As George Washington University last week narrowed its options to four choices to replace its “Colonials” nickname, the steady anti-American efforts to erase history take another innocent victim.

To suggest that, in the context of Washington, the Colonials' nickname is offensive is to take performative over-sensitivity to new levels. Of the four names now being considered as replacements — Ambassadors, Blue Fog (huh??), Sentinels, and Revolutionaries — only the latter has any relation to Washington or his era. And if those in the business of perpetual offense-taking worry about the modern connotations of “colonial,” revolutionary is hardly better and, with its aura of radicalism, definitely less in Washington’s spirit.

As GW law professor Jonathan Turley wrote, “the Colonials fought against foreign rule. They were not advocates of colonization. ... The meaning of the Colonials has been obvious for over a 100 years at GW and remains clear to this day.”

This is all part, however, of a trend where large majorities on campuses across the country are willfully ignorant and ungrateful for their blessings, among myriad other faults. Contemptuous of tradition, despoilers of history, obsessives about identity politics but tramplers of both liberty and decorum, they see American heritage as an embarrassment rather than as among the greatest gifts that ever will grace their lives.

Depressingly, decades of what the Soviets called “ ideological subversion ,” achieved by taking over cultural institutions and especially college campuses, are having a deleterious effect throughout American society. A Wall Street Journal poll released today reports that only 38% of Americans , by far an all-time low, now say patriotism is very important to them.

Generations of college students, with ample opportunity to have learned better if they weren’t lazy enough to accept uncritically the anti-American bilge so many professors dish out, now are taking leading positions in our culture. It’s not just that they are ignorant about the U.S. record as a beacon of freedom, a spreader of human rights, and a charitable nation beyond compare; it’s that they choose to ignore the evidence and, worse, often seem not to value liberty except in the form of license.

Is it any wonder that, because they are immune to any understanding in depth of what George Washington fought for, so many professors, students, and even university board members today refuse to value nicknames redolent of our nation’s founding era?

Today, the nickname Colonials is going in the trash can. Tomorrow, will it be the university’s affiliation with Washington himself?