1776 Commission slams 're-education attempts' to frame US as 'evil'

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.

Source: Read Full Article

Previous post Wearing face masks does top the spread of Covid-19
Next post Sacramento deputy, K-9, suspect killed in shootout: officials