The Patriot Post® · Constitution Day
Yesterday was Constitution Day. On September 17, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the document that would become the “owner’s manual” of the American Republic. In 2004, Congress passed a law recognizing September 17 as a day to celebrate that great document and the vision of our Founding Fathers.
Sadly, our educational institutions are failing to teach the basics of the Constitution. According to a recent survey, 19% of Americans cannot name even one of the five rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. And only a bare majority of Americans can name the three branches of government. (We have an election coming up in which all three are at stake!)
Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr is warning that the COVID lockdowns are the greatest intrusion on our civil rights since slavery. Thankfully, one federal judge just overturned Pennsylvania’s lockdown order, ruling that the Constitution still applies during emergencies.
Please take a moment today to talk to your children and grandchildren about the Constitution. Tell them what they are not learning in school — that America is unique because we believe our rights come from God, not government, and that government was meant to be limited so that we could be free.
Trump Defends America
Yesterday, President Trump addressed a conference on American history held at the National Archives. He said:
Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtues of America’s heroes and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world.
The president described the Constitution as the fulfillment of “a thousand years of Western Civilization,” adding that “no political document has done more to advance the human condition or propel the engine of progress.”
Trump warned that a “left-wing cultural revolution” was attempting to “overthrow the American Revolution.” And the president declared, “We will never submit to tyranny.”
During his remarks, the president denounced the teaching of critical race theory in our schools as a form of child abuse. He warned that the left was trying to destroy the “beautiful vision” of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and impose “a new segregation.” He denounced the 1619 Project as “toxic propaganda” and “ideological poison.”
The president said that the only path to national unity is “through our shared identity as Americans,” adding it was urgent that we restore patriotic education to our schools that “celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history.” Trump announced that he will be signing an executive order to promote patriotic education under a new “1776 Commission.”
This is something I have advocated for years, and I am tremendously encouraged by the president’s announcement. We must teach our children that America is so much more than the sins of our past. It is, as Abraham Lincoln declared, “the last best hope of earth.”
Left-Wing Lunacy
In the aftermath of the protests and riots triggered by George Floyd’s death, the Minneapolis City Council led the nation in the left’s latest fad — defunding the police. According to ABC News, the so-called “progressives” on the city council voted to advance a plan “to eliminate the police department.”
You might think that’s crazy. But City Council President Lisa Bender went on CNN and said that calling the police if your house is broken into “comes from a place of privilege.”
Given that government’s primary obligation is to defend public safety, I doubt most taxpayers consider police services a “privilege.”
Not surprisingly, hundreds of Minneapolis police officers quit and submitted paperwork to retire early. One estimate this summer suggested as much as 20% of the entire Minneapolis police force would quit in the weeks and months ahead.
Then news broke that Minneapolis taxpayers were paying tens of thousands of dollars to provide private security to city council members who voted to abolish the police. Talk about “progressive privilege”!
So after the city council went on a jihad against the police and successfully cut the police budget, crime predictably surged. Now these same city council members have the audacity to complain that police are not being tough enough on crime!
It’s too bad that there isn’t a requirement that all city council members must work with police officers once a week. Maybe if they stood in their shoes for once, they might have more appreciation for what law enforcement officers do for us every day.
Tragic News
Two volunteers for Lacy Johnson, the Republican candidate challenging Ilhan Omar, were shot this week. One of them, Andre Conley, a 17 year-old black high school senior, was killed. No word yet on whether the shootings were politically motivated.
If two of Ilhan Omar’s staffers had been shot, every media outlet would be claiming that Trump’s “anti-Islam and anti-immigrant” rhetoric was responsible. But there’s hardly any mention of this lost black life.
Nevertheless, the left does bear some responsibility, if for no other reason than Conley’s death is the 55th murder in Minneapolis this year as the city descended into anarchy, thanks to the city council’s efforts to defund and demoralize the police.
Ignorance Is NOT Bliss
Yet another survey is highlighting the gross and disturbing ignorance of America’s younger generations when it comes to the Holocaust. For example, the survey found that:
48% of those aged 18 to 39 could not name a single concentration camp.
56% had no idea what Auschwitz was.
63% could not correctly identify how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
36% believe that two million or fewer were killed. The real figure is six million.
Incredibly, 11% thought that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust.
Clearly, our schools are failing to educate our children about one of the most important events in modern history. Perhaps if they spent less time teaching them anti-American history, like the 1619 Project, they could find more time for Holocaust education.
Polling as Propaganda
If you see a disturbing poll, don’t assume it’s accurate. Case in point: Minnesota.
The Trump campaign believes Minnesota is competitive, and it is concentrating resources in the state. Well, if you believe the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, which shows Biden leading Trump by 16 points, that would seem like a total waste of resources.
But the poll was total garbage. It grossly oversampled young voters by nearly twice the rate at which they voted in the 2016 election! There is no reasonable scenario in which that demographic is more than a third of the vote.
No self-respecting pollster would have published these figures. But that’s the problem. So many of these media polls are manipulated to serve as little more than Democrat propaganda and to demoralize conservative voters.