Now the statue censors are going after … William McKinley?
The City Council of Arcata, Calif., has voted to remove the town’s most prominent statue on the grounds that it represents “historical pain” to Native Americans; local advocates claim the 25th president promoted “settler colonialism.”
It looks more like progressives with too much time on their hands looking to rally around a handy, if not very fact-based, cause.
Yes, McKinley’s time in office marked the end of the sovereign status of the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Seminole and Cherokee tribes — but that’s a modest footnote in the history of federal-Indian relations.
He also presided over the Spanish-American War, which left Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines as US possessions, as well as the peaceful annexation of Hawaii — which may make him an imperialist, but shouldn’t much matter to Native Americans.
Yet the small Humboldt County town (pop. 18,000) has no Confederate or Columbus monuments to remove, so Arcata’s activists apparently settled for the only available target — even though McKinley fought for the Union in the Civil War.
The search for grievances, it seems, can’t be allowed to fail.



