Woke NJ students demand statue of slave owner come down (Opinion)

If today’s politically correct woke culture has you feeling socially claustrophobic you’re not alone. Here’s another example.

A signer of the Declaration of Independence was considered so important to Princeton, New Jersey a street was named after him, a school was named after him, and a 10-foot tall statue of him was erected on a 7-foot pedestal at Princeton University.

John Witherspoon.

He was after all once the president of the Ivy League school back when it was called the College of New Jersey. He was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. He was the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. He signed the Articles of Confederation. He worked towards ratification of the Constitution of the United States.

And he was a slave owner.

Keep in mind he was born in 1723, just shy of 300 years ago. Being woke to some things means being ignorant to others, such as judging a man by current-day standards who was born 300 years ago is absurd.

But that’s just what Princeton students are doing. They want the statue gone.

“We believe that paying such honor to someone who participated actively in the enslavement of human beings ... is today a distraction from the University’s mission.”

That comes from a petition that the university has taken seriously enough to now be taking public input on the matter. When the same university took Woodrow Wilson’s name off its school of public policy and off a residential hall the precedent was set that will no doubt lead to the removal of Witherspoon’s statue. Witherspoon’s name was already stripped from the middle school in Princeton. You can see where this will go.

One irony of all this is a black student attending Princeton University can’t truly make a case for how their life is still being repressed from the vestiges of slavery.

What’s the end game of all this history cleansing and virtue signaling? Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the very Declaration of Independence that Witherspoon signed, was also a slave owner. George Washington, known as the Father Of Our Country, owned slaves. Will some not rest until the first and third presidents’ names are banished from our culture?

I’m sick to death of social justice warriors and their phony causes. Judging historic figures by 2022 standards is foolish. I wonder what changes in law and culture will come about over the next three hundred years and how today’s woke Princeton students will themselves be judged then.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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