The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: Ptarmigan on November 28, 2015, 02:08:47 PM
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Dear Liberals, Stop Defending Racist Progressive Woodrow Wilson
https://reason.com/archives/2015/11/28/dear-liberals-stop-defending-racist-prog
Last week a group of students at Princeton University occupied the office of the school's president and demanded that the institution remove the name of Woodrow Wilson from all campus buildings and academic programs, including the elite Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Why? Because Wilson was a virulent racist who imposed white supremacist policies while serving as president of the United States. As one student protestor told The New York Times, "we think that you can definitely understand your history without idolizing or turning Wilson into some kind of god, which is essentially what they've done."
Not everyone is quite so eager to see Wilson knocked off his pedestal, however. Writing at Politico Magazine this week, left-wing New York University professor Jonathan Zimmerman attempted to defend the beleaguered 28th president by reminding the ungrateful student activists about Wilson's pioneering progressive agenda. Sure, Wilson may have been a racist, Zimmerman admitted, but "the Progressive doctrines espoused by Wilson" ushered in a new era of activist government that was ultimately "reflected" and enshrined in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Wilson was a founding father of modern liberalism, Zimmerman insisted, and therefore "deserves a good deal of credit" for improving the lives of "America’s poor and dispossessed, including minorities."
I never cease to be amazed when I encounter this sort of liberal apologia for Woodrow Wilson. This is the same Woodrow Wilson, after all, who imposed Jim Crow on the federal government, praised segregation, glorified the Ku Klux Klan, spied on innocent Americans, censored the mail, trashed the Bill of Rights, and imprisoned multiple critics for the "crimes" of giving speeches, writing editorials, and distributing pamphlets. As H.L. Mencken once remarked about the ugly record of another unlikely liberal hero, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., "If this is Liberalism, then all I can say is that Liberalism is not what it was when I was young."
Woodrow Wilson was an avowed and hard core racist as he was a "Progressive" (Regressive). He was really racist even in his days. He did more harm for Blacks. Also, the New Deal was harmful to Blacks.