Trump’s 1776 Commission slams schools for trying to paint the US as an ‘evil country’ with ‘distorted histories’ on slavery, defends the Founding Fathers and urges teachers to reject ‘activist propaganda’ in MLK Day report
- The Trump administration’s 1776 Commission has slammed what it calls ‘re-education attempts’ that re-frame the United States as ‘an evil country’
- The commission released a scathing 45-page report on Monday – MLK Day
- President Donald Trump created the commission last September to promote ‘patriotic education’ amid nationwide racial injustice protests
- Released hours before Trump leaves office, the report says that ‘deliberately destructive scholarship shatters the civic bonds that unite all Americans’
- It also calls on schools to ‘reject any curriculum that promotes one-sided partisan opinions, activist propaganda, or factional ideologies’
- The report vehemently denies the charge the Founding Fathers were hypocrites for preaching equality while keeping slaves themselves
- It also compares ideological division in the US today to those in the Civil War
- The report argues that identity politics are ‘the opposite of [Martin Luther] King’s hope that his children would “live in a nation where they will not be judged”
The Trump administration’s 1776 Commission has slammed what it calls ‘re-education attempts’ that re-frame the United States as ‘an evil country’ in a scathing report released on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The 45-page document blasts ‘destructive scholarship’ that the commission says misrepresents the history of slavery and racial discrimination in the nation’s schools and colleges.
It also likened American liberals to the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, who the commission said ‘sought to centralize power under the management of so-called experts.’
‘States and school districts should reject any curriculum that promotes one-sided partisan opinions, activist propaganda, or factional ideologies that demean America’s heritage, dishonor our heroes, or deny our principles,’ the authors of the report urge.
President Donald Trump created the commission last September to promote ‘patriotic education’ amid nationwide racial injustice protests. He said at the time that American heritage was under assault by revolutionary fanatics and called for a ‘pro-American’ curriculum.
The panel, he said, would be tasked with encouraging educators to teach students ‘about the miracle of American history’ and plan for the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Released just two days before Trump leaves office, Monday’s report says that ‘deliberately destructive scholarship shatters the civic bonds that unite all Americans. It silences the discourse essential to a free society by breeding division, distrust, and hatred among citizens.
‘And it is the intellectual force behind so much of the violence in our cities, suppression of free speech in our universities, and defamation of our treasured national statues and symbols.’
Earlier Monday, Trump signed an executive order to establish a ‘Garden of American Heroes’ to honor a hodgepodge of figures including Thomas Jefferson, Kobe Bryant, Grover Cleveland and Alex Trebek.
President Donald Trump created the commission last September to promote ‘patriotic education’ amid nationwide racial injustice protests
The 45-page document (above, in part) blasts ‘destructive scholarship’ that it says misrepresents the history of slavery and racial discrimination
Protesters attempt to pull down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square near the White House on June 22
The 1776 Commission’s report comes as an apparent counter to The New York Times’ Pulitzer-winning ‘1619 Project,’ which highlights the long-term consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans. Speaking last fall, Trump called the project ‘toxic propaganda.’
Throughout Monday’s report, the commission vehemently denounces the charge that America’s Founding Fathers were hypocrites for preaching the importance of equality in the US Constitution while still holding slaves themselves.
‘This charge is untrue, and has done enormous damage, especially in recent years, with a devastating effect on our civic unity and social fabric,’ the report says, adding: ‘Many Americans labor under the illusion that slavery was somehow a uniquely American evil.’
The commission argues that, in fact, ‘The foundation of our Republic planted the seeds of the death of slavery in America,’ and said the issue needs to be ‘seen in a much broader perspective’, including ‘the unfortunate fact’ that slavery ‘has been more the rule than the exception throughout human history.’
‘Historical revisionism that tramples honest scholarship and historical truth, shames Americans by highlighting only the sins of their ancestors, and teaches claims of systemic racism that can only be eliminated by more discrimination, is an ideology intended to manipulate opinions more than educate minds,’ the report states.
The report, which comes just two weeks after supporters of President Trump stormed the US Capitol, compares the ideological divisions in America today to those experienced during the Civil War.
‘Americans are deeply divided about the meaning of their country, its history, and how it should be governed. This division is severe enough to call to mind the disagreements between the colonists and King George, and those between Confederate and Union forces during the Civil War,’ the report says.
The authors of the document also argue that the ‘Civil Rights Movement was almost immediately turned to programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the founders,’ specifically criticizing affirmative action policies.
‘Today, far from a regime of equal natural rights for equal citizens, enforced by the equal application of law, we have moved toward a system of explicit group privilege that, in the name of “social justice,” demands equal results and explicitly sorts citizens into “protected classes” based on race and other demographic categories,’ the report says.
‘Eventually this regime of formal inequality would come to be known as “identity politics.”‘
Read the report in full:
Throughout Monday’s report, the commission vehemently denounces the charge that America’s founding fathers were hypocrites for preaching the importance of equality in the US Constitution while still holding slaves themselves
The 1776 Commission’s report comes as an apparent counter to The New York Times’ Pulitzer-winning ‘1619 Project,’ which highlights the long-term consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans
The commission was chaired by Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn, a staunch Trump ally. He drew criticism for comments he made in 2013 when he said state officials had visited Hillsdale to see whether enough ‘dark ones’ had enrolled. Other members include Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist, and Trump’s former domestic policy adviser, Brooke Rollins.
The report argues that identity politics are ‘the opposite of [Martin Luther] King’s hope that his children would “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”‘
Feminists were also criticized by the commission in the report. The adoption of ethnic and racial identities in American life was also panned, with the commission arguing that they were constructed by ‘activists.’
‘A radical women’s liberation movement reimagined America as a patriarchal system, asserting that every woman is a victim of oppression by men. The Black Power and black nationalist movements reimagined America as a white supremacist regime,’ the report says.
‘Meanwhile, other activists constructed artificial groupings to further divide Americans by race, creating new categories like “Asian American” and “Hispanic” to teach Americans to think of themselves in terms of group identities and to rouse various groups into politically cohesive bodies.
The report continues: ‘While not as barbaric or dehumanizing, [identity politics] creates new hierarchies as unjust as the old hierarchies of the antebellum South, making a mockery of equality with an ever-changing scale of special privileges on the basis of racial and sexual identities.’
The report argues that identity politics are ‘the opposite of [Martin Luther] King’s hope that his children would “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”‘
The report compares the ideological divisions in America today to those experienced during the Civil War (pictured: Anti-Trump protesters march around downtown DC on August 30)
The report was released less than two weeks after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an insurrection spurred by the president
American universities, the commission claims, are ‘hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that combine to generate in students and in the broader culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright hatred for this country.’
The commissions further states their belief that ‘states and school districts should reject any curriculum that promotes one-sided partisan opinions, activist propaganda, or factional ideologies that demean America’s heritage, dishonor our heroes, or deny our principles.’
The commission was chaired by Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn, a staunch Trump ally. He drew criticism for comments he made in 2013 when he said state officials had visited Hillsdale to see whether enough ‘dark ones’ were enrolled
They also declare that ‘educators must convey a sense of enlightened patriotism that equips each generation with a knowledge of America’s founding principles, a deep reverence for their liberties, and a profound love of their country.’
The commission does not have authority to enforce the recommendations it has made to educators.
The release of their report came with hours of Trump signing an executive order to create a ‘Garden of American Heroes’, that would feature a hodgepodge of figures ranging from Thomas Jefferson, to late Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek.
The executive order contains no funding nor even information on a location where the garden would be constructed – assuming successor Joe Biden wants to proceed with the project that Trump first revealed as pushback against street protests.
Trump first announced the idea after summer protests following the death of George Floyd. He laced the order issued Monday with rhetoric blasting ‘dangerous anti-American extremism that seeks to dismantle our country’s history, institutions, and very identity.’
‘The heroes of 1776 have been desecrated, with statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin vandalized and toppled,’ he said in the order.
He did not mention the events of January 6, when a MAGA mob invaded the Capitol and his supporters smashed windows, broke into the House and Senate chamber, and some climbed statues and posed with statues – covering some in Trump paraphernalia.
Trump issued the order with just days left in office
The order identifies dozens of specific people in American history and culture who would be honored in the sculpture garden.
Some have a personal connection to the president, like Whitney Houston, who was photographed with him in the 80s.
Others died recently, like longtime ‘Jeopardy!’ host Alex Trebek and basketball great Kobe Bryant, who died tragically in a helicopter accident in May.
The list includes some Democrats, including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Despite her dying wish, Trump and the GOP Senate rushed to confirm Ginsburg’s successor, Justice Amy Coney Bryant, in the final weeks before the election.
The Biden transition did not respond to a request for comment on whether the new administration would keep or scrap plans for Trump’s hero garden.
Trump’s list includes several significant Americans who owned slaves – in pushback at what Trump and his allies sometimes describe as ‘cancel culture.’ Trump vetoed a Defense bill in part over provisions to rename bases that bear names of confederate generals.
The garden would have statutes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, along with Christopher Columbus, who never set foot in the continental U.S. but did land at Puerto Rico.
The list includes Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who also inherited and kept his family’s slaves at the plantation he owned. Trump in September blasted Biden for not opposing the effort by community leaders to take down a statue of Rodney located in his home town of Wilmington.
‘Joe Biden said nothing as to his home state’s history and the fact that it was dismantled dismembered, and a founding father’s statue was removed,’ said Trump in September.
Other names on the list could have been plucked from history books and lists of figures in 20th century popular culture. They include conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Grover Cleveland, political theorist of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, and Charlton Heston.
WHO MADE THE CUT TO BE IN TRUMP’S ‘GARDEN OF HEROES’
Ansel Adams
John Adams
Samuel Adams
Muhammad Ali
Luis Walter Alvarez
Susan B. Anthony
Hannah Arendt
Louis Armstrong
Neil Armstrong
Crispus Attucks
John James Audubon
Lauren Bacall
Clara Barton
Todd Beamer
Alexander Graham Bell
Roy Benavidez
Ingrid Bergman
Irving Berlin
Humphrey Bogart
Daniel Boone
Norman Borlaug
William Bradford
Herb Brooks
Kobe Bryant
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Sitting Bull
Frank Capra
Andrew Carnegie
Charles Carroll
John Carroll
George Washington Carver
Johnny Cash
Joshua Chamberlain
Whittaker Chambers
Johnny ‘Appleseed’ Chapman
Ray Charles
Julia Child
Gordon Chung-Hoon
William Clark
Henry Clay
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Roberto Clemente
Grover Cleveland
Red Cloud
William F. ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody
Nat King Cole
Samuel Colt
Christopher Columbus
Calvin Coolidge
James Fenimore Cooper
Davy Crockett
Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.
Miles Davis
Dorothy Day
Joseph H. De Castro
Emily Dickinson
Walt Disney
William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan
Jimmy Doolittle
Desmond Doss
Frederick Douglass
Herbert Henry Dow
Katharine Drexel
Peter Drucker
Amelia Earhart
Thomas Edison
Jonathan Edwards
Albert Einstein
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Duke Ellington
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Medgar Evers
David Farragut
Marquis de La Fayette
Mary Fields
Henry Ford
George Fox
Aretha Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Milton Friedman
Robert Frost
Gabby Gabreski
Bernardo de Gálvez
Lou Gehrig
Theodor Seuss Geisel
Cass Gilbert
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
John Glenn
Barry Goldwater
Samuel Gompers
Alexander Goode
Carl Gorman
Billy Graham
Ulysses S. Grant
Nellie Gray
Nathanael Greene
Woody Guthrie
Nathan Hale
William Frederick ‘Bull’ Halsey, Jr.
Alexander Hamilton
Ira Hayes
Hans Christian Heg
Ernest Hemingway
Patrick Henry
Charlton Heston
Alfred Hitchcock
Billie Holiday
Bob Hope
Johns Hopkins
Grace Hopper
Sam Houston
Whitney Houston
Julia Ward Howe
Edwin Hubble
Daniel Inouye
Andrew Jackson
Robert H. Jackson
Mary Jackson
John Jay
Thomas Jefferson
Steve Jobs
Katherine Johnson
Barbara Jordan
Chief Joseph
Elia Kazan
Helen Keller
John F. Kennedy
Francis Scott Key
Coretta Scott King
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Russell Kirk
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Henry Knox
Tadeusz Kościuszko
Harper Lee
Pierre Charles L’Enfant
Meriwether Lewis
Abraham Lincoln
Vince Lombardi
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Clare Boothe Luce
Douglas MacArthur
Dolley Madison
James Madison
George Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
William Mayo
Christa McAuliffe
William McKinley
Louise McManus
Herman Melville
Thomas Merton
George P. Mitchell
Maria Mitchell
William ‘Billy’ Mitchell
Samuel Morse
Lucretia Mott
John Muir
Audie Murphy
Edward Murrow
John Neumann
Annie Oakley
Jesse Owens
Rosa Parks
George S. Patton, Jr.
Charles Willson Peale
William Penn
Oliver Hazard Perry
John J. Pershing
Edgar Allan Poe
Clark Poling
John Russell Pope
Elvis Presley
Jeannette Rankin
Ronald Reagan
Walter Reed
William Rehnquist
Paul Revere
Henry Hobson Richardson
Hyman Rickover
Sally Ride
Matthew Ridgway
Jackie Robinson
Norman Rockwell
Caesar Rodney
Eleanor Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Jonas Salk
John Singer Sargent
Antonin Scalia
Norman Schwarzkopf
Junípero Serra
Elizabeth Ann Seton
Robert Gould Shaw
Fulton Sheen
Alan Shepard
Frank Sinatra
Margaret Chase Smith
Bessie Smith
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Jimmy Stewart
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Gilbert Stuart
Anne Sullivan
William Howard Taft
Maria Tallchief
Maxwell Taylor
Tecumseh
Kateri Tekakwitha
Shirley Temple
Nikola Tesla
Jefferson Thomas
Henry David Thoreau
Jim Thorpe
Augustus Tolton
Alex Trebek
Harry S. Truman
Sojourner Truth
Harriet Tubman
Dorothy Vaughan
C. T. Vivian
John von Neumann
Thomas Ustick Walter
Sam Walton
Booker T. Washington
George Washington
John Washington
John Wayne
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Phillis Wheatley
Walt Whitman
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Roger Williams
John Winthrop
Frank Lloyd Wright
Orville Wright
Wilbur Wright
Alvin C. York
Cy Young
Lorenzo de Zavala
Theodore Roosevelt
Betsy Ross
Babe Ruth
Sacagawea
Some names hint at the story of the coronavirus pandemic that rocked Trump’s presidency and the nation. Jonas Salk, considered the father of the modern vaccine; Johns Hopkins, who was revealed to have owned slaves and whose namesake university has catalogued the world’s 2 million deaths from the virus; and Walter Reed, an Army physician who studied disease transmission whose name adorns the military hospital where Trump got treated for the disease.
The language of the White House order states that ‘The National Garden should be composed of statues, including statues …’ meaning those on the list would get in.
‘In short, each individual has been chosen for embodying the American spirit of daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love. Astounding the world by the sheer power of their example, each one of them has contributed indispensably to America’s noble history, the best chapters of which are still to come,’ it says.
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