FOR THE POLITICALLY correct elite, nothing brings more right-eous pleasure than the act of tearing down the pillars of the white, male patriarchy.

A crowning moment for this crowd came in 1998 when the New Orleans School District
scrubbed the names of dead white guys off many of their schools. Not even George
Washington was spared.

Carl Galmon, the local civil-rights activist who agitated for the racial cleansing, summed up why the name was changed: "Why should African�Americans want their kids to pay respect to someone who enslaved their ancestors? ... to African�Americans, George Washington has about as much meaning as David Duke."

God help those poor kids if that's the kind of history they are being taught. To imply that George Washington is as morally unclean as a Klansman is too ridiculous to give offense. Not that people like Mr. Galmon will stop trying.

The idea is to make the country ashamed of its history-to tarnish the glory of America because it is imperfect. But sometimes this standard is used to tear down the heroes of Politically Correct History too, like abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

Associated Black Charities of Baltimore wanted to honor the Maryland native with huge
murals on the sides of bleak buildings in some of the city's roughest neighborhoods.
So the group acquired a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and
commissioned New Jersey artist Mike Alewitz for the job.

All the murals were outstanding, but one was especially dramatic and moving. Alewitz
cast the escaped slave and abolitionist as a Moses figure, hands raised as if parting
the Red Sea. Through the breach slaves run to the promised land of freedom, while
white men are being tossed from their boat into the violent water.

In one hand Tubman holds a lantern. In the other, a rifle.

Uh, oh. Big mistake. That last detail was a deal-breaker, and the mural was nixed.

"It would be a very big gun pictured on these walls. It would be so big, it would obscure Harriet Tubman and her greatness. Is that what we really want
to do?" asked Donna Jones Stanley, executive director of Associated Black Charities. "The mural is really about Harriet Tubman and her strength and her greatness. That's
really what we want to shine through."

Exactly. What could be stronger than a picture of Harriet Tubman with the great
equalizer in one hand and the light of liberty in the other? Not only is the artist's portrayal moving, it's also historically accurate.

Tubman was the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad, and she was also
the most notorious among those who owned slaves and didn't take kindly to their being
stolen. The penalty for smuggling slaves to freedom was harsh, usually death. Certainly if Tubman were captured she would be killed, so she armed herself for her own protection.

Indeed, the most famous story about Tubman involves a gun. While smuggling a group
of slaves to freedom, one of them began to lose his nerve and wanted to turn back.
Fearing the fugitive slave would divulge their location if he was captured and tortured, she held a gun to his head and reportedly told him, "Dead men tell no tales."

Yet the truth about Harriet Tubman presented a dilemma: Is it more important to
portray her as she really was, or distort her image for the sake of political correctness? For the Associated Black Charities, it was an easy and instant choice.

Like all disciples of political correctness, Stanley said she is opposed to censorship-except, apparently, in cases where she thinks it's OK. And it's always OK
to censor guns, especially in a city "which had more than 300 murders last year."

See the messes you can get yourself in when you are more interested in being
politically correct than historically accurate? Unwittingly, Stanley put Harriet
Tubman with a rifle on the same moral level as a common thug with no regard for human
life. This is the natural result when guns, instead of criminals, are demonized. All who lay their hands on a firearm are in the wrong.

But if anyone needs a gun in their hands, it's the law-abiding citizens of Baltimore's tough neighborhoods. By the time the cops showed up at those 300 murders, the only thing left to do was draw the chalk outline and take pictures. I doubt Harriet Tubman would have allowed herself to be left defenseless.

To his credit, the mural artist-who made a name for himself as a '60s radical painting anti-war propaganda-refused to disarm Ms. Tubman. He scoffed at his patrons' suggestion that he turn the rifle into a more benign shepherd's staff.

"There was nothing safe about her," Alewitz said, pledging to find another home for his murals. "Nothing will stop this historic endeavor. Harriet Tubman will live on the walls of
Maryland."