Telling America’s story is too important to leave to radicals



Every nation has a story. Recently, the Washington Post described the Smithsonian Institution, with its 21 museums and 14 educational and research centers, as “the official keeper of the American Story.” What kind of story have the Smithsonian museums been telling about our country?

On March 27, President Trump issued an executive order arguing that there has been a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” and promote a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” This “revisionist movement” casts American “founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” A White House fact sheet calls for “revitalizing key cultural institutions and reversing the spread of divisive ideology.” Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, will lead the administration’s efforts.

The debate over the Smithsonian is only one front in a wide-ranging, ongoing conflict over first principles and concepts of justice (equality versus equity).

Critics of the executive order responded quickly. They maintain that the Trump administration wants to “whitewash the past and suppress discussion of systemic racism.” The Smithsonian, the critics contend, is led by nonpartisan professionals whose aim is to be truthful and inclusive and tell the whole story of America, including groups that have been neglected in the past. Professor David W. Blight of Yale, president of the Organization of American Historians, complained that the executive order is a “laughable thing until you realize what their intent actually is and what they’re doing is trying to erode and then obliterate what we have been writing for a century.”

Is there a divisive ideology being taught, as the Trump administration maintains, and if so, what is it? What have university professors been writing about America, if not “for a century,” for at least the past decade? Professor Blight’s OAH revealed its ideology by embracing the New York Times’ 1619 Project, declaring:

The 1619 Project’s approach to understanding the American past and connecting it to newly urgent movements for racial justice and systemic reform point to … the ways in which slavery and racial injustice have and continue to profoundly shape our nation. Critical race theory provides a lens through which we can examine and understand systemic racism and its many consequences.

What do we call the ideology that, as the OAH explains, “acknowledges and interrogates systems of oppression — racial, ethnic, gender, class — and openly addresses the myriad injustices that these systems have perpetuated through the past and into the present”?

As most are aware, the ideology expressed by the OAH is dominant in universities today. It views American history negatively through the lens of “oppressors” (white males) versus “oppressed” and “marginalized groups.” This ideology has been variously called political correctness, identity politics, social justice, and wokeness. We could use Wesley Yang’s term “successor ideology,” meaning it is the new, radical, left-wing ideological successor to the old patriotic liberalism of politicians like Walter Mondale and historians like Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Not surprisingly, given its pre-eminence in America’s universities, this divisive “successor ideology” is at the heart of the worldview propounded by the leaders of the Smithsonian.

Something rotten in the Smithsonian

The current secretary of the Smithsonian is Lonnie G. Bunch III, who is adept at dealing with donors, stakeholders, and Republican congressional appropriators. His language is mostly measured and reasonable. He talks in terms of truth, nuance, complexity, and nonpartisanship. But in reality, Bunch is a partisan progressive, a skilled cultural warrior, and a promoter of the leftist “successor ideology.”

Bunch partnered with and promoted the biased 1619 Project, which asserts that slavery is the alpha and omega of the American story and that maintaining slavery was a primary motivation for some American colonists who joined the revolutionary cause. The architect of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, bragged that it “decenters whiteness,” and she denounced her liberal academic critics as “old white male historians.”

Nevertheless, Bunch proclaimed, “I want the Smithsonian to legitimize important issues, whether it's 1619 or climate change.” Of the Smithsonian’s participation in the 1619 Project, he declared, “I was very pleased with it.” Bunch proudly noted that people “saw that the Smithsonian had fingerprints on [the 1619 Project]. And that to me was a great victory.”

Bunch pictures America as a nation in which systemic racism is pervasive. During the George Floyd riots, Bunch told the Atlantic, "It is really about systemic racism throughout, not just the police department, but many parts of the American system.”

Further, he made excuses for the violence in the summer of 2020, which resulted in more than a dozen Americans killed and between $1 and $2 billion worth of property damage:

How dare they loot. Well, that kind of protest is really one of the few ways the voiceless feel they have power. And while I am opposed to violent protests personally, I understand that frustration sometimes pushes you over the edge. I think what’s important for us to recognize is, let us not turn attention towards looting in a way that takes away what is the power of these protests.

Three years ago, the Smithsonian assisted in the creation of a new College Board AP course on African American Studies. Ethics and Public Policy Center scholar Stanley Kurtz has revealed how APAAS is a radical neo-Marxist, anti-American project that calls for the socialist transformation of the United States. APAAS is soaked in the tenets of critical race theory, flirts with supporting violence, and implicitly advocates dismantling the American way of life, including free-market capitalism. It is a curriculum where students learn from Frantz Fanon that America is a “monster” and from Aimé Césaire that Stalin’s Soviet Union was a model society. Nevertheless, the APAAS curriculum is promoted on the Smithsonian’s Learning Lab.

Under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida legislature passed the Stop Woke Act that bars APAAS from the state’s K-12 schools because it promotes the divisive concepts manifest in CRT. Lonnie Bunch and his close ideological ally Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, falsely accused DeSantis of ignoring African-American history. On the contrary, DeSantis created a new black history curriculum based on serious and accurate scholarship. In response to DeSantis’ opposition to APAAS, Bunch complained to Alexander:

I am upset because you know we were involved in helping [APAAS] and the notion that somehow simply having a course that forces us to understand complexity, nuance, and ambiguity is a problem, that’s a problem for all of America.

In truth, there is very little “complexity” and “nuance” in the Smithsonian-promoted APAAS. It is one-sided, partisan propaganda. Kurtz notes that APAAS is not in fact inclusive, ignoring the work of black conservatives “like Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, or Robert Woodson” or even “liberal black intellectuals, like Randall Kennedy or John McWhorter.”

Bunch often talks in terms of “nonpartisanship” and promoting the best of historical and cultural scholarship. But at the same time, he promotes the progressive left agenda, stating that the “job” of the National Museum of African American History and Culture is “really to create new generations of activists,” and “for me it really is about how … museums play a social justice role.”

Our story

To use one of Lonnie Bunch’s favorite terms, what is the “context” in which President Trump issued his executive order? It recognizes that a left-progressive cultural revolution (the “successor ideology”) has marched through our universities, schools, foundations, and museums, transforming the story of America into a tale of oppression and exploitation. The woke revolutionaries aim to “fundamentally transform the United States” from a nation based on a natural rights concept of the equality of citizenship to “equity,” a system of racial-ethnic-gender group quotas and group consciousness.

The debate over the Smithsonian is only one front in a wide-ranging, ongoing conflict over first principles and concepts of justice (equality versus equity). If the cultural revolutionaries are “transformationist,” in the sense that they aim to deconstruct the American way of life, the position articulated by Trump’s executive order is “Americanist,” in the sense that it represents a cultural counterrevolution that affirms America’s past and principles.

Are the Organization of American Historians and the current leadership of the Smithsonian right that America is a nation built on “slavery, exploitation, and exclusion”? Or is the American story what British writer Paul Johnson described as one of “human achievement without parallel,” the story “of difficulties overcome by skill, faith, and strength of purpose, and courage and persistence”? Was Johnson right when he wrote, “The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures” and that Americans “thrown together by fate in that swirling maelstrom of history” are “the most remarkable people the world has ever seen”?

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

The ONE way to STOP the left from ERASING America



Our memory is not only the key to who we are as individuals but to who we are as a society as well.

“Entities, which lose their memory — people, groups, churches, nations — lose not just the mere knowledge of their past of who they were or have been, but they also lose the knowledge of themselves, the knowledge of their purpose, of who they are, who they’re meant to be,” Glenn Beck explains, noting that this is a massive problem today, as “we are memory holing things.”

When the past is erased, “It leaves people open to manipulation” and to “being reprogrammed with lies by whatever bad actor wants to use them for their own purposes.”

This is the open intent of many on the left — which is made clear by movements like the 1619 project and Howard Zin.

“It’s the logic behind the many reimagining policies,” Glenn says, before playing a clip of Michelle Obama perfectly illustrating his point.

“We are going to have to make sacrifices, we are going to have to change our conversation. We’re going to have to change our traditions, our history. We’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation to provide the kind of future that we all want,” Obama told an audience.

“These stories that tell us why we’re here and what we’re here to do, we have new stories for you. Stories that will tell us we’re all born in sin, that we’re all irredeemably evil, that we should be torn down forever,” Glenn mocks.

The way we fight this is to make a true effort to remember where we came from.

“Memory requires a conscious effort, a choice, a ritual. It requires that a story be told over and over and over again,” Glenn says. “The first thing we have to do is know the truth and then stand up for the truth. Stand up to say, ‘No, you have no right to memory hole an event.’”


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Airbnb apologizes after '1830s slave cabin' was advertised as luxury bed and breakfast



Airbnb removed listings and apologized on Monday after a TikTok user complained that a "slave cabin" in Greenville, Mississippi, had been listed as a bed and breakfast.

Wynton Yates, a black lawyer from New Orleans, posted a video that went viral last week blasting the online rental app for listing the "Panther Burn Cottage" at Belmont Plantation. Screen captures taken by Yates showed the listing described as an "1830s slave cabin" that had also been used as a "tenant sharecroppers cabin" before being converted into a bed and breakfast.

"How is this okay in somebody's mind to rent this out — a place where human beings were kept as slaves — rent this out as a bed and breakfast?" Yates asked in the video.

 @lawyerwynton 

#airbnb this is not ok. #history #civilrights #americanhistory

 
 

"The history in this country is constantly being denied and now it's being mocked by turning into a luxurious vacation spot," Yates said after pointing out the rental featured running water and lighting fixtures, luxuries that were not enjoyed by the enslaved people once held there.

The video has been viewed more than 2.6 million times and led to a wave of backlash against Airbnb.

The San Francisco-based company apologized on Monday and announced that it is "removing listings that are known to include former slave quarters in the United States."

“Properties that formerly housed the enslaved have no place on Airbnb,” Airbnb spokesman Ben Breit said in a statement to the Washington Post. “We apologize for any trauma or grief created by the presence of this listing, and others like it, and that we did not act sooner to address this issue.”

The owner of the listing, Brad Hauser, said that he only recently acquired the property in July and that it had been a doctor's office, not slave quarters. He said the previous owner had made the "decision to market the building as the place where slaves once slept," a decision that Hauser, a white man, "strongly opposed."

“I am not interested in making money off slavery,” Hauser told the Washington Post, claiming he had been "misled" about the property and apologizing for "insulting African Americans whose ancestors were slaves.”

Airbnb and Booking.com have reportedly suspended advertising contracts with Belmont "pending further investigation" into the matter.

"I intend to do all I can to right a terrible wrong and, hopefully, regain advertising on Airbnb so The Belmont can contribute to the most urgent demand for truth telling about the history of the not only the South but the entire nation,” Hauser said in a statement.

EXPLAINED: No, Thomas Jefferson did NOT support slavery
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EXPLAINED: No, Thomas Jefferson did NOT support slavery

 

Texas GOP lawmaker refutes claims his bill would drop Ku Klux Klan, civil rights, and women's suffrage from curriculum



The author of a Texas bill that would restrict the teaching of critical race theory in schools said claims that his bill would strip lessons on the Ku Klux Klan, civil rights, and other topics from the state curriculum were outright false.

Sen. Bryan Hughes (R) responded to critics of his bill on "The Glenn Beck Radio Program" Wednesday, explaining that the legislation he's offering would not make a single change to requirements in Texas administrative code for the teaching of slavery, the civil rights movement, the Ku Klux Klan, and other topics Republicans have been accused of trying to "cancel" by passing bills banning critical race theory in schools.

"Anyone can go to Chapter 113, of the Texas administrative code. That's where our curriculum elements are found," Hughes told BlazeTV host Glenn Beck. "Chapter 113, Texas administrative code. That's before my bill. That's after my bill. It's still there, and you will find many specific references to difficult subjects, like slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, eugenics. Things like the women's suffrage movement. A lot of that, Dr. King, we adore and look up to Dr. King so much. You'll find many references to him, to Susan B. Anthony, to the civil rights movement. The underground railroad. The very things -- the very things that we're accused of removing — are specifically set out in the curriculum standards today."

Hughes' bill, S.B. 3, is legislation that would follow-up and amend a House bill signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in May that restricts the teaching of critical race theory in schools. The law specifically prohibits teaching that one race or sex is inherently superior to another; that an individual, by virtue of race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; that an individual bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of their race or sex; that the advent of slavery in the United States constituted the true founding of the nation; and other tenets of critical race theory that Republicans across the nation have sought to remove from school curriculums.

The House bill that became law was amended by Democrats to require teaching "the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong," along with readings related to "the civic accomplishments of marginalized populations," including Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and writings by Susan B. Anthony.

The Senate bill would amend the law to remove several of the specific requirements Democrats added, a change that Hughes explained was requested by teachers and the State Board of Education, who asked for the law to cover broad topics and let schools decide which specific documents they should teach.

But a report from the Huffington Post seized on S.B. 3 and accused Republicans of trying to "eliminate a requirement that public schools teach that the Ku Klux Klan and its white supremacist campaign of terror are 'morally wrong.'"

The report said that the "cut is among some two dozen curriculum requirements dropped from the new measure, along with studying Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech, the works of United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, Susan B. Anthony's writings about the women's suffragist movement, and Native American history."

What followed was a wave of backlash and outrage from journalists on social media falsely accusing Republicans of trying to ban teaching about the Ku Klux Klan.

"We've dealt with media bias for a long time. Everybody gets that. But to falsely state objective facts, and to do it again and again. And to have this echo chamber ... it is remarkable." Hughes said.

He told Beck that what S.B. 3 actually does is "teach our students to judge people, based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin."

"It specifically says, in Texas public schools we do not teach that one race is inherently superior to another. That one sex is inherently superior. It specifically rejects white supremacy, or any racial supremacy. Or inferiority. It also says, one race -- members of one race are not inherently racist, and unable to overcome their racism," Hughes said.

"Do we have problems in America's past? Of course. And we teach American history. And Texas history. Good, bad, and ugly. But we teach our students how we overcome it, by coming together as Americans, not by being racists," he added.

The lawmaker went on to criticize critical race theory as a "toxic, evil doctrine" that "attacks the very heart of the American dream."

"In critical race theory, they're teaching little white children that they should feel guilty about bad acts by previous generations of white folks," he said. "Even worse, they're telling little children, from the Nordic communities, little black children, brown children. They're telling them, oh, you can never make it in America. It's so against you. You'll always be second class.

"What a horrible message to teach those children. Let's teach them, that we can all succeed. Are there problems? Yes. We'll overcome them as Americans. But everyone gets a chance. Everyone can succeed in America. And critical race theory, as you said, undermines, the very heart of the American dream."

Phil Robertson: America needs more manliness, more boldness, more GRIT



"What in the world happened to America's manhood and its boldness?" Phil Robertson asked in the latest episode of "In the Woods with Phil."

"What America needs, simply put, is more manliness, more boldness, more grit. We need to look back, instead of trying to rewrite and erase our history," the "Duck Dynasty" patriarch said.

"This [country] started on the backs of hunters, fishermen, trappers. That's how we started. You look up 240 years later, and you're like, 'What in the world happened to America's manhood and its boldness?' Can't even stand a black cup of coffee these days," he added. "What we need are more men in America who tell it like it is. They do what is right no matter where they are. They are what they are. We're losing that at an alarming rate."

Watch the video below to hear Phil explain:


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South Carolina considers bill to require colleges and universities to teach America's founding documents



Lawmakers in South Carolina are nearing passage of a bill that would require all public college and university students in the state to study America's founding documents. While the legislation has broad support, some Democrats in the state House opposed the bill in committee, referring to it as "indoctrination" and suggesting that requiring schools to offer a course that teaches the U.S. Constitution and other documents is just "blowing smoke."

Senate Bill 38, the "Reinforcing College Education on America's Constitutional Heritage Act", or REACH Act, was introduced in the state Senate by Sen. Larry Grooms (R-Berkeley) to reform state education law. The bill would require all South Carolina public college students to take a three-credit hour class on American history, American government, or an equivalent course that requires at minimum reading the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

Grooms' bill would update and modernize existing state law that requires institutions of higher learning to teach a yearlong course on America's founding documents, a law that the bill's supporters say is largely not enforced. The existing law, which is 97 years old, mandates that students complete a "one year" class on America's founding documents and be examined on their "loyalty" to the United States.

The REACH Act would shorten the course requirement from one year to three credit hours, remove the "loyalty" provision — which is problematic for foreign students — and empower the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education to enforce the law.

The bill passed the state Senate in March in an unanimous roll call vote of 45-0. It will be considered in the state House as early as Wednesday this week after advancing through committee on March 16 over the objections of some Democrats.

State Rep. Michael Rivers (D-St. Helena Island) was one of the House Democrats who opposed the bill. Calling it "indoctrination," Rivers said, "we talk about America being built on God ... but until there's repentance there's no forgiveness of sins. And we can write the Federalist Papers, we can write whatever we want. But until there's some acknowledgement about the sins of the past we are just whistlin' Dixie."

Rivers suggested that requiring students to read the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, and other documents could perpetuate "falsehoods" about American history that could lead to "1861 again in South Carolina."

"This stuff in S. 38, what it's saying, is that we want to indoctrinate college students on their dime to what we think is important," Rivers said. "It's just blowing smoke."

State Rep. Garry Smith (R-Greenville), the REACH Act's chief sponsor in the House, told TheBlaze in an interview Monday that studying America's founding documents will ultimately make South Carolina students better citizens.

"An idea of liberty for all, that whole idea in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, those things are found in the Constitution. It flows, it goes together, it was meant to do that. And when we're looking at education in the United States and in South Carolina, we're looking at education to build good citizens who can function in our representative republic," said Smith, who is an affiliate professor of political science at North Greenville University.

By reading America's founding documents, he explained, students will be taught the ideas and principles that animate American government, ideas like federalism — how state governments have some powers under the Constitution that the national government must not infringe upon.

"We're in such danger right now of losing these ideas because you've got a Congress and an administration in Washington, D.C., that is looking to take those rights that under the Constitution were reserved for the states and for the people and make them federal rights. That's completely contrary to what's intended," Smith said.

"When you have citizens that don't understand that liberty for all — and they're thinking about equity instead of equality, and dividing us instead of uniting us, then we've got a real problem," he added.

THIS is why Dr. Fauci may be the ‘MOST DANGEROUS' bureaucrat in US history
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THIS is why Dr. Fauci may be the ‘MOST DANGEROUS' bureaucrat in US history

 
Insane John Adams Stories Not Taught In School (Pt.1)| C. Bradley Thompson | POLITICS | Rubin Report
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Insane John Adams Stories Not Taught In School (Pt.1)| C. Bradley Thompson | POLITICS | Rubin Report

 
DeAgostini/Getty Images

President Trump establishes '1776 Commission' to promote 'patriotic education' and counter attempts to 'distort' America's history



President Donald Trump established on Monday a new advisory commission to "promote patriotic education" and "protect America's founding" while countering educational attempts to describe America as a systemically racist country.

The 1776 Commission, as it is called, will aim to "improve understanding of the history and the principles of the founding of the United States among our Nation's rising generations," according to a White House news release.

Trump announced the forthcoming initiative in a speech in September, during which he denounced "cancel culture," critical race theory, and the New York Times' revisionist 1619 Project as "toxic propaganda" and "ideological poison."

During the speech, the president also connected recent violence stemming from Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots to "decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools."

An executive order establishing the commission noted that "in recent years, a series of polemics grounded in poor scholarship has vilified our Founders and our founding," leading many students to be "taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains."

"This radicalized view of American history lacks perspective, obscures virtues, twists motives, ignores or distorts facts, and magnifies flaws, resulting in the truth being concealed and history disfigured," the order added. "Failing to identify, challenge, and correct this distorted perspective could fray and ultimately erase the bonds that knit our country and culture together."

As a part of the order, the 20-member commission will be tasked with producing a report within a year recommending how America's founding principles can be integrated into the country's educational systems to "further the blessings of liberty and promote our continuing efforts to form a more perfect Union."

The order acknowledged that the federal government's role, however, is not to overstep its bounds but rather to preserve state and local control over instructional programs.

According to the White House news release, the commission will also offer recommendations for how the federal government can promote patriotic education at federal sites such as national parks and monuments and will create the "Presidential 1776 Award" to recognize student knowledge of America's founding.

The release noted that "fewer than one in six eighth graders have proficient knowledge of United States history according to the Nation's Report Card."

In a tweet on Monday, the president said: "Just signed an order to establish the 1776 Commission. We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students, and restore PATRIOTIC EDUCATION to our schools!"