‘Patriotic education’ will foil left: Trump
US President Donald Trump escalated his attacks on “left-wing demonstrators” yesterday, portraying himself as a defender of American heritage against revolutionary fanatics and arguing for a new “proAmerican” curriculum in schools.
At the National Archives Museum, Trump vowed to counter what he called an emerging classroom narrative that “America is a wicked and racist nation”, and said he would create a new “1776 Commission” to help “restore patriotic education to our schools”.
He reiterated his condemnations of demonstrators who tear down monuments to historical American figures, and sought to link the Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice-President Joe Biden, to the removal of a Founding Father’s statue in Biden’s home state, Delaware.
“Our heroes will never be forgotten,” Trump said. “Our youth will be taught to love America.”
Since the killing of a black man, George Floyd, in police custody in May in Minneapolis, and the protests that followed nationwide, the president has seized on cultural issues and has sounded many of the same themes — notably including at a showy Independence Day celebration at Mount Rushmore.
Since then, his vision of a Democratic Party hijacked by antiAmerican Marxists has become a core theme of his campaign. But he elevated the concepts yesterday by delivering them at the National Archives Museum, standing before the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in what was billed as the first “White House Conference on American History”.
The event was held on Constitution Day, the anniversary of the document’s signing in 1787. Trump said it reflected “centuries of tradition, wisdom and experience”.
“Yet as we gather this afternoon, a radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance,” he added.
Trump said that “left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools”, adding that “it’s gone on far too long”.
Douglas Brinkley, a historian at Rice University, said conservatives have long been angry at what they see as a growing emphasis in public schools on themes of civil rights at the expense of more traditional historical narratives, mainly revolving around white men.
“I think Trump sees the cultural wars as a pathway to victory,” Brinkley said. But, “what he sees as a cultural war is just trying to open up the narrative to other peoples’ experiences — not just white males”.
Trump singled out The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, named for the year the first enslaved Africans arrived in the Virginia colony, and which reframes American history around the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans.
The project, whose lead author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, has been incorporated and is taught in many schools across the United States.
Trump said the project “rewrites American history to teach our children we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom”.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Trump added, saying the United States’ founding “set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism, and built the most fair, equal and prosperous nation in history.”
Trump said he would soon sign an executive order to create the 1776 Commission, named after the year the American colonies declared their independence.
The commission would promote a “patriotic eduction” and “encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honour the 250th anniversary of our founding”.
Trump’s speech also singled out the doctrine of critical race theory, the view that the law and other societal institutions are based on socially constructed theories of race that benefit white people.
He called the theory “a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation, that even young children are complicit in oppression, and that our entire society must be radically transformed”.
Hours after extolling the United States’ iconic heroes, Trump missed a ceremony honouring a major one. He was absent from the dedication of a new memorial to President Dwight D Eisenhower in Washington. That was unusual: President Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial to Franklin D Roosevelt, President George W Bush dedicated one to World War II, and President Barack Obama dedicated one to the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King jnr.
Trump instead left town for a campaign rally in Wisconsin.