The View from Woodrow Wilson

I’m a certified Woodrow Wilson hater, and when the left at Princeton demanded a few months ago that Wilson’s name be stripped from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs because of his racism, I thought of printing up a bumper sticker: “Conservative: Hated Woodrow Wilson before it was cool.”

But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. From an 1889 essay entitled “Nature of Democracy in the United States,” Wilson says:

The country is now older than it was when Andrew Jackson delighted in his power, and few can believe that it would again approve or applaud childish arrogance and ignorant arbitrariness like his. . .

Hat tip: Charles Rubin, who adds: “Many ironies in this coming from Wilson, of course, but still. .  . Oh well.”

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