The New York Analysis of Policy and Government provides a two-part look at how the basic foundational concepts of the United States are being challenged as never before.
A small portion of the U.S. population has rejected the foundational concepts of what America is all about. Bedrock principles of individual rights, free enterprise, and even national sovereignty have been called into question as never before.
Unlike previous major controversies, this division does not center around a single issue or dispute. Rather, it calls into question the essential reasons for the founding of the country, and even the great principles of western civilization that guided and motivated the thirteen original colonies to form an entity unlike any ever seen before.
During the past century, the basics of Western Civilization were challenged across the globe. However, within “the Anglosphere,” including primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the guiding principles were kept alive, and improved upon. The last vestiges of the world-wide tragedies of racism, sexism, dictatorship and religious persecution were attacked, and individual freedoms expanded, in contrast to the rest of the planet, where, in many cases, these evils expanded to previously unimaginable degrees. Nazi concentration camps, Communist Gulags, and the medieval practices of Islamic extremism plagued the planet (and some continue to do so) but America remained largely immune.
That may be changing, as individual rights are replaced by collective rights, despite the history of this concept which resulted in 100 million people murdered by Communist states, 15 million or so extinguished by Hitler, and the growing daily ravages of radical Islam.
The attempts to eliminate the key, unifying ideas and traditions that bind America together become more serious each day.
“Progressive” educators, from kindergarten through college, when they include American history at all in their curriculum, do so only in the most deprecating manner possible. Left-wing pundits work overtime to cast the nation’s founding fathers in the worst possible light. Bruce Thornton, writing for Frontpage explains: “The politicizing of the universities has led to two ill effects. First… adding [anti-American] material to the curriculum necessitates the driving out of the traditional curriculum…Second, generations of credential students have sat in these courses and then gone on to teach in high schools and grade schools, and to write the textbooks and curricula that propagate this ideology. The result is a student population ignorant of the basic facts of history.” Even the unifying act of having young students recite the Pledge of Allegiance together is now under assault by those who wish to remove it from regular student activities.
As a result of biased or nonexistent education in U.S. history, there is little appreciation for the extraordinary leap in human rights brought about by the American Revolution, and the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Therefore, when individuals who seek to dismantle America’s philosophical underpinnings point out the inevitable flaws in the nation’s founding figures, those flaws are all those undereducated students see.
Some entertainment and sports figures use their access to the public to attack unifying symbols and traditions. Example: Football quarterback Colin Kaepernick, rather than voice his concern over a particular set of issues, chooses instead to denigrate the nation as a whole by refusing to honor the traditional playing of the national anthem. As a result, his muddled message isn’t one of reform of whatever bothers him; it’s an undercutting of support for the nation as a whole.
The essential philosophical principles which underpin America are under constant siege. Freedom of religion has been a central tenet of American life. But now, holding any religious beliefs makes one vulnerable to attack. Examples abound:
- Houston’s former mayor sought to mandate that pastors had to submit their sermons to the city for approval.
- The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal noted with alarm Senator Diane Feinstein’s assault on a judicial nominee simply because the candidate for the bench held traditional religious beliefs: “David Rivkin, a constitutional litigator, says ‘the tenor of questions by Democrat Senators seemed designed more to challenge the ideas of Catholic orthodoxy—a subject more fitting for a theological debate than a Senate hearing…Sen. Dick Durbin jumped in to demand of Ms. Barrett: ‘Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic…This questioning is part of a broader effort on the left to disqualify people with strong religious views from the public square.’
- It has also been reported that a “A Washington state high school football coach… was punished for taking a knee at the 50-yard line for a post-game prayer violated the U.S. Constitution,” according to the radical 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
- The co-chair of the Democrat National Committee has a long history of associating with anti-Semites.
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The Report Concludes tomorrow.