Andrew Cuomo: These NYC Streets Shouldn’t Be Named After Confederate Generals

The Left isn’t only focused on tearing down Confederate statues, now they’re looking to rename streets as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is calling for the names of Confederate generals on a couple of New York streets to be removed entirely.

According to Breaking911, Cuomo sent a letter to Acting Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy in which he advocated for renaming Stonewall Jackson Drive and General Lee Avenue since they’re named after Confederate generals.

“Given the events of this week, including the violence and terrorism perpetrated by white supremacists in Charlottesville and the resulting emboldening of the voices of Nazis and white supremacists, I now strongly urge the U.S. Army to reconsider its decision and I call on them to rename these streets,” Cuomo wrote.

Cuomo added that it was a necessary move to fight back against the scourge of white nationalism.

“In our state, we condemn the language and violence of white supremacy in no uncertain terms,” wrote Cuomo. “Unlike President Trump, we stand together to say that there are not many sides to hatred and bigotry; they do not belong in our communities and must be denounced for what they are.”

Cuomo concluded his letter by stating, “Renaming these streets will send a clear message that in New York, we stand against intolerance and racism, whether it be insidious and hidden or obvious and intentional.”

This is the latest among many of the Left’s efforts to expunge confederate monuments, as a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Georgia is calling for the removal of the Stone Mountain monument, and “The Confederate States of America” monument was torn down in Durham, North Carolina.

There are a couple of problems with the movement to tear down statues and rename streets. The first is that it’s a slippery slope, as Ben Shapiro has explained:

The first prong: label a huge number of common symbols racist. There’s a movement afoot to tear down statues of Thomas Jefferson, to stop students from wearing the American flag to school on Cinco De Mayo, to end the playing of the National Anthem at football games. The Confederate flag and Confederate war memorials are only the first step toward that goal. It’s rather obvious that the Left has no such interest in tearing down statues of Robert Byrd in the U.S. Capitol or Vladimir Lenin in Seattle.

Case in point: a pastor is now calling for George Washington’s name to be removed from a park.

The second problem is that, as Daniel Horowitz points out, these are the same people who are behind the efforts of “tearing down the Ten Commandments and removing separate-gender bathrooms.”

“All of this is part and parcel of a de-civilization agenda that desecrates every bit of our history, traditions, and commonsense values,” wrote Horowitz. “It is truly regressive at its core.”

Horowitz added, “The only thing this agenda will accomplish is rejuvenating the dark forces that were thankfully dormant until recently and turn a once innocuous and even inspirational heritage of reconciliation into a flashpoint for the worst elements on all sides of the political and social spectrum.”

Instead of virtue signaling by tearing down statues and renaming streets, people like Cuomo should focus on calling out the evils of identity politics and forces like the alt-right and Antifa in order to reduce the tribalism that brought the alt-right to prominence to begin with.

Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter.