Cutler decries Biden administration attempt to cancel William Penn

January 8, 2024

HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler (R-Lancaster) made the following statement on the decision by the Biden administration to attempt to cancel William Penn by permanently removing his statue from Welcome Park in Philadelphia as part of an effort to make the park more inclusive:

“The decision by President Biden and his administration to try and cancel William Penn out of whole cloth is another sad example of the left in this country scraping the bottom of the barrel of wokeism to advance an extreme ideology and a nonsensical view of history.

“The Penn Treaty was historic. Not just in its occurrence, but in the mutual respect shown between Penn and Native tribes. As Voltaire so aptly put it, the Penn Treaty was the only treaty with Native Americans ‘never sworn to or broken.’ In fact, it was Penn’s commitment to the Quaker principle of pacifism that led to a long and lasting peace between Native Americans and settlers in Pennsylvania.

“This issue is also deeply personal to me. The first Cutlers came to Pennsylvania in 1685 on the ship Rebekah, not long after Penn’s arrival in 1682. They came to Pennsylvania because they were Quakers who shared Penn’s view of religious tolerance and peace.

“To remove Penn’s statue to create a more inclusive environment takes absurd and revisionist view of our state’s history and further seems to serve no purpose other than to check a box for an increasingly dangerous radicalism infiltrating today’s left wing political agenda.”

Republican Leader Bryan Cutler
100th Legislative District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Media Contact: Jason Gottesman
717-512-0620
jgottesman@pahousegop.com
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