Jan. 09, 2024
HARRISBURG – The National Park Service this week announced it will not pursue plans to remove William Penn’s statue from its Philadelphia location at Waterfront Park due to public backlash over the initial plan to remove it.
Rep. Dave Zimmerman (R-Lancaster/Berks) wrote the following column in response to the entire episode:
Who would have thought that Dylan Mulvaney and William Penn had much in common?
Mulvaney, a trans Tik Tok personality, was part of an ad campaign that backfired and brought Bud Light to its knees due to customer disapproval with the advertising campaign. The brainchild of this campaign is Alissa Heinerscheid.
Heinerscheid attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 2006. She also took courses in psychology, sociology and statistics.
Now, we only need to reflect on the recent testimony of the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) before the U.S. House of Representatives to understand what is going on.
In the midst of the shameful, and oftentimes violent, demonstrations against Israel and against Jewish students, the presidents of Penn and Harvard were asked to condemn calls for genocide by their students. All three presidents refused to say such behavior violated their schools’ rules of conduct to the point of saying it depended on the “context” and “if the speech turned into conduct, it would be considered harassment.”
Now, we have Ms. Heinerscheid at Bud Light. Her idea to base a marketing campaign on an obscure and divisive figure was not to ruin Bud Light. I think she actually believed she was doing the right thing for the company.
And that’s the problem. These elite colleges – indeed, many of our institutions of higher learning – instill and inculcate this bizarre thinking. And they do it with malice. These “schools” are filled with tenured professors making hundreds of thousands of dollars whose goal in life is to tear down American society and culture. To revise it in a perverse way that is sure to cause more strife and division.
The National Park Service’s effort to remove William Penn’s statue from its place on the Philadelphia waterfront was born by employees within the National Park Services (NPS), among them Marilou Ehrler, NPS Historical Architect and graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. This is what they have been trained to do by Harvard, UPenn, MIT, et.al.
The most egregious part of this is that Penn’s vision for a land with equality and religious freedom was established before America was even a thought in the Founding Fathers’ minds. That makes Penn’s legacy an even larger target – doing so would besmirch and remove the very bedrock of our Constitution.
Was Penn perfect? No. Who among us is? But I have met descendants of the actual Lenape chief painted on the wall of the hall of the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives. It takes up an entire section of the wall on its own. It is Penn shaking hands in agreement with the chief to purchase some land and to live in harmony. The Lenape descendants are very proud of this painting and the peace treaty it depicts.
The reality is America is more equal and freer today than it ever has been with respect to race and gender and myriad other left-wing talking points.
In 2001, an extremist movement called the Taliban destroyed two 6th century Buddha statues — one 180 feet tall and the other 124 feet tall. The area was a holy site for Buddhists on the ancient trading route between China and Europe known as the Silk Road.
Despite international pressure, the Taliban declared them un-Islamic and brought the statues down using heavy explosives. Destroying past history to establish their own version of events is what tyrants do.
Currently, the NPS has announced due to public outcry, it will not be removing Penn’s statue. But the fact is, the men and women our elite colleges have produced will be back for Penn’s head sooner or later. It is what they have been trained to do.
The fact is we need to preserve the truth of our history and stop the woke ideology that has infiltrated our culture.
Representative Dave Zimmerman
99th Legislative District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Media Contact: Charles Lardner
717.260.6443
clardner@pahousegop.com
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