Another day, another statue toppled by the Biden administration. Once a hallmark of communist revolutions, this erasure of history has become almost banal in modern America. Yet the latest statue to come down is the most absurd one yet — until you realize the true aim of this historical revisionism.
First, they came for the Confederate monuments. Then they came for the Founding Fathers. Now, William Penn joins the long list of American statesmen to have his statue removed from public land. The Biden administration’s National Park Service announced Friday that it would be removing Penn’s statue from Welcome Park in Philadelphia as part of a “rehabilitation” process.
BREAKING: The Biden administration is removing William Penn from his home in Philadelphia and replacing it with Native American history.
Welcome Park is a park on the grounds of Penn’s home in Philadelphia. Penn is the founder of Pennsylvania. He created the colony as a haven… pic.twitter.com/IPADU7eleM
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 7, 2024
William Penn was a 17th-century English aristocrat, prolific writer, and influential Quaker. Most importantly, he founded Pennsylvania in 1681. Today, the park is located on the site Penn once called home, and is named after the ship, the “Welcome,” that carried him to America. Yet the NPS now wants to erase his memory for all the usual reasons: “to provide a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors.”
Penn’s statute will not be the only piece removed. Additionally, the NPS plans to remove the museum that includes a model of his home and a timeline of his life and the settlement of Pennsylvania. The “reimagined” exhibit will include an “expanded interpretation of the Native American history” developed “in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations.” (RELATED: Left-Wing Activists Simultaneously Shut Down New York City’s Transportation Arteries)
Presumably, this means the same treatment that the historical properties of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington all received in the post-George Floyd era. Walking through the updated exhibits, it’s clear these are no longer the grand estates of the Founding Fathers, but the disgraced plantations of slave owners — the prison and graveyard for America’s first victims. Welcome Park is sure to become singularly focused on the evils inflicted upon Native Americans by early Pennsylvanians — and the legacy of trauma that persists in disparities today. Rather than a hero, an icon, or even a neutral historical figure, Penn will be recast as a villain in his own story.
It’s lamentable, but unsurprising that the Founding Fathers received this treatment. The left has long had a stake in discrediting the architects of the constitutional system it seeks to dismantle. Yet it is more surprising that a relatively obscure figure like Penn would find his way to the chopping block — particularly given that until five minutes ago, he was revered as an enlightened figure who stood out from the otherwise brutal history of the American colonies.
Penn, like many of his contemporaries, owned slaves. But compared to many of those same contemporaries, he also treated Native Americans exceptionally well. Penn became a Quaker at a young age, and the persecution he suffered in England as a result made him into a staunch advocate for religious toleration. This attitude eventually brought him to the New World, where his proto-liberal governance would lay the foundation for America’s constitutional framework a hundred years later.
In 1682, he drafted a Frame of Government that established a bicameral legislature and guaranteed trial by jury, freedom from unjust imprisonment, and free elections. Several months later, his Great Law established religious freedom, that no man should be “Compelled to frequent or Maintaine any Religious Worshipp place or Ministry whatever.” After two decades of experimentation, Penn established the Charter of Privileges in 1701, which further strengthened individual rights and a separation between church and state. Notably, these rights applied equally to the Native Americans.
The Treaty of Shackamaxon (1682) negotiated between Penn and the Lenape Indians reflected a mutual respect as they exchanged “promises of perpetual friendship.” Benjamin’s West famous painting, “Penn’s Treaty with the Indians,” has immortalized the spirit of the treaty in Pennsylvania’s history and self-conception. The peace lasted until the Penn’s Creek Massacre of 1755.
The Treaty of William Penn with Native Americans by Benjamin West painted in 1771: https://t.co/3qtN2DizDR pic.twitter.com/69CpdOHYus
— Robert H Butler (@redlegagenda) June 13, 2016
For now, Philadelphia’s Independence Hall Association still explains how Penn’s philosophy applied to Native Americans, though it is unlikely that this record will remain standing for long.
“He befriended the local Indians … and ensured that they were paid fairly for their lands. Penn even learned several different Indian dialects in order to communicate in negotiations without interpreters. Penn introduced laws saying that if a European did an Indian wrong, there would be a fair trial, with an equal number of people from both groups deciding the matter. His measures in this matter proved successful: even though later colonists did not treat the Indians as fairly as Penn and his first group of colonists had done, colonists and Indians remained at peace in Pennsylvania much longer than in the other English colonies.”
Like me, this woefully brief overview is likely all you ever learned of Pennsylvania’s founder in history class. When I was in school two decades ago, American education already suffered from a decidedly liberal bent. We learned first and foremost of the cruelty of manifest destiny and the atrocities like the Trail of Tears. But Penn was always portrayed as the gleaming, egalitarian exception to the rule of American hypocrisy. If only the rest of American history had followed his example, then we would truly be worthy of our ideals. Now, only a few short years later, these ideas are enough to get him canceled.
While the statue’s removal highlights the rapid pace of the assault on American history, it exposes the ideology behind it more clearly than ever. These historical arsonists were never going to stop at overthrowing the memory of the Confederacy, or the imperfect liberalism of the Founders. Their ideology is not opposed to the hypocritical failure to embody American ideals, but to the ideals themselves. They won’t stop until they supplant America’s original tradition of liberalism — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — entirely. Like all “egalitarian” revolutionaries in history, they are perfectly fine with hierarchies of injustice and inequality as long as they remain at the top to orchestrate their grand social designs. (RELATED: New Poll: Is Anyone Surprised That Democrats Overwhelmingly Hate Democracy?)
Penn was not the first victim of this totalizing project, nor will he be the last. It will consume until there is nothing left but blank slate to mold anew. It was never about “reimagining” Penn, but reimagining man, society, and nature itself. It only stops when we collectively understand this and stand up to say “Enough.”