All people value their reputations. Most of us try to honor our reputations by following the rules, being decent people, and making ethical and moral decisions.
You can imagine how you’d feel if people started attacking you after you’ve lived a life that, while imperfect, was on balance an honorable one.
Imagine how you’d feel if a group of people in your hometown started saying that your entire life was a lie, that it was based on greed and exploitation, and that the world would be better off if you didn’t exist.
Imagine that it wasn’t only strangers in town who were making these allegations. Even those who knew you best, your family and your closest friends, began to wonder if somehow there was another side of you they weren’t familiar with.
That’s exactly what’s happening right now, and not to a person, but to our country. There is a powerful movement in America that’s telling the country that’s historically been referred to as a shining city on a hill and the greatest representative democracy the world has ever seen that it’s no good.
A loud group of professors, media moguls, social justice warriors, and elected officials are telling the world that this good and decent land was built on a lie, and that it’s the modern day equivalent of Nazi Germany. They’re even teaching our children that there’s nothing to be proud of in America.
This movement is trying to erase the symbols of our greatness and history, and to remove memorials to our founders and heroes. They’re trying to erase from the hearts of our children the natural love and affection that a child must feel for their nation if the nation is going to survive.
This movement used to be confined to the faculty lounges of elite universities and coastal cities. But now it’s seeping into the Heartland.
A city council in a small town in Minnesota recently voted to stop opening their meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. Their pitiful excuse was that they want to be more inclusive. They later realized the error of their ways and reinstated the practice.
Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is an inherently inclusive act. It’s a symbolic effort to include everybody in the American experiment. It’s a way of proclaiming that no matter what differences we may have, we are united as Americans.
Out West, a city school board has decided to spend more than half a million dollars to paint over historical artwork depicting the life of George Washington. Not Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, or some Civil War figure from the South, but George Washington — the father of our country and our first president.
The New York Times recently ran a video op-ed titled “Quit telling me America is great.”
At Colorado State University, students have been asked not to utter the word “Americans,” in order to make the campus more inclusive to foreign students.
Ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, Nike caved in to the demands of its leftist brand ambassador Colin Kaepernick when they pulled shoes featuring what some said was the “racist flag” of Betsy Ross. That’s the 13-starred flag flown during the American revolution. No matter that the Betsy Ross flag flew at President Barack Obama’s 2013 inaugural. That was six years ago, before hating America became a cultural phenomenon.
Anybody who’s offended by the Betsy Ross flag must also be offended by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the very founding of our nation.
Sadly, that’s true. Many people are. The liberals who control Charlottesville, Virginia, recently decided they will no longer recognize the birthday of Thomas Jefferson. That’s right, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and the man who founded the University of Virginia, located in Charlottesville, will no longer be tolerated there.
Remember when President Trump warned that attacks on Civil War monuments would eventually lead to attacks on the Founding Fathers and other symbols of our country? Clearly, he was right.
The political debate today should be about how, not whether, to make America great again. But instead we’ve been confronted with the idea that making America great again means all kinds of horrible things for women, minorities, and immigrants.
Most of us would consider a defamatory attack to be an attack not just on ourselves but also on our family and home.
In the same way, this defamation of America is an attack on the home of us all. Just as we’d fight back against those who defame us, we as a people must collectively fight back to save our country.
Gary Bauer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.
