This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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There are many famous memorials within walking distance of each other in our nation&#8217;s capital, but perhaps none so imposing as the World War I Memorial just steps from the White House. Its 60-foot bronze sculpture known as &#8220;A Soldier&#8217;s Journey,&#8221; installed in 2024, honors the 116,000 men and women who died in the war and uses 38 figures in its depiction of the hero&#8217;s journey, beginning and ending with the relationship between a soldier and his daughter. For Memorial Day, The Daily Wire spoke with Sabin Howard, the master sculptor behind the art. We talked about the beauty of the Western artistic canon, the value in memorial artwork, and why our history is something to remember, not reject.
The Daily Wire: Tell us about getting veterans to pose for you as models. What was that process like?
Sabin Howard: There&#8217;s something that distinguishes this memorial from the rest of the memorials that are out there, and I really wanted to show our humanity. My whole process of making art is so reliant on looking at real people. I spent an average of 650 hours per figure. That whole time you&#8217;re looking at the person, and you&#8217;re diagramming what you see in real life and translating it into art. And I&#8217;m using a system of translation that is objective truths and sacred truths.
When you look at art and when you depict a human being, that human being needs to be — I&#8217;m searching for the word — created. It&#8217;s almost like as an artist you&#8217;re creating the vision of that human being in the sculptural form. And we&#8217;re made in God&#8217;s image, so you have to use a voice that comes from the canons of Western civilization, of proportion and anatomy and design, that were used for almost 2,000 years — and then thrown out.
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<div id="attachment_1101293" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1101293" class="size-medium wp-image-1101293" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/IMG_7317-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/IMG_7317-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/IMG_7317-768x576.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/IMG_7317-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/IMG_7317-2048x1536.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Courtesy of Sabin Howard</div>
There&#8217;s no way I could have made that monument if I didn&#8217;t have a really, really good knowledge of what had preceded me in the figurative art world for the last 2,000 years. Every single figure comes from a source of an artist that has preceded me, and then I use that as a launching point to then evolve it into something that would be modern and contemporary. 
What can I learn from looking at the Baroque period with Bernini? It&#8217;s highly dramatic and like an opera. And what about the structure of Michelangelo? And what about the emotionalism of Rodin? Because I looked at that, I was able then to compose things that are very unique because I would have a starting point. I didn&#8217;t go and try to reinvent the wheel. I looked at what had happened in Western civilization, and I took that and I evolved it into a contemporary mindset. And that was by making the figures more kinetic, more action-packed, breaking past the boundary of the frame. And that goes to the art form of today, which is movies. So that sculpture is an evolution of Western civilization. I made a bronze &#8220;movie&#8221; that the visitor comes and looks at.
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<div id="attachment_1101217" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1101217" class="size-medium wp-image-1101217" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/IMG_9613-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/IMG_9613-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/IMG_9613-768x576.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/IMG_9613-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/IMG_9613-2048x1536.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Courtesy of Sabin Howard</div>
The Daily Wire: You&#8217;ve created something visually complex and compelling. Why was it important to create a sculpture in this style rather than, say, some abstract shapes? 
Howard: A large segment of our society is not into art, right? They&#8217;re not art aficionados. So you need to make something that will capture their attention in a chemical, visceral way. And so by going to the idea of a bronze movie, you&#8217;re doing something that&#8217;s very dynamic, kinetic, and emotional. It has a life when people look at it. I saw busload after busload of eighth graders and high school kids, and they&#8217;re really captured by it because they&#8217;re excited by it, by how it looks. The visuals are exciting to them.
We got a problem, though, because figurative art today is not exciting. If you do something that&#8217;s esoteric and static and quiet, it&#8217;s not going to emotionalize the viewer. You got to capture the viewer&#8217;s attention. And so I was thinking, how do I design this so I can capture the viewer&#8217;s attention and get them engaged? That was it.
People want to see what we look like. They want to know, what did it look like to be in World War I? That&#8217;s what I did.
The Daily Wire: Like you were saying, there&#8217;s a little bit of a contemporary element. Viewers can picture themselves in that scenario. It doesn&#8217;t feel as far removed.
Howard: Yes. That&#8217;s exactly it. It&#8217;s perfect words that you use, &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t feel that far removed.&#8221; You can relate to it, and you can see yourself in the sculpture because it&#8217;s not like gods. It&#8217;s very much real people because we sculpted real people.
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<div id="attachment_1101295" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1101295" class="size-medium wp-image-1101295" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/GettyImages-1312837205-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/GettyImages-1312837205-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/GettyImages-1312837205-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/GettyImages-1312837205-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/05/GettyImages-1312837205.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Photo by Shannon Finney/Getty Images</div>
The Daily Wire: Why is it important to have things like the World War I Memorial, this sculpture, pieces of art that are specifically about our veterans or people who have died in combat? What is the value of honoring them in that way, through art?
Howard: Two things. Each of us is not an isolated incidence in time. Our DNA strings way back into history. And then if you have children, it goes forward. So we are stewards of our history, and we, in the present moment, must think about how are we going to play that into the future.
I&#8217;m very averse to tearing down the past and saying, &#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s old, it&#8217;s archaeological, it&#8217;s history.&#8221; No, it&#8217;s our story. Stories unify cultures and countries. And that&#8217;s why the Left is so interested in destroying history and destroying values and Western civilization: because then it&#8217;s like we&#8217;re starting fresh from zero and you have to reinvent everything rather than build off of our heritage of what we&#8217;ve been given.
History explains to us our virtues and our ideals because we&#8217;ve seen men and women who have done things of great courage and stepped into places where we don&#8217;t know what will happen. Stepping into the void, I call it. Those soldiers and all history, everything that we honor — these are men and women that have stepped in the void. It&#8217;s limbic space, and it&#8217;s a space where our faith grows.
This is actually what all memorials are about. It shows the virtue and ideals of our predecessors. How can we learn from history so we don&#8217;t repeat the same mistakes? And we move forward with greater consciousness.

First Illumination of “A Soldier’s Journey” At The National World War I Memorial

The Hidden Message Inside America’s New WWI Memorial

History

Upstream

World War I

Editor’s note: This is the last of a four-part weekend series on the hunt for the Bismarck, coming up on its 85th anniversary this month.
When the last of Ark Royal’s Swordfish plopped onto the tossing flight deck, their rain-soaked crews believed they’d scored no hits. At least none they could see. Yet something strange was happening. Bismarck had suddenly begun steering away from France. But why?
Watching the air attack from a healthy distance, Sheffield’s lookouts reported what may have been the most consequential torpedo hit of the war. One said: “There was a big column of water, briefly dull red, at [Bismarck’s] base near the stern.” For the Germans, the torpedo had struck in the worst possible place.
Though well-protected, trials revealed Bismarck had an Achilles heel: she could not steer using propellers alone. Without her rudder, she was uncontrollable. And now the rudder was jammed, frozen in place by the stern torpedo blast while the battleship was maneuvering to evade the incoming attack. Locked into a 12-degree turn to port, Bismarck began veering away from France in a helpless circle while damage-control crews repeatedly dove into flooded compartments trying to free the frozen rudder as if their lives depended on it — which they did.
Sub-Lieutenant Ludovic Kennedy, serving aboard destroyer HMS Tartar, remembered: “We didn’t know what happened…all we knew was [Bismarck] was steering in our direction. And there was a feeling of tremendous exultation…she’d been delivered into our hands.”
After hours of futile effort, it became grimly clear to Bismarck’s crew that her rudder could not be freed. Unable to steer, the situation was hopeless. Just 350 miles from Brest, a single torpedo from a slow biplane nicknamed the “stringbag” had delivered Hitler’s mightiest warship to the Royal Navy. And they were out for blood.
Throughout the night of May 26-27, Tovey’s converging forces closed in on their helplessly circling prey, who would be in range by sunrise. The German crew knew exactly what awaited them at dawn. The Royal Navy would surround their crippled ship like a firing squad and blast her to pieces. Tension aboard Bismarck was palpable. Many of the crew simply wanted it over with. They knew their time was up when Lindemann told the men to help themselves to anything in the galley.
Lütjens admitted as much when he radioed the fleet: SHIP UNMANUEVERABLE. WILL FIGHT TO THE LAST SHELL. LONG LIVE THE FÜHRER.
During the night, messages arrived from Berlin promising help, but the men knew otherwise. Another announced gunnery officer, Adalbert Schneider, was awarded the Knight’s Cross for sinking Hood. Then came Hitler’s own message, effectively delivering their eulogy:
ADOLF HITLER TO CREW OF BISMARCK: ALL GERMANY IS WITH YOU. WHAT CAN BE DONE WILL BE DONE. YOUR PERFORMANCE OF DUTY WILL STRENGTHEN OUR PEOPLE IN THE STRUGGLE FOR ITS DESTINY.
Addressing the crew, Lütjens echoed the Führer. “The German people are with you. We will fight until our gun barrels glow red-hot and the last shell has left the barrel. For us seamen, it is a question of victory or death!”
It was received in silence. If the admiral hoped to inspire the men, it had the opposite effect by confirming it really was over. Bismarck’s 2,282 men could do nothing now but await execution. One sailor muttered, “Let us think one more time about our home, our wives, our children,” before breaking down in tears.
Across Britain, over 1,400 other messages were arriving. In Ringwood, the parents of one sailor aboard Hood received the devastating telegram: REGRET TO REPORT THAT YOUR SON THOMAS JOSEPH BERNARD SAMMARS, BOY FIRST CLASS P/JX 182136 IS MISSING PRESUMED KILLED ON WAR SERVICE. Joseph Sammars was just 16 years old.
At 8:43 a.m. on May 27, 1941, the British sighted the huge German battleship over the horizon. Tovey intended to close the range, bring his broadsides to bear, and systematically annihilate the crippled enemy. Remembering Hood, he ordered Renown to remain clear. Prince of Wales had already been dispatched home for repairs, her crew still unaware how decisive their earlier hits had been.
Leading the attack was King George V, supported by the 45,000-ton battleship Rodney. Though older and slower, Rodney mounted nine monstrous 16-inch guns, making her the most heavily armed ship present. Before battle, Rodney’s padre delivered a brief prayer that captured the mood of thousands of sailors on both sides: “Oh God, remember that we will be very busy today. And though we may forget you, please don’t forget us.”
At 8:47 Bismarck came within range. Rodney swung her turrets toward the enemy and vanished in what one of her sailors described as “a sea of flame and pall of black smoke” as she unleashed two of her three forward 16-inch batteries. King George V followed with her own 14-inch salvos. Unable to steer, Bismarck was an easy target; the British quickly got the range. Soon a storm of shells tore through her superstructure, including one that obliterated the bridge, likely killing both Lütjens and Lindemann.
Bismarck returned fire, but her crews could not aim effectively due to the ship’s erratic movements, and hits disabled her optics, forcing her to fire blind. (Only one near miss against Rodney caused any damage at all.) By 9:30 a.m., all four main turrets had been knocked out, and hundreds of men were dead, among them Germany’s newest Ritterkreuzer Schneider. Machinist Mate Karl-August Schuldt, emerging from the inferno below decks, later recalled the horror awaiting him topside: “The turrets were ripped open like a tulip. I could see inside. Everything was on fire. There were explosions. Twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred dead, some of them without legs, without arms, without heads.” To Zimmerman, who’d already seen two men ripped in half by a shell right in front of him, the dead strewn across the deck resembled “butchered meat” more than people.
With the German guns silenced, Rodney closed to point-blank range and hammered the helpless battleship again and again while King George V stayed farther off to rain plunging fire onto her decks. Norfolk and Dorsetshire closed in, adding their eight-inch guns to the destruction. By battle’s end, the British ships would fire more than 1,800 shells, scoring roughly 400 hits. Yet Bismarck remained afloat, absorbing repeated blows like an exhausted boxer who, though out on his feet, refuses to go down.
At 10:10 a.m., Tovey ordered a cease-fire. Bismarck lay dead in the water, witnesses describing her as “on fire from stem to stern.” British sailors watched German crewmen leaping overboard like ants fleeing a collapsing hill. It took three torpedoes from Dorsetshire to finally finish the shattered battleship, though German survivors claimed scuttling charges and opened sea valves had already doomed her. In the end, both sides claimed credit for sinking the Bismarck.
At 10:35 a.m., less than two hours after the fight began, Germany’s greatest battleship rolled over and slipped beneath the waves, joining Hood and so many other wrecks at the pitch-black bottom of the Atlantic. Roughly 800 men escaped the sinking ship.
Although satisfied they’d avenged Hood and restored national honor, victory brought little joy to the British. A feeling of pity replaced hatred. Lieutenant Commander William Crawford aboard Rodney later reflected: “A gallant ship had gone, and a lot of gallant people had gone, although they were our enemies.” The shivering and oil-soaked Germans clinging to wreckage in the frigid water were no longer mortal foes but fellow seamen in desperate need of rescue. Dorsetshire and the destroyer Maori cautiously entered the debris field and began hauling survivors aboard. Saved Germans would later express gratitude towards the British for their decent, even kind, treatment.
But then came the final tragedy. After rescuing 110 men, the British received reports of a nearby U-boat. They had no choice but to flee, leaving hundreds to die a lonely, torturous death in the middle of the open ocean. One captive died of his wounds, while German vessels later recovered five more survivors. Of a total complement of 2,365 (including Lütjens’ staff), 2,251 Germans perished. Jack Austin, a Royal Marine aboard Rodney, contemplated the madness: “We lost a lot of good sailors on the Hood. But there were a lot of good sailors lost in the Bismarck or in the water afterwards. What a waste.”
A waste, perhaps, but also a necessity. Had Bismarck been able to return to sea, especially if joined by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau already refitting at Brest, she could have ravaged Britain’s lifeline across the Atlantic. Bismarck had to be destroyed.
Yet the manner of her destruction carried even greater significance. Slow carrier aircraft had crippled Europe’s most formidable battleship and rendered her helpless before the guns arrived. The five-day running engagement over 1,700 miles of ocean marked the swan song of the big-gunned battlewagon. Just six months later, Japanese carrier aircraft would devastate the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Three days after that, Prince of Wales and Repulse would be sunk off Malaya by land-based Japanese bombers, taking Captain Leach to his watery grave. Even Tirpitz, Bismarck’s sister ship, would eventually succumb to air power. As would the eventual largest battleships of them all, the 72,000-ton IJN Yamato and Musashi.
Thus did the destruction of Bismarck help close the curtain on one of the most iconic chapters in naval warfare. When one German survivor was hauled aboard Dorsetshire, he reportedly warned his captors with eerie foresight: “Today us. Tomorrow you.” Dorsetshire herself would indeed be sunk by Japanese carrier aircraft barely a year later. The age of naval air power had arrived. And though Bismarck’s brief reign of terror was over, a wider war at sea was just beginning.
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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">books</a>. You can also follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/BSchaefferNJ">X</a>. His latest book, A War For Half The World: Why the Real Battle for the Future was Fought in the Pacific, will be released in February 2027.

The German battleship “Bismarck”.

The Rise and Fall Of The German Battleship Bismarck, Part IV

DW Opinion

Editor’s note: This is the third in a four-part weekend series on the hunt for the Bismarck, coming up on its 85th anniversary this month.
On the bridge of King George V, still steaming westward toward the battle area, Adm. Tovey received a staggering message from the captain of Prince of Wales, John Leach. It simply read: HOOD SUNK.
Word of the disaster ricocheted through the fleet. One sailor described the mood aboard his vessel as “a strange mixture of incredulity, anger, and loss.” Royal Navy pilot Alan Swinton’s reaction was blunter: “Well bugger me!” But as the magnitude of what had happened settled in, numbness turned to rage, then iron resolve. The Admiralty now had one mission: avenge Hood. Sink Bismarck.
One British warship was still engaging the lethal German battleship and cruiser. But Prince of Wales was in no condition to continue the fight. During the action her aft Y turret jammed, and she was down to only three operational 14-inch guns, while Hood’s destruction freed both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to concentrate fire on the lone British battleship. It did not take long for the German gunners to find the range. In the next 10 minutes, the Prince of Wales was struck four times by Bismarck and another three by Prinz Eugen. Outnumbered, with 13 crewmen dead and turrets malfunctioning, Captain Leach broke off the action at 6:10 a.m. Lindemann wanted to pursue and destroy the fleeing battleship, but Lütjens ordered the squadron southward instead.
Now came the damage assessment. Bismarck had blasted her way free, but the victory carried a heavy cost. Prince of Wales, though untested and under intense fire, had scored three hits, including two below the waterline, one at the bow and one amidships. Two thousand tons of seawater flooded Bismarck’s forward compartments, leaving her down three degrees by the bow and listing nine degrees to port before counterflooding corrected the imbalance. Worse still, damage to fuel tanks cut off access to 1,000 tons of precious oil. Lütchens no doubt wished he’d topped off when he had the chance.
Trailing oil and unable to sustain maximum speed, Bismarck needed repairs. Lütchens faced two choices: return north toward Norway and Germany, the closer route, or make for the French coast through the sanctuary of wide-open seas. Lindemann, after initially arguing to repair the ship at sea and continue the mission, favored returning home. Lütchens instead informed Berlin he intended to head for occupied France.
Since Prinz Eugen remained unscathed, Lütjens would detach her for commerce raiding. But the German ships were still shadowed by Suffolk, Norfolk, and the battered Prince of Wales. Then, at 6:00 p.m. on May 24, Lütchens executed a clever maneuver. Bismarck suddenly turned southwest while Prinz Eugen accelerated directly south. The British followed the battleship as she eventually resumed course while the cruiser slipped unseen into the open Atlantic.
Now Bismarck was alone, and her crew understood what Hood’s obliteration meant. Every available Royal Navy warship in the Atlantic would be mobilized with one purpose: hunt down their fugitive battleship and kill her…and them. For Britain, this was no longer merely a military necessity. It had become a matter of national honor.
The Admiralty ordered every ship within reach to converge on Bismarck. While the cruisers and Prince of Wales continued shadowing her, Tovey steamed at 27 knots aboard King George V, accompanied by the carrier Victorious, battlecruiser Repulse, four cruisers, and several destroyers. Also racing toward the scene was the battleship Rodney and three destroyers, diverted while en route to Boston for a refit. From the south came Gibraltar-based Force H built around the carrier Ark Royal, battlecruiser Renown, and cruiser Sheffield. Two cruisers were pulled from convoy duty off West Africa, and one more, Dorsetshire, detached on her own volition. The hunt was on.
In the spring of 1941 carrier warfare had yet to fully emerge, and most admirals still had little faith in aircrafts’ ability to sink a capital ship at sea. But by the evening of May 24, the British were desperate to stop Bismarck before she reached France, and they resolved to use every arrow in their quiver. One of those arrows was the Fairey Swordfish.
First flown in 1934, the ungainly biplane looked more suited to the trenches of the First World War than modern naval combat. Built of metal framing, canvas, and wire, with a top speed barely above 130 miles per hour, the Swordfish hauled a 1,700-pound torpedo under the belly. With Tovey’s heavy vessels still too far away, these open-cockpit aircraft would launch from Victorious into foul weather to attack the most formidable battleship at sea. It seemed suicidal. One pilot remembered climbing into his cockpit and thinking, “God, I’d get out of this if I could!” But they went.
With the northern sun still lingering above the horizon, the plucky Swordfish lifted off from Victorious’ pitching, rain-swept flight deck and headed into worsening weather. At first, the inexperienced crews emerged from the clouds too early, only to discover an American Coast Guard cutter searching for survivors from a merchant ship sunk earlier by U-boats. Bismarck remained farther away. Surprise was lost, but the Swordfish crews pressed on through heavy anti-aircraft fire. Ironically, the lumbering biplanes’ ostensible weaknesses became strengths. The Swordfish flew so slowly that Bismarck’s advanced fire-control systems struggled to track them properly, especially while the aircraft were buffeted sideways by violent winds. And any shells that did hit passed straight through the canvas skin without detonating.
Skimming the churning sea, the Swordfish released their torpedoes, banked slowly, and crawled away through streams of cold rain and hot tracers. One torpedo struck home. The damage was minor — the warhead detonated against the thickest belt armor — but one sailor was killed, Bismarck’s first fatality. More ominously, the attack demonstrated that aircraft could threaten even the mightiest warship afloat. By 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, May 25, all the biplanes, many riddled with holes, had landed safely aboard Victorious.
May 25 was Admiral Lütchens’s 52nd birthday, but no one aboard Bismarck was celebrating. Fuel had become critical. To conserve oil, he slowed the ship to 22 knots and steered directly for Brest. If Bismarck could get within a few hundred miles of occupied France, Luftwaffe aircraft could shield her final approach. But first he had to shake the British trackers.
Taking advantage of enemy zig-zagging to avoid U-boats, Lütjens executed a brilliant maneuver. At 2:00 a.m., with perfect timing, he ordered Bismarck hard to starboard, swinging the battleship in a broad loop while the British cruisers, having temporarily lost radar contact during a “zag,” continued onward into the darkness. Bismarck then circled back, crossed her own wake behind them, and resumed her easterly heading. At 5:00 a.m. Suffolk reluctantly signaled: HAVE LOST CONTACT WITH ENEMY. The German battleship had vanished into the Atlantic. When word reached Prince of Wales, one crewman recalled, “We all felt utterly depressed.” Bismarck appeared home free.
And then Lütjens made an inexplicable mistake. Unaware how completely he’d escaped, the admiral carelessly broke radio silence to send routine reports to naval headquarters in France. British direction-finding stations intercepted the transmissions and obtained a bearing on the battleship’s location. Lütchens had inadvertently revealed himself.
But the German admiral was not the only one to blunder. Having obtained a rough bearing, Tovey miscalculated Bismarck’s heading and assumed she was steering north. He turned his pursuing force away from the enemy. Only on the evening of May 25 did Tovey realize the mistake. By then, Bismarck had widened the gap still further.
RAF Coastal Command had also joined the search, dispatching reconnaissance aircraft across enormous stretches of ocean in what amounted to scouring for a needle in an Atlantic haystack. Then, at 3:30 a.m. on Monday, 26 May, an American-built Catalina flying boat lifted off to continue the hunt. Although the United States remained officially neutral, the aircraft was co-piloted by an American, L.B. Smith. At 10:30 a.m., to his astonishment, Smith spotted the German battleship below him.
Bismarck had been lost, found, lost again, and found again. But time was rapidly running out. If not stopped soon, the battleship would reach the protective umbrella of German air cover. She still remained roughly 150 miles ahead of her pursuing battleships — well beyond gun range, but not beyond aircraft range.
And so the British turned once more to the Swordfish. This strike would launch from Ark Royal, as Victorious had broken off low on fuel. The raid nearly ended in catastrophe when the attackers mistakenly identified Sheffield as Bismarck and dropped torpedoes against their own cruiser. Fortunately, they missed. As evening approached on May 26, Bismarck drew ever closer to safety.
Then, at 7:00 p.m., with only hours remaining before the German battleship escaped, the intrepid Swordfish again rolled down Ark Royal’s flight deck into foul weather. This time they found their target. Once more the little biplanes crept toward the giant battleship through intense anti-aircraft fire. Towering geysers erupted around them as Bismarck fired her main guns into the sea in an attempt to destroy the fragile aircraft with shell splashes alone. The Swordfish pressed through the chaos and released their torpedoes before turning away into the darkness.
From the aircrews’ perspective, the attack appeared to be another failure. The torpedoes seemed to miss. And with France now dangerously close, time had effectively run out.
Only a miracle could stop Bismarck now.
And that is exactly what happened.
***
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">books</a>. You can also follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/BSchaefferNJ">X</a>. His latest book, A War For Half The World: Why the Real Battle for the Future was Fought in the Pacific, will be released in February 2027.

World War Two: War at Sea 1940

The Rise And Fall Of The German Battleship Bismarck, Part III

Bismarck

At the recent summit with President Donald Trump in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping invoked the fifth-century B.C. Greek historian Thucydides in his opening remarks, saying: “The world has come to a new crossroads. Can China and the United States transcend the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ and forge a new paradigm for major-power relations?”
Cue the predictable, breathless coverage from the mainstream media, which has rushed to take Xi’s remarks at face value and eagerly embraced the Chinese Communist Party’s framing, a narrative that aligns perfectly with the elite talking point popularized by Harvard’s Graham Allison in his 2017 book &#8220;Destined for War.&#8221; In it, Allison argued that a rising power (China as Athens) must inevitably clash with an established hegemon (America as Sparta) unless “cooler heads prevail.” For nearly a decade, this thesis has been treated as an unassailable truth in think tanks, Wall Street boardrooms, and foreign-policy circles. The deeper implication is that America should step aside gracefully, accommodate China’s “peaceful rise,” and accept managed decline so the benevolent dragon can assume its rightful place as the world’s new leading power.
Unfortunately for our elites, it turns out that the Thucydides Trap is fake and gay.
Fake, because it is nothing more than pop-political science masquerading as profound historical destiny. Gay, because, well… it’s ancient Greece and the Peloponnesian War basically involved Sparta and Athens arguing over who got to be the top in the Mediterranean. And it’s both fake and gay because most of the commentariat has read Xi Jinping’s condescending history lesson to Donald Trump completely backward and missed the real signal.
Let me explain.
Graham Allison’s Destined for War hit bookshelves in 2017, just months after Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 victory. It was the first time since Nixon that a U.S. presidential candidate had openly rejected the bipartisan elite consensus on China, as evidenced by Trump hammering China on its currency manipulation, massive trade surpluses, IP theft, and hollowing out of American manufacturing while on the campaign trail. His promise to America was a total “America First” reset by slapping tariffs and decoupling from China.
The foreign policy and business establishments were in full panic mode. For decades, they were drunk on the Kool-Aid that economic liberalization inevitably leads to political liberalization, as they pushed for China’s entry into the WTO in 2001. Of course, we know now that it never panned out as Beijing failed to blossom into a “responsible stakeholder,” nor did it have any desire to embrace Western norms.
Allison’s book arrived as the perfect intellectual counterweight to President Trump’s new agenda. Suddenly, every think tank panel, Davos dinner, and editorial board had a shiny new framework to wield: You can’t get tough on Beijing — that’s Sparta panicking and triggering the Thucydides Trap. It reframed Trump’s hawkishness as dangerous and historically illiterate brinkmanship that risked catastrophic war. The message to policymakers, CEOs, and pundits was to push for continued “strategic engagement,”  i.e., keep the money flowing, keep the technology transferring, and don’t let this populist disruptor upset the profitable status quo. The business elite lapped it up because it gave them the perfect intellectual cover to keep doing what they already wanted and were incentivized to do: make obscene amounts of money in China, while pretending it was sound political strategy. In other words, Thucydides was a rhetorical weapon deployed to neuter the first serious challenger to the China engagement consensus in two generations.
Putting aside his distinguished record in political science and international relations, in this particular work on China and the Thucydides Trap, Allison commits a fundamental error. The bulk of the historical evidence shows that, contrary to his thesis, status quo powers have rarely launched preventive wars against perceived future rivals. In reality, it is the rising powers that usually strike first when they sense opportunity and weakness because established ones have far too much to lose — wealth, prestige, stability, and hard-won power.
For example, it was Imperial Japan, the ascending challenger in 1904, that launched a surprise attack on the long-established Russian Empire. Later in the 1930s, a recovering and resurgent Germany faced no preemptive assault from Britain, France, or the Soviet Union; the established powers dithered and appeased until the revisionist forced their hand. Even the Peloponnesian War, the supposed origin story for this historical analogy, does not fit the script Allison assigns it. Thucydides, an Athenian general writing after his own side’s catastrophic defeat, portrayed Sparta’s fear of Athenian growth as the “truest cause.” Yet the historical record reveals an aggressive, expansionist Athens provoking a reluctant Sparta through a series of calculated affronts. The vanquished, not the victors, shaped the narrative that has endured for 2,400 years.
Allison rests his entire thesis on 16 historical cases of rising versus ruling powers. Critics have dismantled this dataset for cherry-picking, miscoding, and ignoring critical variables such as agency, ideology, and revisionist behavior. In at least 14 of the 16 examples, the historical record simply does not support the core claim that fearful status quo powers preemptively attack rising challengers. Many of the wars were instead initiated by aggressive rising states, not paranoid incumbents.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the U.S.-China relationship itself. After emerging from World War II as the undisputed superpower, America did not crush Mao’s revolutionary regime despite Chinese forces killing tens of thousands of American soldiers in the Korean War. Nor did America retaliate against the Chinese for providing massive, sustained aid to North Vietnam throughout the Vietnam War. Instead, the United States opened diplomatic relations in the 1970s, integrated China into the global trading system, and, through investment, technology transfer, and market access, engineered the greatest economic lift in human history. So not only was Beijing’s rise never thwarted by Washington, it was actively aided and abetted by America.
Fast-forward to 2026, and the picture looks far less rosy for Graham Allison and his fellow elites who once eagerly proclaimed the dawn of the “Asian Century.” The structural headwinds they long downplayed have now become impossible to ignore. A collapsing property sector, demographic freefall, crushing local government debt, chronically weak domestic consumption, and tightening U.S. export controls have collectively shattered the narrative of China’s inevitable overtake of the United States. Recent projections show the nominal GDP gap between the U.S. and China actually widening by 2030.
So what is the signal that most of the mainstream media missed? Back in 2015, at the peak of China’s swagger, Xi Jinping had declared: “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap.” At the time, Beijing was surging with double-digit growth (on paper), the Belt and Road Initiative was rolling out to great fanfare, island building in the South China Sea was barely met with any Western response (thanks, Obama), and the American president was still preaching “strategic patience.”
Why would the man who had only a decade ago dismissed the concept as non-existent, now suddenly treat the Thucydides Trap as the central dogma defining the U.S.-China relationship?
To answer this, one must read between the lines. The difference in what Xi said in 2015 vs. 2026 is what, in poker, you would call “a tell.”  In “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu teaches to “appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.” When China appeared unstoppable, Xi pretended there was no trap at all in order to lull America into complacency. Now that China is visibly weakening, he suddenly discovers the Thucydides Trap and warns of looming danger — projecting strength and issuing veiled threats to deter pushback.
This seminal text is a window into the operational doctrine of how the Chinese Communist Party thinks and acts. The mainstream media, predictably, has missed it entirely. What they hail as “statesmanship” is in reality a desperate tactical feint from a revisionist power whose “century of rejuvenation” has slammed into harsh headwinds. Xi invoked the phrase to ostensibly warn Trump against “disrupting the relationship.” In reality, he was making a veiled threat: Don’t contain us. Don’t push back too hard. Keep the one-way transfer of wealth, technology, and power flowing, or you’ll be the paranoid Sparta that starts the war.
The Thucydides Trap was always a strategically convenient fiction, weaponized to keep America passive while its rival rose. Xi is not educating Trump on ancient Greek history; he is testing him. Rising challengers press their advantage until they meet credible resistance. Xi’s blatant flip-flop is proof that the balance of power is tilting back toward American strength. America should reject Xi’s premise and continue to maintain unrelenting pressure across every domain — economic, technological, military, and diplomatic — to force Beijing to choose between genuine internal reform and managed decline on far less favorable terms.
Americans should see Xi’s sudden rediscovery of the Thucydides Trap as a clear sign that their country is not in inexorable decline, no matter how loudly the usual chorus of influencers, podcasters, and legacy media insists otherwise. Ignore the usual suspects shilling for managed decline. What we are witnessing is a weakening rival’s desperate plea for America to once again choose self-delusion over self-defense.
***

Multiple Mao

The Thucydides Trap Is Fake And Gay

Communist China

Global power

Thucydides Trap

Editor’s note: This is the second in a four-part weekend series on the hunt for the Bismarck, coming up on its 85th anniversary this month. 
The short-lived “battlecruiser” concept involved mounting the biggest guns on the fastest hull — the idea being they could outrun heavy battleships while wielding enough firepower to destroy faster armored cruisers. Stretching 860 feet from bow to stern, Hood, the most famous of them all, displaced 46,000 tons and carried eight 15-inch guns. But the type’s speed came at a cost. To compensate for the immense weight of their guns, battlecruisers sacrificed armor protection, particularly deck armor. Though they may have looked like battleships, when put into the line at Jutland, three inadequately armored examples were blown apart, and 3,300 sailors perished; the design was effectively abandoned. Hood, already under construction, was still completed in 1920, but she became the last of her kind.
Like the German battleship approaching over the gray horizon, Hood was arguably the most aesthetically pleasing ship in her navy. Throughout the interwar years, she toured the world as a floating symbol of British power, earning the sobriquet “The Mighty Hood.” Yet beneath the glamour she was, in the words of historian Iain Ballentyne, a heavyweight boxer with a glass jaw. Although plans existed to refit her with thicker armor, events overtook them. And so, in the predawn darkness of May 24, 1941, Hood found herself steaming headlong toward the most powerful operational battleship in the world.
Accompanying Hood was the 44,000-ton Prince of Wales. She carried 10 14-inch guns in a four-and-two-gun turret forward and another four-gun turret aft. A true battleship, she was well-protected. But she had troubles of her own. Commissioned only three weeks earlier, Prince of Wales was plagued by mechanical defects, including chronically malfunctioning turrets (civilian engineers even sailed with her), while her crew remained largely untested.
Overall command of the British squadron rested with Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland aboard Hood. Holland intended to run straight in, presenting a narrow target before turning to “cross the T” — placing his ships broadside so all their heavy guns could fire while forcing Bismarck, presumed to be leading the German column, to answer only with her forward turrets. But during the night, the cruisers lost contact with the enemy. By the time the Germans were reacquired, Holland found himself badly positioned, approaching from the southeast at an oblique angle in a long, slow run-in.
He knew the approach was perilous. Hood’s thin deck armor — only three inches — left her vulnerable to plunging fire. At long range, Bismarck’s shells would descend in steep arcs down onto the battlecruiser’s weak decks. The range had to be closed quickly so incoming shells would flatten their trajectory and strike Hood’s thicker twelve-inch belt armor instead. Compounding matters, Holland’s ships were positioned in a way that denied them use of their aft guns — the very predicament he had hoped to impose upon the Germans.
From Suffolk, farther north, one sailor observed: “Against the light horizon were silhouetted the German ships, while away to port and barely distinguishable against the low cloud forming their background were Hood and Prince of Wales. As they tore along with their guns cocked up in the air, they were a gallant sight, and we watched with the feelings of a producer who has set his stage and now only awaits the rising of the curtain.” Then came the electrifying signal: FROM HOOD. ENEMY IN SIGHT. AM ENGAGING.
At 5:52 a.m., with the range down to 14 miles, Holland calmly gave the command, “Open fire.” Hood’s forward guns erupted in flame, followed moments later by Prince of Wales. The massive shells took nearly 50 seconds to arrive, throwing up towering geysers around their target — Prinz Eugen.
Holland had made a grievous, if understandable, error. In the skirmish with Norfolk the previous evening, the concussion of her own guns knocked out Bismarck’s radar. So during the night, the smaller cruiser moved into the lead. From a distance, Prinz Eugen had similar lines to Bismarck, which Holland assumed to be the lead ship. But she only displaced 18,000 tons and carried eight-inch guns. Skippered by Lindemann’s 1913 Naval Academy classmate, Captain Helmuth Brinkmann, she was a dangerous opponent…but not a battleship. Several British salvos landed near the German cruiser while Bismarck’s unmolested gunners impatiently awaited permission to fire. Realizing the error, Holland coolly ordered his crews to “switch target to the right.” However, in the confusion no correction was made and Hood continued firing on the smaller lead ship. Prince of Wales, recognizing the mistake earlier, had already shifted fire onto Bismarck. But they had lost the advantage of firing first to get the range quicker.
Few experiences rival the terror of being on the receiving end of incoming heavy shells. Seaman 2nd Class Josef Statz remembered, “When the shells flew overhead, they literally ripped a scream from your body. It was indescribable.”
For several minutes, British projectiles fell around the German battleship. Yet Bismarck still had not fired. Admiral Lütjens hesitated, mindful of his orders to avoid engagements with enemy warships. But as seconds turned to minutes, Captain Lindemann finally had enough. He snapped, “I will not have my ship shot out from under my ass!” before grabbing a phone and barking to the gunnery officer: “Permission to fire.”
Suddenly, Bismarck’s eight 15-inch guns unleashed a full broadside, lighting up the dawn. The concussion staggered the ship itself. Machinist Mate 1st Class Heinrich Kuhnt remembered: “It felt like it was bending, pushed sideways in the water. It was amazing.” A sailor aboard Prince of Wales recalled seeing “a line of orange flashes right across her side, which meant she was using her fore and aft guns at us! Waiting… waiting…waiting. Range closing. And then presently hearing a WHOOOOOSH!!!” Ted Briggs, an 18-year-old signalman standing on Hood’s compass platform near Holland, and the ship’s captain, Ralph Kerr, described the surreal horror of watching the shells approach: “The first thing I saw were four red stars with a gold center coming from her. And I suddenly realized they were fifteen-inch projectiles coming towards us. Then we heard this scream like an express train going overhead.”
Prinz Eugen was by now firing her eight-inch guns, shifting targets as the situation required, augmenting Bismarck’s firepower. A second German salvo bracketed Hood as the battlecruiser charged ahead, desperate to get inside the “zone of immunity” re: plunging fire. The Germans then unleashed a third broadside. A shell from Prinz Eugen struck Hood aft, detonating anti-aircraft ammunition below and setting fires, killing and maiming several crewmen. Through the voice pipes Briggs could hear the screams of wounded men. While the German cruiser peppered her opponents, Bismarck found the range. She fired a fourth salvo. One shell smashed through Hood’s observation deck above the compass platform. A shaken crewman sent to inspect the damage returned to report that above them was a veritable charnel house; one officer was unrecognizable, missing both face and hands.
Only five minutes into the battle, Hood was in trouble. By now Holland had closed the range to seven miles, which he hoped placed him inside the zone of immunity…but he was wrong. He then ordered a turn to port so both Royal Navy warships could finally bring their aft turrets to bear. It was during this fatal maneuver that Bismarck fired her fifth salvo. After a 30-second trip, a 15-inch armor-piercing shell screamed down and plunged through Hood’s vulnerable deck armor, smashing deep into the ship’s vitals and then detonating her magazines.
All at once, an immense superheated sheet of flame ripped upward through the center of the battlecruiser until it resembled a gigantic acetylene torch rising hundreds of feet into the air. Then Hood blew apart in a colossal fireball that left both British and German sailors aghast. Within seconds, her stern disappeared beneath the sea while flames and smoke engulfed the ship. Hood’s bow reared up vertically before beginning its terrible descent into the Atlantic. As she went under, a forward turret fired in a final act of defiance from a doomed gun crew.
In just a few seconds, the most celebrated warship in the world was gone. All that remained of “The Mighty Hood” was a flaming patch of oil and debris on the surface of the ocean. Out of a crew of 1,418, only three survived: Ted Briggs, Bob Tilburn, and Bill Dundas. It is believed that an exploding boiler beneath them hurled the trio upward on a rush of air and water, saving them from the suction dragging the rest of the ship downward.
Every man who witnessed the explosion was stunned. Zimmerman recalled hearing the news as it spread through Bismarck: “The Hood sunk? It was such a shock. At first there were smiling faces everywhere, but that didn’t last long. As there was a strange feeling in our stomachs that tomorrow that could be us.”
Sensing blood, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen now trained all their guns on Prince of Wales — whose own turrets were malfunctioning. The Battle of the Denmark Strait, barely five minutes in, had become a catastrophe for the Royal Navy.
***
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">books</a>. You can also follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/BSchaefferNJ">X</a>. His latest book, “A War For Half The World: Why the Real Battle for the Future was Fought in the Pacific,” will be released in February 2027.

German battleship Bismarck and german cruiser warship Prinz Eugen during naval battle against english battleships Hood and Prince of Wales may 24, 1941 on the road to Denmark which ended by the shipwreck of Hood (only 3 survivors over 1428 men) picture ta

The Rise And Fall Of The German Battleship Bismarck, Part II

Bismark

WWII

The Texas State Board of Education faces pressure from leftist activists and conservative lawmakers as it meets Friday to consider a push to place more positive references to Islam in the state’s history curriculum. 
Officials in the Lone Star State are reviewing social studies standards amid a push from Muslim advocacy groups, which claim current proposals are “exclusionary and Islamophobic.” At the same time, congressional Republicans are urging the board not to give Islam a more prominent role, particularly in response to lobbying from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. 
“It has come to our attention that an extensive lobbying effort is underway to have the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) alter curriculum standards in a way that would diminish American and Texas history,” Rep. Brandon Gill and other Texas Republicans wrote in a Friday <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/1024602690/Rep-Gill-Letter-to-Texas-SBOE?_gl=1*1gq3kdd*_up*MQ..*_ga*NjgyMzMyMjg3LjE3NzU4MzYzNTA.*_ga_Z4ZC50DED6*czE3NzU4MzYzNDkkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzU4MzYzNTMkajU2JGwwJGgw*_ga_8KZ8BV0P5W*czE3NzU4MzYzNDkkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzU4MzYzNTMkajU2JGwwJGgw">letter</a> first obtained by The Daily Wire. The letter went on to describe CAIR as a &#8220;transnational criminal organization.”
CAIR has denied any connection to terrorism and has sued the state over the designation. Members of CAIR-Texas have <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/texas-education-officials-pushed-delay-175944847.html?guccounter=1">attended</a> recent board meetings to voice their opposition to how Muslims are currently represented in state curriculum. 
Republicans also pushed back on claims they say are being introduced into the standards.
“The petitioners’ efforts claim that Islam influenced our founding, culture, and way of life,&#8221; the letter states. &#8220;For instance, the (board) recently responded to public testimony asserting that the Alamo is an Islamic building.” 
&#8220;Such claims are intended to introduce sensationalized or false history into our curriculum, and it is not the (board&#8217;s) responsibility to accommodate flagrant lies or cultivate spurious claims of their belonging.”
The fight over the standards has been raging for weeks, with local Muslim groups organizing in support of changes. In March, an Islamic center in Houston <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DWRUs5Bjk-U/">hosted</a> a discussion on “challenging Islamophobia in Texas schools.” 
Gill said that Islam played no major role in the founding or development of Texas and warned against what he described as &#8220;revisionist history.&#8221;
“Students should be taught age-appropriate facts and hard-truths, even when it is uncomfortable. Islam did not play a role in the founding or development of Texas, and to say so would be an outright lie,” he wrote.
The other lawmakers who signed onto the letter include Reps. Chip Roy, Wesley Hunt, Michael Cloud, Nathaniel Moran, Ronny Jackson, Lance Gooden, Brian Babin, Keith Self, and Pat Fallon.

MixCollage-10-Apr-2026-09-46-AM-265

One Of America’s Most Iconic Symbols — Now ‘Islamic’? The New History Fight

Brandon Gill

CAIR

Islam

Texas

Students in New Mexico will learn more about the January 6 Capitol riot and climate change than the moon landing.
New Mexico high school <a href="https://defendinged.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/High-School-United-States-History.docx.pdf">history guidelines</a> contain over a dozen references to the January 6 riot while only mentioning the moon landing once. The guidelines, part of the New Mexico Instructional Scope for History, are largely focused on racial and gender grievances and encourage teachers to promote Democratic politicians and lament how the richest men in the United States today are “mostly white.&#8221;
“The freedom of those in America and Ukraine after the 2021 Capital [sic] Insurrection and Russian invasion of Ukraine are two events that reveal the rights and safety of women, immigrants, children, and the LGBTQ community are at risk,” an example discussion in the guidance reads. 
Teachers are also instructed to show footage from NBC showing “Americans armed with weapons and military-type gear storming the Capital, breaking glass, defacing sacred art, political statues and podiums on and in our Capital [sic] building in Washington, DC.”
The purpose of the footage is to “disprove some of the beliefs that it was not violent or a threat to our democracy.”
The repeated misspelling of &#8220;Capitol&#8221; in the January 6 section is one of several errors in the guidelines. In another section, teachers are encouraged to list Democratic politicians from racial and sexual minorities, including &#8220;VP [Kamala] Harris, Transportation Secretary [Pete] Buttigieg, Interior Secretary [Deb] Haaland and Supreme Court Justice Brown.&#8221;
The last example appears to be a reference to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Rhyen Staley, the director of research at Defending Education, said the documents were an example of politics being pushed in the classroom.
“These state level documents expose a troubling pattern by education activists of pushing leftwing political and social biases into K-12 classrooms as established ‘facts,'&#8221; Staley told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Students and families deserve an education that values a politically neutral approach to weighing different sides of issues, not political indoctrination.&#8221;
The <a href="https://web.ped.nm.gov/bureaus/curriculum-instruction/new-mexico-instructional-scope-nmis/">New Mexico Instructional Scope</a> is an “educator influenced tool designed to provide guidance and support to assure that all students in New Mexico have access to content at their grade level combined with the use of impactful instructional strategies.”
The history guidelines reveal a heavy focus on left-wing activism and grievance politics.
Teachers are suggested to ask students why the United States still struggles “with the idea of racial equality,” discuss the pros and cons of reparations, and assess “who is responsible for the socio-economic disparities in early U.S. immigration to today.”
In contrast, the moon landing and the space race are each only mentioned once
The guidance also suggests that states like Georgia and Florida have implemented laws that are similar to voting restrictions on black people during the Jim Crow era. Teachers are recommended to provide “Current suppression of voting rights” in examples of Georgia, Texas, Florida, and New Mexico.
“How does the current suppression of voting rights compare to the suppression of voting rights during and immediately following the Reconstruction Era?” a question for students said. 
Another suggested discussion is whether there are “more opportunities for minorities today in the business realm.”
“Absolutely there is more opportunity today than there was back then, but that doesn’t mean that things are totally equal. Even though there are lots of Black owned businesses, the richest men in the country are still mostly white,” a suggested student response to the question said. 
Other guidance included in the history materials is for students to be encouraged to “join a program already in existence and help spread their message to prevent global warming” or write to their representative about climate change. 
Students should be able to define LGBTQ (“Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, queer or questioning”) and PFLAG (“Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays”).
“How do historically underrepresented groups such as women of color, LGBTQ and Indigenous people offerse [SIC] diverse views of society,” teachers should ask students, according to the guidance. 
Similar politically focused guidance is found in materials for instruction on <a href="https://defendinged.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/High-School-World-History-NMIS.pdf">world history</a> and <a href="https://web.ped.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/High-School-Ethnic-Cultural-and-Identity.docx.pdf">ethnic studies</a>. 
In the guidance for world history, “equity” is defined as the principle “that all citizens have had different opportunities and experiences, and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.”
The world history guidance also contains guidance recommending that students “create their own posters that show their actions on climate change” after watching a climate alarmist documentary from former Vice President Al Gore. 
The ethnic, cultural, and identity guidance discusses left-wing groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, Black Lives Matter, and the Human Rights Campaign.  
“How do advocacy at the local, community, national and global levels work together to achieve change over time?” a supporting question asks. 
It also introduces students to the concept of “gender identity,” which it defines as ”identification with, or sense of belonging to, a particular group based on gender, such as cisgender, transgender, agender, bigender.”
New Mexico, a solidly blue state, has previously come <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-mexico-government-survey-asks-middle-and-high-school-students-if-they-are-two-spirit?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=New+Mexico+Government+Survey+Asks+Middle+And+High+School+Students+If+They+Are+‘Two-Spirit’">under scrutiny</a> for asking high school students whether they identify as “two-spirit” or transgender through its Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey.

Trump Supporters Hold “Stop The Steal” Rally In DC Amid Ratification Of Presidential Election

Students In Blue State Spend More Time Learning About January 6 Than The Moon Landing

Capitol Riot

Education

January 6

New Mexico

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
This summer marks the 250th birthday of the United States. In preparation for this historic moment, over 1,500 prominent Catholics from across America will soon gather in prayer for the country’s future at the 21st annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.
Their witness testifies to the endurance of American Catholics over the past two and a half centuries, whose commitment to prayer — and refusal to be cowed by adversity or hostility — helped establish enduring concepts of human dignity, freedom, and excellence that powerfully shaped the world. Though secular forces seek to undermine Catholic beliefs and influence today, the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast annually reminds our adversaries that Catholicism has historically prevailed against great evil, and accomplished miracles, thanks to the prayers of those who refused to give up on their country or their faith.
Catholicism played a role in offering peace and hope to settlers from the earliest days of the American founding. There is some evidence that <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWAc3addc5d-8e37-a0b8-f5c1-bac159165378" title="https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/was-squanto-catholic-what-we-know-about-this-hero-of-the-first-thanksgiving?redirectedfrom=cna" href="https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/was-squanto-catholic-what-we-know-about-this-hero-of-the-first-thanksgiving?redirectedfrom=cna" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/was-squanto-catholic-what-we-know-about-this-hero-of-the-first-thanksgiving?redirectedfrom%3Dcna&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw15CNWv2xXBRslxjvpULwI-">Squanto</a>, a Native American translator without whom the earliest pilgrims wouldn’t have survived their first winter in New England, was Catholic.
Many of the Catholics joining Christian pilgrims for a better life in the new world were welcomed with pervasive anti-Catholic skepticism and legislation in the early American colonies. Undeterred, Catholics braved harsh conditions and uncertain futures — even death — to bring faith and civilization to America. The sacrifice of Catholic Jesuits such as Saint Isaac Jogues, who was brutally tortured and martyred by the Mohawks, as well as the missions, schools, and hospitals founded by the Jesuits, Spanish Franciscans, and other Catholics, played a pivotal role in shaping and sustaining the nation for generations to come. Their impact is evident in the <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWAe656ce6a-c7dd-da6d-b91f-d006c0388c4a" title="https://www.churchpop.com/the-hardcore-catholic-saints-behind-american-cities-names/" href="https://www.churchpop.com/the-hardcore-catholic-saints-behind-american-cities-names/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.churchpop.com/the-hardcore-catholic-saints-behind-american-cities-names/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1kRZH6aZdY6ir9Ky6jtd9e">number of major cities</a> that were named after Catholic saints.
Catholics also helped to establish and protect core American freedoms. Cecil Calvert, the Catholic 2nd Baron of Baltimore, was a primary driver behind the 1649 “Act of Toleration,” which made Maryland the first colony to pass religious freedom laws and later influenced the drafting of the First Amendment.
Charles Carroll made history as the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, which drew upon concepts of the natural law originally derived from the logic of the Catholic Saint Thomas Aquinas. Carroll&#8217;s signature on that globe-shattering document was significant since most of the colonies didn’t allow Catholics to hold office at the time. Following the Revolutionary War, won partially thanks to the aid of Catholic King Louis XVI of France, <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWA869e99c8-aa6b-f169-9782-d03d15b07f8f" title="https://catholicvote.org/7-surprising-facts-about-the-american-founding/#:~:text=Without%20hesitation%20they%20threw%20in,to%20be%20suffered%20or%20excused." href="https://catholicvote.org/7-surprising-facts-about-the-american-founding/#:~:text=Without%20hesitation%20they%20threw%20in,to%20be%20suffered%20or%20excused." target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://catholicvote.org/7-surprising-facts-about-the-american-founding/%23:~:text%3DWithout%2520hesitation%2520they%2520threw%2520in,to%2520be%2520suffered%2520or%2520excused.&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0UkcNwrIZRZC79cqJgrD8D">two of Carroll’s relatives</a> became the first Catholic members of Congress. In 1961, John F. Kennedy would make history as the first Catholic to become the president of the United States.
Over the 17th to 21st centuries, Catholics continued shaping America through religious, philanthropic, and educational endeavors. To this day, the Catholic impact on <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWAad7812b5-6a61-c55c-fef5-60b5bd6e662c" title="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21452027/" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21452027/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21452027/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3J7QaB7hrekaN6agG-ITeC">American health systems</a> and philanthropy can&#8217;t be overstated. Heroic figures such as Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and Saint Mother Frances Cabrini, like thousands of other religious sisters, braved anti-Catholic sentiment and horrible conditions to create dozens of schools, orphanages, and hospitals.
Three major medical institutions today, the Columbus Hospitals in New York and Chicago and the Columbus Sanitarium in Seattle, were founded by Cabrini, while the U.S. Catholic <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWA427d8dba-b12b-776a-ed38-42e6a9cd86e0" title="https://www.catholicherald.com/article/columns/a-patron-saint-for-catholic-schools/" href="https://www.catholicherald.com/article/columns/a-patron-saint-for-catholic-schools/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.catholicherald.com/article/columns/a-patron-saint-for-catholic-schools/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0UtsvUhnw1KEBFKNgWHHQj">parochial school system</a> was established by Seton. Thanks to these and other Catholic efforts, the Catholic Church is universally respected as the leading philanthropic organization in America and the world. Catholics have also been vital forces in the key moral battles of the 21st century pertaining to human life and dignity.
Catholic Bishops staunchly opposed segregation during the Civil Rights movement, while Catholic nuns and an estimated 35 Catholic priests marched in the historic Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965.
When the Supreme Court of the United States legalized abortion in 1973, Catholics galvanized on behalf of the unborn. Catholic lawyer Nellie Gray responded by founding what is now the largest annual human rights demonstration in the world: the <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWA05e1e3fd-1c7c-cb19-c44e-f5b547707d47" title="https://marchforlife.org/women-of-the-pro-life-movement-nellie-gray/" href="https://marchforlife.org/women-of-the-pro-life-movement-nellie-gray/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://marchforlife.org/women-of-the-pro-life-movement-nellie-gray/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1HoD4SU6-V8BlrjU5OS2Cz">March for Life</a>. Today, this peaceful protest draws over 100,000 Americans, including tens of thousands of Catholics, from across the country. Catholics also helped establish the pro-life safety net, which now boasts <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWAbf8b89ad-7a99-25e6-728e-6065794eb14f" title="https://lozierinstitute.org/new-pregnancy-centers-provided-over-452-million-in-services-and-goods-to-families/" href="https://lozierinstitute.org/new-pregnancy-centers-provided-over-452-million-in-services-and-goods-to-families/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://lozierinstitute.org/new-pregnancy-centers-provided-over-452-million-in-services-and-goods-to-families/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0u0_KwcMfHVyuQI81HRohI">over 3,000 organizations</a> and countless volunteers (many Catholic!) nationwide that care for women and children in need — despite <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWA8c203794-770c-7de7-7204-07b6d936f9ec" title="https://catholicvote.org/pregnancy-center-attack-tracker/" href="https://catholicvote.org/pregnancy-center-attack-tracker/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://catholicvote.org/pregnancy-center-attack-tracker/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2CaT5NVHDVGKYZih8VmBLK">violent hostility</a> from pro-abortion opponents.
As attacks on religious freedom increasingly threatened Americans’ right to practice their faith in the public sphere, Catholics boldly fought back. In 1993, Catholic lawyer Kevin “Seamus” Hasson founded the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has won 13 Supreme Court cases in the past 15 years. In 1994, Catholic Alan Sears was a primary founder and president of Alliance Defending Freedom, which is now the leading religious freedom law firm in the world and has played a role in 83 Supreme Court victories.
From attempts to force poor nuns to fund contraception in their healthcare plans, to attacks on pregnancy resource centers for not providing abortions, or pressure on religious employers and business owners to participate in activities that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, both Becket and ADF have won hard-fought victories and established Supreme Court precedent that protects American freedoms for generations to come.
And at a time when European nations imprison citizens for social media posts and prayer, Catholics at nonprofits and religious freedom firms such as Becket and ADF are leading the fight to protect men, women, children, and ultimately the truth — especially against attempts to allow biological males in women and girls’ sports and spaces, as well as the horrifying trend of transgender surgeries on children.
These fights — over the gender wars, abortion, religious freedom, free speech, immigration — and so many others continue dominating news cycles and evoking despair among many that our nation is irreconcilably damaged and headed towards ruin. Yet on Thursday, Catholics will unite in prayer for the nation’s future at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. As they reflect on the challenges ahead and the past 250 years of American history, they have every reason for optimism.
Catholics faced setbacks and discouragement at every period of our nation’s history, including many grave threats to truth and freedom in America today. Yet Catholic heroes like Jogues, Cabrini, Seton, Gray, Hasson, Sears, and so many others continue to lead us by example, teaching us to meet adversity with the hope and perseverance that only authentic prayer can sustain. I hope attendees of this year’s prayer breakfast take heart from this remarkable Catholic legacy. Through the power of prayer, we can similarly fight the good fight that God has entrusted to each of us for the benefit of our nation, and ultimately the world.
***
Mark Randall is a board of director and chairman of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

GettyImages-2033775702

America At 250 — Catholics Gather In Prayer As The Fight For The Nation’s Soul Heats Up

Catholic Church

Religion

Academy Award-nominated American director and filmmaker Darren Aronofsky is being questioned for his new AI-generated series, “On This Day&#8230; 1776.”
The 56-year-old filmmaker, best known for dark dramas including “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “Black Swan” (2010), and “The Whale” (2022), is producing the series with his AI-based company Primordial Soup. “On This Day” will use Google DeepMind to reconstruct scenes from the American Revolution and post them to Time Studio’s YouTube channel, per <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/darren-aronofsky-revolutionary-war-ai-series-1236488180/">The Hollywood Reporter</a>.
The series has a stated goal of “reframing the Revolution not as a foregone conclusion but as a fragile experiment shaped by those who fought for it,” the companies said in a statement. Episodes will be released to coincide with the 250th anniversary dates as they occurred throughout this year.
Two episodes, one featuring George Washington boosting morale in Massachusetts and another with Benjamin Franklin encouraging Thomas Paine to champion common sense, were released yesterday.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="On This Day… 1776 | Official Trailer" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E4cLKIxt8W8?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>
Aronofsky has been vocal about using AI as a tool, and not as a replacement for filmmaking. He insists that the creations are “soup not slop,” and are worthy of watching. Many fans, however, are less than thrilled about it. 
“Wow this looks like a hunk of worthless dog sh*t,” Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh <a href="https://x.com/mattwalshblog/status/2017086047868404138?s=43">wrote</a> on X in response to the trailer. 
“A director should completely lose their career for this. [H]is wikipedia should say former filmmaker from now on no matter what else he does,” another commenter <a href="https://x.com/ecto_fun/status/2016950114439323746?s=43">agreed</a>. 
“My favorite part of this garbage is how you can see which actors the different characters lifts their looks from (due to unlawful usage of their likeness in the training data) and how these characters slowly morph into different actors during scenes,” <a href="https://x.com/Carnivol/status/2017163838601224671">said</a> a third X user.
“This look [sic] awful,” another popular comment <a href="https://x.com/BikeMan/status/2016981447446290642">said</a>. “It has that weird uncanny valley AI sheen on it as usual. AI also always has boring, predictable camera movements. Slow rotations and pans every time. I see the standard AI dead eyed line deliveries are present as well.&#8221;

Darren Aronofsky

‘Black Swan’ Director Mocked For AI-Generated Series About The American Revolution

'Black Swan' Director Mocked For AI-Generated Series About Revolutionary Period

American Revolution

Artificial Intelligence

Entertainment

Television

YouTube

The Ohio state House of Representatives passed a bill along party lines last week that would allow public schools to teach on the &#8220;positive influence of religion,&#8221; particularly Christianity, in history courses.
House Bill 486, titled the &#8220;<a href="https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/136/hb486">Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act</a>,&#8221; would codify teachers&#8217; rights under the state constitution to instruct their students on how Christianity positively shaped U.S. history, according to one of the bill&#8217;s sponsors, state Rep. Gary Click, NBC Columbus affiliate WCMH <a href="https://www.nbc4i.com/news/politics/charlie-kirk-bill-to-teach-positively-about-christianity-passes-ohio-house/">reported</a>.
&#8220;The teaching of the historical, positive impact of religion on American history is consistent with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. An accurate and historical account of the influence of Judeo-Christian values on the freedom and liberties ingrained in our culture is imperative to reducing ignorance of American history, hate, and violence within our society,&#8221; the bill states. &#8220;Accurate historical instruction regarding verifiable, historical impacts of religion on American history is factual and is not proselytization or a violation of the First Amendment.&#8221;
The text of House Bill 486 provides examples of how public school teachers can teach on the positive influence of Christianity, such as the faith of the pilgrims, the clear presence of Christianity in the Mayflower Compact, the appeal to divine power in the Declaration of Independence, and Christianity&#8217;s influence on the U.S. Constitution. The bill is named after conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, a devout and outspoken Christian, who was assassinated while speaking on the Utah Valley University campus on September 10.
“Charlie was a committed Christian, whose life and work will serve as a testament to the power of conservative ideals combined with a legacy of faith for generations to come,” Click said.
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All 62 Republicans in the Ohio House voted in favor of the legislation, while all 27 Democrats opposed it. It now heads to the state Senate, where Republicans hold a 24-9 majority.
“It’s essential that we highlight the positive influence religion has had throughout our history – uniting communities, enriching our shared values, and safeguarding our First Amendment rights as Americans to speak and worship freely,” said Republican state Rep. Michael Dovilla.
The bill was criticized by education and civil liberties groups and advocates for the separation of church and state. The Ohio American Civil Liberties Union <a href="https://www.acluohio.org/news/house-bill-486-opponent-testimony/">argued</a> that the bill &#8220;is obviously designed to paint Christianity in the most positive light while deliberately avoiding the negative.&#8221;
&#8220;The ACLU of Ohio submits HB 486 is, at a minimum, unneeded,&#8221; the organization added. &#8220;Politicians leaning on schools and universities to teach their version of Christianity and religion is an idea rejected centuries ago, and for good reasons.&#8221;
Gabe Guidarini, chairman of the Ohio College Republican Federation, pushed back on the criticism, arguing, “This bill does not impose a belief system, it simply allows teachers and professors to include historical truths that have too often been neglected — how faith shaped the resolve of the pilgrims, guided our Founders’ convictions, inspired movements that provided us the liberties we enjoy today and informed the moral fabric that has bound our republic together since its birth.&#8221;

Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk-Inspired Bill Allowing Schools To Teach Christianity’s ‘Positive Influence’ Nears Law

Christianity

Ohio

U.S.

Fitness influencer Jillian Michaels was amazed to discover that Jesus Christ was a real person whose existence was chronicled in texts beyond just the Bible.
The conversation took place during an episode of Michaels’ podcast while she was speaking with world-class historian and Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson.
Hanson was discussing the specific issues the Romans had with Jesus, which prompted her to admit that she was surprised to learn his existence was widely accepted as a historical fact.
 “I thought we didn&#8217;t even know this guy… this is going to infuriate people and I&#8217;m so sorry and I stay out of it, but I thought we weren&#8217;t even really sure whether or not Jesus existed and the apostles wrote this stuff hundreds of years ago,” Michaels said. 
Hoover explained, “We have Roman documents completely separate from religion, that he was a magnetic, he was a romantic, wonderful person to the people who knew him and he had staged a revolution and that presented a problem in this troublesome province.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Victor Davis Hanson: The Civilizational Crisis No One Expects" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QEXG_SWVdKo?start=1681&#038;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>
The historian recounted how Pontius Pilate was a Roman official who was most interested in keeping peace in the region, so he pushed the blame for Jesus being put to death onto the Pharisees, using the justification that this move helped achieve that goal.
Hanson also noted how Jesus’ teachings were the antithesis of what the Romans believed. “He&#8217;s got a new religion and unfortunately it&#8217;s turned the other cheek, brotherhood of man, blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor, that&#8217;s not Roman. We have a Roman military ethos that the strong inherit the earth and if an enemy offends you, you hit him twice. And this guy is preaching something very different,” the historian explained.
“When anybody says that the Jews killed Jesus, it&#8217;s more like the Romans wanted a quiet province and they did not like Jesus and what he represented was anti-Roman…So they said basically, well, in Judaism, in Judea, the Jewish establishment, the religious establishment doesn&#8217;t like him any more than we do. So we can get rid of him and then say the Pharisees basically did it.”
“This is so wild. I&#8217;m sorry. I know it&#8217;s not wild for people who know this information, but I genuinely thought, okay, the Jews had the Old Testament, the Torah, and then maybe there was this guy, Jesus,” Michaels said as she looked on in awe. “The apostles wrote stuff, but the first guy who wrote something was like 90 or so years later. We think maybe there&#8217;s some Dead Sea Scrolls kind of mentioned this guy, Jesus.”
Michaels doesn’t talk much about religion publicly, but <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/jillian-michaels-stands-by-criticism-of-the-olympics-opening-ceremony/">described herself</a> as “not a religious person” and “agnostic” in 2024.

Jillian Michaels

Jillian Michaels Is Shocked To Discover Jesus Was A Real Person

Celebrities

Jesus Christ

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth and final installment in the series “American Maoists: Warnings From The Cultural Revolution.”
In <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/proletarian-profanity-like-communists-democrats-want-to-trap-voters-in-a-linguistic-ghetto">Part IV</a>, Xi Van Fleet and Sasha Gong — both activists, scholars, and survivors of Mao’s communist uprising — exposed the radical communist roots of Democrats cringey attempt to seem cool by using profanity.
Today, the authors look to the future, and explore how radical leftist movements rewrite history, not just to justify their actions and demonize the cultures they want to destroy, but to change how people think about their past, present, and future. 
***
Every nation lives by its landmarks. These are not merely dates on a calendar, but signposts dividing history into “before” and “after.” They anchor collective memory and shape how a people understand themselves.
For Americans, the great landmarks have long been clear: 1492, the discovery of the New World; 1776, independence; 1861, the Civil War; 1929, the Great Depression; 1964, the Civil Rights Act. To speak of “before” and “after” these events is to tell the story of a nation striving toward freedom, law, and self-government.
In recent years, however, new landmarks have been imposed by ideological fiat. The most striking is the New York Times’s 1619 Project, which declared that America began not in 1776 but in the year enslaved Africans first arrived in Virginia. With that shift, the axis of history moved: “before and after independence” became “before and after slavery.” Liberty and law were redefined as hypocrisy and oppression. More dividing lines quickly followed: before and after Jim Crow, before and after George Floyd, and so on.
These changes are not merely academic. When the Chinese Communist Party seized power in 1949, it imposed a single ultimate landmark: “before liberation” and “after liberation.” Five thousand years of recorded history were collapsed into a morality tale. Everything before was painted as darkness; everything after as light. The word liberation itself became a judgment on every person and institution. Those who had prospered before were condemned, often destroyed.
The CCP has never ceased wielding this powerful weapon to manufacture historic milestones. After the disastrous Mao era, it crafted yet another milestone by dividing its own history into ‘before Reform and Opening-Up’ and ‘after.’ The Mao years were rebranded as ‘decades of arduous exploration’ in search of a better China, erasing the atrocities that claimed tens of millions of lives.
The post-Mao period, by contrast, is exalted as the Party’s crowning achievement: lifting the Chinese people out of poverty and transforming China into an economic superpower. And the ultimate aim? To enshrine the CCP as the eternal liberator of the Chinese people. This is not just propaganda but a wholesale transformation of society. History was rewritten, language reshaped, culture remade. The “before” was demonized; the “after” glorified. Ordinary people adopted the new vocabulary, willingly or not. And once language changed, thought and memory changed too. The Chinese people, once bound by a magnificent civilization, were divided into “good” and “bad” classes — oppressors and oppressed, loyalists and enemies. Hatred of the designated groups was not just tolerated but demanded.
America is not a one-party state. Our institutions remain democratic. Yet the project of re-framing — what might be called Cultural Marxism — has advanced here with surprising speed. The narrative of American exceptionalism, rooted in liberty, law, and individualism, has been replaced by a narrative of slavery, racism, and oppression.
The Left has shown itself to be even more cunning Cultural Marxists than the Maoists. They have redefined and “simplified” American history into a new binary: before and after. In their telling, the “before” is our present — defined solely as slavery and white oppression — rendering the Civil War irrelevant and erasing the achievements of countless Black Americans, including Barack Obama. The “after,” meanwhile, exists only in the future. And how is that future to be reached? By dismantling the entire system, which they insist is built on racism, bigotry, and injustice. 
History’s landmarks are never neutral. They can unite or divide, elevate or diminish. To say “before independence” and “after independence” is to conceive of ourselves as citizens — free, equal, and striving for self-rule. To say “before slavery” and “after slavery” is to fix identity forever in terms of bondage and resentment. One story moves toward freedom; the other freezes us in grievance.
Nations cannot thrive on grievance. A shared history, however imperfect, is the glue that binds generations. To rewrite that history into a tale of villains and victims is to dissolve the glue.
The real question is whether we will continue to allow new landmarks to redefine us. Will we pass on to our children the story of a free people, equal under God, struggling but advancing toward justice? Or will we hand them a fractured narrative that teaches them to see one another as permanent enemies?
History is never only about the past. It frames the future. What we choose as our “before” and “after” will decide who we become.
READ MORE:
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/license-to-kill-what-turns-normal-people-to-political-violence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">American Maoists, Part I: License To Kill: What Turns Normal People To Political Violence?</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-wheel-of-misfortune-victims-victimhood-and-victimization?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Xi+Van+Fleet+and+Sasha+Gong&amp;category=Opinion&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=The+Wheel+Of+Misfortune%3A+Victims%2C+Victimhood%2C+And+Victimization" target="_blank" rel="noopener">American Maoists, Part II: The Wheel Of Misfortune: Victims, Victimhood, And Victimization</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/from-red-guard-to-blue-hair-why-leftists-destroy-womanhood?author=Xi+Van+Fleet+and+Sasha+Gong&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=From+Red+Guard+To+Blue+Hair%3A+Why+Leftists+Destroy+Womanhood">American Maoists, Part III: From Red Guard To Blue Hair: Why Leftists Destroy Womanhood</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/proletarian-profanity-like-communists-democrats-want-to-trap-voters-in-a-linguistic-ghetto">American Maoists, Part IV: Proletarian Profanity: Why Democrats Want To Trap Voters In A Linguistic Ghetto</a>
Xi Van Fleet is a survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, activist, and author of “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning.”
Sasha Gong is a writer, scholar, journalist, and filmmaker. A dissident in Mao’s China, she holds a PhD from Harvard University and was previously Director of the China Branch at Voice of America.
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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