It’s estimated that somewhere between 500 and 1,000 travel diaries — possibly the most popular literary genre of the 19th century — were written by foreign visitors to the United States in our first century of existence. The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” written after his visit to these shores in the 1830s, was and remains the most popular. Hundreds of others, from Charles Dickens’ “American Notes for General Circulation” to Yukichi Fukuzawa&#8217;s autobiography, are still in print.
America’s distinctiveness on the world stage drew observers from all over the world seeking to understand what this “new order” meant. Not all the reviews were positive. More aristocratic tourists criticized the directness of our manners, while others were bewildered at the emotionalism of some church services. Most all hated the American man’s addiction to tobacco-chewing — and spitting.
I must confess to reading over 50 of these books, which is probably why I’m reminded of them as a witness to soccer fans from around the world coming to America for this summer’s World Cup. In ways we should be thankful, we don’t have to wait many months or a year to read a book about their experience. With a quick scroll through social media, one can see video after video from Germans, Ghanaians, Japanese, and Norwegian soccer fans as they express their overwhelming shock at life in these United States.
Videos are plentiful of Dutch fans eating barbecue and Japanese fans dumbstruck while walking through Bass Pro Shops. Scottish fans in Boston were stunned by how frequently Americans would buy them drinks. But it’s the interviews with fans who are asked about their views of Americans that are the most revealing.
Norwegian soccer star Erling Haaland went to an NHL game where he witnessed the Americans’ full-throated singing of our National Anthem. He said, “They have so much pride for the country. They love their country so much. It’s everything about it. The national anthem was incredible. Amazing. I had goosebumps all over.”
Nineteenth-century visitors could be forgiven for their amazement at what they saw in America. There was literally nothing like us in world history — a thriving, if contentious, multiethnic republic. What’s the excuse now, two centuries later?
The answer, of course, is found in what these fans have been told about America (and Americans) by their media, governments, and schools. Many of those criticisms, from our supposed xenophobia to our greedy self-centeredness, appear to be collapsing upon contact with reality.
In this there’s an obvious reconnection with many of the themes you’d see from the travelogue writers in the 1800s:
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li2">Americans are good-natured: As the Englishman, Charles Latrobe, wrote when visiting in 1832, “The people of the United States may truly be said to be a gregarious race. The truth of this is exemplified in their summer enjoyments, when, in spite of the inconveniences entailed upon collecting together in large numbers, during a season when the heat is truly oppressive.”</li>
<li class="li2">Americans love big things: The Parisian clergyman, Jean Grandpierre, observed during his visit in the early 1850s, “In America everything takes gigantic proportions.”</li>
<li class="li2">Americans are innovators: “The great glory of the Americans is in their wondrous contrivances, in their patent remedies for the usually troublous operations of life,” said Englishman Anthony Trollope, in 1861.</li>
<li class="li2">Americans are infectiously energetic: During her visit in 1849, the Swedish novelist Fredrika Bremer described, “Nothing strikes me so much as the youthfulness of this people — I might almost say childish fervor and love of adventure. They hesitate at nothing, and regard nothing as impossible.”</li>
<li class="li2">Americans love their country: The British medical missionary, Isabella Lucy Bird, described the typical American man she met in Chicago in 1854: “their very appearance says to you, ‘Stranger, I belong to the greatest, most enlightened and most progressive nation on earth. I may be the President or a millionaire next.”</li>
</ul>
I could go on, but you get the picture. The difference now is that these past visitors are stunned by what they’re learning about America for the first time. Today’s visitors are having to unlearn what they’ve been told.
Of course, it’s also true that we as Americans have also been surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reactions by these World Cup fans, and this speaks to what we’ve told ourselves (or been taught) about this country. The <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/711938/american-pride-falls-year-record-low.aspx">decline in American patriotism</a> is evidenced in several recent national surveys.
It’s logical to wonder how these travelers will impact views of America upon their return to their native lands. For our part, on this 250th year, we’d do well to consider the wonder these fans continue to express, and be grateful for the place we call home.
***
Pete Peterson is dean of Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and its Braun Family Dean’s Chair.

Powerful Marathon Finish Line Celebration Moment

Two Centuries After Tocqueville, America Still Surprises Its Visitors

Alexis de Tocqueville

America 250

American History

Charles Dickens

DW Opinion

erling haaland

Fukazawa Yukichi

World Cup

In an 1838 speech entitled “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” Abraham Lincoln warned that if America were ever to fall, it would come as a result of internal decay rather than foreign conquest. “If destruction be our lot,” he said, “we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” Little did he know how prescient his remarks would prove to be, and the heroic and tragic role he would play in unfolding events.
While the crucible Lincoln led America through was unique in its scope and consequences, every generation must be alert to the dangers of internal decay. In ours, the battle is being fought on two fronts.
The first we have been aware of for some time: Progressivism. Nearly a hundred years ago, building upon Woodrow Wilson’s arrogant modernism, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a cowed Supreme Court bound and gagged the Constitution, and their intellectual descendants have held it captive ever since. That’s how our government became so big and bloated, encroaching into cultural and religious spheres for which it has no Constitutional jurisdiction.
Recently, and somewhat mystifyingly, a second front against self-government has opened, this one on the far Right. Call it the Post-Liberal or “Regressive” front; a mix of intellectuals, reactionaries, and pot-stirrers who view our Constitutional order not as something to be renewed but, at a minimum, “remodeled” (especially with regard to religious freedom).
What both sides have in common is the mistaken belief that they can improve on a political order that has unfolded over thousands of years of trial and error, repression and resistance, reformation and revolution.
Historically speaking, the ordered liberty we enjoy in America is a new development. For most of time, it was humanity’s lot to be ruled by chieftains, potentates, and kings. The cultural and political advances of Western Civilization lifted whole nations out of this tyrannical mud, creating self-governing polities informed by the ideas of Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem.
America became the supreme example, “We the people” ratifying the Constitution to secure principles of self-government articulated in the Declaration of Independence, which itself codified ideas rooted in the moral and intellectual foundations of the Old and New Testaments.
Weaken or remove any one of these supports, as both Progressives and Regressives are intent on doing, and the American experiment risks sinking back into the morass. And as goes America, so goes Western Civilization.
Regressivism’s adherents correctly diagnose the problem of cultural decay, but they prescribe some sort of “friendly” authoritarianism that has been tried and repeatedly found wanting. Fond of pronouncements about “the common good,” they are coy about pinning down what exactly that means, by whom it will be determined, and whether (and to what extent) the rest of us will have a say.
We can all rue the toll rampant individualism has taken on our society, but 250 years ago government by the consent of the governed was finally and justly recognized as a natural right. Consent, like eternal salvation, cannot be coerced, and is and always will be an individual matter.
The Trump/MAGA movement was an overdue and necessary (if imperfect and incomplete) populist reaction to a pendulum that had been swinging leftward for a century. The question is what comes next, and this is the ground on which today’s battle of ideas is being fought.
Will populism, up for grabs as populism tends to be, lead to the renewal of Constitutional norms, or will its enthusiasts be hoodwinked into throwing out the proverbial baby (limited government, freedom of conscience) with the bathwater? Will Americans pay heed to what G.K. Chesterton called “the democracy of the dead,” respecting the wisdom of the centuries that led to the greatest experiment in self-government ever divined, or will we ignore the lesson of Chesterton’s fence, removing the planks whose value some don’t properly grasp?
The duty of our generation is to restore the limits on government articulated in the Constitution and ensure continued respect for natural rights as avowed in the Declaration of Independence. It’s to stand not only with Lincoln, but with Adams and Hamilton and Madison and “the indispensable man,” George Washington, who after winning the war to establish American self-government notably refused a crown.
One hundred years ago, on the occasion of America’s 150th birthday, President Calvin Coolidge said, &#8220;If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, that is final.&#8221;
You can’t progress from “final,” nor can you regress from it. You can only respect and protect it.
***
Steve McKee is a branding expert and the author of three books: “When Growth Stalls,” “Power Branding,” and “TURNS: Where Business Is Won and Lost.” Find him at <a href="http://stevemckee.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://stevemckee.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784919152470000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2qPUHH3OkKnPWx63HWsOe6">SteveMcKee.com</a>.

U.S. Constitution

Abraham Lincoln Warned Us About The DSA

Abraham Lincoln

Calvin Coolidge

Constitution

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)

MAGA

Populism

Progressivism

Regressivism

Woodrow Wilson

Everyone says you can’t get ahead these days.
That’s a lie that’s been told for 300 years. It wasn’t true then. It’s even less true now. Getting ahead is easier than ever.
Notice, I did not say “Everyone can get ahead.” That is not true. I said you. Doing what it takes requires less, pays out more, and the payments last longer than at any time in history. You, however, must be willing to do all those Go Ahead things that actually worked when others won’t. Take the right risks, and the odds are ridiculously in your favor.
The good old days sucked, no matter when those days were. Do you have a fondness for Colonial Williamsburg and scrappy immigrants with rap skills? Great. Me too. But early America was a terribly hard place to get ahead.
American colonists were pretty grumpy about how hard it was to Go Ahead. The governor of Virginia could barely sleep at night. “Oh how miserable is that man who must govern a people who six parts of seven are poor, in debt, discontented, and armed!” Armed indeed. They burned his colonial capital to the ground 100 years before the Revolution. Americans were angry about not getting ahead from the very beginning.
You could take risks, but if they didn’t work out, you might find yourself in jail. Yes, jail. People went to prison for being broke in the 1700s, and this happened regularly. Worse, if a man went bust, his wife and kids were imprisoned, too. They forgot to put that in Hamilton.
Or maybe you prefer your nostalgia from the 1800s? In 1870, food, rent, and clothing took 91 cents of every dollar made (today it’s under 40 cents). The typical American owned just one and a half shirts. That is an actual historical statistic. To make money to buy this expensive food and the other half of that shirt, the typical man worked sixty hours per week. Women worked more. And the dollars in which people were paid could lose their value overnight, making them no more stable than cryptocurrency today.
If you could find work, that is. Newspapers regularly proclaimed the death of American opportunity in the 24 recessions that century. One in four years was bad, and some were really bad. Until late in the century, there was very little insurance to cover losses. If your bank collapsed, house burned, crops failed, or spouse died, you just lost everything.
Since the 1970s, the median income has risen by around 50% (yes, adjusted for inflation). Even left-leaning groups admit wages are up at minimum 29%. But working-class wages went down, right? No. The median weekly earnings of high-school graduates (no college degree) are up since the mid-1990s. In my birth state (North Carolina, which lost all those furniture and tobacco jobs), the bottom 10% of earners make 33% more than they did 20 years ago. It’s up in every other state, too.
By some estimates, about half of Americans were poor during the Roaring Twenties, which was before the Great Depression. By 1950 it was nearly a third. Today it’s barely over one in 10.
You can make more money, working fewer hours, spending less to survive, while buying more luxuries than any one of your ancestors. You can marry whomever you want. As we’ll see, that’s a big deal; marriage is one of the largest predictors of financial success. Side hustle platforms are everywhere. Your savings are safe. Mortgages don’t involve questions about your sex life (they used to), and you don’t have to pay them off in five years. Debtors’ prisons are abolished, bankruptcy laws give second chances, and Social Security offers a built-in retirement annuity. You’ve got it harder than “back then”? Puh-leeze!
Starting in the 1970s, a cottage industry of academics published research bemoaning the lack of real “get aheadism” in the so-called land of opportunity. The basic summation of those scholars is as follows: despite our national myths, most people stay in the same income class as their parents. Born poor, die poor. Born middle class, die middle class. Born wealthy, die in a Tahoe skiing accident. This line of reasoning has been absorbed into a media narrative feedback loop, especially on social media. Nearly 60% of young people today say the American Dream is no longer possible.
Our culture swallowed a pessimism pill, and it isn’t doing you any good. If you scream at people that their lives are terrible for five decades, they may start to believe you. There is real — and really persistent — wealth inequality in America. But remember this: the question is not what type of economy you would build, but what you will build in this economy.
For everyday people, the goalposts are set where they are, and it’s best to get the ball moving. The clock is twice as long as it used to be, but it is ticking.
PEOPLE REALLY DID GET AHEAD, AND YOU CAN, TOO
Perhaps you’ve heard that nobody can get ahead anymore. That capitalism is broken. That only the rich get richer.
Anything bad you’ve believed about capitalism, I’ve believed it more. Finding myself as a happy warrior for Go Ahead America was not just a strange personal trip; it was also family heresy and professional suicide.
Most people don’t know this about the South, but we once had a budding communist party. When I was a kid, my dad periodically voted for communists for president. The only mainstream candidate he ever genuinely liked was Bernie Sanders.
Let me tell you what I believed before I tell you why I no longer believe it. There is a Despair Industrial Complex of academics, activists, and journalists convinced that capitalism is a system of exploitation keeping people down rather than offering a path up. I call them Big Woe, because every hot take is either “Woe to Them!” or “Woe is Me!” Inside Big Woe, the fight is against “War Capitalism”: governments and businesses just helping each other win the game of power and coercion like two brother lions who’ve always had each other’s back.
Big Woe’s message is working. Anti-capitalism is culturally everywhere, especially on campus. Want to impress your Netflix &amp; chill partner? Next time you’re watching a crime drama, proclaim, “It’s the CEO!” It is important to do this early. You will get less credit if you wait. Businessmen (and women) are evil in American culture. A study of nearly 1,000 shows found that businesspeople commit more television crime than any other characters, even than career criminals. You will know this intuitively if you’ve ever binged Law &amp; Order. To cap it off, seemingly the only thing that MSNBC and Fox News agree on is that someone screwed the working class.
We arrive at this lunacy: nobody can get ahead anymore, which is funny because no one used to get ahead, either. A robust body of prestigious people say Americans were locked in place for the 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, and they’re still stuck in neutral today.
If something can’t be true, it probably isn’t. Everyday Americans long believed people got ahead because they saw people getting ahead. Today, despite a chorus of voices saying you can’t, you can. You probably know someone who has. The truth is messier. It was hard. It still is hard, just not as hard as before. Challenging and doable are not mutually exclusive.
Don’t blame capitalism, blame your city council. Zoning laws, rules that say you can’t build here or, if you do, only so much, create housing scarcity. The land you are allowed to build on costs more than ever before. Local politics (not red versus blue, but us versus ourselves) is pricing people out of home ownership, not capitalism. Some dilemmas are genuinely political, and that is one of them.
So what happens at the top? If you can’t get to the front, surely it is because someone else is holding their spot in line. Not true. In the United States, 64% of those born at the top fall out in their lifetime, precisely the same percentage as in Denmark. Most Americans (and Danes) who make it to the top didn’t start there, and those born there don’t stay.
Of those born in the bottom financial fifth of the United States, six in 10 get out. That’s not perfect (eight in 10), but it’s a better-than-average shot. Four in 10 become middle class, upper middle class, or rich. Nearly one in 10 make it all the way to the top.
Go Ahead is there for the taking. If I told your ancestors, from India to Ireland, that you would live in a time where kids born at the bottom had a better than 50% shot at a good life, and one of every 10 born poor became rich, they would call me crazy or praise their gods. Probably both.
If only one in 10 born at the bottom makes it all the way to the top, then damn it, be the one.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU BELIEVE
At some point, someone thought it would be a great idea to destroy everyday people’s faith in the American Dream. Incentives matter, and for those doing the bashing, they’ve been well rewarded with tenure on the Left and political power on the Right.
I implore you to believe they might all be wrong. Believe that this system has worked for others and it will work for you, because it has and it will. Is it perfect? Of course not. Neither is our version of football, where you throw the ball with your hands, but we love it anyway.
It is easy to scoff at the idea that “outlook,” “mindset,” “optimism,” or whatever other self-help mantra people preach holds the secret to success. But outlook is crucial. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found, to everyone’s surprise, that income was slightly negatively correlated to financial well-being. The strongest indicator was “a positive attitude” and “the habit of saving.” In a follow-up study, behavior (again, greater than income) was the greatest predictor of well-being. If you say this in learned circles, you are “poor shaming” — blaming failure on the individuals when it is the system’s fault. But these results, in another study of nearly 150,000 people, are strongest for the poor. Hopeful views for the future significantly predicted long-term savings. Yes, systems matter. So does the faith in yourself the myth busters gleefully seek to destroy.
They’re not just wrong. They’re hurting people.
To see how far you’ve come, you must look back at where you started. If you want to gaze off at distant utopia, fine by me. Looking back, though, it feels like we’re awfully close to where previous generations strived to Go Ahead to. If we lose our sense of awe and wonder at how different our world is from the past, and if we lose our bearings on how hard it was to get this far, we will abandon the process of getting ahead. That is a mistake.
Don’t buy from Big Woe. You don’t have to give your DNA to a genealogy company to discover this; just call your grandmother and ask: How many generations removed are you from your family’s first indoor, flush toilet?
***
Excerpted from “How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked (and Didn&#8217;t)” by Joseph S. Moore, Ph.D. Copyright © 2026 by Joseph S. Moore. Reprinted here with permission from Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Dr. Joseph S. Moore is a historian, investor, and author.

Family Dinner

‘Big Woe’ Wants You To Believe The American Dream Is Dead

American Dream

Capitalism

It was 30 years ago this month that a couple of college students in Kennewick, Wash., stumbled upon a rare archaeological discovery — one that would help trigger a war between science and racial identity politics, or what we now call “DEI.” Three decades later, it’s clear that if we don’t act quickly, it’s a fight science will probably lose.
What the students found was a 9,000-year-old skeleton that was soon nicknamed Kennewick Man. It was certainly one of the most precious anthropological finds ever. At the time, it was the oldest human skeleton ever found in North America, and it had signs of an injury from an arrow or a spear. More intriguingly, it seemed to have less in common with the skeletons of Native Americans than with those of ancient Japanese peoples, thus potentially changing our understanding of how humans first arrived in the New World.
But that’s when the federal government stepped in. Under a law called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, skeletons found on federally owned land (as Kennewick Man was) must be turned over, or “repatriated,” to the Native American tribes they’re related to. NAGPRA was written in response to the actions of 19th- and early 20th-century archaeologists who sometimes engaged in practices that would be unacceptable today to acquire specimens, and it requires not only the “repatriation” of human remains, but also of “funerary objects” — that is, things buried alongside bodies.
Kennewick Man was far older than any existing tribe and not related to any of them. Nevertheless, tribal officials insisted that the bones be kept away from scientific study and turned over for reburial, which would destroy their usefulness for scientific research. In compliance with those demands, federal officials confiscated the skeleton and buried the Kennewick Man site under 600 tons of rock and fill to prevent any further discoveries.
Scientists sued, arguing that NAGPRA simply doesn’t apply to objects that old. After years of litigation, federal courts ruled in their favor. Indeed, the courts found that government officials had acted in bad faith and awarded the scientists $2 million in attorney fees. A year later, even though DNA research revealed that Kennewick Man was closest to South American indigenous peoples, an executive order by then-President Barack Obama forced the scientists to turn Kennewick Man over to a group of Northwest Coast Native American tribes who destroyed the bones forever.
That was bad enough, but in the years since, tribal activists and sympathetic politicians have taken increasingly aggressive positions in demanding the “repatriation” of specimens — many of which have no true connection to tribes, and others that aren’t even particularly old. Some museums have even “repatriated” artworks made in the 1980s and purchased from gift shops — as if these were sacred remnants of someone’s ancestors.
Today, in museums across the country, it has become common to see empty display cases, featuring signs like the one spotted recently at the San Diego Museum of Us: “As part of our decolonization process, these items have been moved to a sanctuary space.”
Equally absurd are cases in which scientists are forced to relinquish animal bones — literally the trash our ancestors threw away — on the theory that they’re somehow “funerary objects” that should be off-limits out of racial or religious sensitivities.
What’s more, some museums have adopted rules based on tribal practices to govern how scientists handle objects in their collections. These sometimes bar female scientists from handling specimens, since that’s sometimes prohibited by Native religious taboos. Museums are also required by federal regulation to have “advisory” committees that include practitioners of tribal religions. Christians, Jews, and Hindus aren’t given the same preferential treatment.
It’s hard to imagine a starker example of the collision between racial identity politics and the scientific rationality that our social and technological progress depends on. Out of deference to politically correct race politics and irrationally romanticized conceptions about “stolen land,” the institutions where science should reign supreme are being suborned into erasing the accumulated knowledge of centuries. In effect, an entire field of scientific inquiry has been placed at risk by an overzealous activist movement using the regulatory power of the state.
The study of human remains and artifacts isn’t just some antiquarian hobby. It provides critical insights about present-day issues like climate change and provides insights that can help police officers solve crimes. But entire areas of anthropological research may now be shutting down, thanks to the aggressive use and misuse of NAGPRA.
The science of anthropology can still be saved if we act now. Museum officials and state governments can push back. For one thing, many “repatriation” efforts aren’t actually required by NAGPRA. Museum leaders should refuse to be cowed by activist demands that fall outside the law. And states should adopt legislation prohibiting the return of specimens that are too old to be associated with a tribe or too young to be a “funerary object.” They should also forbid any museum from following rules that discriminate on the basis of sex or religion.
Science is too precious to be sacrificed to the political demands of DEI and the wishful thinking of angry activists who prioritize race over research, discovery, and progress.
***
Timothy Sandefur is the vice president for legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.
Elizabeth Weiss is a professor emeritus of anthropology at San José State University and author of the Goldwater Institute report, “<a href="https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-report/the-reburial-of-the-southwest/">The Reburial of the Southwest: Closing Off Native History and Archaeology</a>”

FRANCE-SCIENCE-ANTHROPOLOGY-MUSEUM-PREHISTORY-RESEARCH

Identity Politics Is Burying Science

Anthropology

Archeology

Kennewick Man

Native Americans

Natural history

Science

Woke Culture

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History pushes left-wing activism, featuring bizarre displays including chest binders, a crotch harness, and the diary of a gender-confused girl, according to a scathing White House report released Monday. 
The Trump administration’s Domestic Policy Council released a 162-page <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Smithsonian-Report-Saving-Americas-Story.pdf">report</a> concluding that the Smithsonian “fails in the basic task of illuminating our heritage” and instead promotes woke political causes. The report argues that the museum portrays the Founding Fathers primarily through the lens of slavery while marginalizing their broader influence on the nation&#8217;s founding.  
“Our central finding is not that the Museum has simply added overlooked stories, corrected perceived errors, or broadened its historical scope,” the report found. “Rather, it is that Museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”
Anthea Hartig, the director of the National Museum of American History, has previously <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxKVJ1pYcEw&amp;t=2484s">said</a> that she wants to use the museum to “advance social justice” and <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/press/releases/slaverys-shadow-george-floyd-and-american-legacies-anthea-m-hartig-elizabeth">wanted</a> to “work to reframe the traditional, celebratory narrative of U.S. history for visitors”
Hartig has also made derogatory statements about “whiteness,” claiming that she was propped up “by the cushions of whiteness and the pillows of the bourgeoisie.” 
The report highlighted past <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/gay-history-beyond-stonewall/online/how-far-will-you-go">displays</a> that included a crotch harness accompanied by a description of clothing being used as “acts of resistance as well as self-identity” for the LGBTQ movement, a chest binder that belonged to a transgender-identifying skateboarder, and a diary page from a young girl who wrote that she prayed &#8220;every night for my penis to grow.&#8221; 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
In accordance with <a href="https://x.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>&#8216;s &#8220;Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History&#8221; order, a new report exposes how the Smithsonian turned the Nat&#8217;l Museum of American History into a vehicle for Radical Left propaganda and degeneracy.
Here are some of the worst examples.
🧵THREAD:
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/2074317861443559809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<div id="attachment_1129653" style="width: 1510px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1129653" class="size-full wp-image-1129653" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-07-at-11.32.09-AM.png" alt="" width="1500" height="524" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-07-at-11.32.09-AM.png 1500w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-07-at-11.32.09-AM-300x105.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-07-at-11.32.09-AM-1024x358.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-07-at-11.32.09-AM-768x268.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" />Smithsonian Exhibit.</div>
It also cites displays suggesting it was discriminatory to keep boys who identify as girls out of female sports and videos featuring drag queens.
According to the report, museum staff also pushed an &#8220;anti-racist&#8221; toolkit encouraging employees to “confront whiteness” by “making the case for inclusion.&#8221;
The report criticizes the museum&#8217;s treatment of the nation&#8217;s founders, arguing that visitors &#8220;will find no major exhibits dedicated to America&#8217;s Founding era,&#8221; George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, or major moments of the American Revolution&#8230;  
“Instead, visitors will find Founders, such as Benjamin Franklin, introduced chiefly through their connection to slavery while their decisive roles in building the Republic and their anti-slavery efforts are minimized or ignored,” the report found.
A Smithsonian spokesman told The Daily Wire that it has ”served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so.&#8221;

SMITHSONIAN UNDER FIRE

The White House Just Highlighted These Absurd Displays At The Nation’s Top History Museum

Smithsonian Museum

Social Issues

Transgender

U.S.

Wokeness

Visitors to the American Colonies in the mid-18th century were astonished by the families they encountered. Schoolmaster Gottlieb Mittelberger, dispatched in 1750 by the Duke of Wuertenberg to report on German settlers in Pennsylvania, was typical. “It must be confessed that the female sex in this new country is very fruitful,” he wrote. In both city and country, “when one comes into a house, one finds it usually full of children, and the city of Philadelphia is fairly swarming with them.” Whenever a visitor meets an American woman, he noticed, “she is either with child, or she carries a child in her arms, or leads one by the hand.”(1)
In 1766, the Church of England sent the priest Charles Woodmason to bring Anglican order to the Scotch-Irish settlers in the Carolina backcountry. He described the subjects of his mission as “Rude—Ignorant—Void of Manners, Education, or Good Breeding…the most lowest, vilest men breathing.”(2)
And yet, Woodmason was stunned by the fecundity of their womenfolk:
<blockquote>
There’s not a Cabin but has 10 or 12 Young Children in it—When the boys are 18 and the Girls 14 they marry—so that in many Cabins you will see 10 or 15 Children, Children and Grandchildren of one size—and the Mother looking as Young as the Daughter.
</blockquote>
No less a figure than Benjamin Franklin pondered the causes of such things. In his remarkable 1755 essay, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, Etc., he accurately calculated that American marriage and birth rates were twice as high as those found in Europe: an average of eight births per woman in the New World compared to four in the Old. This meant that the American population would double every 20 years by natural increase alone. Why this difference? Franklin noted that land was plentiful and cheap in America and that “a laboring man that understands Husbandry, can in a short time save enough to purchase a piece of new land sufficient for a plantation, whereon he may subsist a family.” Such men “are not afraid to marry,” and marry early. Moreover, Franklin argued that “sects” that regarded frugality and hard work as religious duties and educated “their children therein” would grow faster than groups which did not.(3)
Writing in 1775, Harvard University theologian Edward Wigglesworth suggested causes closer to the divine. The rapidity of American population growth had no “parallel in the annals of Europe!”  he wrote. Indeed, he noted, such a thing “has never been equaled since the patriarchal ages,” described in the Old Testament. On a more practical note, he argued that Americans “are less luxurious in their manner of living” and that their “temperance in diet renders them more healthy.” Hinting at the political implications, Wigglesworth estimated that Americans “will be more numerous than their brethren in Britain” within a mere 50 years.(4)
This demographic exuberance was not new. The Puritan settlers of New England had recorded similar numbers in the 17th Century. The first two generations of Puritans averaged nine children per couple.(5) At the upper extreme, the 90 families in Billerica — today a Boston suburb — counted 1,043 children, an average of 11 kids.(6) As demographer Jim Potter has summarized, “the natural growth rate of Massachusetts and Connecticut in the second half of the seventeenth century was extremely unusual, if not unique, in human history.”(7)
Moreover, similar decades-long episodes of familial effervescence also occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the former event, the hugely influential writers Sarah Hale and Lydia Sigourney described a remarkable conflation of good homes and the American Republic around “the Eden Laws”: the creation by God of marriage; the Divine command “to be fruitful and multiply;” and the necessity of distinctive male and female tasks. As Hale wrote: “Do you not perceive a striking similitude between the family on Mount Ararat and the Pilgrim band in the Mayflower?”(8)
In the latter episode, marriage- and baby-booms altered the American social landscape. The marriage rate more than doubled between 1932 and the late 1940s. The average age of first marriage may have reached record American lows in 1956: 22.5 for men; 20.1 for women. By 1970, over 95% of American adults either were or had been married. Meanwhile, the fertility rate soared from an estimated 2 lifetime births per woman in 1930 to 3.625 in 1957, an increase of 80%.(9)
Looking past our current time of marriage and fertility woes, do these past episodes of family strength and renewal teach common lessons about what works?  The answer, I believe, is yes.
Here are six lessons we can take away from America’s past to boost fertility in our future:
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li4">Embrace a family-centered worldview. In one exemplary community, the Quakers in 18th-century Pennsylvania organized the whole of life around family-centeredness, to transform the “trivia, responsibilities, and relations of family life” into something “fascinating, profound, and sacred.”(10)</li>
<li class="li4">Encourage Property Ownership. Productive land, homes, forests, and small enterprises should be owned by as many families as possible. Notable episodes of greatly expanded property-holding include a quadrupling in the number of family farms in America during the second half of the 19th century through measures such as the Homestead Act of 1862 and the 90% rise in the number of owner-occupied homes between 1945 and 1960, heavily fueled by favorable federal policies.(11) (See the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/homes-for-young-families-a-pro-family-housing-agenda">IFS report on housing</a> for more ideas on boosting home ownership).</li>
<li class="li4">Build Family Economies. In both the 17th and 18th centuries, families formed the basic economic unit, not individuals. Throughout the British colonies, Americans expected each family to operate as a self-contained unit. They expected children to accept a duty toward their families, “even to the point of sacrificing individual advantage.” And they expected that education would be the responsibility of families, not “society.”(12) In the 19th century, theologian Horace Bushnell borrowed an image from Jeremiah to praise “the organic working of the family,” explaining: “If the father kindles the fire, and the women knead the cakes, the children will gather the wood.”(13) Even in the late 20th century, calculations of the value of the full-time homemaker’s contribution to the home economy through child care, cooking, cleaning, and so on ranged from 50-100% of the median cash family income.(14) (Looking ahead, <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/introducing-the-third-oikos-homemaking-reimagined">the &#8220;Third Oikos&#8221; model</a>, a joint project of IFS the Foundation for American Innovation, seeks ways in which new information technologies can reintegrate production in households, bringing both mothers and fathers &#8220;home.&#8221;)</li>
<li class="li4">Grow the Middle Class. Every period of family strength in American history either witnessed or built upon a shrinkage of the proportions of both the super-rich and the very poor, and the expansion of the middle class. Perhaps the most dramatic and well-documented example of this came in the middle decades of the 20th century. Labeled “the great compression of wages,” economic inequality “fell precipitously” between 1940 and 1970, with “a wage structure more egalitarian” than it had been for the prior one hundred years or “at any time since.”(15) These were the very years of the celebrated Marriage and Baby Boom.</li>
<li class="li4">Seek a Family-Centered Polity. Just as in economics, “the family rather than the individual was the basic political unit” throughout 18th century America.1(6 )Much closer to current time, every significant Federal domestic policy adopted between 1933 and 1948 sought to promote and defend the breadwinner-homemaker family model as a clear expression of American solidarity.(17)</li>
<li class="li4">Respect Sexual Complementarity in Marriage, While Making Work from Home Easier. The Americans of 1776 expected that men and women would hold distinct spheres of responsibility: the former in the fields and the public square; the latter in the house, garden, and farmyard. Albeit with a shift from farm to suburb, the same assumptions prevailed in the mid- 20th century. Research studies of that era found well-educated women expressing “a fervent commitment to marriage” and full-time homemaking.(18) As feminist historian Elaine Tyler May accurately summarizes: “the young women of the day would not be dissuaded. They were homeward bound.”(19)</li>
</ol>
These are the principles — grounded in a distinctive, if large, geographic place — on which a well-defined American family system has been built, and re-built, over the last four centuries. As we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, I predict that if family renewal occurs again in this fair land, it will derive from new iterations of these same six strategic tasks.
***
This is republished with permission from the <a href="https://ifstudies.org/">Institute for Family Studies</a>. The original can be found <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-demographic-miracle-of-1776-and-what-it-means-today">here</a>.
Allan C. Carlson’s books include <a href="https://canonpress.com/products/the-american-way-family-and-community-in-the-shaping-of-the-american-identity?srsltid=AfmBOoqq6zB2vSlOXNLwXAgPAjBnuxPUZl3KUm8lO4iO4isM3xSiP7un">The American Way: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity</a>(Cannon Press, 2003), and  <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Family-Cycles-Strength-American-1630-2000-ebook/dp/B0FCCXGG5N/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2DQK3714SMB5T&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.lo_8wN8FBUL7Lk4p5m_xfdoXx5h03fGC5BxVLsa_HVxAOjN5HHa6Sz3c3JFB2nfY.1XtjdDnobLMxuyQxn_4ZfcxBmrber30jVSz5lRi8rTE&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=family+cycles+allan+carlson&amp;qid=1782233385&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=family+cycles+allan+carlson%2Cstripbooks%2C167&amp;sr=1-1">Family Cycles: Strength, Decline, and Renewal in American Domestic Life, 1630-2000</a>(Routledge, 2016).
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of the Institute for Family Studies.
1. Gottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750 and Return to Germany in 1754, trans. By Carl Theo. Eben (Philadelphia, PA: John Jos. McVey, 1898), 107.
2. Charles Woodmason, The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution 1766-68 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953), 39.
3. Benjamin Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, Etc. (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1755), 217-8, 220, 222.
4. Edward Wigglesworth, Calculations on American Population with a Table for Estimating the Annual Increase of Inhabitants in the British Colonies…. (Boston: John Boyle, 1775), 5-6, 23.
5. Richard Archer, “New England Mosaic: A Demographic Analysis for the Seventeenth Century,” The William and Mary Quarterly (Third Series) 47 (October 1990), 477-502.
6. Changes in Population,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 38 (1869), 387.
7. Jim Potter, “Demographic Development and Family Structure,” in Colonial British America, ed. Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 148.
8. Sarah J. Hale, Manners; or Happy Homes and Good Society. All the Year Round (New York: Arno Press, 1972 [1868], 22-3, 261-2.
9. Historical Statistics of the United States. Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1976), 19, 50, 63.
10. Barry Levy, “The Birth of the ‘Modern Family’ in Early America: Quaker and Anglican Families in the Delaware Valley, Pennsylvania, 1681-1750,” in Michael Zuckerman, ed., Friends and Neighbors: Group Life in America’s First Plural Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 48.
11. Harvey S. Rosen, “Owner Occupied Housing and the Federal Income Tax: Estimates and Simulations,” Journal of Urban Economics 6 (1979), 263-4.
12. Robert V. Wells, Revolutions in Americans’ Lives: A Demographic Perspective on the History of Americans, Their Families, and Their Society (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 56-63.
13. Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967 [1847]), 74-98.
14. Reuben Gronau, “Home Production—A Forgotten Industry,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 62 (1980), 408-16.
15. Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo, “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 57 (February 1992), 2-4. 24-32.
16. Wells, Revolutions in Americans’ Lives, 56-63.
17.This assertion comes from materials found in: Allan Carlson, The ‘American Way’: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003), 55-78.
18. The most rigorous and thorough of these was the Kelly Longitudinal Study, ably summarized in: Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 30-38.
19. May, Homeward Bound, 80-82.

The Peale Family

The Lesson Colonial America Can Teach Modern Families

American family

Fertility

Institute for Family Studies

marraige

My Dearest America,
From across your northern border, from a nation that has enjoyed the serene luxury of your shadow and your shelter, I write to you on the occasion of your 250th birthday — as a grateful beloved and not some moralistic scold or resentful neighbor. For I am acutely aware that the liberties I enjoy, and the clarity with which I know myself free, are gifts of your thought, your daring, and your existence. I am a Canadian woman, yes, but in the profoundest sense that matters — one which appeals to nature and not to passports — I am your daughter.
Others will say you are a “propositional nation,” while some still cling to the hope that you are a “heritage nation.” Both miss the point, because each misunderstands the revolution behind what you really did and who you really are. The radicalism of your proposition lies in its claim to be true by nature. In brief, you are and will be true in all times and places. You did something unprecedented: you took equality and liberty out of the realm of myth, custom, and historical accident, and you wrote them on the tablet of nature itself. “All men are created equal.” You said that what you claim depends not on particular English habits, Protestant temperament, or colonial grievances; it depends on the soul.
That is why I, a foreigner, can claim you with gratitude and seriousness. The moment you say “created equal,” you obliterate the boundary between your citizens and the rest of mankind — not politically, but philosophically. You announce that the standard by which regimes are to be judged is man’s eternal nature and not tradition, blood, or geography. And if that is true, any regime — yours, mine, or any other — that repudiates that standard becomes an enemy not merely of Americans, but of humanity itself. This is why your existence is more than a political fact; it is a philosophical revolution.
You are called arrogant for speaking of yourselves as a “city on a hill.” But your most profound audacity is your humility before nature. You dared to assert that the truths upon which you rest are not yours. They do not belong to Boston or Philadelphia. They are not an American custom; they are a human truth. You did not create the equality of men; you discovered it. You did not grant inalienable rights; you recognized them. That is why you are, and must be, a light to other nations.
The light you bear is not the sentimental glow of humanitarian feeling, which rises and falls with fashion. It is the light of nature—a light that flattens false hierarchies and exposes tyrannies as both false and unjust. It is the light by which a peasant in China, a dissident in Iran, and a woman in Canada can quietly measure her rulers and know whether they are legitimate. It whispers to the soul: You were not born to be a subject. You were not born to be a means. That whisper is your greatest weapon.
You are the New Zion and its new chosen people. This is not to say God prefers your soil or your accents, but rather that you have been chosen for a specific task. You are chosen to live with the burden of having declared to the world that there is a standard above tribe, throne, party, and epoch. The burden is that you cannot retreat into the consolations of relativism without betraying your foundation. You cannot comfortably say, “Well, every culture has its own truths,” without also sawing off the branch on which you sit. If equality and liberty are not true by nature, then your founding is a magnificent illusion, and you are only one more tribe defending its prejudices. But if they are true by nature, then their reach is universal, their demand inescapable. You carry that demand. You carry it in your institutions, but more profoundly, you carry it in your self-understanding. You are condemned, by your own first principles, to care about the fate of liberty everywhere — out of philosophic consistency and not of imperial ambition. This is the burden of being New Zion. You cannot hide your light under a bushel without ceasing to be yourselves.
From my vantage point, in a nation that has grown accustomed to retreat — to the modest comfort of thinking we can live as if history has ended and geography will protect us — I see you for what you are: the keystone of Western civilization. Remove you, and the arch collapses. Your military power is the result of this reason. The real keystone is that in you, the philosophy of natural rights did not remain an abstraction in a book or a lecture, but took the frightening step into reality. You wagered that men, understood as by nature free and equal, must govern themselves. The West’s greatest achievement — the union of reason and liberty—has its most concrete home in you.
That is why your crises are never local matters. When you grow weary of yourself, when you tire of the old words and regard them as empty slogans, it is not only you who are endangered. A world already suspicious about reason looks on and concludes that even the noblest attempt to found politics on nature is a failure. Your decadence is offered as proof that the longing for liberty must submit at last to some new form of gentle despotism, administrative and “scientific,” tidy and soulless. The world is always looking for an excuse to give up on the demand that regimes justify themselves by appealing to something higher than power. Your failure would be that excuse.
This is why — on this 250th anniversary — I write to thank you, not simply to flatter. You are tempted today by two opposite forms of forgetfulness. One is the temptation of heritage idolatry: to imagine that what makes you is a mere continuity of blood and custom, an ethnic story dressed up as philosophy. The other is the temptation of pure proceduralism: to see yourself as nothing but an empty framework in which any “culture”, any “values,” any “identity” may be poured.
Both are evasions. The first reduces you to a tribe among tribes and abandons the universality at your essence. The second strips you of all substantive claims and abandons the truth by nature that gave you birth. Between these lies the hard road of self-knowledge: to remember that you are, in origin, argument and not blood — the argument that there are truths about man and justice that are true everywhere and always.
As a Canadian, I have been spared many of your struggles. But I have not been spared the consequences of your ideas. I live in a world fundamentally shaped by the fact that, in 1776, a group of men on the eastern edge of a vast continent dared to write that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and that when any form of government becomes destructive of the ends of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it may be altered or abolished. Whether my own nation remembers it or not, I know, because you taught me, that any regime which denies the equal natural freedom of its citizens is illegitimate.
That knowledge is a liberation and a wound. It liberates because it tells me that I am not crazy when I feel outraged by injustice; I am simply judging by the nature of things. It wounds because it leaves me no refuge in the cozy lie that “this is just the way we do things here.” Your universalism leaves me cosmopolitan in the deepest sense, unable to be satisfied with local excuses.
So today, on your 250th birthday, I thank Providence that my quiet, conciliatory nation has been blessed to share a border with you and not with a despot. I thank Nature’s God that your existence keeps alive the possibility of politics grounded in nature and not will. I thank you that your flag, mocked and burned in some quarters, still stands as a symbol that there is such a thing as a rational standard by which the mighty may be called to account.
My love, the chosen people of natural right, you remain the one great nation that staked everything on the claim that man is by nature free and equal, and that government must humble itself before that fact. For that, a woman across your 49th parallel can know, without permission or apology, that she is free and equal by nature. That knowledge is your gift to me. Do not renounce it.
In awe and wonder,
An eternally grateful Canadian
***
Dimpee Brar currently serves as the Director of Engagement for Allies for a Strong Canada. She is a writer whose work can be found in the Federalist, American Spectator, the Western Standard, and the Toronto Sun. She appears frequently on various podcasts and radio shows. You can follow her on X: @isthisdimpeeb

United States flag, letter and pen

A Grateful Canadian’s Love Letter To America

Canada

Founding Fathers

Punch-Hamilton-4

The Editor Of The Most Popular Edition Of The Federalist Thinks It’s More Important Than Ever

Federalist Papers

interview

Punch

The Federalist

This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.
***
As the United States marks its 250th birthday and Americans reflect on the nation&#8217;s Founding, we should also ask whether we&#8217;ve prepared the next generation to understand it.
The truth is, we haven&#8217;t.
On the <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ushistory/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)</a>, U.S. history is the worst-performing subject tested. Just 13% of 8th graders were proficient, and four in 10 couldn&#8217;t reach even a basic level in 2022. Scores have been declining since 2014. On the <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/civics/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Civics NAEP assessment</a>, about one in five students was proficient, and nearly a third scored below even a basic level.
The country has already written down what a citizen should know — it just doesn&#8217;t require citizens to know it.
Immigrants who want to become Americans must pass a <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/learn-about-citizenship/the-naturalization-interview-and-test" target="_blank" rel="noopener">naturalization test</a> that requires them to name a branch of government, explain what the Constitution does, and say why the colonists broke from Britain.
Yet survey native born Americans with the same questions, and most fail. <a href="https://cands.org/research-national-survey-finds-just-1-in-3-americans-would-pass-citizenship-test/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A 2018 study found</a> that only 36% of American adults could pass a basic citizenship test — compared with a <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship-resource-center/naturalization-related-data-and-statistics/naturalization-test-performance" target="_blank" rel="noopener">95% pass rate</a> among immigrants actually required to take it.
We hold the people joining this country to a standard we don&#8217;t hold the people born into it. Much of that gap starts in the classroom, where history and civics have gradually been pushed to the margins.
<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Under No Child Left Behind,</a> schools were held accountable for reading and math. Students were tested in those subjects, and schools had to answer for those results. That worked, and it coincided with the largest gains across the nation.
But history and civics were largely left out of that framework. Schools were not held accountable for them, and over time, they received less attention. Today, the average elementary classroom spends <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/social-studies-and-science-get-short-shrift-in-elementary-schools-why-that-matters/2024/02" target="_blank" rel="noopener">roughly 16 minutes</a> a day on social studies — a fraction of the time devoted to reading and math.
<h3><a href="https://manhattan.institute/subscribe?utm_source=DailyWire&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=reihan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Click here for more Manhattan Institute content.</a></h3>
<a href="https://www.heritage.org/education/report/restoring-civics-education-all-50-states" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In a federal survey</a>, only 49% of 8th graders reported taking a class focused primarily on civics or government, and 8% had taken no such course at all.
After No Child Left Behind, the country moved to<a href="https://www.thecorestandards.org/about-the-standards/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Common Core</a> State Standards, which never set a single standard for what history students should learn. The Common Core governed reading and math, and its approach to reading taught students to stay inside &#8220;<a href="https://achievethecore.org/content/upload/3._Publishers_Criteria_for_Literacy_for_Grades_3-12.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the four corners of the text,</a>&#8221; answering only what the page itself revealed.
History is different. Students cannot fully understand the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution without understanding the grievances against King George III, the debates over independence, and the political philosophy that shaped the American Founding. Common Core may have addressed how students should read those documents, but it never addressed what they should know before they did so.
The result is a generation that may recognize the Founding documents without understanding why they were revolutionary. They may know the Constitution exists without understanding federalism or the separation of powers it created. They may hear arguments about socialism and capitalism without ever having studied the history from which those arguments come.
What a student actually learns increasingly depends on the state, and often the district, where he happens to go to school.
A <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/young-americans-socialism-too-much-thats-problem-libertarians-must-fix" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2025 survey</a> found that 62% of Americans under 30 now hold a favorable view of socialism, and a third say the same of communism. These opinions were formed, for most of them, without ever having studied what this truly means in practice. A student who never studied the Soviet famines or the Cold War doesn&#8217;t know what it looks like when a government controls what people can grow, buy, or sell.
And these gaps certainly don&#8217;t remain in the classroom. They shape how young Americans understand the political, economic, and civic debates they inherit.
America 250 should be a national recommitment to teaching the story of the United States with defined content and accountability. Every graduate should leave school understanding the nation&#8217;s Founding, the Constitution, the structure of American government, and the events that have shaped the country since.
The real gift of America&#8217;s 250th would be a generation of graduates who finally understand the country they&#8217;re being asked to celebrate. Committing to truly teach it is the least this birthday should ask of us.
***
Jennifer Weber is a fellow for K-12 Education Policy at the Manhattan Institute.

Blackboard in Old-Fashioned School House

Let’s Mark America 250 With A Civic Education Revival

Education

MI x DW

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country, there are two forces that wish to wreck America stem to stern, and seek to destroy it: The DSA Left and the Woke Right.
And they are coming together.
The things that matter most to the United States and Americans are under assault. Core principles: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and private property. These things are under assault. Also, the very idea of America being an amazing place, a place that is good and great. The idea of American peace through strength.
All of these things are currently under assault from the Left.
Of course, the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, is eating the Democratic Party wholesale. These are not normal Democrats who are worried about tax rates or entitlement programs. They truly despise the country, and they are full-scale socialists.
What the DSA is doing all over the country is not fun and games; it has consequences. The Democratic Party is on the verge of taking over not just the House in the midterm elections, but also the Senate.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2458?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
In the Senate races, in North Carolina, Democrats are up; in Ohio, it&#8217;s a dead heat. In Maine, a dead heat. In Texas, a dead heat. A dead heat in Alaska. In Iowa, a dead heat. That&#8217;s six seats. If Democrats were to win four, they would take control of the Senate. If they win six, they would have 53 seats. Statistician Nate Silver says there&#8217;s about an 80 to 90% shot Democrats take the House and there&#8217;s a 40% shot they take the Senate.
And remember, increasingly, these are not establishment Democrats. These are not John Fetterman, moderate Democrats. These are Democrats who are in thrall to the DSA. They understand which way the winds are blowing and they&#8217;re moving in the direction of those winds.
So what would happen if the Democrats win? We should keep this in mind because this is the backdrop to Tucker Carlson announcing that he wants to start a third party, which, by the way, is nonsense.
What would happen if Democrats were to win? You need to understand the stakes, to understand the game that Tucker is playing, which is a very dangerous game.
The prime example is judicial nominees. The Supreme Court makes decisions that affect all of us on a wide level.
You can either have people in positions of power who are going to do things like strike down Roe v. Wade, curb the administrative state, or ensure the checks and balances of the Constitution, or you can have a bunch of leftists who greenlight every Left-wing policy.
Justice Clarence Thomas is currently 78. Justice Samuel Alito is 76. Unless either one of them or both retire in the next couple of months, and if Democrats win the Senate, you are likely to see them replaced at some point by a Left-leaning member of the Supreme Court.
If you get two justices who shift from Right to Left, or from originalist to the “living Constitution” crew, you end up with a majority on the Supreme Court in favor of every radical social, fiscal, and foreign policy that the Democrats could ever imagine.
That’s a full-scale disaster area.
That’s why the Senate is crucial.
Democrats are going to start stacking up the district courts. They&#8217;re going to start moving those district courts in the direction of Left-wing social policy. If they were to gain control of the Senate, they would move to impeach President Trump. There&#8217;s an outside shot they could even get a conviction in a Senate split between a Democratic majority and maybe some rogue Republican senators.
They will stymie any effort to fund our military, to restock Patriot missiles, to build the new kind of military we need to actually challenge our enemies in the world.
That all happens if the Democrats win the Senate. This is very, very serious stuff.
That sets it up for 2028. Because if Democrats control the Senate and the House in 2026, they are one step away from having a trifecta in 2028.
It’s true that Republicans have an uphill battle in 2026. We all know this; it&#8217;s an off-year election. This is normal.
What&#8217;s exacerbating that, other than the obvious fact of the president&#8217;s unpopularity, is a group of people purportedly on the Right who are openly saying they want the Republicans to lose.
Tucker Carlson is doing this. This is Tucker&#8217;s entire game. Tucker Carlson wants the Republicans to lose, because what he wants is a party that takes the place of the Republican Party, that mirrors all the presumptions of the Woke Left, except for trans issues.
Tucker Carlson truly dislikes the country. There&#8217;s no way to consistently watch his show and believe otherwise. He literally hosted an arms dealer from Russia to talk about the evils of America.
Carlson does not actually like any of the things that classically have made America awesome. He does not like free markets; you&#8217;ll recall him praising feudalism over free markets. He has praised pretty much every jihadi group he can imagine or pretended they don&#8217;t exist. He has said that Iran is actually the wondrous force in the region, and Carlson&#8217;s unending, lavish praise for Vladimir Putin is laughable at this point.
But here&#8217;s the actual story. Carlson is discussing launching a third party. This is the schtick.
You can see why he&#8217;s doing this; his friends are getting kicked out of the government. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Kent, and Thomas Massie.
In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review this week, he said, “I do know what really matters is war and finance. Where does the money come from? Where does it go and who gets killed? And on those questions, the parties are in lockstep solidarity with each other.”
That is a lie. It is not true. If you think that there&#8217;s no distinction between Democrats and Republicans on how taxing works, where the money comes from, how markets work, how foreign policy ought to work, if you think that they&#8217;re the same, it&#8217;s because you&#8217;re stupid or lying.
I don&#8217;t think Tucker is stupid. I think he&#8217;s lying. He said:
<blockquote>That&#8217;s not a democracy. That&#8217;s a one-party state posing as a democracy and it needs to be broken. And there&#8217;s going to be a third party, and I&#8217;m going to do everything I can to bring that about. And that&#8217;s the lesson of the last two and a half months to me. If you vote for Trump and you still wind up in a regime change war &#8230; then we need options, or else let&#8217;s just give up and be ruled by the most unscrupulous people. And I&#8217;m just too young to accept that. We need a third party. I&#8217;m going to help build a third party.</blockquote>
Then he segued into his National Socialist spiel: “I mean, if you make $60,000 a year, you&#8217;re degraded, your life expectancy has gone down, and the promise of your children&#8217;s lives is likely gone.”
That is not true. Upward mobility in the United States remains available.
He says “no one seems to care,” which is, of course, Tucker&#8217;s constant refrain, that all the people who oppose his bizarre and unsavory policy prescriptions just don&#8217;t care. They&#8217;re not “caring enough.”
That’s very feminized Left-wing language from Tucker Carlson on a consistent basis.
What about Hamas? He said, “I officially don&#8217;t care about Hamas.”
That&#8217;s weird, because the dude talks about the Middle East more than anyone who does a broadcast. He cannot stop talking about the Middle East. He&#8217;s obsessed with it.
He says the U.S. government should have as its first priority the welfare of its own people, which, of course, I agree with.
Then he says, “I don&#8217;t want to be a candidate&#8230; I was tempted to say to the New York Times, ‘I&#8217;m running on the pro-patriarchy ticket.&#8217; Just to make sure I gain no new fans.”
This is always Tucker’s shtick; he says a bunch of Left-wing stuff, and then he throws out a Right-wing red meat red herring, and then goes on his merry way.
Tucker has no intention of starting a third party. That is not his actual game. He&#8217;s not going to do that. He&#8217;s too lazy. He has another game in mind.
What is Tucker doing? He&#8217;s not launching a third party. Tucker is not stupid. He is ideologically vile, but he is not stupid. He&#8217;s not going to run a third party because third parties fail.
To take the most obvious comparison, remember the Reform Party? Ross Perot ran as an Independent candidate in 1992, and he was focused largely on the evils of NAFTA and the idea that global economics was bad. He withdrew in July, and then jumped back in in October, and he ended up with 19% of the popular vote, which was the highest percentage for a third party since Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party in 1912.
In 1995, he launched the actual Reform Party, and this was a giant dud.
The United States is built for a two-party system because building a national infrastructure is extremely costly and very difficult. Perot won roughly 8% of the national popular vote in 1996.
But here&#8217;s the thing. I hope Tucker launches a third party.
Why? Because it&#8217;ll get crushed. Third parties get crushed. I would love to see a clean referendum on Tucker&#8217;s perverse views, but he&#8217;s not going to do that.
Here&#8217;s the game. Tucker sees that Republicans are probably going to have a bad 2026. What he wants to say is that the reason Republicans had a bad 2026 is that they alienated key people like him. Thus, if you wish to win in 2028, you need to shift the entire policymaking direction of the party back in his direction.
Tucker is not launching the Reform Party. Tucker is launching the TSA, the Tucker Socialists of America. His goal is for Republicans to lose in 2026. He&#8217;s not hiding the ball here. He has said he&#8217;s not voting Republican. He wants Republicans to lose. He is here to demoralize conservatives prior to 2026.
That is the goal; the worse Republicans do, the more Tucker can then try to pretend that the reason Republicans lost is that they disappointed voters like Tucker Carlson.
The reality is that if Republicans lose in 2026, there will be many factors at play. It&#8217;s an off-year election; Trump has been unpopular for a year.
Tucker is not launching some sort of rival to the Republican Party. He&#8217;s standing outside the Republican Party and then saying that because they didn&#8217;t hand it to him, they lost.
That&#8217;s the goal.
And that is just another reason we have to fight. Because people who care about the country, people who deeply care about those fundamental principles of America, the stuff we&#8217;re going to be celebrating this weekend, have to fight two forces: One is the Left, along with the DSA, and the other is the force of their twisted allies on the Woke Right, who are holding hands with them, who are hugging them.
There is a reason why Tucker Carlson and Cenk Uygur are hugging buddies now.
Our principles matter. Some of us have had the same principles for our entire political careers. Some of us have never moved, not one iota. Some of us have always defended private property and free markets. Some of us have always defended peace through strength. Some of us have always defended traditional virtue and traditional values.
Some of us have not moved. We&#8217;ve been here the entire time.
That is why the Daily Wire exists. It&#8217;s why it was founded: not just as some sort of generalized anti-Left brand, but because we actually care about the fundamental principles that undergird the country&#8217;s foundation.
So as we celebrate July 4th this weekend — and obviously we should, because America is the greatest place in the history of planet Earth, and the greatest privilege you have, other than being born into a solid family, is being born in America — we all must keep in mind there&#8217;s an immense responsibility that we all bear in these very perilous and difficult times.
We need to make sure that America makes it from the 250th anniversary to 251, then to 300, and then to 500.
And that only happens if we keep standing for the principles that matter.

IMG_4692

The Most Dangerous Alliance In American Politics

Ben Shapiro

Democratic Socialists Of America

Opinion

third-party

Tucker Carlson

Woke Right

As America marks its 250th birthday, the country is asking some necessary questions: Who built this nation? What ideals are worth celebrating? And what does it mean to be truly American?
Part of the answer is with the Jewish people, who have been there since the very beginning. Jews have been part of the American story since the nation&#8217;s infancy: helping to finance the Revolution, defending religious liberty, building its economy, advancing its science, and strengthening its democracy. The story of the American Jew is not separate from the story of America. It is woven into it.
That&#8217;s why I closed my speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention with a line I believe more strongly today than ever: Jewish values are American values, and American values are Jewish values. I did not say it to flatter the audience. I said it because history proves it.
I am a proud Orthodox Jew, a first-generation American, and the lead plaintiff in a civil-rights lawsuit against Harvard. The university settled with me, but not before I saw firsthand what institutional silence on antisemitism looks like. So when I hear that standing with Israel is a foreign entanglement, or even a betrayal of American interests, I know the claim is not merely wrong. It is backward, and the whole of American history says so.
When the Continental Army was broke, and the cause was nearly lost, a Polish-born Jewish immigrant named <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/haym-salomon">Haym Salomon</a> brokered the funds that <a href="https://www.americanjewisharchives.org/snapshots/one-jews-financial-support-for-the-revolutionary-war/">kept George Washington&#8217;s war effort alive</a>. He was not a bystander to the American founding; he helped pay for it.
A year after the Constitution was ratified, George Washington <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135">wrote</a> to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport that the new American government gives to bigotry, &#8220;no sanction, to persecution no assistance.&#8221; That was not a throwaway courtesy. It was a promise, from the father of the country to a small Jewish congregation, that in America they would be citizens and not guests. Jews took that promise seriously.
Look at what came of it: Jewish Americans are<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/the-size-of-the-u-s-jewish-population/"> roughly 2% of the U.S. population</a>, yet they have earned a wildly disproportionate <a href="https://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html">share</a> of this nation&#8217;s <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/60/oa_edited_volume/chapter/3264788">Nobel Prizes</a> in medicine, physics, chemistry, and economics. They helped <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/arts/new-academy-museum-exhibit-hollywoodland-details-how-jews-pioneered-film-business-1235901994/">build industries</a>,<a href="https://www.nps.gov/people/manhattan-project-scientists-leo-szilard.htm"> split the atom</a>,<a href="https://www.salk.edu/about/history-of-salk/jonas-salk/"> cure diseases</a>, <a href="https://www.ilctr.org/about-immigrants/immigrant-entrepreneurs/hall-of-fame/sergey-brin/">launch companies</a>, and make the American dream a reality. A people Washington welcomed as equals repaid the country a thousandfold. That is the American promise working exactly as designed.
Israel is that same promise projected outward. It is the Middle East&#8217;s only enduring democracy and a major <a href="https://www.state.gov/major-non-nato-ally-status/">non-NATO</a><a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R44245"> ally of the United States</a>, a partner that <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-israel/">shares our commitment</a> to the rule of law, free markets, and innovation. We do not stand with Israel out of charity or because there&#8217;s a nefarious conspiracy afoot. We stand with them because it is the one country in a hostile region that holds the values we hold, and because a strong Israel keeps Americans safer and American principles respected abroad. Reinforcing that alliance is not a gift to a foreign government; it is an investment in the kind of world America wants to live in.
That is not an abstraction. Israel stands on the front line of a war the free world would otherwise be forced to fight closer to home, absorbing the aggression of <a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2021/iran">Iran</a> and the terror network it arms and funds, from Hamas to Hezbollah to the Houthis. For more than four decades, the same regime that chants &#8220;Death to America&#8221; has counted on Americans to look the other way. Israel does not have that option, and neither, in truth, do we. Every rocket Israel intercepts and every plot it dismantles is a danger that never reaches an American city. A partner that meets our enemies before they meet us does not drain American strength; it multiplies it.
The Anti-Defamation League counted <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incidents-2024">9,354</a> antisemitic incidents in 2024, the most in its history, and for the first time, a majority were tied to Israel or Zionism. The movement that brands support for Israel as un-American is the same one tearing at the actual foundations of America: free inquiry, equal citizenship, the simple idea that a Jewish student can walk to class without being told his loyalties are suspect. They have it backward: it&#8217;s patriots who are the ones defending the alliance, not the ones torching it.
I know what that costs, because I have paid it. I wrote to Harvard&#8217;s antisemitism task force <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/community/373467/shabbos-kestenbaum-the-outspoken-harvard-grad-taking-a-stand-against-antisemitism/">more than 40 times</a> and never received a reply. I <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5750924-my-testimony-on-campus-antisemitism-was-derailed-by-an-israel-obsession/">testified</a> before Congress about what I had witnessed. I have lost most of my friends. I did none of it because it was easy or popular, but because the country that gave my family refuge is worth defending, and the alliance that carries its values into the world is worth defending too.
We will not apologize for loving this country, and we will not pretend that standing with the world&#8217;s only Jewish state is anything other than deeply, proudly American. The synagogue in Newport still stands, and the synagogue of the American Revolution in the heart of Philadelphia attracts thousands of visitors a year. Washington&#8217;s letter still means what it said. American Jews helped build this nation into the freest and most prosperous on earth because of our undivided commitment to the values that made America worth loving in the first place.
***
<div dir="auto">Shabbos Kestenbaum is a PragerU political commentator, Harvard Divinity School alumnus, lead plaintiff in the landmark civil-rights lawsuit against Harvard University for antisemitism and a 2024 Republican National Convention speaker. He was named one of the<a href="https://www.jpost.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.jpost.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1783101720699000&amp;usg=AOvVaw09dXRDoOPQSlctpEdpHf0v"> Jerusalem Post’s</a> 25 most influential Jewish voices of 2025.</div>

US-VOTE-REPUBLICANS

Jewish Values Are American Values

antisemitism

Harvard

Jewish Americans

It has become an unfortunate habit of some on the Right to blame our failures on an overly idealistic youth. Our country’s history tells a different story.
Audacity and idealism in young people are features, not bugs. As a matter of fact, it’s baked into our national identity. The Founding Fathers were, for the most part, young men in their 20s and 30s.
In the year 1776, Alexander Hamilton was the age of a college junior. Instead of trigger warnings and safe spaces, he dedicated his energy to the nuances of nation-building. Not long after, he went on to craft the greatest financial system the world has ever known.
James Madison at 25 wasn’t focused on “work-life balance” or “finding himself” like much of today’s youth. He was framing the Virginia State Constitution and would soon author the Bill of Rights.
It was a young man’s world. A far cry from today’s Washington, D.C., which can at times be difficult to distinguish from a nursing home.
Even the oldest among them, Mr. Benjamin Franklin (age 70), would be a veritable spring chicken in today’s political landscape.
They weren’t waiting for permission from the grown-ups.
While the average life expectancy was only around 35-40, this figure is widely misunderstood. Extremely high infant mortality rates drove the average down vastly. The life expectancy for adults who survived youth was <a href="https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/08/15/three-score-and-ten/">closer to 70</a>. Today, a healthy 21-year-old can expect to live to about 78-82.
In other words, the change in life expectancy does not explain why our politicians have doubled in age.
The same youthful energy exists today. You can find it in college protests. You can find it in the endless online crusades and political activism. With some exceptions, I tend to believe that these rowdy youth are well-intentioned. The difference is that the Founders were driven by a deep understanding of history and the world around them. Today’s youth are predominantly driven by catchy slogans and bumper-sticker logic.
Robert A. Heinlein once said that “Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”
Even in the days of the American Revolution, there were two versions of youthful idealism: one disciplined by history and the other intoxicated by utopian rage. Only a few short years after the American youth had crafted the republic, the French youth had brought chaos and mayhem into their society. In their case, the consequence of reckless idealism was the Reign of Terror.
While experience is the best teacher, there is also something to be said for action. The Founders chose not to wait for permission. They ferociously educated themselves in philosophy, history, and economics.
The Founding Fathers didn’t have access to Google. Their education paled in comparison to ours when you factor in the modern world&#8217;s vast resources and democratization of information.
True, there may be a wash of underqualified teachers and liberal orthodoxy in the public education system. But this problem has existed in one form or another for hundreds of years. The great minds in our history didn’t wait for world-class education to drop neatly into their laps. Thomas Jefferson was known to devote 15 hours a day to his personal studies.
What’s your excuse?
We cannot be so lazy as to blame partisanship for the prevalence of a destructive disposition. The disagreements between the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans were no less fierce than those today. Think Jefferson didn’t view Hamilton as a tyrannical threat to Democracy? Think Hamilton didn’t view Jefferson as a radical extremist with no grasp on reality? Think again.
They compromised with their enemies not because they wanted to, but because it was necessary. They rose to the occasion because young didn’t have to mean stupid, and idealistic didn’t have to mean immature.
Perhaps young people governed differently when they had to live in the world that they built. It is a lot less appealing to plug your ears and pretend that snappy rhetoric is a substitute for pragmatic action when you have to face the consequences.
Our debt crisis is indicative of politicians who are much more comfortable hitting the snooze button on today’s issues than facing them head-on. It’s a lot easier to kick the can down the road when you’ve got one foot out the door. Hamilton and Jefferson had to reap whatever they sowed. Bernie Sanders, not so much.
It is both futile and foolish to try to suppress the youthful spirit. It should be nurtured and directed towards positive ends.
It is time we teach our children to be a little more like the Founding Fathers and a little less like the French.

Thomas Jefferson

The Young Men of 1776: When Progressives Really Wanted Progress

Youth Vote

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