The William Penn statue in the center of
Welcome Park. Note the panels on the wall
behind, describing the achievements of his life.
The park service was also planning to “rehabilitate”
this as well.

Though the Biden administration and the National Park Service immediately backed down from its proposal to remove the statue of William Penn from the Pennsylvania park dedicated in 1982 to honor his memory, the very proposal proved without doubt how much the Democrats who dominate our government truly hate America, its founding, and everything it stands for.

First, let’s review the proposal that has now been dumped. According to the National Park Service press release issued on January 5th,

The proposed rehabilitation of Welcome Park includes expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia and was developed in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. The reimagined Welcome Park maintains certain aspects of the original design such as the street grid, the rivers and the east wall while adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches. The Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled. [emphasis mine]

In other words, a park built at the site of William Penn’s pioneer home and designed expressly to honor his achievements as the founder of Pennsylvania as a religious haven for all people was to be redesigned instead as a memorial to the primitive stone-age Indian tribes that once lived there, focusing instead on how Penn and the Quakers oppressed them by coming to America. And to rub salt in the wound, this change was to be done in connection with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.

As I said, the Democrats who dominate our federal bureaucracy as well as academia are our enemies. They truly intend to wipe any positive mention of America from every history book or place, and replace it with Marxist icons and false anti-American propaganda.

Very quickly there was an uproar against this plan. Even the Democrat governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, registered his disapproval with the park service and the Biden administration.

Thus, only three days after its publication the Park Service announced that the plan was being completely withdrawn, claiming (in what was almost certainly a lie) that it had been released prematurely.

Don’t put down your guard however. That announcement also said this:

The National Park Service (NPS) remains committed to rehabilitating Welcome Park as the nation prepares to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. [emphasis mine]

They fully intend to change things, and do so in line with the demands of those various Indian tribes. Without doubt those changes will sully Penn’s name (“rehabilate” him), and make him appear not as a supporter of religious freedom but as an oppressor of others.

There is a more fundamental lesson to take from this story than simply its ugly politics. It reveals starkly the true beliefs of Democrats, the federal bureaucracy, and the academics who advocate such things. They don’t simply wish to deepen our understanding of America’s past by looking at all sides of the story. No, that task was never necessary, because American culture from its beginning has always honestly struggled with its faults while celebrating its overall good works. The Civil War itself was a horrible example of Americans struggling with our country’s complex reality, and a victory for those good works.

No, the park service and the Biden administration are really only interested in telling one side, focusing entirely on the lie that America was always bad and evil, pushing a false history that says our heritage was nothing more that a bigoted and endless oppression of racial minorities.

They hate America. They are anti-American. They are a fifth column inside our country, dedicated to destroying it and replacing it with a Marxist dictatorship that favors some over others and puts power and control as its central tenet. It is time we not only recognized this, but say it bluntly to their face, over and over again.

More important, it is time that Americans of good will from all walks of life and all ethnic groups team up to reject these hateful thugs and to remove them from power as quickly as possible. They need to go, and they need to go fast.