(June 9) When the woke despoilers of history and reason try to cancel the legacy of one of the greatest liberalizers in Western civilization, they demonstrate a willful ignorance so deep as to be malevolent.
Sadly, the University of Liverpool has abjectly surrendered to the moronic mob. The university has agreed to remove the name of legendary 19th-century British Prime Minister William Gladstone, a Liverpool native, from one of its residence halls because Gladstone’s father owned slaves and, early in his distinguished career, Gladstone didn’t object. By this stunningly twisted illogic, women’s organizations should not honor suffragette leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton because her father, too, once owned slaves.
The mind reels.
For the uninitiated, Gladstone, who served four terms as prime minister, was so famous for being a champion of the working class and of equal opportunity that he became nicknamed “The People’s William.” He pushed for Irish home rule, expanded the legal rights of Irish tenant farmers, advocated increased pay for unskilled factory employees, strongly opposed most forms of colonialism and especially opposed the European rush to colonialize Africa, and did yeoman’s work for an organization finding safe and honest work for former prostitutes.
Gladstone also successfully pushed to extend voting rights to millions previously lacking the franchise, supported striking dockworkers, proposed an effort (long pre-Social Security) to figure out a way to provide income for former laborers too old to work, and pushed through a law requiring effective education for blind and deaf children.
Yet this is the sort of man the radicals would remove from history’s honor. A white, British defender of liberal and Victorian social values, he must, in their fevered minds, represent the enemy. Never mind historical accuracy. Never mind context. Never mind decency…
[For the rest of this column about the idiocies of “woke” radicals, please follow this link.]
