Make America Great Again ... just like it was in 1776
On the next to last day of his presidency, Donald Trump finally revealed ... no, not his tax returns ... his view as to when America was great and how to make it that way again. According to a White House announcement and press release, The President's Advisory 1776 Commission consisting of "America's most distinguished scholars and historians" issued The 1776 Report, a roadmap to restore American education written and guided by some of the most conservative and controversial political supporters of Donald Trump. In reality, the commission was created and the report was initiated as and intended to be a response to the historical perspective of slavery in the 1619 Project sponsored by the New York Times.
I could not bring myself to read the report yesterday and only scanned it sufficiently to see that it is filled with photos of and quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and words of wisdom from Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Frederick Douglass, and Ronald Reagan (of course). Despite that blatant hypocrisy, I really began to question the objectivity of the report when I got to the passages expressing the view that, even though many of our Founding Fathers were slave owners, their heart really wasn't in it, and that the evidence is found throughout our Constitution. For example, according to the distinguished scholars and historians, James Madison saw to it that the word "slave" did not appear anywhere, and the 3/5ths compromise and 20-year prohibition against restrictions on the slave trade were actually indictments of slavery introduced by anti-slavery delegates at the Constitutional Convention. Why, Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner himself as we all know, even included a "strong condemnation of slavery" in a draft of the Declaration of Independence before removing it at the insistence of other slave holding delegates. In other words, Jefferson was actually against slavery before he gave in and was for it -- sort of as he engaged in slave holding himself. I finally had to put the report away when I flipped through the pages of the appendices and noticed they were dominated by advocacy for the essential nature of faith-based virtues as a key to restoring "authentic education" and critiques of identity politics and cancel culture. The last straw for me was the directive that, to be genuine, "civics and government classes should rely almost exclusively on primary sources" (so we can educate our children to be little Antonin Scalia wannabees?).
I could not sleep tonight. It is now 2:30 in the morning. I don't know whether it was the disturbing nature of the snippets from The 1776 Report or the fact that today will be the last full day of Donald Trump's presidency and the uncertainty of what that might bring down upon us. The news is full of stories about an avalanche of more than 100 pardons and commutations (going for as much as $2 million each), Trump embedding his loyalists in positions throughout the federal government (remember the Deep State?), an executive order making it easier for federal judges and other officials to carry concealed handguns, and 25,000+ National Guardsmen patrolling our capital city in anticipation of another invasion by white supremacists and sundry other domestic terrorists.
Anyway, I am up and revisiting The 1776 Report to learn more about the "most distinguished scholars and historians" who wrote it. Turns out that most of the commission members are not historians at all. Why am I not surprised that Trump would lie about that?
Larry Arnn, the Chairman, is the long-time president of Hillsdale College, a private conservative university that refuses to allow any federal grants, Pell or other student loans or grants, or athletic funding so that they do not have to comply with affirmative action guidelines or federal anti-discrimination rules. Arnn is an outspoken critic of Common Core curriculum standards and what he considers government interference in educational institutions. When the Michigan Department of Education claimed that Hillsdale College violated diversity standards, Arnn fired back saying, "... we didn't have enough dark ones, I guess, is what they meant." Arnn is not a historian. He has undergraduate degrees in political science and accounting and graduate degrees in government. Of course, Arnn supported and voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Carol Swain, the Vice Chair of the advisory commission, is even less of a historian and is even more controversial than Chairman Arnn. She has degrees in criminal justice, political science, and legal studies. Swain is a black woman who has called the Black Lives Matter movement a "Marxist organization" and compared BLM groups to the Ku Klux Klan. She is a frequent conservative television political commentator and analyst who supported and voted for Trump. Before she retired as a professor at Vanderbilt University, students presented the administration with a petition accusing her of being "synonymous with bigotry, intolerance, and unprofessionalism" and engaging in hate speech toward Islam. The students demanded that she be fired. In her religious life, Swain has progressed from being a devout Jehovah's Witness to baptism in the Pentacostal faith. She is currently a Southern Baptist -- another one of those good Christians who practice what they preach and pray on Sunday so they can prey on the rest of us the other six days of the week.
The other members of the 1776 Commission may be "distinguished" most by their conservatism and support for Donald Trump rather than any distinction as historians or scholars.
Brooke Rollins is a graduate of Texas A&M University with a degree in agricultural development and a law degree from the University of Texas. She was formerly the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an ultra-conservative think tank, and a policy director for Texas Governor Rick Perry. Thomas Lindsay, another member of the 1776 Commission, also works for TPPF as its Director of Education. Rollins has been working in the White House since May 2020. Her portfolio has been focused on criminal justice reform, but she and Larry Kudlow are forming a nonprofit organization to continue Trump's public policies after tomorrow morning.
Phil Bryant is a former governor of Mississippi with a degree in political science. Before politics, he was a deputy sheriff, an undercover drug enforcement officer, and an insurance claims investigator. As governor, he was an ardent defender of the Confederate symbols in the Mississippi state flag and refused to support their removal.
John Gibbs was a computer software engineer and has worked in various positions in the Trump administration since 2017. He is best known as Trump's White House personnel director charged with cleansing non-loyalists from the federal government. Gibbs is well known for his alt-right leanings and conspiracy theory postings on Twitter and social media including claims that John Podesta engages in Satanic rituals. When Trump nominated Gibbs as Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the Senate refused to confirm the nomination.
Scott McNealy was the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and his other claims to fame are that he considers himself to be primarily a "raging capitalist" and a "golf major" He was probably on the golf course when Trump talked him into playing a distinguished historian and scholar on television.
Charlie Kirk is a college dropout who rose to fame in high school by writing a Breitbart News op-ed about liberal bias in high school textbooks. Kirk is the founder of a conservative activist group known as Turning Point USA and appears frequently on Fox News. He is a dedicated and active spreader of a wide variety of conspiracy theories about Covid-19 as a hoax and 2020 election fraud.
Peter Kirsanow is a Republican labor attorney and a long-time political appointee to the NLRB and the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. He testified before Congress as an opponent of the confirmation of Justices Sotomayor and Kagan and in favor of the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Michael Farris is a constitutional lawyer and the founder of Patrick Henry College, "...a Christian institution with the mission of training students through a classical liberal arts curriculum and apprenticeship methodology to impact the world 'for Christ and for Liberty.'" Farris is also the founder, chairman, and general counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association -- an organization which he badly needs to succeed since he has ten children and twenty-two grandchildren. Known by the associations he keeps, Farris enjoyed long-time friendships and alliances with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Phyllis Schafly.
Bob McEwen has a degree in business administration and is a former Congressman from Ohio and is currently a lobbyist.
Victor Davis Hanson is the closest thing to a real historian or scholar on the 1776 Commission. His specialties are ancient and classical warfare and agrarianism. In 2019, Hanson authored The Case for Trump, a book in which he defends Trump's insults and incendiary language as "uncouth authenticity" and praises Trump for "an uncanny ability to troll and create hysteria among his media and political critics." Not surprisingly, Trump praised the book as a classic and awarded Hanson with a position on the 1776 Commission and a designation as one of "America's most distinguished historians and scholars".
Don't expect to see The 1776 Report on the New York Times best seller list unless Trump can talk the Republican National Committee into buying several hundred thousand copies.
At least I have gotten some venting out of my system and relieved a partial cause of my insomnia. I think I will try to take a little nap before starting to dread the potential horrors which may be coming our way the rest of today.