America’s national parks obsess over slavery, climate panic, and racial grievance instead of the courage and achievements that built our country.
President Trump is planning a massive celebration of the United States of America for its 250th birthday. But he has already done a lot to give America a birthday present better than any parade or pyrotechnic display: the preservation of our history. You have probably noticed a subversive anti-American agenda creeping into memorials and historical sites in recent years that have no place in places meant to celebrate or glorify America.
To push back against this, President Trump signed an Executive Order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The order directs the Department of the Interior (DOI)—which runs our national parks and most of our treasured memorials—to review which monuments have been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.”
Validating the necessity of Trump’s actions, left-wing activists within the DOI and the National Park Service (NPS) revolted. It promoted hundreds of photos of signs from national parks and memorials that the Trump Administration wanted to review. Of course, activists decry this as an example of the Trump Administration being anti-history, but a fair-minded look at these signs shows their goal was never to educate, but to shame people for feeling proud of their country.
The examples are numerous. Probably the most egregious can be found at the Independence National Historical Park. At the Liberty Bell itself, a symbol of American liberty and freedom, the messaging focuses almost exclusively on how slaves and women did not have the same liberties. It does not focus at all on how America advanced the very concept of liberty.
Along with the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, it includes the lesser-known “President’s House Site,” now just a slab with brick structures around it. The slab marks the foundation of the house where the first two presidents and their families lived before the White House was built. But most of the exhibit emphasizes the slaves who lived there, rather than the founders of our country. This is especially ridiculous considering President John Adams not only never owned slaves, but was vociferously anti-slavery all his life.
Fort Sumter, where the Civil War started, should focus on America's deadliest conflict — the Civil War. But NPS personnel decided to prioritize African slavery with over a dozen exhibit panels. Even though Fort Sumter played no role in the importation of slaves from Africa to South Carolina, the narrative was hijacked from the effort that led to the end of slavery to the evils of perpetuating slavery.
To drive this point home further, the gift shop is filled with books promoting racial Marxism, such as the 1619 Project. Even worse, it contains signs warning of the effects of climate change that will “seriously endanger future generations’ interaction with and understanding of this historic place.” Of all the messages to share with visitors about the Civil War, fear-mongering about the climate isn’t one of them.
Even places displaying our natural beauty are used as political tools. At Yosemite National Park, NPS panels seem more interested in highlighting the racism of Joseph Le Conte or John Muir than in celebrating their achievements in wilderness exploration and preservation. On the other hand, panels praise the efforts of the left-wing activist group the Sierra Club, which, according to the New York Times, has expanded beyond environmental issues to “racial justice, labor rights, gay rights, immigrant rights and more.”
President Trump should expand upon his Executive Order to other sites not controlled by the DOI. One egregious example is the American presentation at the Columbus Lighthouse (Faro a Colón) in the Dominican Republic. Rather than celebrating the greatness and uniqueness of the United States, the exhibit inaugurated by the U.S. Embassy under Obama focuses exclusively on Native Americans, who are undoubtedly part of the story of America but far from the entire story. There are countless other sites the State Department and other agencies control, which should be used to project the best of the United States.
America is big enough and good enough to take a “warts and all” approach to our history without allowing the warts to crowd out the beauty. Americans are heirs to Columbus and the Founding Fathers; to abolitionists, Confederates, and slaves; to American Indians and Indian fighters; to penniless immigrants and tycoons; to civil rights marchers and those they overcame. Our monuments should celebrate us all, not divide us in the way that woke fads tend to do.
The Trump Administration’s efforts to restore our history are a beautiful birthday gift, celebrating our country’s greatness in capitalizing on our strengths and overcoming our flaws.
Curtis Schube is the executive director of Council to Modernize Governance.