Lord Arthur James Balfour recognized what our activist class has failed to consider: that which has been stewarded for a generation cannot be cut down with an X-Acto knife. 

Earlier this month, an anti-Israel protester destroyed a 110-year-old portrait of Balfour at Cambridge University. The masked woman sprayed red paint over the portrait and slashed the canvas with a box cutter, first in a methodical cross and then in quick, indiscriminate movements until Balfour hung in tatters from his frame.