Leftist educators seek a "national consensus" that America is rotten.

Clueless Republicans give them hope of succeeding.

John Fonte writes:

The woke revolutionary assault on national heroes is occurring throughout the West. In Britain, even statues honoring Winston Churchill have come under attack. From France to Sweden, the woke Left seeks to denigrate national histories. Everywhere the goal is the same: to undermine national democratic traditions.

Here in the U.S., the denigration of our history is proceeding full-speed-ahead:

Last year six former Secretaries of Education, including Republican Secretaries appointed by Bush 41 and Bush 43—Lamar Alexander, Rod Paige, and Margaret Spellings—endorsed a massive new Civic Education project. This project, “Educating for American Democracy,” provides guidance for legislation currently before Congress.

Educating for American Democracy seeks to “harmonize” a national consensus on civic education. The leaders recruited a few conservatives to provide cover for a “trans-partisan” project. But the executive committee is sacked 8-2 to the left, dominated by progressive academics from Harvard and Tufts and left-wing activists that promote so-called “Action Civics.” Of the 300 educators who participated, perhaps 10 are non-liberals.

What “national consensus” does this overwhelmingly leftist project seek to “harmonize”?

Let us start with a rather basic question: what does this national “consensus” tell us American students should learn about George Washington? Well, the project laments that “students can make it into their teens without knowing that Washington was not only a foundational leader, but also enslaved people.”

But if there’s to be a consensus regarding George Washington, it should be that he was not an “enslaver.” If anything, Washington was a de-enslaver.

Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were not, by definition, “enslavers”—they did not seize individuals who were free and put them in bondage. The three Virginians were slave owners who sought, in Lincoln’s words, the “ultimate extinction” of that institution. Washington freed his slaves and provided for their education and economic well-being in his will.

Why do the leftists want to form a national consensus around a hostile mischaracterization of George Washington? To make Americans ashamed of our national history :

The term “enslaver” is a weaponized concept that is deliberately employed by woke progressives because they know that to succeed in “fundamentally transforming America,” it is first necessary to denigrate and delegitimize the American Founders.

This is consistent with the Educating for American Democracy’s stated mission of treating themes of “marginalization and oppression” as central to American history.

These denigrators of America also take on the notion of citizenship:

The so-called consensus expressed in Educating for American Democracy also degrades American citizenship by redefining the concept of a “citizen,” arguing that “ethically…all who reside in the United States,” citizen or non-citizen, legal resident or illegal alien who just crossed the border, should be involved in political decision-making.

What is the source of an alleged moral imperative to allow people who, as a matter of law, shouldn’t be in the U.S. to help decide how we shall live? I think it comes from the same place as the desire to denigrate America’s Founders — contempt for America and the desire radically to transform it.

That’s also the source of the push to mandate Action Civics:

A major goal of the progressive education establishment is the nation-wide implementation of Action Civics, in which students receive class credit for participating in political protests that magically are always leftist—never pro-gun rights or pro-life protests.

There’s plenty more in Fonte’s article, including his takedown of the legislation through which the left hopes to solidify its radical CRT-based “national consensus” — the Civics Secures Democracy Act introduced by Democrat Senator Chris Coons and Republican Senator John Cornyn. I wrote about this scandalous proposal here.

The participation of Republican legislators and ex-education officials in the left’s denigrate America project is shameful. Fonte asks:

What common ground is there with those who defame the founders as “enslavers”; portray America’s story as one of “systemic racism”; and reject the principle of human equality exemplified in the Declaration of Independence in favor of “equity” as manifested in the ubiquitous dogma of DEI?

There can be none.

Accordingly, Fonte concludes that, “instead of playing a subordinate role in phony ‘consensus’ projects dominated overwhelmingly by the progressive Left, conservatives should develop solid, accurate, patriotic curricular materials as a distinct alternative to the progressive narrative.” Fortunately, “this is already happening with Governor DeSantis’s reforms in Florida,” for example, which Stanley Kurtz discussed here.

The struggle to stop the woke left from consolidating control over how Americans are taught to think about America is as important as any front in the battle to keep our country strong and free. As the left well understands, a country that deplores its past cannot expect a happy future.