Page 22 - 1776 Report

“Law and liberty cannot rationally become the object of and historical truth, shames Americans by highlighting
our love,” wrote founding father James Wilson, “unless only the sins of their ancestors, and teaches claims of
they first become the objects of our knowledge.” systemic racism that can only be eliminated by more
Students who are taught to understand America’s discrimination, is an ideology intended to manipulate
exceptional principles and America’s powerful history opinions more than educate minds.
grow into strong citizens who respect the rule of law
and protect the country they know and love. Deliberately destructive scholarship shatters the civic
bonds that unite all Americans. It silences the discourse
essential to a free society by breeding division, distrust,
A Scholarship of Freedom and hatred among citizens. And it is the intellectual
force behind so much of the violence in our cities,
Universities in the United States are often today suppression of free speech in our universities, and
hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that defamation of our treasured national statues and
combine to generate in students and in the broader symbols.
culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright
hatred for this country. To restore our society, academics must return to their
vocation of relentlessly pursuing the truth and engaging
The founders insisted that universities should be at the in honest scholarship that seeks to understand the world
core of preserving American republicanism by and America’s place in it.
instructing students and future leaders of its true basis
and instilling in them not just an understanding but a
reverence for its principles and core documents. Today, The American Mind
our higher education system does almost the precise Americans yearn for timeless stories and noble heroes
opposite. Colleges peddle resentment and contempt for that inspire them to be good, brave, diligent, daring,
American principles and history alike, in the process generous, honest, and compassionate.

To place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm
as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are
compelled to take. . . . it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and
to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.

Thomas Jefferson

weakening attachment to our shared heritage. Millions of Americans devour histories of the American
Revolution and the Civil War and thrill to the tales of
In order to build up a healthy, united citizenry, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin,
scholars, students, and all Americans must reject false Lincoln and Grant, Sojourner Truth and Frederick
and fashionable ideologies that obscure facts, ignore Douglass. We still read the tales of Hawthorne and
historical context, and tell America’s story solely as one Melville, Twain and Poe, and the poems of Whitman
of oppression and victimhood rather than one of and Dickinson. On Independence Day, we hum John
imperfection but also unprecedented achievement Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” and sing along
toward freedom, happiness, and fairness for all. to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”
Historical revisionism that tramples honest scholarship Americans applaud the loyalty, love, and kindness

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