Are All Empires Bad?
Arguments over how we remember the past will not be resolved by simplistic slogans or knocking down statues.
Rhodes must fall. Churchill must fall. Queen Victoria must fall. Are there any statues of Gordon or Kipling still standing? If so, they must fall too. Not, as Alex von Tunzelmann argued recently, because empires rise and fall and all rulers end up like Shelley's Ozymandias, as trunkless legs of stone, but because a vociferous and sanctimonious student movement, with minimal public support, has decreed that they must.
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