An astonishing example of ignorance, stupidity, and political correctness run amok.  The College of Holy Cross is dropping its longtime mascot, the knight, because of its connection to Christians who fought during the Crusades.

Fox News:

The College of the Holy Cross announced it would drop its Knight mascot and related imagery to avoid ties to the violence committed by Christian armies during the Crusades. 

The Massachusetts school's president, Rev. Philip Boroughs, said in a letter to students that "the visual depiction of a knight, in conjunction with the moniker Crusader, inevitably ties us directly to the reality of the religious wars and the violence of the Crusades."

The College of Holy Cross is one of the preeminent centers of Catholic higher education in the country.  But holy moly, guys – who's teaching history at that school?

The Crusades were incredibly violent – on both sides – because the times were incredibly violent.  It was not a good time to be a non-combatant anywhere in the world.  Slaughters of civilians were commonplace.  Much is made of the slaughter of Muslims and Jews after the Christians took Jerusalem in 1099.  Yes, it was horrific, but it was hardly unusual.  The only difference between Christians killings of Muslims and Jews and Muslims killing Christians was the scale of violence.

Don't worry: Muslims had plenty of opportunities to kill innocent pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem and other Christian holy sites, and they rarely passed up on the chance to do so.  They had been doing so for 450 years.

"This imagery stands in contrast to our stated values.  Over the coming months, the College will gradually phase out the use of all knight-related imagery," [Boroughs] wrote.

Students and faculty members unsuccessfully urged the school to drop the Crusaders name entirely, arguing it associates the school with the violence committed against non-Christians nearly 1,000 years ago. 

On "Fox & Friends," Lawrence Jones, editor-in-chief of Campus Reform, said this story is yet another example of the political correctness running amok on campuses.

"The social justice warriors and the speech police are out to destroy history," he said, asking where this all stops. 

"Why not ... just remove the 'Cross' from the name Holy Cross?  That's ultimately what the Crusaders were defending," said Rachel Campos-Duffy.

"This imagery stands in contrast to our stated values."  Gee, ya think?  Except, the code of chivalry is something much to be admired.  It was the first attempt to actually lay down rules to govern soldiers in combat.  "Don't kill women and children" and "show mercy wherever possible to the enemy" were revolutionary concepts in their time. 

And what about Muslim knights?  They, too, had a chivalry code, and it was much older than Europe's.  But in war against Christians, they followed that code about as often as European knights. 

No use refighting the Crusades or the debates surrounding them.  But what makes Holy Cross's action particularly stupid is that the school is using the principle of political correctness and not history as a guide for its action.  The school is using the accepted modern narrative of the Crusades as though they actually went down that way.  They didn't.  Muslims were no better than Christians in safeguarding civilian lives, except the Crusaders, as the invading army, could kill a lot more Muslims than Muslims could kill Christians.

The Muslims made up for it a few hundred years later, committing savage atrocities in their invasion of the West.  The Christian armies defending cities and territories at that time didn't kill many Muslim civilians because there were few. 

Let's face facts: when given the opportunity to slaughter people, Christians did so in Arab lands, and Muslims did so in Christian lands.  When given equal opportunity to commit atrocities, both sides did.

Deputy editor Drew Belsky adds: I appreciate the desire to quell tensions by attempting to establish an equivalence, but calling the Crusades a war between equally barbaric sides is too kind to one of those sides.  I cover why here.