Happy Independence Day

This past weekend, my wife and I took a quick trip up to Boston to pick up our daughter at the airport and drive her up to summer camp. With half a day to kill before our daughter’s flight arrived, we decided to walk Boston’s Freedom Trail, the literal birthplace of the American Revolution.

Starting at Boston Commons, the nation’s oldest public park, and ending at Bunker Hill, the Revolution’s first major battle, our self-guided tour took us past some of our country’s most indelible and important founding monuments, including Faneuil Hall (often referred to as “the home of free speech” and the “Cradle of Liberty”), the site of the Boston Massacre, and Old North Church (the starting point for Paul Revere’s midnight ride that launched the American Revolution and the famous lanterns: “One if by land, two if by sea.”) 

As my wife and I absorbed visiting some of the most consequential spots of America’s history - just days before we all celebrate America’s birthday - several thoughts swirled through my head. 

First among them, the fact that our nation’s children are not learning this history. They are not learning about the wisdom and the bravery of our forefathers, or about the risks our founders took and the sacrifices they made to secure the freedoms we today take for granted. Nor are they learning about the compromises, arguments and debates that shaped, fashioned and formed our government.

They are learning the opposite.

They are being taught that America’s founding was evil, oppressive and racist. They are taught that our founding documents are outdated, irrelevant, and unsuitable for modern times. And that our founders, implicitly judged by today’s moral standards, were immoral, selfish, and unsophisticated. 

Ask any American kid, or young adult, what they know of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson and they are most likely to say that these were white men who owned slaves. They know nothing more.

When my daughter finished fourth grade at her former New York City school, we were invited for an exit interview with the head of the Lower School. This was before the school’s radical mission change after the summer of George Floyd and BLM, and before I wrote the now-famous Brearley letter.

At the meeting, I voiced only one complaint about my daughter’s education over the preceding five years. I told the lower school principal, who at the time I respected, that the school’s social studies curriculum made no sense. Brearley, an all-girls school, had spent an inordinate amount of time on women’s suffrage but had not yet even mentioned the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution or the American Revolution. Brearley had been obsessed with civil rights but had not yet taught about the Civil War. 

At the time I was naïve, but I know now what I didn’t know then. Brearley’s social studies curriculum wasn’t confused. It was intentional. The goal was indoctrination. 

When students get to middle school or high school and are introduced to America’s founding, the school’s aim was to already have it ingrained in their brains that America is irredeemably racist, sexist and oppressive.

It is both sad and terrifying that our nation’s children are learning to hate our history, and that patriotism is considered a “far-right” sentiment, rejected and ridiculed by our schools, our media, and one of our two major political parties. 

Which brings me to the second realization that I had while walking through America’s history in Boston a few days ago, and coincidentally or not, confirmed by Joe Biden the next day.

The Democrats believe that “democracy” was the goal of our founding fathers and our founding documents. As you can see, the White House tweeted earlier this week a short video of Joe Biden, saying, “Democracy is the essence of who we are.” 

And as I posted then, and say now, Joe Biden is wrong. Our country’s founders did not fight the revolution for democracy. They were motivated by freedom, and they fought a revolution and founded a new country in the name of freedom. 

Our founders, steeped in history and wise in political philosophy, correctly understood that the primary role of government is to preserve freedom. They devised a form of government, brilliant, if not perfect, to try to ensure that freedom. 

They properly understood that our freedoms face four threats: from foreign powers, domestic criminals, the tyranny of a democratic majority, and a power-hungry government. Our constitution, a product of political wisdom and political compromise, was designed to protect us against these four threats. Our founding fathers were wise to the fact that there were tensions and tradeoffs between protecting against each of these types of threats and built the “checks and balances” and protections for individual rights into our system of government.

What we call “democracy” was never the end-goal, but simply the tool to preserve our freedoms. Republicans understand this. Democrats do not. 

As we all know, our country faces a great many challenges. We’ve got an education system that is indoctrinating a generation of children to hate our own country and despise our history. And we’ve got the Democratic party, aided by most of the mainstream media, that seeks to tear down the very system that, over nearly 250 years, fostered our prosperity and preserved our freedoms.

The fight to preserve the core values upon which our great country was founded is the reason that I am running for Congress. This is a fight we must have, and one we must win. 

There is no better time than the 4th of July, when we celebrate our independence from England, for all of us to reaffirm our belief in America’s founding values, and to reassert our commitment to fight for these values, for our children and for our country.

I hope you will join me in this fight.

Happy Independence Day!

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As always, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at andrew@speakupforeducation.org. Please follow me on X (Twitter) @AndrewGutmann. My campaign website is andrewgutmann.com. Support for the campaign is always appreciated!