The frightening thing about UW-Madison professor Walter C. Stern’s column last Sunday, “To move ‘Forward,’ we must confront troubled past,” is not how he tortures history to fit his ideology. It’s that he teaches his identity politics to your children’s teachers and — one suspects — many of the late-night visitors to State Street and Capitol Square this long hot summer.
Stern justifies the toppling of Wisconsin’s iconic “Forward” statue because, “while the statue and the state motto it embodies represent progress, their vision of progress does not extend to all.”
Does the professor understand that forward is a direction, not a final destination. That progress is not perfection?
“I use ‘Forward’ in my UW-Madison classes,” he writes, “to help students grasp how celebrations of conquest and white male domination became embedded within the daily fabric of American life.”
Here we thought “Forward” represented a strong woman. No wonder UW-Madison students want to tear down Abraham Lincoln (a white male). Who replaces Old Abe? Al Sharpton?
Tenured professors such as Stern supply the intellectual apologia for the tear down of society. They sell plywood. Menards only stocks it. Tommy Thompson, you’ve got your work cut out for you as interim president of the University of Wisconsin System.