And Then They Came for William Penn
The National Park Service staff decided that William Penn is offensive. They were preparing to remove his statue from the very national park dedicated to him, named after his ship that brought him to America, in the city he named — the City of Brotherly Love. The man who established a Commonwealth built on religious tolerance and bearing his name.
But the staff was overruled. The statue is staying. What’s the big deal?
No big deal? Actually, it’s a huge deal. It’s another cultural flashpoint that exposes what the craziness of woke culture and extreme left-wing politics has brought us.
Leftists, woke-activists and legacy media commentators all chimed in within minutes of this “do-over” by the National Park Service (NPS) — as if they’d been fed talking points. The messages were similar in theme and even words: “The statue is staying. And, besides, all of you bellyachers — you never even knew it was there, you never even visited the park. This is much ado about nothing. So shut up.”
The left is getting angry, friends. Angry about Penn. Angry about Israel. About climate change. About genders. About Claudine Gay. And now, angry that most of America was offended by their coming after William Penn.
You know you’ve touched a nerve by how loudly, how quickly and how repeatedly they fight back. There are touchstones in the progressive church: Higher Education. DEI. LGBTQIA+. Climate Change. Woke culture.
And their mission is to tear down, humiliate, and scrub from history anything to do with the founding of our nation: Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, the Constitution — and William Penn. After all, he checks all the woke boxes of “sin:” He’s been dead a long time. He was white; and he was a man.
Being woke means that the world is divided into good and evil. There is no nuance, no gray areas. To acknowledge that someone or something could be good but flawed is not a road they want to go down. Because that might mean that America is good, but flawed.
In the hours following the reversal — days after a matter-of-fact press release went out announcing the plan to make “Welcome Park” more “inclusive;” we learned so much about the Democrats and the left.
First, Governor Shapiro tip-toed up to the edge of taking credit for getting NPS to come to their senses. Later, Senator Bobby “Cautious” Casey tweeted that all’s well: he’s been assured that the statue will remain. Columnists and left-wing activists pounced on “the deplorables” who were upset that Penn’s statue would be removed — that William Penn was being canceled. And the region’s Democratic congressional delegation did what it does so well when controversy arises, and a woke policy may have offended a majority of citizens: they went radio silent. Crickets.
We now know that the NPS staff has gone woke — or, actually, whatever the next step beyond woke is…crazy? They were ultimately reigned in. But, like in a big business or a community, there’s a culture, and that’s the problem. The Left has created a culture where staff and managers are empowered, encouraged, or expected to criticize, tear down, or hide anything that is viewed as having to do with the pillars of America, its founding, and its leadership in the world.
That’s how we got here.
Think about how many other groups of staffers like those at NPS are burrowed in at the Department of Education, EPA, or Department of Labor and the limitless web of agencies, all motivated by ideology, ignorance — or fear — tripping over themselves to do the most woke thing, just to curry favor. Then once they create some goofy policy, we have to live by it, adhere to it or not violate it. Plus, think of how many left-wing, woke activists have been drawn into the alphabet soup of government agencies because they feel empowered to dictate to us, impose their “justice” — and to erase American history.
To those who tweeted that statue-defenders never even visited the park, so why do we care? Respectfully, anyone saying that is either trolling or must have been asleep the last five or ten years. The woke mob has come for Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Lincoln and ridicules our Constitution. This is just the next step.
They tried to remove Jefferson’s statue from the University of Virginia — a school I would not have been accepted to back in the day. But of course I care. Millions of us care. Trying to tear down, remove, hide, and disparage our founding is to not only deny the greatness of America; it is to deny our common history, our culture and the building blocks that got us here. It shows an ignorance of history and an arrogance of selfishness — as if justice was invented in 2020.
As for William Penn, there may not be a more important, and more inoffensive, selfless founder. The man who risked his life to travel here and worked tirelessly to create a safe, stable, and vibrant community — a commonwealth built on religious tolerance and freedom of expression; a man whose wife and family followed in his footsteps for generations to help guide this experiment. Is there any doubt that the woke mob would try to rename Pennsylvania next?!
A group of taxpayer-funded government officials proposed getting rid of the statue of William Penn from a park built in his memory, to welcome people to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and to appreciate our history. Such a decision shocked and angered the overwhelming majority of Americans. So, days later, the politicians in charge do what they sometimes do when they are caught: Stop. Apologize. And tell us to move along: “nothing to see here.”
If we don’t stand up and remove the pillars of woke culture, all too soon there will be truly “nothing to see here” of America’s founders, our founding — or even of America.
Guy Ciarrocchi is a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation. He writes for Broad+Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania. Follow Guy @PaSuburbsGuy
