William Penn's Statue of Limitations
How the planned removal of a William Penn statue shows the endless pit of progressivism
There's a new statue that's about to come down. It's not of a Confederate general. It is none other than William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania:
The National Park Service (NPS) has announced it will be rehabilitating (via reduction) Pennsylvania founder William Penn’s Welcome Park to “provide a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience.” Named after the ship that bore Penn to that city of fraternal affection, the park is the site of his former Philadelphia home and the Slate Roof House. As part of this reimagining of Welcome Park, the park service has confirmed that “the Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled.”
Why do they want to take Penn’s statue down? To be more “inclusive”. And who was the perhaps the most inclusive leader of his time? William Penn.
William Penn was a Quaker. The Quakers, to put it bluntly, were basically the radical leftists of their time. They had suffered a lot of religious persecution by the Church of England, and they ended up fleeing to what is now America, but even in America, other sects like the Puritans (who themselves also came to flee persecution) also persecuted the Quakers. Puritans would whip, beat, and even hang Quakers for their beliefs.
Penn himself endured a lot of persecution, which I once discussed in a piece I wrote for The Free Press. He was imprisoned six times for his outspoken and radical advocacy of religious tolerance. When William Penn was able to secure a plot of land for Quakers, which was later called Penn’s Woods (Pennsylvania), he and other Quakers flocked there in droves.
Unlike the Puritans, who escaped persecution in England only to persecute others in the colonies, the Quakers stressed religious tolerance, even for faiths that would not extend tolerance back. While some had slaves early on, they later became ardent abolitionists. They were antiwar pacifists. They opposed the death penalty. They stressed gender equality and allowed women to preach. They spoiled their children at a time when other colonists were putting their children to the rod. Quakers even disavowed the need for clergy and the Bible itself, claiming that everyone could communicate directly to God via an “inward light”. And while other colonists were forcibly taking land from Native Americans, Penn respected Native rights and learned various Native languages to negotiate contracts to buy their land.
In retrospect, William Penn can easily be framed as the most prominent progressive leader of his time. Yet instead of being celebrated by progressives, they are now planning to take down a statue of him, as he was not progressive enough, by contemporary standards. I hereby coin the term “statue of limitations”, after the legal concept of a statute of limitations. A statute of limitations refers to the time limit to when a claim can be filed or a person can be charged after an alleged wrongdoing. A statue of limitations, on the other hand, refers to the fact that no matter how much time has passed, progressives will still judge the actions of historical figures using current standards, and will decide whether or not to remove a statue by limiting morality to contemporary rather than historical conceptions.
So while Penn was one of the most egalitarian figures when it came to Native Americans, that is still not enough for today’s progressives. They believe Penn must be brought down as a bygone relic of a dark age rather than seen as a symbol of tolerance. They believe that that history is inherently “progressive”: first people were in the dark times, then they were enlightened, and history is always in a state of melioration where every new step leads everyone into a more glorious future. The slippery slope is slippery indeed.
Understanding this view of history is crucial to understanding the progressive mindset. Whereas some people think of history as cyclical, with ebbs and flows and highs and lows, progressives believe history is a forward arrow with a utopia at the end, and that once the perfect world happens, they will be vindicated as being on the “right side of history”.
Today’s progressives are free to build statues of their current heroes. In another hundred years, should progressives get their way, the new progressives will demand that the old 100-year-old statues must be smashed for not meeting the standards of the new progressive goal. Thus, to progressives, all statues are statues of limitations. What’s progressive today may be what’s backwards a few years from now. Erect one today, have it toppled later when new standards come in. Who knows what the future holds?
It's a great article, but I think it's missing a key point.
We're living through a socialist cultural revolution. Erasing history is a means of seizing power and redefining the culture.
We're being shaped as a country and as a people to wipe out our roots so the soul of America can be reborn as a totalitarian, international, socialist vassal state.
We said they wouldn't stop with Confederates, and this is why. They won't stop erasing everything that represents our roots, because those are white men and the socialists hate white men.
Funny that you mention the Puritans, because Woke Progressivism while Marxist in nature, is also Calvinistic in its foundation. John Calvin believed that an "elect" were created by god, preordained before birth as his "Chosen," with the rest of mankind being the eternal damned, no good deed or act could change their fate.
Calvinists are the modern-day Presbyterians, with other Protestant sects also influenced by this philosophy like Baptists, Methodists, Church of Christ, the Congregational Church, etc.. Their religious fervor, their castigation of the "un-elect," and their intense need to burn anyone who does not agree with them as a witch has never left.
Many of today's White "progressives" are the secular remnants of John Calvin's flock, former Presbyterians and Methodists, I know many of them. They are despicable people, incapable of any meaningful thought or authentic self expression. The Woke/Progressive/Marxist religion is also the Presbyterian/Calvinist religion, only now they are "secular humanists."
I can see them persecuting Quakers, the shear jealousy of anyone authentically just or good would make every true Presbyterian explode in jealous rage. They are despicable people, and have not changed a bit since the day they landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts -