“It Will Be as if the American Founding Never Happened” – Heritage Foundation
Forget George Washington, James Madison, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln–nothing meaningful happened in America before 1877. ** That’s the lesson North Carolina public high schools may start teaching. Under proposed changes in their high school history curriculum, the U.S. History course (which seniors take) will cover events from 1877 forward only. ** It will be as if the American Founding never happened. ** According to Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the goal of this change is to teach what students will feel connected to, “where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day.” ** By implication, nothing before 1877 has any meaning to students: the Declaration of Independence that proclaims the self evident truths of equality, natural rights, and consent of the governed; the Constitution that establishes the rule of law and the framework in which we exercise our liberty; the Civil War in which Abraham Lincoln defended the principles of the American Founding and ended the institution of slavery. These events are irrelevant for today’s students.
Now what left-wing, revisionist, anti-American, living Constitution progressive came up with this idea?
If anyone is interested in the difference between the left and right sides of the aisle READ THIS ARTICLE and then follow the links within it to read all about the progressive movement in America, it’s goals and ambitions. Here’s a couple of excerpts from one of them:
“The Progressive Movement and the Transformation of American Politics” – Heritage Foundation
…the Founders tried to promote the moral conditions of an independent, hard-working citizenry by laws and educational institutions that would encourage such virtues as honesty, moderation, justice, patriotism, courage, frugality, and industry. Government support of religion (typically generic Protestantism) was generally practiced with a view to these ends. One can see the Founders’ view of the connection between religion and morality in such early laws as the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which said that government should promote education because “[r]eligion, morality, and knowledge [are] necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.”
These values and ideals are those embraced by the right. They are the motivating principles of Tea Party Patriots and, if they have anything to say about it, the Republicans moving forward. They are values that students should learn about when studying US history.
The values and ideals of the progressive left (now in control of the Democrat Party) follow:
In Progressivism, the domestic policy of government had two main concerns. ** First, government must protect the poor and other victims of capitalism through redistribution of resources, anti-trust laws, government control over the details of commerce and production: i.e., dictating at what prices things must be sold, methods of manufacture, government participation in the banking system, and so on. ** Second, government must become involved in the “spiritual” development of its citizens–not, of course, through promotion of religion, but through protecting the environment (“conservation”), education (understood as education to personal creativity), and spiritual uplift through subsidy and promotion of the arts and culture.
Is it any wonder students are being poorly served by our educational institutions? Those who come up with ideas like leaving the founders and the first hundred years of our history as a nation out of the curriculum in US history class were probably educated themselves by progressive educators.
If you value the freedoms and rights of our founding please make it your business to take note of the many ways that progressives are attempting to supplant our Constitutional freedoms and rights with the socialist/Marxist/fascist ideals of the progressive left.