Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is many things: a radical progressive, a viable presidential candidate, a former bartender, and apparently, America’s foremost revisionist historian. Last week she graced the country with a bombshell revelation, informing us all that it was black Americans who created democracy:
<blockquote>I think about the Civil Rights and voting rights movement, and how black Americans really created democracy in this country… black Americans created democracy. They built something from nothing. </blockquote>
I had no idea. I was under the naive impression that it was the ancient Greeks and our Founding Fathers who conjured such a thing, but clearly I was the last to know. Even the podcast host, whom she was enlightening, nodded along in vigorous agreement: “Yes, YES.” Where have I been all these years?
There you have it, folks. The 1619 Project rides again. History has been rewritten, you’ve been lied to your entire life, and James Madison was apparently mixed. Unless, of course, AOC hit her head falling out of a coconut tree and is simply, resoundingly, and spectacularly wrong.
Let’s take a stroll down history lane.
Democracy literally comes from the ancient Greek word dēmokratia: “rule by the people,&#8221; from dēmos meaning &#8220;the people&#8221; or &#8220;citizen-body,&#8221; and kratos for &#8220;power&#8221; or &#8220;rule.” <a href="https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm">By the people, for the people</a>. Sound familiar? It describes a system in which citizens hold the power to make decisions, either directly or through their elected representatives. 
In 508-507 BC, the true “Father of Democracy,” Cleisthenes, shifted power away from hereditary elites and toward the demos. He reorganized citizens into tribes based on residence rather than bloodline, introduced equality under the law, and reformed governance through popular voting. Long after his death, the historian Thucydides praised the system: “Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy.”
Credit for the creation of democracy goes to white, ancient Greek aristocrats. My apologies, Congresswoman.
If AOC means American democracy specifically, she’s no less mistaken. American democracy wasn’t “built from nothing” by any single group or era. It was deliberately engineered as a constitutional republic with robust democratic features during the late 18th century. Drawing on ancient Athens and Rome, English common law, and Enlightenment thinkers including John Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone, our Founders designed a republic specifically intended to avoid the pitfalls of pure direct democracy. As Madison argued in <a href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/primary-sources/federalist-no-10/">Federalist No. 10</a>, this often resulted in mob rule and instability.
In its place, they built representative government, separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism, all to protect individual liberty.
This architecture did not spring up overnight. In 1620, the Mayflower Compact established a framework in which settlers agreed to &#8220;combine ourselves together into a civil body politic&#8221; and make &#8220;just and equal laws&#8221; by majority consent, planting the seed of consensual self-governance on American soil. Over a century later, on July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that “all men are created equal,” endowed with unalienable rights from God, not government, and that we have the right to rule ourselves. This culmination came at what historians have rightly called the <a href="https://www.constitutionfacts.com/us-constitution-amendments/the-constitutional-convention/">“Miracle at Philadelphia,”</a> where 55 delegates, including Madison and Washington, met in secret at the Pennsylvania State House and hammered out the most consequential governing document in human history. Popular sovereignty, elected representatives, separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism all took final form under the tutelage of the evil, non-pigmented caucasian.
Just as it would be inaccurate to say women alone created American democracy, it is equally inaccurate to say black Americans did because it is simply not true. Unless Washington and the Founders were applying considerably more face powder than the portraits suggest.
I was reminded of all this just last night at an Independent Women’s event, where extraordinary women gathered to celebrate and defend exactly this history. That’s the spirit we need more of: women, Americans of all backgrounds, who know what this country is built on and aren’t afraid to say so. We should be teaching this, not erasing it.
To be uncharacteristically charitable to AOC, one could argue that she means that black Americans, through the crucible of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement, helped make the promise of democracy real rather than merely rhetorical. Indeed, black Americans&#8217; contributions to expanding rights were immense and undeniable, but &#8220;expanding and perfecting democracy&#8221; is a very different claim from &#8220;creating it from nothing,&#8221; and conflating the two isn&#8217;t empowerment, it’s historical erasure. This revisionist framing flattens a complex, centuries-long story into a single-group morality tale, where one group’s activism gets sole credit for everything good.
Meanwhile, that very democracy she claims was created by black Americans is being thwarted by her and her fellow Democrats in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama wants to strip away the voting rights of Republicans of all color, and they’ve promised that when they regain power, they will pack the Supreme Court, enable mass mail-in-ballots, throw away voter ID, and nuke the filibuster to add four more blue senate seats. 
These are not the actions of people who revere democratic institutions. They’re the actions of people who revere power.
The danger of letting the Left rewrite history and promote fallacious ideas is not abstract. When young people and useful idiots are taught a distorted version of the past by a backward education system and p(regressive) leadership, they have no framework to defend what is true. That’s been the design. Gutting civics and history education was not an accident; it was a strategy.
Our Founders studied history with rigor, absorbed its lessons, and built something incredible and new: a durable, liberty-focused republic that has endured for nearly 250 years. Its genius lay not in perfection but in self-correction through elections, courts, and amendments, not reinvention.
Don’t fall for the lies: communism has failed everywhere it has been tried, Capitalism harnesses human self-interest to drive innovation, growth, and prosperity like no other, and our constitutional republic is a miraculous achievement, conceived by a very pale founding bunch and hardened over generations by Americans of different color and circumstance, bound under one creed.
That’s not an uncomfortable fact; that’s a beautiful one, and as we approach our 250th birthday, it is one worth defending clearly and without apology.
So thank you, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for yet another opportunity to do exactly that.

Democratic National Convention (DNC) 2024 – Day One

AOC Flunks American History

1619 Project

American History

DW Opinion

Founding Fathers

When historians look back on this period of war in Ukraine and Iran, they will be deeply puzzled by a simple question: why can’t the leaders of the Western Democracies hear our enemies?
There were two examples last week, one from Russia and one from Iran, in which our enemies were extraordinarily clear about their view of things.
In both cases, our enemies’ comments were dramatically different from what we have been telling ourselves.
We keep hoping for reasonableness, for negotiating to a peaceful conclusion, for finding some common ground to build a better future.
Our enemies share none of those goals, and they are very clear about their goals and how different they are from the West’s self-delusion.
Consider first the Russian position.
While Putin was having a very nice chat with President Donald Trump for over an hour, his senior national security spokesperson was preparing a radically different message.
Dmitry Medvedev has been president, prime minister, and now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia. He would never make an aggressive, hostile speech without Putin’s approval.
Yet the day after Putin’s call with President Trump, Medvedev gave a speech in which he declared that the United States is Russia’s geopolitical rival and that the conflict with the West is “a question of existence” that will last longer than this generation. He rejected any American mediation between Russia and Ukraine and asserted that victory over Ukraine would solve a lot of Russia’s problems.
Medvedev’s speech was a pretty clear statement of long-term conflict. Remember that Putin, in his April 2005 State of the Nation address, said he believed the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
Why would we expect a former KGB Colonel who is a fervent Russian nationalist and who wants to reassemble a very strong Russian state to settle for the survival of a Ukraine he is determined to conquer?
While the Russians were telling us we were in a very long conflict that would last over a generation, the Iranians were sending us a clear, unambiguous statement about their intentions.
As the Institute for the Study of War reported:
<blockquote>
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei declared on April 30 that Iran will retain control over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and maintain its nuclear and missile capabilities, which supports ISW-CTP’s assessment that the Iranian regime is unlikely to make meaningful concessions in its next proposal to the United States … Mojtaba also underscored that Iran will defend its nuclear, missile, and advanced technological capabilities as resolutely as it defends its territorial borders. A senior Iranian official speaking to the Washington Post on April 30 similarly asserted that Iran’s security establishment rejects compromise on key matters, such as Iran’s ability to enrich uranium.
</blockquote>
It seems clear that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Major General Ahmad Vahidi now dominates the Iranian dictatorship and represents the hardline position that Iran can withstand American and Israeli attacks and ultimately win the war simply by not giving in.
Western analysts, including those who dominate Washington, D.C., simply cannot break out of their rational, Enlightenment model of reasonableness to understand how unreasonable alternative systems can be, and yet, within their own values and their own experiences, they are following a logic train that is easily understandable.
This was the key problem Winston Churchill faced after reading “Mein Kampf” in the early 1930s and understanding the logic of Hitler’s insanity. He simply could not get the British establishment to listen to Hitler and rearm accordingly.
Consider first the belief system and history that shape General Vahidi. He is part of a religious dictatorship that has been chanting “Death to America” for 47 years. General Vahidi was born in 1958 and joined the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in 1979 at the age of 21. He is sanctioned by the United States, Canada, and the European Union for terrorism and nuclear activities.
When we think about the pain our bombing campaign is causing the Iranian government, we have to put it in the context of their experience of the war with Iraq from September 1980 to August 1988. This was a brutal meat grinder in which the Iraqis used chemical weapons. The best estimate is that Iranian casualties were over 1,000,000, with the Iranian death toll somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000.
If you consider that General Vahidi’s experience from the age of 22 to 30 was this brutal war, and since then he has waged terrorist campaigns against the West while focusing on building nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach Europe and the United States, you get a different sense of what we are up against.
If the religiously inspired (and this is the vital fact which the rational West refuses to consider) dictatorship, when it was barely established, could endure an eight-year war with a million casualties, what is the historic yardstick by which we should expect them to accept terms they would regard as a betrayal of the revolution?
This question of pain levels also applies to Putin and the Russian dictatorship. The Soviet Union lost over 20 million dead in World War II. At Stalingrad alone, they lost 40,000 civilians and had about 1,100,000 soldiers killed or wounded.
From a Ukrainian perspective, the horror of the Stalin-enforced famine of 1932 and 1933, which killed 3,900,000 (about 13% of the population) through starvation, is a horrifying reminder of why they fight against Moscow so intensely and at such costs. The Ukrainian word for the famine is Holodomor, which combines the Ukrainian words for starvation and to inflict death. It is reasonable to suggest that the Ukrainians will fight to the end rather than accept subjugation to a city that deliberately starved millions of them to death.
Our enemies are trying to tell us who they really are. Future historians will puzzle at our inability to hear them.
The Chinese and North Korean dictatorships are watching carefully our inability to confront and respond to reality. They will develop their own strategies accordingly, and both will help Russia and Iran survive the inadequate efforts of the United States and its allies.
Literally, the future of the world will be decided by the American ability or inability to learn and change when faced with aggressive evil.
If we do not change and recognize that our enemies are enemies who think differently from us, we will lose. It is that simple.
***
Newt Gingrich was the Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. Follow him on X @NewtGingrich. Join his newsletter at <a href="https://www.gingrich360.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.gingrich360.net/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1778011290065000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1zn9zi0baZTNq2_7KeHn-r">Gingrich360.net</a>.

IRAN-POLITICS-US-HOSTAGE-ANNIVERSARY

Newt Gingrich: Why Can’t We Hear Our Enemies?

Foreign Policy

Iran war

Ukraine-Russia War

As America approaches its 250th birthday, one might expect to see a nation eager to celebrate its inheritance. Instead, American pride has fallen to new lows, and the reason runs deeper than politics. A cultural phenomenon has taken hold within our institutions, eroding national pride at its root.
The problem comes down to a matter of loyalty versus hatred for one’s country.
Both phenomena have a name. The former is patriotism, expressed by a love of home, a national attachment shaped by loyalty to the values and goals of a country.
The latter is seldom identified, but the great British conservative thinker Sir Roger Scruton gave it a name: Oikophobia.
Sir Roger defined it as “the repudiation of inheritance and home.” The Greek root oikos denotes a dwelling place or a home in the fullest sense, which encompasses one’s home country and its inheritance: its history, culture, beliefs, and institutions.
And today, there is a tangible rise of oikophobia.
<div id="attachment_1087107" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1087107" class="size-large wp-image-1087107" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-589704846-864x576.jpg" alt="EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - AUGUST 15: Roger Scruton attends the Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 15, 2016 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Edinburgh International Book Festival is one of the most important annual literary events, and takes place in the city which became a UNESCO City of Literature in 2004. (Photo by Awakening/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-589704846-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-589704846-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-589704846-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-589704846.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Awakening/Getty Images</div>
A <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/692150/american-pride-slips-new-low.aspx">2025 Gallup poll</a> asked adults, “How proud are you to be an American — extremely proud, very proud, moderately proud, only a little proud or not at all proud?”
In 2001, 87% answered extremely or very proud. Today, that has fallen by a third to a disheartening 58%.
The remaining 40% certainly fall short of patriotism — 9% claimed they were not at all proud to be American, 11% attested to be only a little proud, and 19% were moderately proud. Nothing to boast about, for this is the grip of oikophobia. And it is exacerbated in certain groups.
Pride in America varies vastly between political parties, pointing to perhaps the root of the problem. Among Republicans, 92% were extremely or very proud to be American, and the figure for independents was 53%. But among Democrats, the rate plummets to 36%.
These numbers reflect a curious trend. For Democrats, their pride seems to fluctuate with current events and politics: President Trump in office, George Floyd’s death, January 6 — the list goes on.
Conservatives, on the other hand, appear to derive their pride from America’s history, its traditions, and its achievements — the unshaking character of our nation.
This is the difference between oikophobia and patriotism.
However, it is important to understand that oikophobia is not just a lack of pride or the expression of criticism. In fact, a healthy nation ought to reflect on its past and seek improvement. Oikophobia, by contrast, rejects national inheritance. It reframes history as something to be dismantled rather than understood.
Since the oikophobe — better, the oik — is so consumed by repudiation, one might expect him to simply leave the home he so thoroughly disdains.
Oddly, they instead choose to rule it. And they can be found across the most critical cultural institutions — museums, academia, and media, to name a few.
But these oiks are not working for the sake of public benefit, mind you. They infiltrate the public sphere and act as operatives of the Culture Wars, bending, or rather reframing, American history to their will: to paint America as systemically racist, oppressive, and cruel, all in order to tell what can only be described, in Scruton’s own words, as “a tale of shame and degradation.”
This tale is told in different ways depending on the institution.
Take first the Smithsonian — the home of America’s national museums that attract visitors from all over the country. As an institution that is nearly two-thirds publicly funded, it bears a responsibility to American taxpayers.
Yet it fails in nearly every way. The National Museum of American History, for instance, cannot even deliver an objective narrative of American history. Instead, it indoctrinates visitors with left-wing ideology and sows shame among Americans, all in an attempt to make them reject their national identity. It treats slavery, imperialism, political polarization, and identity politics as the defining characteristics of the United States.
<div id="attachment_936715" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-936715" class="size-large wp-image-936715" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2217701221-864x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 29: A view of the Smithsonian Institution near the National Mall on May 29, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2217701221-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2217701221-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2217701221-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/GettyImages-2217701221.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Roy Rochlin/Getty Images</div>
Undeniably, these are elements of our history, some more important than others, but when elevated above all else, they cease to inform and instead distort the American narrative. 
And this is where oikophobia becomes most visible — through omission, interpretive framing, and moralizing language. What is emphasized, what is forgotten, and how the story is told is a much more insightful story. 
Institutions like the Smithsonian are respected worldwide, and for them to show such blatant disrespect to the very heritage it is meant to preserve is nothing short of disgusting.
Its leaders also make it abundantly clear that they are oiks themselves. 
Dr. Anthea Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History, never misses the chance to recite lines about how the Smithsonian Institution resides on the stolen land of native tribes or how her white privilege has afforded her her station in life. Both statements are meant to signal that the American story begins and remains in illegitimacy rather than achievement.
Nothing is further from the truth.
Like museums, academia too has been affected. Critical race theory tells young, impressionable students that institutions are not to be trusted, for they are inherently racist. Campuses not only allow but even enable protesters who threaten Jewish students and faculty, harass law enforcement, camp out on shared student grounds, and chant violently, anti-American sentiments. Conservative students self-censor so as not to be canceled. 
The media is not free either. An excellent example of this is the ongoing conflict in Iran. Just a few weeks ago, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called out the press for its lack of discipline and honesty, for its habitual practice of sowing shame and fear.
Referencing Operation Epic Fury, Hegseth asks why no one has run a story on the bravery and tenacity of American soldiers. Not MSNBC. Not CNN. Not even Newsmax.
Hegseth shamed the press corps for being irresponsible and for “undermining the success” of the American military. “How about we talk about how special America is,” he said, “that only we have these capabilities.” And then he even conceded, “I think it’s too much to ask.”
<div id="attachment_1074159" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1074159" class="size-large wp-image-1074159" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2269789867-865x576.jpg" alt="US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on April 8, 2026. The United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire on April 7 barely an hour before President Donald Trump's deadline to obliterate the country, triggering global relief alongside apprehension. Tehran has agreed to temporarily reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil, gas and fertiliser passes, easing concerns for the battered global economy." width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2269789867-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2269789867-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2269789867-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2269789867.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Credit: Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images.</div>
Unfortunately, he may be right. This is yet another example of the ways in which oikophobia now permeates the most influential institutions, degrading national unity by diffusing doubt.
In the 2004 essay <a href="https://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/NeedForNations2020.pdf">The Need for Nations</a>, in which he coined the term oikophobia, Scruton quotes Goethe’s Faust, “What you have inherited from your forefathers, earn it, that you might own it.”
Though he was writing about Europe of the early 2000s, Scruton’s analysis applies almost perfectly to contemporary America. He says that we must “earn again the sovereignty that previous generations so laboriously shaped from the inheritance of Christianity, imperial government and Roman law. Earning it, we will own it, and owning it, we will be at peace within our borders.”
The trouble with oikophobia is that it makes such ownership impossible. It breeds a class of followers who, set in their ways to redefine the nation according to their disdain for it, feel entitled to reject the very inheritance of their birthright. Thus, they will never earn it. And they will never own it.
Where gratitude should exist toward our forefathers, oiks replace with grievance. They say that America is not a nation striving toward its ideals, but one defined solely by its failures. And when that story is perpetuated through museums, classrooms, and the media — the very venues tasked with shaping national attachment — it does not remain abstract. It becomes formative. It becomes defining. It reshapes how Americans see their country, and ultimately, whether they believe it is worth loving at all.
This is the cost of the rise of oikophobia — a battle to define what it means to be American.
But the answer is simple: our American inheritance is worth conserving.
* * *
Anna Gustafson is a Research Assistant in the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation. 
Savanna Donaldson is a former member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program.

Roger Scruton Portrait Session

Roger Scruton Was Right About The War On Patriotism

America 250

Heritage Foundation

Legacy Media

Patriotism

Smithsonian Museum

If you thought America’s love of Japan was only about Hibachi restaurants, Anime teens, and The Karate Kid reboots, you haven’t spent enough time on X. Last weekend, the admiration entered a new phase as the social media platform boosted an AI-enabled translation tool, making exchanging and sharing posts easier between Japanese and American users.
What resulted was a pleasant and outright wholesome font of positive vibes that seemed out of place in the notoriously cynical virtual world of hot takes, hate bots, and culture wars. The website Pirate Wires noticed and published an <a href="https://www.piratewires.com/p/japan-is-americas-greatest-ally-and">essay</a> doubling down on the niche community, heaping praise on the newfound old love between Japan and America. In it, the authors point to President Trump’s bromance with the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, love of American BBQ, and shared technological and military goals, all of which are true and good, but that’s only part of the story.
While it appears the Japanese people are living their best lives cosplaying Americana at <a href="https://tasteofcountry.com/authentic-honky-tonk-bar-tokyo-japan/">Honky Tonk bars</a> and showing off their <a href="https://www.topspeed.com/japans-love-affair-with-american-muscle-cars/">classic cruisers</a>, the Pirate Wires take is a little deceiving. What’s missing is the 1980s working-class anxiety and animosity toward our now Eastern besties — a sentiment not felt since the Greatest Generation came back from raising the flag on Mt. Suribachi and refused to buy Toyotas.
Japan’s rapid post-WWII industrialization and investment in technology paid off economically and sparked a transpacific rivalry, trade war, and manufacturing insecurity on par with a Rocky-versus-Drago fight of the century, if not a little less…violent. The Cold War rightly absorbs much of the attention when recalling the era, but as the Soviet Union was showing signs of losing its grip, Japan was becoming a real threat to the United States’ industrial domination — and the repercussions were being felt in homes, boardrooms, and factories across the country. Toyota and Honda exploded onto the automotive scene, helping usher in Detroit’s demise. Japanese technology, such as portable radios, video games, and televisions, was grabbing more market share from American companies like RCA. Even America’s trophy landmarks were being taken over. In 1989, Mitsubishi Estate took control of Rockefeller Center, a capstone acquisition following the Japanese corporation&#8217;s acquisitions of Firestone Tire &amp; Rubber and Columbia Pictures.
This tension was reflected in pop culture entertainment — think Ron Howard’s 1986 film Gung Ho, where Michael Keaton plays a foreman at an American auto manufacturing plant taken over by a Japanese corporation. The film is a comedy, but it mirrors the zeitgeist of the time. There was also Rising Sun, Kinjite, and imagined futures that look strikingly Japanese, such as Blade Runner and Robocop 3; Die Hard takes place in Nakatomi Plaza. Tom Clancy even explores this theme in his novel &#8220;Debt of Honor,&#8221; in which the protagonist, Jack Ryan, fights a &#8220;secret cabal of Japanese industrialists.&#8221;
But enough with nuance. The biggest takeaway from the situation is the display of understated power and the magnitude of influence and reach American culture has had from the mid-20th century forward. And even though there have been some notable outside foreign influences permeating these liberty-laden shores, it’s far from an even exchange.
We gave the world jazz and rock and roll, fast food and blue jeans, baseball and John Wayne Westerns. Sure, we got the British Invasion and Crocodile Dundee, but what would France do without Jerry Lewis and Germany without David Hasselhoff? I’m only half-kidding. American cultural influence was instrumental in winning the Cold War — there was even an underground pipeline of Chuck Norris <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2442080/">films</a> to undermine the communists — and who could deny Roger Goodell’s not-so-secret <a href="https://media.nfl.com/news-and-releases/international/nfl-s-global-markets-program-expands-in-2026-with-addition-of-it">plan</a> for the NFL to take over the world?
So while our “special” relationship with Japan is great, it’s not exactly novel. America’s cultural influence is a force for good in the world, and it’s a shame the mainstream media has ignored it in favor of authoritarian worship, evidenced by the rise of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/25/asia/chinamaxxing-americans-soft-power-intl-hnk-dst">stories</a> about “Chinamaxxing.”
Good for Pirate Wires to report a feel-good story that most of the media ignored, even if it wasn&#8217;t a complete picture. It’s important to remember that for all the reports of America’s demise, we’re still going strong — and in unexpected corners of the world and in unexpected ways. Far from the evil empire that snobby Europeans or elitist media personalities would have you believe, we just want to spread some good old-fashioned American fun. Because in the long run, that makes better friends than enemies.

Patriotic cowboy boots

Hate Us Or Love Us, Everyone Still Wants To Be American

America

Japan

Social Media

World

Academics who do not know what a woman is should not be the taxpayer-funded gatekeepers of women’s history. But ever since Congress authorized the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum in 2020, the Smithsonian Institution has made it clear that gender ideology matters more than biological truth in its version of women’s history.
Congress’s next move on the project is to grant the Smithsonian federal land on the National Mall for the museum. In a House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing last month on the subject, Congressman Tom Tiffany (R-WI) pressed a Smithsonian Institution representative with a simple question: “How can we be sure that the women celebrated in the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum are not men?”
The Smithsonian staffer dodged the question, and subcommittee members ripped the congressman for what they deemed a baseless inquiry. But the question hit the nail on the head: the Smithsonian pretends that men can be women.
While the brick-and-mortar Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum has yet to earn a permanent building, the Smithsonian’s mobile exhibits prove Rep. Tiffany correct. In its 2023 exhibit “<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/girlhood/gallery">Girlhood: It’s Complicated</a>”, the Smithsonian exhibited <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-troubling-case-of-jazz-jennings-the-medias-first-transgender-child">Jazz Jennings</a>, a trans-identifying male reality TV star.
Jazz was <a href="https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/jazz-jennings-was-transitioned-at-2-and-had-surgery-at-17-my-new-vagina-fell-apar">socially transitioned</a> by his parents at age two, pumped with puberty blockers at eleven, and surgically mutilated at eighteen.
<div id="attachment_566557" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-566557" class="size-large wp-image-566557" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/06/GettyImages-1138982204-864x576.jpg" alt="BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 28: Jazz Jennings attends the 30th Annual GLAAD Media Awards at Beverly Hills Hotel on March 28, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/06/GettyImages-1138982204-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/06/GettyImages-1138982204-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/06/GettyImages-1138982204-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/06/GettyImages-1138982204.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />David Crotty/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images</div>
Here’s what the Smithsonian has to say about Jazz:
<blockquote>For many, the rigid rules about what it means to be a girl are too small and too simple. Jazz Jennings is one of those girls. She shares her girlhood with millions of Americans on television and reminds us that girls can be assigned male at birth and that girlhood comes in many forms. Jazz always knew she “was a girl trapped inside a boy’s body.” As a toddler, she felt a roar of emotions at not being able to communicate what she was experiencing. But Jazz was lucky because her family listened, learned, and supported her.</blockquote>
First, Jazz is not a girl. He was deceived at just two years of age. Second, girls cannot be “assigned male at birth.” Girls are young human females; sex is immutable, not “assigned.” Finally, no toddler is &#8220;a girl trapped inside a boy’s body.” 
If the Smithsonian flunks a single-room exhibit, how can they be trusted with an entire building? The Smithsonian’s feature of Jazz in its “Girlhood” exhibit is flagrantly disqualifying.
The institution’s problem boils down to its own academics and advisors. On the website’s featured “Biographies: Every Woman Has a Story” page, Smithsonian-associated scholars hail men and historical “women.” First in the list is Roderick “Lavergne” Cox, a trans-identifying male actor described by the Smithsonian as “assigned male at birth,” and “the first openly transgender person nominated for an Emmy.” The Smithsonian made a distinct choice to acknowledge “Lavergne” as simultaneously male and “woman.”
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/what-is-a-woman?elementPosition=7&amp;row=7&amp;rowHeadline=Featured&amp;rowType=Portrait+Show+Carousel">WATCH: Matt Walsh&#8217;s groundbreaking documentary &#8220;What Is A Woman?&#8221; on DailyWire+</a></h3>
The Smithsonian also features seven other males: United States Congressman Timothy “Sarah” McBride and Biden-era Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Richard “Rachel” Levine, “the highest-ranking openly transgender government official in U.S. history,” <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/cecilia-chung">Cecilia Chung</a> (a California based advocate for sex-rejecting procedures), <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/marsha-p-johnson">Marsha P. Johnson</a>, <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/andrea-jenkins">Andrea Jenkins</a>, <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sylvia-rivera">Sylvia Rivera</a>, and <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/janet-mock">Janet Mock</a>. It is unacceptable that eight men are hailed as historical women on a taxpayer-funded “.gov” website.
<div id="attachment_1069997" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1069997" class="size-large wp-image-1069997" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252864900-864x576.jpg" alt="Visitors outside the Smithsonian Institute's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. The White House is raising the pressure on the Smithsonian Institution to turn over extensive internal records as part of a broader effort to assert control over how US history is presented - and threatening to withhold congressionally authorized funding if it doesn't comply by Jan. 13. Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252864900-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252864900-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252864900-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/GettyImages-2252864900.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
If the Smithsonian Institution — with its hordes of PhD-clad ideologues — cannot acknowledge that a woman is an adult human female, it should not be trusted to narrate women’s history, especially with the taxpayer’s dime on federal soil.
The Smithsonian’s demonstrated radicalism must be top of mind as Congress works to authorize the construction of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum. On March 18, the House Committee on Administration held a markup to advance the authorization, this time, however, with <a href="https://x.com/CWforA/status/2034336481561502017?s=20">an amendment</a> offered by Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) to prohibit the new museum from portraying men as women. The bill passed in committee, but Democrats uniformly voted “No.”
How ironic. Democrats care more about transgender ideology than a long-awaited women’s museum.
The Smithsonian Institution cannot be trusted with women’s history. If the Women’s History Museum goes up, Congress must do its due diligence to ensure that it operates under a strict, brazenly explicit federal authorization requiring that no male be presented as a “woman” in its exhibits — no exceptions. Better to have no museum at all than one that presents males as “women.”
* * *
Hannah Lape is Legislative Strategist for <a href="https://concernedwomen.org/">Concerned Women for America</a>, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. On X: @CWforA

35th Annual GLAAD Media Awards New York – Arrivals

Should Taxpayers Fund A Women’s Museum That Features Jazz Jennings?

Federal Government

Gender Identity

Girls

Opinion

Transgender

Woke Culture

Women

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, we need to confront two questions that make liberals and the Left uncomfortable: What does it truly mean to be an American, and why have black Americans been discouraged from fully embracing that identity?
For generations, black Americans understood themselves plainly. They were Americans. Their struggle was not to separate from the nation, but to claim it. The Civil Rights Movement did not reject America; it appealed to its founding principles and demanded that the nation live up to the promises made in the Constitution and first articulated in the Declaration of Independence.
Martin Luther King Jr. captured this vision when he spoke of a nation where his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. That dream assumed character would be formed within families and reinforced by faith, discipline, and responsibility. Strong families were not secondary to progress; they were essential to it.
The previous generations that were not indoctrinated by the 1960s socialist agenda make one thing clear: black Americans did not endure hardship because they rejected America. They endured it because they believed in it strongly enough to demand better.
Over time, however, the story shifted.
In the late twentieth century, black Americans were increasingly encouraged to adopt a hyphenated identity rather than simply being American. This change did not arise organically from lived experience or historical necessity. It was advanced by political activists who emphasized global racial identity over national allegiance.
But what exactly is an “African American”? Africa is not a nation. It is a continent of 54 countries, many of which have been divided by centuries of bloody conflict.
For most black Americans, Africa is not a place they can trace lineage to or claim citizenship in. Their ancestors were born here, labored here, fought here, and helped build this country. Rooting identity in a continent rather than in the Constitution detached black Americans from an American birthright earned through generations of sacrifice.
Hyphenating identity did not elevate black Americans. It weakened citizenship and diluted historical birthrights.
Citizenship implies ownership and responsibility. It declares, “This country is yours, and you are part of this country.” When identity becomes abstract rather than national, accountability erodes. When people are taught to see America as something separate from themselves, the incentive to build and protect institutions — family, marriage, faith, businesses, and community — declines.
This shift has had consequences.
As leftist identity politics expanded, family stability declined. Father absence increased. Faith receded. Dependency on government and political leaders replaced self-determination. What once happened inside the home — character formation and moral grounding — was increasingly outsourced to systems that could never replace it.
The results are visible across the country: generational poverty, struggling schools, unsafe neighborhoods, and cycles of incarceration. These are not merely economic failures; they have become embedded in a generational culture — and it was intentional.
A people taught that they do not fully belong will eventually stop acting as though they do. They may come to oppose the very nation that offers greater opportunity for freedom, wealth, and security than any other country in the world, including those on the African continent.
American history is complex. Slavery was real and evil, and it must never be minimized. But black Americans were never outsiders to the American project. They were participants from the beginning, serving, building, and sacrificing for a country they claimed as their own.
Black History Month should not reinforce separation or grievance. It should remind black Americans of their deep roots in this nation and their rightful claim to its future.
There is nothing empowering about surrendering an American birthright for a global identity with no legal or historical grounding. There is nothing liberating about teaching children that the country they were born into is not truly theirs.
Black Americans are not guests in this nation. They are not hyphenated citizens. They are Americans, by birthright, by sacrifice, and by contribution.
As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, Black History Month should be a moment of reclamation: of citizenship, responsibility, faith, family, and confidence in the American promise.
Progress has never been given; it has always been built. And it always begins at home.
* * *
Kendall Qualls is an Army veteran, business leader, and the leading Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota. TakeCharge is a national nonprofit organization led by Kendall and Sheila Qualls focused on restoring strong families as the foundation for opportunity, dignity, and upward mobility.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and the Washington Monument at dawn

Black Americans Are Not Hyphenated Citizens — And It’s Time We Stop Acting Like It

Black History Month

Blacks

Family Values

Martin Luther King Jr.

U.S. Citizens

I have released enough documentaries over the years to recognize an emerging pattern in terms of how the Left will respond. There are really only two options: Either they&#8217;ll ignore my documentary entirely (which is how most of the media responded to &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/am-i-racist?elementPosition=0&amp;row=13&amp;rowHeadline=Comedy+%26+Entertainment&amp;rowType=Portrait+Show+Carousel">Am I Racist?,</a>&#8221; even though it was the top documentary of the decade). Or, in the alternative, they&#8217;ll publish extremely low-effort, highly dishonest articles, where they review some imaginary version of my documentary, put words into my mouth, and take every important scene out of context.
That was the case with &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/what-is-a-woman?elementPosition=1&amp;row=13&amp;rowHeadline=Comedy+%26+Entertainment&amp;rowType=Portrait+Show+Carousel">What is a Woman?</a>,&#8221; when outlet after outlet accused me of being a &#8220;transphobe&#8221; who engaged in &#8220;hate speech&#8221; — even though 99% of the movie involved me asking basic, straightforward questions to self-described experts in gender ideology. And the other 1% was me asking why those experts were running away from me instead of answering my simple and straightforward questions.
So based on these experiences, when I released the first episode of my newest series at the Daily Wire, which is called &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/real-history-with-matt-walsh?elementPosition=2&amp;row=6&amp;rowHeadline=Featured&amp;rowType=Portrait+Show+Carousel">Real History</a>,&#8221; I was expecting either a total media blackout, or a flood of desperate hit pieces. After all, &#8220;Real History&#8221; is a direct challenge to some of the most important tenets of modern Leftism. 
But interestingly enough, &#8220;Real History&#8221; has not been met with a total media blackout. Nor has it been bombarded with a series of incredibly dumb and lazy smears. Instead, aside from a small number of YouTube videos from historians — which have mostly been positive, and very thorough — the only mainstream response to &#8220;Real History&#8221; has come from The Atlantic magazine, which considers itself to be the bastion of Left-wing intellectual thought.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1735-aoc-utterly-humiliates-herself-on-the-world-stage?elementPosition=1&amp;row=6&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-976065 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
And right away, that got my attention. It&#8217;s not that The Atlantic is a trustworthy outlet. It&#8217;s obviously not. In fact, they&#8217;ve created numerous high-level hoaxes in just the past couple of years, solely to influence elections. But at the same time, if The Atlantic — and only The Atlantic — is coming after you, then it means you&#8217;ve done something unique. It means that you&#8217;ve rattled the people who, in elite circles of the Democrat Party, are taken very seriously. Now, why might &#8220;Real History&#8221; have done that?
To answer that question, let&#8217;s see what <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/slavery-matt-walsh-1619-project/685982/">The Atlantic says</a>, specifically.
<blockquote>Matt Walsh would like you to know you’ve been lied to. Last month, the right-wing provocateur appeared on Megyn Kelly’s show to discuss his new video series, Real History With Matt Walsh. &#8230; In Walsh’s account, the left believes that “America was built on slavery, and it has no right to exist, and every white American carries, somehow, that legacy, that guilt in their blood”; therefore progressives feel they have the “moral justification to just do whatever they want” to white people. Walsh intends to stop this. So in Real History, he relentlessly downplays the brutality of slavery in the United States. Sanitizing slavery has become a core objective of the reactionary right under Donald Trump—a malignant response to the progressive left’s oversimplification of American history for their own present-day ends. But the truest understanding of slavery doesn’t serve any political faction. Rather, it acknowledges the horrors of racial oppression while still allowing us to see beyond them. &#8230; Walsh also notes that the descendants of Africans trafficked to what became the United States are now in better socioeconomic shape than those whose ancestors remained in the Old World or were transported to Latin America or the Caribbean. He draws an odious conclusion from this—American slavery wasn’t that bad—yet the point is not entirely incorrect. Other far more serious thinkers have made versions of it too.</blockquote>
There&#8217;s the sneering that you might expect from The Atlantic. They want you to know that there are &#8220;far more serious thinkers&#8221; than I am. But for all their preening and all their arrogance, it&#8217;s clear that the author of this piece, Thomas Chatterton Williams, has not even watched <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/rhs-260118?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel">Episode 1,</a> &#8220;The Real History of Slavery.&#8221; He couldn&#8217;t be bothered to spend the hour to actually watch the show.
And I can make that claim with confidence, because there is absolutely nothing in the episode — or any episode of the series — that &#8220;relentlessly downplays the brutality of slavery in the United States.&#8221; Instead, the episode is a roughly hour-long look at what slavery entailed, all over the world. And yes, as a matter of historical fact, Africans and the Barbary Pirates and the Ottomans generally treated their slaves far, far worse than Americans and American colonists. Americans weren&#8217;t known for floating canoes in the blood of their slaves, for example. Nor were Americans known for sailing thousands of miles away in order to snatch men, women and children from their homes, throw them onto boats, and sexually assault them. That&#8217;s not &#8220;downplaying&#8221; anything. It&#8217;s the truth. And &#8220;serious thinkers&#8221; — to use The Atlantic&#8217;s terminology — care about the truth, above all else.
But The Atlantic doesn&#8217;t care about the truth. That&#8217;s why, in 2019, they published an article <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians-clash-1619-project/604093/">entitled</a>, &#8220;The Fight Over the 1619 Project Is Not About the Facts.&#8221;
What&#8217;s remarkable about this headline is that, indeed, the fight over the 1619 Project was about the facts. All of the history was completely wrong — including their claim that Americans fought the Revolutionary War to preserve slavery. But The Atlantic ran cover for the 1619 Project at the time, because it served the narrative of the Democrat Party. It advanced racial grievances, which they saw — correctly, for a time — as a pathway to power.
The point of &#8220;Real History,&#8221; on the other hand, is not to advance the interests of the &#8220;MAGA movement,&#8221; or anyone else. The point is to communicate historically accurate information that&#8217;s deliberately hidden from us, at every stage in our lives. Schools don&#8217;t talk about it. The media doesn&#8217;t talk about it. Movies don&#8217;t talk about it. Telling the truth is not &#8220;downplaying&#8221; anything. By contrast, it&#8217;s the fake intellectuals in the Left, people like the writers at The Atlantic, who have been downplaying the reality of the African and Ottoman slave trades for generations.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Real History with Matt Walsh | Official Trailer" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PQu1n_OC1eE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
But according to The Atlantic, so-called &#8220;MAGA revisionists,&#8221; along with the Trump administration, are the problem here. 
So let&#8217;s read on from <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/slavery-matt-walsh-1619-project/685982/">their review</a> of &#8220;Real History.&#8221;
<blockquote>Back in March, [Trump] strong-armed a host of institutions by issuing an executive order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which directs federally funded museums, monuments, and parks to remove materials that promote “corrosive ideology.” Last month, the park service obliged, eliminating an outdoor exhibit at Independence National Historical Park, in Philadelphia, where George Washington’s house once stood. The exhibit honored nine slaves who toiled at the residence &#8230; Trump and his allies seem unwilling to tolerate virtually any acknowledgment that America subjugated Black people. Rather than making a dispassionate case against the idea that the country was founded to enslave Africans, MAGA is taking down plaques commemorating basic facts, such as Washington’s slaveholding. In Real History, Walsh turns the clock back further still.</blockquote>
Notice the sleight of hand here. 
They&#8217;re strongly implying that the Trump administration ordered the park service to remove an exhibit about the fact that George Washington owned slaves. But that&#8217;s actually not true. If you read the Executive Order, it orders the parks service to remove anything promoting a &#8220;corrosive ideology&#8221; that demonizes Americans. And as The Washington Post reported, the parks service interpreted that Executive Order as broadly as possible. It&#8217;s a form of &#8220;malicious compliance.&#8221; 
The Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/09/15/national-parks-slavery-information-removal/">reported:</a>
<blockquote>the removals were in line with President Donald Trump’s March executive order directing the Interior Department to eliminate information that reflects a “corrosive ideology” that disparages historic Americans. National Park Service officials are broadly interpreting that directive to apply to information on racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights or persecution of Indigenous people.</blockquote>
See how that works?
The Trump administration issues an order, telling agencies to stop advancing an anti-white, anti-American agenda. Democrats then remove displays of slavery. And then Democrats say, &#8220;Hey, you made us remove displays of slavery!&#8221;
And by the way, it&#8217;s especially ironic that they lump &#8220;Real History&#8221; in with this. Again, if this guy had watched the show — which he clearly hasn&#8217;t — he&#8217;d know that we talk, at some length, about Washington&#8217;s slaves. And in particular, we talk about his white indentured servants, who ran away around the time of the start of the Revolutionary War. Washington put out advertisements, seeking the return of these white runaways. And there were many more white runaways than black runaways at Washington&#8217;s estate. But no one at The Atlantic wants to talk about this, because it complicates their narrative that only blacks were victimized by slavery in America. So they hide the truth, and then they accuse us of being the liars.
What&#8217;s funny about all of this is that, back in 2019, The Atlantic put out an article stating that &#8220;reparations&#8221; could mean &#8220;telling the truth&#8221; about uncomfortable historical facts. So in that sense, you&#8217;d think they&#8217;d be happy about Real History. You&#8217;d think they&#8217;d consider it a form of reparations. Apparently not. 
In reality, The Atlantic, like so many other bastions of Left-wing &#8220;intellectualism,&#8221; is collapsing in on itself. Their ideology is incoherent. They have no idea what they stand for, or how to construct even the most basic argument about anything they believe in.
This is a big, big problem for the Left in general.

The Atlantic Attacks My Documentary, Says I’m ‘Downplaying’ Slavery

The Atlantic Attacks My Documentary, Says I'm ‘Downplaying’ Slavery

Documentaries

Slavery

The Atlantic

Before Donald Trump stunned the legacy media by winning the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton reassured Americans that “the challenges we face today do not approach those of Lincoln’s time. Not even close.”
Measured by bloodshed alone, she was right. Nothing today rivals the carnage of Antietam or Shiloh. Yet in a deeper sense — culturally, psychologically, and spiritually — the United States may now be more divided than it was when Americans were literally leveling rifles at each other.
The reason is profound: in 1861, both sides still believed in the legitimacy of the American experiment itself.
That may sound counterintuitive. How could the Confederacy — founded on secession and slavery — have believed in the principles of 1776, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights that followed? The answer lies in what the Confederates themselves said. In their Declarations of the Causes of Secession, Southern states were explicit. Mississippi declared, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world.” Across the declarations of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia, preserving slavery appears more than eighty times as the central justification for rebellion. Taxes appear once. Tariffs not at all.
This clarity explains a historical paradox: how the country could fight a war of extraordinary savagery and yet reconcile with relative speed once it ended.
The South believed — wrongly and catastrophically — that it was defending the founding principle of self-governance. In its view, states retained sovereignty and thus the right to secede if the federal government threatened their interests. That those interests included the enslavement of millions was morally rationalized or ignored. The North, meanwhile, increasingly understood the war as a test of whether the Declaration’s claim that “all men are created equal” had any binding meaning at all.
As Abraham Lincoln recognized, both sides could not be right. But both believed they were acting in service of America. The Civil War resolved a single, defining question: whether self-government extended to the right to enslave others without due process. The ruling was handed down with prejudice at Appomattox.
The defeated South accepted the verdict — grudgingly, imperfectly, but decisively enough to prevent endless insurgency. By the end of the nineteenth century, former Confederate states had become among the most patriotic regions of the country. Former Confederate general James Longstreet captured that reconciliation when he wrote in 1899, “Barring a little family misunderstanding of a generation back, the South has never been anything but loyal.”
That sentence would be unimaginable today.
Reunion after the Civil War was possible because, once slavery — the central issue — was settled, North and South still shared a reverence for the nation’s founding. They disagreed violently about its application, but not about its legitimacy. They still loved and believed in the innate goodness of their country.
Now consider the present.
What comparable issue divides us today — one that, once resolved, would allow the country to heal? What shared assumptions remain beneath our disputes?
The uncomfortable answer: very few.
We no longer merely disagree over policy. We disagree over whether the United States itself is a moral enterprise. Americans increasingly do not share a common origin story. When one looks at John Trumbull’s painting of the presentation of the Declaration of Independence, one side sees flawed but courageous men risking everything to found a republic that, despite its contradictions, expanded human freedom. The other sees little more than oppression: “racist, sexist, slave-owning hypocrites” whose words about liberty are dismissed as fraudulent from the outset.
<div id="attachment_1041603" style="width: 901px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1041603" class="size-large wp-image-1041603" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-113494983-891x576.jpg" alt="John Trumbull's oil painting, 'Declaration of Independence', 1818, depicting the five-man drafting committee of the Declaration of Independence presenting their work to the Congress, 28th June 1776. The committee are (left to right) John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. They are presenting the draft to Charles Thomson (standing) and John Hancock (seated). (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)" width="891" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-113494983-891x576.jpg 891w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-113494983-300x194.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-113494983-768x497.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-113494983.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 891px) 100vw, 891px" />Universal History Archive/Getty Images</div>
These are not policy disagreements; they are competing realities. They cannot be resolved by elections or concluded by a surrender ceremony. There is no Appomattox for a conflict this diffuse.
Today’s divide is not organized around a single issue like slavery. It is cultural and perceptual. It plays out not on battlefields but across classrooms, workplaces, media, and daily life. Even our fiercest moral debates — abortion, immigration, gender — are symptoms rather than causes. They reflect a society that no longer agrees on truth, limits, or even basic definitions.
The Civil War removed a localized moral cancer, and the body politic survived. Today’s divisions resemble something more metastatic, dispersed throughout the entire system. There are no clear fronts, no decisive battles, no final terms — only endless skirmishes.
Lincoln urged “charity toward all and malice toward none.” But charity requires reciprocity. It requires a shared belief that persuasion matters and that one’s opponent is still a fellow citizen.
Whether such an audience still exists is the question that will define the years ahead.
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, The Daily Wire, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">books</a>. You can also follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener">X</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Lee Surrenders To Grant At Appomattox Court House

There Is No Appomattox For America’s Current Conflict

Abraham Lincoln

Civil War

Culture

Southern States

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In March, the Trump Administration issued an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/">Executive Order</a> (EO) calling for a restoration of “Truth and Sanity to American History” which included a review of the Smithsonian Institute Museums. Now, the Administration is making good on that EO.
Naturally, politicians, Left-wing media, and the far-Left are pouncing with charges of &#8220;Stalinist tactics,” “fascism,” and “Trump’s historical vision.”
Yet, the most glaring example to justify the Administration’s action is the now <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333">infamous</a> Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture’s &#8220;Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness in the United States.&#8221;
But it is not just the one museum, the American Art Museum also features a <a href="https://americanart.si.edu/furthering-conversation-about-whiteness">page</a> titled “Furthering the Conversation About Whiteness.”
While the auditing of these institutions is probably overdue and necessary, there also needs to be a spotlight put on the teaching of culture and history in our educational institutions, especially K-12 schools.
The defensive position from the Left is that they just want to teach “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/27/opinions/teachers-union-critical-race-theory-schools-weingarten">honest history</a>.” Meant to sound noble, this is nothing more than wordplay. It is misdirection in an attempt to hide their heavily curated and far-Left [re]vision of history.
“Honest history,” as they will have the public believe, is just teaching the history of “underrepresented groups” to highlight their contributions to the United States. However, peel back the feel-good façade and it is clear there is a political agenda to advance anti-American, anti-Western ideologies – i.e. anti-“whiteness.”
In the context of K-12 education, there is no clearer example of this than [liberated/critical] ethnic studies.
Sold to school districts, parents, students, and the public writ large as the teaching of history and culture of minority groups, it is a far-Left radical political programming.
It is agitprop being deployed on children into K-12 schools. Amping up their emotions, preying on their empathy, and then feeding them politically biased content.
It’s general framework begins with a heavy focus on a student’s various racial and ethnic “identities,” or intersectionality. The intention is to create a strong tribal attachment to the student’s collective identities.
It then introduces “<a href="https://www.newsmax.com/politics/critical-competency-consciousness/2023/12/07/id/1145144/">critical consciousness</a>,” which trains students to find racism and oppression everywhere in their lives. Driving them into a constant state of anxiety and fear.
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For example, a recent Castro Valley Unified School District ethnic studies <a href="https://cvk12ca.community.highbond.com/document/cf8c0982-2db8-464f-83da-7932fab50636/">presentation</a> to the district board demonstrates this via student art which states “As an Asian American, racism is prevalent all around me.”
Ethnic studies activate deep feelings of anger and resentment in students towards the United States, and even towards their white teachers and peers.
A <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/ridgs/ethnic-studies-initiative/ethnic-studies-evaluation-projects">review</a> of Saint Paul Publics Schools’ ethnic studies program by the University of Minnesota highlights several students’ reflections on the course. One anonymous student stated &#8220;Why would a course about being critical have white teachers? My school has one [B]lack teacher teaching it. How can we be critical if we don’t listen to the voices who are firstly impacted? Also, white teachers even if they mean well will implement their own biases that students will have to deal with.”
The political programming continues by creating heroes, legends, and mythology through the intentional curation of historical events and peoples that have modeled “resistance” against whiteness. Examples include <a href="https://defendinged.org/incidents/ethnic-studies-course-features-poster-of-che-guevara-on-wall-includes-content-focused-on-white-supremacy-and-privilege/">Che Guevara</a>, the <a href="https://defendinged.org/incidents/scotts-valley-unified-school-district-ethnic-studies-course-teaches-students-that-capitalism-heterosexism-and-ableism-are-systems-of-oppression-and-forms-of-oppression-requires-students-to-part/">Black Panther Party, Angela Davis</a>, and even a defense of <a href="https://defendinged.org/incidents/san-francisco-unified-school-district-provides-resource-to-social-studies-and-ethnic-studies-teachers-that-claims-israeli-terrorism-has-been-significantly-worse-than-that-of-the-palestinians-reso/">anti-Israel</a> activism and terrorism.
Finally, students are taught and required to engage in far-Left social justice activism. Under the guise of “Youth Participatory Action Research,” students are trained to become street <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2023/11/20/staley-k-12-student-demonstrations-equity-double-standard/">activists</a> for the flavor-of-the-day far-Left cause.
Eventually, the goal is to embed it into every single subject area and <a href="https://defendinged.org/incidents/santa-rosa-city-schools-ethnic-studies-courses-feature-critical-race-theory-whiteness-and-social-justice-activism-paid-ethnic-studies-consultant-530000-over-four-years/">curriculum</a>. They admit this outright.
In California, San Rafael City Schools <a href="https://simbli.eboardsolutions.com/SB_Meetings/ViewMeeting.aspx?S=36030430&amp;MID=24501&amp;enIID=fBHmEqAHmyvMJ3CrfpluszzjQ%3D%3D&amp;srch=ethnic+studies&amp;ktype=Exact&amp;Tab=Agenda">contracted</a> with the University of California Berkeley’s <a href="https://ucbhssp.berkeley.edu/ethnic-studies">History-Social Science Project</a> to integrate ethnic studies “concepts and pedagogies” into the district’s World and U.S. history courses.
The university’s site states that it is assisting teachers and districts in integrating the “<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/13h6vVmJEeVyk1XdBAGZDuxMiZjLhhoYD4loNz7NSlck/copy">CA Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum</a>” into courses, which includes helping teachers “familiarize themselves with&#8230;critical race theory, intersectionality, which are key theoretical frameworks and pedagogies.”
This issue is not about the actual teaching of culture and history; it is about how far-Left actors are advancing their cultural revolution via the long march through American institutions.
While the Administration and public focus their attention on the national museums, heavy scrutiny must simultaneously be placed on the teaching of “honest history” and ethnic studies in K-12.
The advancement of anti-American and anti-Western ideologies need to be removed from classrooms.
* * *
Rhyen Staley is a researcher for Defending Education. He holds a master&#8217;s degree in elementary education and has over a decade of classroom experience in both public and private schools. He has over 25 years of volleyball coaching experience from Women’s Division I down to junior high.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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