The Reviled Woodrow Wilson
6th June 2022
Woodrow Wilson can’t seem to catch a break. Since Princeton University’s 2020 decision to remove the name of the former president (both of the United States and the university) from its school of Public and International Affairs for his “racist thinking and policies,” other academic institutions have followed suit. An elementary school in Trenton, New Jersey, decided in May to drop his name because of Wilson’s “racist values.” Another school in San Leandro, California, made the same decision, as has a high school in our nation’s capital.
There’s more than a little irony here. Wilson, racist though he was, was also a leading champion of the progressive, globalist worldview shared by our technocratic elites. He pursued a policy of “Moral Diplomacy,” encouraging democratic reforms and American-assisted “self determination.” Our nation’s high-schoolers learn of his famous assertion in a 1917 speech to Congress that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”
Less well known is his role in the progressive project to refashion government into an administrative behemoth governed by unelected experts. In 1891, he wrote that “the functions of government are in a very real sense independent of legislation, and even constitutions.” In an even earlier 1886 essay, he declared, “The field of administration is a field of business. It is removed from the hurry and strife of politics; it at most points stands apart even from the debatable ground of constitutional study.” In other words, the very same diversity, inclusion, and equity technocrats that decry Wilson owe their esteemed status to him.
Arguably the most evil (with respect to effects; not the worst, Biden has a lock on that) President in U.S. history. In other words, the Platonic Ideal of a Democrat.