From Jeb Stuart HS to Stuart HS?

On Thursday night, the Fairfax County School Board, in another attempt to alter Virginia’s storied past, changed the name of Jeb Stuart High School to Stuart High School.  This is part of a long and never ending effort by the radical left to try to wipe out America’s history to continue to divide us so that they can take power and never let go.  

The brainwashing of our country starts with our youth.  Progressives learned years ago that the best way to raise little communists was to indoctrinate them at birth.  And this is what they are doing.  

This story is of great significance to me, not because I went to Jeb Stuart, but because I had many friends who graduated from Jeb Stuart HS from 1982 through 1985.  Also because Jeb Stuart is one of my heroes.  However let’s put aside his Confederate past and my having known many Jeb Stuart alumni.  Let’s focus on something which left wing progressives are always talking about – more money for our schools.

To make this name change will cost a minimum of $750,000, and likely cost more.

Now think on how many textbooks that would have bought.  How many parents from Fairfax or Loudoun or other NOVA schools have been asked to purchase supplies because the schools can’t afford to pay for them?  Yet they can afford to pay nearly 1 million dollars to change the name of a school, and still figure out how to keep the name similar to the original supposed offensive name (from Jeb Stuart HS to Stuart HS)  

So is Stuart HS now named after Jeb Stuart?  Or the Stuart Wars in British history?  Or Stuart Smalley?  (NOTE THE SARCASM) Assuming it’s not named after Mr. Smalley,  then who was it named after? Shouldn’t we be naming our schools after prominent figures in our history?  Like the Confederacy or not, the fact is that Jeb Stuart was a great cavalryman and an outstanding infantry commander (he took over for Stonewall Jackson after he was wounded at Chancellorsville).  Jeb Stuart changed how cavalry would be used in warfare, and was also a patent holder with the US Patent Office.  Stuart helped stop John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry (all John Brown succeeded in doing was killing a few civilians – some of whom were freed slaves).  Stuart was never whipped on the battlefield, and if it had not been for a lucky shot fired by a retreating Michigan private at the Battle of Yellow Tavern, he would have beaten Phil Sheridan in May of 1864 while being outnumbered more than 2-1.  Even though Stuart died that next day, the fact is that Stuart won the battle – forcing Sheridan and his nearly 9000 cavalry to retreat after losing to ½ as many troops.  

Wherever Stuart was, he won.  Yes he was vainglorious and yes he sometimes loved pomp and circumstance a bit too much (see his performance at Gettysburg).  But Jeb Stuart lived and died for Virginia, and after the 1st Battle of Manassas, one of his first major encampments was at Munson’s Hill and Culmore, next to what is now Jeb Stuart HS.  A Hispanic gal who works for me, whose oldest child will soon be going to Jeb Stuart HS told me she thinks the name change is ridiculous, that she’d rather the money be spent on her kids, not on whitewashing history.  

So liberals on the Fairfax County School Board have wasted nearly 1 million dollars, literally left the name ½ way intact, and have tried to wipe out a very influential man in not only Virginia History, but Falls Church history as well.  All they did was waste taxpayer money, diverting these needed funds away from our kids to prove their moral superiority.