to exclude.
Democrats' war on their history

City spokesman David Green said, “no one sees this as an attempt to change the name of the city,” even though that is exactly what was being suggested. And in the progressive worldview it is a short hop from the unthinkable to the mandatory, from concept to edict. Witness the evolution of then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s thinking: in 2015 he said that “Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, these are all parts of our heritage,” and it would be best to “leave the statues and those things alone” on Richmond’s Monument Avenue. A brief two years later the more “woke” McAuliffe, eyeing a run for the presidency, called the statues "flashpoints for hatred, division, and violence” and said they should all come down.

Much of the self-flagellation over these issues has arisen because Democrats are at war with their own history. Southern slavery, Jim Crow and segregation were Democratic institutions. Democrats elevated Confederate memory, and now they are erasing it. The statue of Robert E. Lee that the city of Dallas took down in 2017 was unveiled by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, who said at the time that “all over the United States” Lee was recognized as “one of our greatest American Christiansand one of our greatest American gentlemen.” If a Democrat said that today they would be given a beat-down in the name of tolerance.
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So where does it end in Texas? Sam Houston was the first President of Texas and later a Unionist who lost his governorship over the secession issue. But he was a slave owner, so rename that city. Thomas Saltus Lubbock was a Confederate officer, and Augustus Hill Garland was a Confederate congressman, albeit reluctantly, so their cities are also suspect. Arlington, Texas was named for Robert E. Lee’s Virginia home, so scrub that. Plus, Corpus Christi, San Antonio and other city names rooted in Christianity may be seen as exclusionary by progressives and need rechristening. And don’t forget to investigate Odessa, “because Russia.”
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A previous city council in Austin renamed the "racist" First Street after Cesar Chavez.  Look for them to reconsider that name now since unlike the present city council, Chavez opposed illegal immigration. 

Austin has some real-world problems it has done little to address.  Traffic in the city is terrible and finding a parking space once you get there is almost as tough as finding one in New York City which was named after another slaver. 

It is easier to navigate the Houston metro with six times the population of Austin than it is the state's capital city.  Dallas is also better.