Craven politics

Another well meaning person is having their legacy torched on the pyre of political correctness. The late assemblyman Bill Craven, a moderate Republican and Marine veteran, is having his name erased from Cal State University San Marcos, an institution he fought tirelessly for decades to build.

Cal State San Marcos has launched a “Craven Taskforce” to examine whether Craven deserves to be honored at all on campus. 

The task force has spoken Bill. You are out.

I must confess that my father was a builder, a Democrat, but he had a warm and productive relationship and longtime friendship with Craven and knew that he could always count on him to be a fair and honest steward of the public good. He helped our family business on multiple occasions. I only knew him to be a tireless supporter of San Diego and North County.

But no, William Craven is now being recast, in the most perfect and self righteous backwards twenty twenty vision, as being a bigot. Because of a few intemperate comments he made in the 1990's that have been completely taken out of context. Craven has now had his quick kangaroo trial but the final judgement was really never in doubt, guilty.

In 1991, he wrote a letter to school districts, cities and county officials asking for headcounts of suspected undocumented immigrants who used public services in the school district and city.  In his letter, however, he wrote that he hoped to “use data gathered from the survey to lobby Washington officials in September for more federal funds to pay for the cost of providing services to undocumented immigrants.” 

Craven had the audacity to want the feds to help shoulder the financial burden that the undocumented were putting on the local system. And then he used what may have been a very poor choice of words two years later:

According to an article published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, in a Senate hearing in 1993, Craven referred to undocumented immigrants as “perhaps on the low scale of humanity, for one reason or another,” before later clarifying that he was referring to the “lower rung of humanity, economically speaking.”

Sorry Bill, your actual intent means nothing. You are hereby cancelled and all of your many contributions will be duly erased from the history books in the future. The so very perfect thought police of 2023 don't mess around. The woke have spoke.