America will never compromise with the forces seeking to erase its history and redefine the country in their image, especially not when that compromise means handing over to them the education of our children.
President Trump’s Constitution Day address from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. was the most prominent recognition of this fact yet by an American public official.
It marks the end of the American people’s patience with decades of "Critical Race Theory," and related ideologies.
Ideologies which have seeped into the curriculums of millions of schoolchildren and the bully pulpit of countless mandatory workplace seminars.
Looking the other way and going along to get along have failed.
Such timidity emboldened the editors of America’s once-venerable "newspaper of record," The New York Times, to publish and promote the "1619 Project," an entirely ahistorical new creation myth for the United States that posits — in principle — that America was founded by and for racists for the express purpose of oppressing minorities and that it remains essentially the same white supremacist empire today.
For decades, well-meaning Americans refused to slam the door on what they knew in their hearts is complete nonsense. Had we issued a more emphatic rejection of the zaniest ideas put out by the far left, the 1619 Project’s organizer — a racist conspiracy theorist who previously wrote that white people are "bloodsuckers"and "barbaric devils," that Chistopher Columbus is "no different then (sic)" Adolf Hitler, and that Africans got to the Americas before Europeans and built the Aztec pyramids — would never have gotten anywhere near the editorial pages of The New York Times, let alone your children’s history books.
Without the indifference or acquiescence of our media, political class, and academics to the dark clouds of historical revisionism, racial grievance politics, and revolutionary posturing, there is no way activists and "protesters" would have felt emboldened enough to attack police and violently tear down the public memory of America’s history and heroes this summer.
Monuments to "Star Spangled Banner" poet Francis Scott Key, Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson, progenitor of American mass democracy Andrew Jackson, and even George Washington, the father our of nation, have all been attacked — toppled, covered in graffiti, and subjected to the tantrums of enraged leftists.
The road to that once-inimaginable reality ran straight through the endless refrains of "just ignore the kids and they’ll go away."
Almost 10 years ago, I co-founded a project with businessman Brad Saft, "Learn Our History." It's a series of animated videos for children to teach highlights of American history in an entertaining way.
We launched "Learn Our History" because students today are not learning about American exceptionalism or the extraordinary of this great nation, which far from perfect, has been truly a light to the world. As my own college history professor reminded me often, "History is to a civilization what the memory is to the individual."
A loss of memory leads to confusion, chaos and even personal danger. A loss of history also leads to a country that is confused, divided, and in danger of collapse.
The toxic cancel culture — the one that forces millions of American workers to sit through hours-long struggle sessions organized by "diversity consultants" and "educators," knowing their jobs are at risk if they question the notion that they are subconsciously racist — comes directly from decades of treating anti-American indoctrination as merely "the cost of doing business."
On Constitution Day, President Trump announced that the era of surrender is over, saying, "We are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny. We will reclaim our history and our country for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed."
The president highlighted the measures already taken, such as 10-year maximum sentences for those who destroy monuments to America’s founders and war dead, as well as the complete banishment of "critical race theory" training from all agencies of the federal executive. He also prepared the country for the even more important fight yet to come: getting these people and their poisonous ideologies out of our schools.
To that end, he announced the creation of the "1776 Commission," a first step in bringing together true American historians and living heroes to ensure that the next generation learns to honor both the memory of our founding — what the president called the "the fulfillment of a thousand years of Western civilization" — and the sacrifice of the generations of heroes who have preserved for us "the most exceptional nation in the history of the world."
President Trump implored us to take seriously the threat posed by "those who seek to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children," pointing out that "In order to radically transform America, they must first cause Americans to lose confidence in who we are, where we came from, and what we believe."
For too long, too many Americans have been willing to surrender that confidence for momentary comfort and freedom from confrontation.
On Constitution Day, 2020, that era ended.
We have turned a corner beyond which the threat is impossible to ignore, and President Trump is building a wall even more important than the one at the southern border — a wall to protect the very soul of our nation.
Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas, a 2008 presidential candidate, and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. An ordained Southern Baptist minister, Gov. Huckabee was host of the number-one rated weekend television show Huckabee on the Fox News Channel from 2008-2015, as well as host, from 2009-2015, of The Huckabee Report, which aired three times daily on nearly 600 radio stations across the nation. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the popular weekly talk show Huckabee, which airs on TBN. Read Mike Huckabee's Reorts — More Here.