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With his 1776 Commission on patriotism, Trump helped spark a culture war | Trump attempted to use federal power to define how America’s history is taught — and promises to try again.
The Washington Post ^ | September 2, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT | Laura Meckler

Posted on 09/02/2024 10:33:38 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum

On a weekend day in the summer of 2020, President Donald Trump phoned his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, out of the blue. DeVos’s focus that summer was the mass disruption the pandemic had inflicted on students, but Trump was worked up about something else: the 1619 Project, a set of essays published in the New York Times that centered slavery in understanding the founding of the nation.

In a “rant,” DeVos recalled, Trump wanted to know how the administration could ban it from classrooms.

“I had to remind him that the United States does not have a national curriculum, and for good reason,” DeVos wrote in her 2022 memoir, “Hostages No More.” She told him directly: “The federal government can’t ban the 1619 Project.”

That wasn’t what Trump wanted to hear, and he didn’t drop the idea of a national curriculum. Soon he announced a new 1776 Commission, aimed at telling a far more patriotic story about the place slavery and racism have played in America’s history. If Trump had scant understanding of curriculum development, he saw clearly how Republicans could use the politics of race and education to inflame passions.

The commission ultimately produced a 41-page report on patriotic education that was posted on the White House website two days before Trump left office. It was disbanded by President Joe Biden as one of his first acts in office.

The little-noticed story of how Trump personally commissioned this initiative in his final months as president shows his instinct for spotting and stoking a simmering culture war issue, the same...


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Front Page News; Government; Political Humor/Cartoons; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 1619pedoproject; laurameckler; tds; tdsbs; trump
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Trump attempted to use federal power to define how America’s history is taught — and promises to try again.

Oh, the humanity!

1 posted on 09/02/2024 10:33:38 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I have the apparently unorthodox view that this is the singular justification for universal public education. You might ask why you should have to pay for someone else’s child to learn the three Rs, but if they don’t have a basic appreciation of civics and the founding principles of the Republic, the whole thing inevitably collapses within a generation. That’s in no one’s interest, except our enemy’s.


2 posted on 09/02/2024 10:42:19 AM PDT by rightwingcrazy (;-,)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Doesn’t the federal Department of Education ALREADY try to define how history (and everything else) is taught? As you say, “Oh! The humanity!”


3 posted on 09/02/2024 10:43:17 AM PDT by Steve_Seattle
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

From the garbage bin post.


4 posted on 09/02/2024 10:43:37 AM PDT by TribalPrincess2U (Bye done!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

The 1776 Commission is alive and well at Hillsdale College!

https://info.hillsdale.edu/1776-commission

A new Trump Administration will breathe new life into the commission, and make it nation-wide!


5 posted on 09/02/2024 10:46:58 AM PDT by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
federal power

That's what you get when you have a federal department of education, created by congress.

6 posted on 09/02/2024 10:49:24 AM PDT by fruser1
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To: rightwingcrazy
I have the apparently unorthodox view that this is the singular justification for universal public education.

You and Karl Marx are in complete agreement.

Plank #10 of the Communist Manifesto: “Free education of all children in public schools..."

https://mises.org/mises-daily/marxism-lives

7 posted on 09/02/2024 10:49:30 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (The worst thing about censorship is █████ ██ ████ ████ ████ █ ███████ ████. FJB.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

More like Free Indoctrination.


8 posted on 09/02/2024 10:50:07 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Still trying to find where, in that pesky constitution thingie that the fed was granted the power to regulate education.....


9 posted on 09/02/2024 10:50:58 AM PDT by joe fonebone (And the people said NO! The End)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Trump could extinguish a person on fire, and women would yell that he beat that person with a blanket. It really is some kind of derangement.

At the time that that lunatic gave her “testimony” at the Kavanaugh hearings, I knew at once that she was crazy. Now, I know that it’s just normal.


10 posted on 09/02/2024 10:51:55 AM PDT by Empire_of_Liberty
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To: dfwgator
Trump did NOT "spark a culture war".

The leftist extremists have been fighting this culture war for over 50 years.

Trump sparked the first fighting back for normal people.

11 posted on 09/02/2024 10:54:06 AM PDT by Mogger (AreIn bookstores is a very expensive, beautifully bound in green leather Holy Koran. If one was goin)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Their hatred of Trump, the Founding Fathers, and MAGA Americans runs deep.


12 posted on 09/02/2024 10:55:07 AM PDT by libertylover (Our biggest problem, by far, is that almost all of big media is AGENDA-DRIVEN, not-truth driven.)
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To: Mogger

Trump didn’t cause the division, he revealed it!


13 posted on 09/02/2024 10:55:35 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

The education department has been forcing its own brand of victimology history for decades through edicts and commands under threat of pulling funding. Forcing (letting) schools to go back to teaching the truth isn’t what WP is making out to be.


14 posted on 09/02/2024 10:58:06 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
"Trump was worked up about something else: the 1619 ProjectTrump was worked up about something else: the 1619 Project"


15 posted on 09/02/2024 10:58:21 AM PDT by clearcarbon (Fraudulent elections have consequences.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

“Trump attempted to use federal power to define how America’s history is taught — and promises to try again.”

Anyone else here check for the Babylon Bee byline?

I did


16 posted on 09/02/2024 10:59:36 AM PDT by stanne
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I doubt that Marx would support teaching children the founding principles of the US, and that rights are endowed by the Creator, not by the government.

Judging by all of history and prehistory, might makes right seems to me to be the natural human condition. The American idea has to be learned, or it is stillborn.


17 posted on 09/02/2024 11:02:46 AM PDT by rightwingcrazy (;-,)
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To: rightwingcrazy

Our pastor was discussing a bit about Samaria. After it was overtaken by somebody (Assyria??), the Assyrians flooded the region with foreigners to dilute the character and social norms of the area so as to rule it more easily.

Seems to me that manner of gaining control is not lost on the global elite.


18 posted on 09/02/2024 11:08:15 AM PDT by 21twelve (Ever Vigilant - Never Fearful)
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To: rightwingcrazy
Karl wanted government schools so children can be indoctrinated.

You want government schools so children can be indoctrinated.

19 posted on 09/02/2024 11:08:29 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (The worst thing about censorship is █████ ██ ████ ████ ████ █ ███████ ████. FJB.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I enjoy coffee in the morning. If Karl happened to do so also, it doesn’t bother me. It wasn’t the defining feature of his sick philosophy, which was an economics founded upon envy.

Von Mises asserted economic truths based on unprovable axioms. Karl asserted economic truths based on unprovable axioms. I suppose, then, that supporting Von Mises in any way would make you a Marxist. Or maybe there’s a flaw in you rhetoric.

Dialing things back a notch, I wasn’t arguing for mandatory public education, in any case. I was saying that if there were any justification at all for such a thing, educating people destined to be voters not to be ignorant voters would be the one.


20 posted on 09/02/2024 11:41:48 AM PDT by rightwingcrazy (;-,)
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