Remember when then President Donald Trump warned that cancel culture would lead to the removal of statues and memorials of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson?
(In 2017 as Charlottesville prepared to remove Robert E. Lee’s statue, Trump tweeted that you “can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!”)
The statue of Thomas Jefferson in New York’s City Hall, seen at left, is a model of the bronze statue that sits in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
For more than 100 years, a 7-foot-tall statue of Thomas Jefferson has towered over members of the New York City Council in their chamber at City Hall, a testament to his role as one of the nation’s founding fathers and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.
The mania for tearing down statues and renaming streets is a sign that there may not be enough injustice today for social justice warriors. Thus they have to bring their sensibilities to the past. Who needs history?
Jefferson’s ownership of slaves will forever stain his character. He championed liberty and freedom, and helped establish a nation dedicated to those principles, yet he owned people — he lived grandly off their misery and that is something Americans never should forget.
So why keep the statue? Hmmm. Jefferson was a great man and U.S. president who made a young country better and stronger. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence, which included the phrase, “All men are created equal.” Yes, the slave-owning Jefferson failed miserably on that score, but that phrase changed the world.
Debra J. Saunders is a fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership. Contact her at dsaunders@discovery.org.
