OPINION:
I make a pilgrimage to the Concord Battlefield every year around April 19, the anniversary of the battle that marked the beginning of our War of Independence. I think of it as the place where America began.
Imagine my dismay on learning that the town of Concord, Massachusetts, is ashamed of its heritage.
In January, it removed three historical markers, which had been in place since 1930, that commemorated the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony 300 years earlier.
The move was based on a recommendation from its insane Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, which judged that the signs “harmed indigenous people” — who make up 0.2% of Concord’s population.
This is virtue signaling at its worst. It’s an attempt to reconcile its professed multiculturalism with the reality that Concord is as diverse as the Beverly Hills Country Club.
The town is 82.3% White. The median household income is $184,086, compared with the national average of $74,500. In 2020, voters there went 5-to-1 for President Biden.
America’s hometown has turned its back on America. It is, in effect, saying that it’s better to bury history than offend the hypersensitive — in this case, not Native Americans but rich, guilt-ridden White liberals.
Sadly, Concord reflects a growing trend.
Increasingly, patriotism is out of fashion. According to the latest Gallup Poll, only 39% are “extremely proud” to be an American, compared with 65% in 2004. In a 1998 Wall Street Journal survey, 70% said patriotism was very important to them. Today, it’s 38%.
That’s why the military consistently fails to meet its recruitment goals. Last year, the Army missed its target by almost 25%.
What’s behind this phenomenon is no military secret. Our landscape is dotted with treason factories churning out a steady stream of anti-Americanism.
Where the mission of public education was once to create a sense of solidarity among a diverse population, today it promotes ignorance, skepticism and fragmentation.
Only 32% of Americans know the three branches of government, and one-third can’t name a single right protected by the First Amendment.
Schools are too busy indoctrinating to educate.
Popular tools of brainwashing include Marxist Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” published in 1980, which teaches that America is based on genocide, suppression and exploitation. When he was a political science professor at Boston University during the Vietnam War, campus conservatives, of which I was one, called him Ho Chi Zinn.
Critical race theory is enshrined in our schools. Over 3,500 high schools use a 100-page magazine supplement in the 1619 Project book, which proclaims that racism and White supremacy are woven into the fabric of America.
The state functionaries who mold the minds of our children agree.
In 2021, the 3 million-member National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, reiterated its support for CRT and the 1619 Project in the face of a growing parental backlash.
The union pledged to create “an in-depth study that critiques white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-indigeneity, racism, patriarchy … capitalism … and other forms of power and oppression” which it asserts are behind attacks on CRT.
The partisanship of the mainstream media is reflected in the fact that The New York Times, our country’s so-called newspaper of record, sponsors the 1619 Project. The media generally portray patriotism as the province of ultra-MAGA, insurrectionist Republicans intent on destroying democracy.
Hollywood almost makes the news media seem fair and balanced by comparison.
There should be a special Oscar for cinematic whining about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the blacklist, Jules and Ethel Rosenberg, the Vietnam War, President Ronald Reagan and the Trump presidency.
In 2020, HBO produced a stink bomb called “The Plot Against America,” based on the Philip Roth novel of the same title. It’s about an alternate history in which Charles Lindbergh is elected president in 1940 and turns the country into a fascist dictatorship complete with concentration camps.
It’s no coincidence that the miniseries came out the year President Donald Trump ran for reelection. It was meant to rally the left with visions of Orange Man mobilizing an army of brownshirts to make him president for life.
Democrats think we can be the first nation in history to maintain our sovereignty without a national identity — without anything that unites us as a people.
The Muslim activist in Dearborn, Michigan, shouting “Death to America” at a rally could have saved his breath. The decline of patriotism is a prescription for national suicide.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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