This past December, my 14-year-old son requested a flagpole for Christmas so he could fly the American flag for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. My profession for nearly three decades has been to teach American history. Needless to say then, that our family’s June 2026 trip to Washington D.C. had the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History front and center on our itinerary. Successfully appealing to our sensibilities would be like “shooting fish in a barrel” for the museum’s curators. However, upon arrival, my son and I discovered that as patriotic white Christian males we were actually the fish being shot.
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In 1984, the Reagan administration published , which famously noted: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” The report tragically acknowledged that we had done this to ourselves, having squandered the gains made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. It lamented that we had been, “committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”
The Smithsonian Institution is provided with over a billion dollars of taxpayer money each year and the museum’s leadership … is openly engaged in using history to tear down the republic.
Now, 42 years later, along with the fireworks and picnics celebrating Independence Day, July 4th marked the publication of another crucial government report on education—. It correctly raises the alarm over another red menace to the nation. Ironically, having triumphed in the Cold War we are now inexplicably facing a Marxist threat from within. Instead of educational disarmament, we are now turning our instructive guns on ourselves in an act of cultural suicide.
Like public schools, the public museums’ job is to create, support, and foster our (re)public. As such, as our nation celebrates its 250th birthday, one would expect its own national history museum to lead the revelry over life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Likewise, that it would foster gratitude for the men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor so that we might live blessed with liberty. One would think the bravery, sacrifice, and faith of the families who tamed the land and who expanded freedom across the globe inspired by duty and calling might get a nod of appreciation. Ultimately, one would expect and hope that a spirit of gratitude for the country would be fostered at every turn and display. Alas, one expecting that of the Smithsonian will be sorely mistaken.
Instead, the NMAH Interpretative Plan’s prime directive is to be “relevant” by focusing every topic and display to the “core issues of our time.” These issues being (1) “race and identity”; (2) “gender and sexuality”; (3) “environmental change”; (4) “immigration and migrations”; (5) “economic inequality”; (6) “technological change”; and (7) “nationalism and globalism.”
I do not think I need to explain that these codewords mean indoctrinating one extremist perspective; any doubters can peruse the 162-page report for the evidence. The fact is that, as the Saving America’s Story report notes, “the Museum purposely presents America as a problematic country irredeemably conceived, founded by deeply flawed men, and still operating today as an instrument of systemic racism and oppression.”
Naturally, this official indoctrination agenda makes every display repetitive and explains bizarre anomalies such as why even in the popular Entertainment Nation exhibit one cannot find memorabilia of the biggest icons of the 20th century such as John Wayne or Elvis Presley, though visitors do learn about “a bisexual blues singer, a lesbian actress, a sexually-liberated film star, an LGBTQ ‘icon,’ a lesbian TV star, a gay major league baseball player, and a queer women’s soccer player” as well as the assertion that Mickey Mouse represents “vestiges of longstanding traditions of blackface minstrelsy.”
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Admittedly, our visit to the Smithsonian failed to turn my patriotic son into a woke Marxist advocate. Thus, some will undoubtedly conclude “no harm, no foul.” But this discounts the tremendous opportunity cost, as my son did not walk away from the visit inspired or informed either. Sending away patrons disgusted and discouraged is not a successful museum plan, particularly one dedicated by President Lyndon Johnson to presenting America’s iconic artifacts in order “to foster patriotism.”
Likewise, some will just dismiss the concern since they didn’t plan to visit anyway or will just say, “if you don’t like it, don’t go.” However, this ostrich approach ignores the daily line up of school buses bringing hundreds of thousands of American schoolchildren each year through the Smithsonian’s doors. Likewise, it fails to recognize the enormous influence the Smithsonian Institute wields over education nationwide.
The Smithsonian Institution is provided with over a billion dollars of American taxpayer money each year and the museum’s leadership, as thoroughly documented in this report, is openly engaged in using history to tear down the republic. As the Saving America’s Story report concludes,
As it stands today, it would benefit most Americans, especially parents bringing their children for a tour, if the Smithsonian’s flagship history museum had a label at every entrance that reads: “Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.”
The Trump administration, like Reagan’s before, has done the country a tremendous service by documenting the educational catastrophe ongoing in the nation. Likewise, members of Congress such as Texas’ Brandon Gill are rightly calling the museum’s curators for public explanations in Congressional hearings. Needlessly, we are again a nation at risk, with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History representing the tip of a Marxist educational spear pointed at the heart of America.
Reports and questions are the first necessary steps in fixing the problem. With knowledge though must come action, so I hope this report will rally parents and taxpayers across the country to demand public educational institutions fulfill their duty so that our children’s children can enjoy another 250 years of the American dream.
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