Another misnomer: “Civics Secures Democracy Act”

More A F Branco cartoons at Creators.com

John Fonte at American Mind reports on yet more initiatives to erase America’s past history and culture with progressive ideology.  Here’s his closing:

Legislation currently before Congress would implement this woke revolution in history-civics education. It would implement the teaching of Critical Race Theory and de-legitimize America’s Founders, our principles, and our stories. The legislation is the Civics Secures Democracy Act introduced by Democrat Senator Chris Coons of Delaware and Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas.

The bill provides six billion dollars over six years in competitive grants to states, local school districts; nonprofits; and to university schools of education for teacher training. It requires a national test on history-civic knowledge that would be developed by educators chosen by the Biden Administration.

. . .

Across our nation, in promoting civic education, many in the Republican and conservative establishment seek “consensus” and “common ground” with the woke progressives. But what common ground is there with those who defame the founders as “enslavers”; portray America’s story as one of “systemic racism”; and reject the principle of human equality exemplified in the Declaration of Independence in favor of “equity” as manifested in the ubiquitous dogma of DEI?

Instead of playing a subordinate role in phony “consensus” projects dominated overwhelmingly by the progressive Left, conservatives should develop solid, accurate, patriotic curricular materials as a distinct alternative to the progressive narrative. This is already happening with Governor DeSantis’s reforms in Florida and the work of National Association of Scholars.

 At the end of the day, we must realize that this is not a simply an academic argument, or merely a policy dispute over history and civics education, but a life and death regime struggle over the American Way of Life.

Read the entire column here. This legislation, the Civics Secures Democracy Act, may be vulnerable to phone calls to Congress from outraged voters.  Go here to find your representative and here for your Senators.

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Thomas Jefferson: downright anti-American

 

Robert Spencer is the proprietor of Jihad Watch, a website that specializes in the histories and ideologies of Islam and jihad.  However, in his recent column for PJ Media, he reports on the politicization (i.e., going “woke”) of Thomas Jefferson’s legendary Virginia home, Monticello.  Mr. Spencer begins:

“Who controls the past controls the future,” writes George Orwell in 1984. “Who controls the present controls the past.” Were he with us today, Orwell would be getting tired of being right all the time, but he has just been proven right again: Thomas Jefferson’s famed mansion Monticello has been turned into a fount of woke propaganda that denigrates Jefferson and treats unsuspecting visitors to an over-the-top orgy of victimhood and white guilt regarding slavery. The Left hates America and wants very much for you to hate it, too.

. . .

Not surprisingly, “The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is run by a roster of big-money Dem donors and former Democratic officials.” Monticello’s descent “has largely been funded by left-leaning philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, who donated $20 million toward that effort in 2015. Rubenstein is “on the boards of the globalist World Economic Forum, China’s Tsinghua University, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others.” Now it’s beginning to become clear why all this is happening.

The endgame is not just to make Americans despise Thomas Jefferson, but to make the average American ashamed of being American. That’s what this has been about from first to last. . . .

What’s more, the reason why the Left hates him with such burning intensity is not that he was a slave owner. Leftists love Fidel Castro, who enslaved an entire nation. They love all manner of authoritarians, totalitarians, and mass murderers. They’ve never minded the eggs that have to be broken to make their socialist omelets.

No, the real reason why the Left hates Thomas Jefferson is for all the things for which he should rightly be celebrated: Because he fought against tyranny. Because he helped create a free republic. Because he placed statements in those founding documents that would ultimately lead multitudes of the citizens of the new nation to believe that slavery was wrong and immoral and give their lives to bring about its abolition.

Jefferson is just the sort of man whom the fascist thugs of Antifa, busy smearing ACAB on the sides of buildings and hurling obscenities at police in pursuit of their vision of socialist utopia, and their moneyed backers would despise and fear. They want a docile American populace, frightened into submission to their authoritarian vision. The example of Thomas Jefferson could inspire Americans instead to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to preserve our hard-won freedoms. Can’t have that. Jefferson’s name must be made anathema to Americans.

Howard Zinn would be proud (see here).  Read the full article here.

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On the Pledge of Allegiance

 

At American Thinker, Charlotte Cushman explains why students should have the opportunity to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom:

. . .

Should the Pledge be recited?  And should children be taught the Pledge of Allegiance?  Here is what I wrote to a group of teachers who were discussing whether or not a child should learn the Pledge of Allegiance:

There are a lot of lies being told about the United States and its history right now.  The goal is to get people to hate our country, divide us, and make our country and Western civilization fall.  (I have literally heard people say this.)  Our country was the first country on Earth that was created that recognized individual rights — that each individual had a right to pursue his/her own happiness as long as the rights of others were respected.  Before the creation of this country, people had to live their lives for a king or some other authority.  Slavery was common at that time in history, and while it took time for change to happen (as it always does), it was the idea in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal that led to the Civil War and ended slavery in this country.

I understand that some people think that teaching children the Pledge is a form of indoctrination.  Indoctrination is repeating an idea or belief to someone until they believe it.  As this idea or belief is repeated, no proof is given for it, and no questions or discussions are allowed.  The Pledge is not indoctrination if children are taught the accurate history of our country and understand the meaning of the pledge to our flag.  The United States flag is a symbol for freedom, and freedom is essential to life.  It stands for individual rights, and individual rights are essential in order to pursue happiness.  When I pledge to the flag, in my mind I know that I am pledging to the original ideals put forth by the founding fathers: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Therefore, it is logical to say that you're teaching children about the fidelity that the Pledge represents — the fidelity of the concept of individual rights.

By reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, Americans promise to be true to these ideals, not to take freedom for granted, and to remember the countless men, women, and children who have given their lives through the centuries so Americans can live peacefully today.  When children recite the Pledge, they are given the opportunity to think about their roles as citizens, the founding principles of their country, and may be incentivized to think more about the meaning and significance of the Pledge.  The Pledge can stir up curiosity regarding their country and the desire to learn more about early American history.

Only when a person understands the significance and profound meaning of freedom that America has provided can one feel a stab of pride and patriotism.  However, patriotism cannot be forced upon anyone.  Therefore, the recitation should not be compulsory, which means no punitive action should be taken against children who do not recite the Pledge.

. . .

She makes good points.  Full article is here.

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Land of Hope: book review

Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story 

by Wilfred M. McClay

Philip Tervian’s review at Commentary concludes:

. . . [McClay] begins at the beginning—the archaeological evidence of our aboriginal inhabitants—and like most American histories, McClay’s tends to pass a little quickly over the first century-and-a-half of European settlement. But this is a minor complaint. His description of America on the eve of revolution is perceptive and succinct, and capacious as well. The reader never doubts the author’s perspective on the colonists’ revolt, or British government in America, but he tells the story with illuminating clarity and, above all, fair-mindedness. The answer to ignorance is not indoctrination but knowledge.

This virtue in the writing of history is not necessarily self-evident. The American Revolution, like any such episode, was a complicated matter, reaching back in history and forward in effect; and both sides—one is tempted to say all sides—were benighted and heroic, generous and arbitrary, products of their various places and time. George Washington was not without his flaws, and the Loyalists were not without their reasons. McClay sets all this out in crisp detail, balancing his judgment in conjunction with the evidence, flattering his readers to draw their own conclusions.

Which is what distinguishes this from other history texts. The present sits not in judgment but inquiry. And to the extent that we can understand people and events in circumstances far removed from our own experience, the past is revealed in Land of Hope to the present, without prejudice. The dramas and their actors—the drafting of the Constitution, Andrew Jackson, westward expansion, John C. Calhoun, the Mexican War, Samuel Gompers, women’s suffrage, Woodrow Wilson, the Great Crash, Ronald Reagan—are given the chance to speak for themselves in explaining themselves to modern sensibilities.

This is especially useful in contending with subjects—slavery and its relative significance in national life, the Civil War and its aftermath, the condition of African Americans in their own country—that routinely disrupt the historical profession, and are just as routinely distorted by ideology. This is no small matter, and no small achievement. McClay’s skill in furnishing context to emotion, in introducing modern presumption to past evidence, puts the history of the American republic in a new light by revealing its inward and outward complexity. This makes Land of Hope important, compelling, essential reading.

“Nothing about America better defines its distinctive character than the ubiquity of hope,” he writes, “a sense that the way things are initially given to us cannot be the final word about them, that we can never settle for that.” I hope he’s right.

Land of Hope sounds like a must-read. Full review is here. Amazon listing is here.

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Re-writing History

 image credit: onenewsnow.com

Whether it’s Confederate monuments being torn down, or our language being corrupted into Orwellian terms, or educational institutions from K-12 to advanced learning becoming re-education centers of indoctrination, or jaw-dropping corruptions in the media and government at all levels, these are all interlocking pieces in a master plan. Thaddeus G. McCotter at American Greatness connects all the dots. He starts off: 

Some time ago, I noted the irreconcilable difference between the Left and the rest of America: the majority of our fellow citizens believe America is an inherently good nation that continues its pursuit of a more perfect union; the Left believes America is an inherently evil nation that must be transformed fundamentally into an oppressive socialist state—at best.

For the Left to win this existential argument, it must distort and revile America’s history to destroy the truth of American Exceptionalism. If the past is evil, the present has no choice but to reject America’s history and its defenders; and to embrace the dishonest leftist ideology and the agenda of those who loathe America.

This is a dangerous devolution of the classical American political paradigm, in which both antagonists, conservatives and liberals, agreed America was an exceptional, fundamentally decent nation but differed about how to effectuate a more perfect union. This devolution has several causes, but notable is the incestuous relationship between the leftist media and left-wing academics. 

. . .

What one can expect is this: the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project.”

According to Mara Gay of the New York Times’ editorial board, the 1619 Project “[i]n the days and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.”

. . .

Now one understands why the Left rejects the Betsy Ross flag as a symbol of hate. Yet the hate is theirs, not ours. Ergo, why would anyone who rejects the hateful Left subsidize it with their hard-earned money, be it in subsidizing the Left’s brainwashing emporiums or subscribing to its propagandizing fanzines? As the esteemed Thomas Sowell instructs: “We are among the biggest fools in history if we keep on paying people to make us hate each other.”

The entire article is here.

Related: Lest the reader despair, a Millenial named David Grasso gets it, and there’s hope for everyone. From Mr. Grassos’s New York Post article:

. . . The new crop of self-proclaimed socialist candidates is promising a smorgasbord of programs that are intended to get us out of our “struggle-bus” reality.

Given such a journey, it is easy to see why socialism seduces young Americans. We desperately need change if we are ever going to progress as a generation. The problem is, what the socialists are proposing — more government — is exactly the opposite of what we need. In fact, many of the most prominent obstacles we have faced are the result, at least in part, of heavy-handed government interference.

. . .

I understand why millennials are seduced by populist politicians who promise a better life, but they shouldn’t fall for it.

Growing government is expensive and inefficient, and the government machinery already in place is frequently dysfunctional and prone to be hijacked by special interests.

In the end, our generation will be liable for the staggering bill for these programs. Nothing is free, and working millennials will stand to lose trillions of dollars of wealth if we sleepwalk our way into socialism.

Truth is, young people need exactly the opposite of socialism — pro-growth policies and restrained, common-sense regulation. This will create more economic opportunities and more avenues into the middle class. Socialist policies will only choke economic opportunity and make our tough existence far worse.

Sometimes it’s helpful to read somebody else’s perspectives to prepare for your next conversation with a liberal.

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Historical (and historic) votes

A mini-history lesson via the Mama Grizzly : 

Do your friends and family know any of this?

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