You just _knew_ this was coming sooner or later. Indeed, I'm surprised it wasn't sooner. But we will not buckle; rather, we shall prevail!

First of two WSJ Opinion pieces I will post before the traditional editorial.

<< Censoring the Pilgrims
The left wants to cancel the WSJ’s annual Thanksgiving editorials.

By The Editorial Board
Nov. 22, 2021

No doubt it was only a matter of time. The progressives have come for our annual Thanksgiving editorials. They won’t succeed, but we thought we’d share the tale with readers for an insight into the politicization of everything, even Thanksgiving.

Since 1961 we’ve run a pair of editorials written by our former editor Vermont Royster. The first is a historical account about the Pilgrims in 1620 as related by William Bradford, a governor of Plymouth Colony. The second is a contemporary contrast from the mid-20th century about the progress a prosperous America has made that we can all be thankful for.

The editorials are popular with readers, who tell us they appreciate the sentiments about hardship and gratitude during what should be a unifying national holiday. For decades we’ve run them with nary a discouraging word.

But we live in a new era when the left sees nearly everything through the reductive lens of identity politics. It sees much of American history as a racist project that should be erased. This is the motivation of a petition campaign to censor the Pilgrim editorial.

The effort comes via Change.org, a website that calls itself “the world’s platform for change.” It mobilizes campaigns to promote progressive causes. The petition driver is Randy Kritkausky, an author who writes about Native Americans. His petition has gathered some 50,000 signatures and here’s its argument:

“Tell the Wall Street Journal that it’s 2021. It’s time to stop publishing 17th century racism.

“The [editorial] includes lines such as, ‘What could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men?’ The pilgrim writes that they were separate from ‘all the civil parts of the world.’

“The Wampanoag indigenous people saved the colonists from starvation and death, a story that our nation now celebrates as Thanksgiving. But even more than this disturbing lack of gratitude is the notion that there were no civilized people in the Americas. This world view generated centuries of genocidal practices that eliminated 90% of the indigenous population, my ancestors.

“And indigenous people are still experiencing lethal prejudice. Just this year we learned about more than 1,300 unmarked graves at residential schools in Canada. We know that thousands of indigenous children died of abuse, neglect and disease through the residential school system.”

We think that’s a willful misreading of the editorial, which recounts the bravery and trials of the Pilgrims as they sought a better life in a new land. The petition makes a historical point, which is fair enough, but then wraps it in the grievances of contemporary politics to claim the editorial is racist. Somehow the Pilgrims and their chronicler share responsibility for genocide. The point of the statement and petition isn’t to promote debate but to shut it down.

We don’t mind giving critics a chance to make their case, but we won’t bend to political demands for censorship. We will run the editorials as usual this week.

Appeared in the November 23, 2021, print edition. >>