ASSAULT ON JULY 4th

Erasing celebrating the 4^th of July and replacing it with Juneteenth is the Left’s Holy Grail.

Denigrating the American Flag, removing our National Anthem, and ending the 4^th of July are the Left’s trinity for destroying America’s civic culture.

Changing calendar references eradicates the old order to establish a new radical one. The Bolsheviks replaced Christian holidays with May Day (May 1) and their October Revolution (November 6).  The French Revolution zealots went so far as to rename the months of the year.

Making an obscure moment in the Civil War our new “more inclusive” national holiday is fundamental to shifting the inspiring narrative of America’s founding in 1776 to the darker, anti-American, narrative of the 1619 movement.

Just before the 4^th of July, Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and James Lankford (R-OK) called for establishing Juneteenth as “a national holiday to remember the 1865 emancipation of slaves in the United States”.   They eliminate the Columbus Day holiday, because “as a holiday that is lightly celebrated, and least disruptive to Americans' schedules”.  Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) co-sponsored Juneteenth legislation with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX).

The moment Juneteenth is in and Columbus is out, the Left will move to eliminate the July 4^th holiday as being just two weeks apart and “disruptive” to summer work schedules. 

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the intellectual force behind eliminating the 4^th of July and the 1619 movement, barnstormed cable news to assert, “Independence Day does not mean the same thing to everybody.  We are forcing white people to confront what this holiday has meant to black people”.

On one show, Hannah-Jones’ assault was supported by historian Jon Meacham, who reported that the 4^th was “only about a document not about shaping a nation”, while Juneteenth is a fully inclusive culminating moment in America’s story.  They both recommended that Americans “evolve”, and to end the “divisive” and racist 4^th in favor of the “more inclusive and accurate” Juneteenth:  “For generations we have looked at 1776 as our founding moment, our “nativity”, when it was actually 1619… For too long we have taught this one narrative that glorifies white supremacy, glorifies colonization.”

Attacking July 4^th began on July 1, 2011.  That was when Harvard University released a study revealing that “children who attend July 4 celebrations are more likely to identify themselves as Republicans in life”.  The study observed, “The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century. Survey evidence also confirms that Republicans consider themselves more patriotic than Democrats”.

The study continued, “attending one rain-free July 4 celebration before the age of 18 increases the likelihood that children will identify as Republican by two percent, and increases the likelihood that they will vote for a Republican candidate by the time they turn 40 by four percent”.

Overnight, patriotism became partisan. 

During the summer of 2019, the New York Times, armed with the revisionist history of Nikole Hannah-Jones, launched the 1619 history curriculum. 1619’s goal is to completely recast America as the most demonic, racist, destructive nation that has ever existed.  According to the 1619 narrative, America began when a ship with African slaves arrived at Jamestown during the summer of 1619.  Everything since is a steady march of white racism destroying dark skinned people and polluting the world with white supremist and white privilege dogma, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution.

 

Since the 1960s, colleges and universities have indoctrinated students with anti-Americanism.  K-12 is the next battleground. A recent study found that 66 percent of high school students believe America is exceptional, and 70 percent look favorably on America’s history.  Only 47 percent of College students think America is exceptional, and 44 percent are favorable to our nation’s history.

 

The 1619 curriculum is already being used in over 3,000 schools.  Changing history to eliminate July 4^th, and replacing it with Juneteenth, is a critical part of 1619’s anti-Americanism strategy.

Juneteenth is based on the false narrative that slavery in America ended on June 19, 1865.  That was the day a Union General marched into Galveston, Texas and announced the Civil War was over and the slaves being held in the region were free.

It took ratifying the 13^th Amendment on December 6, 1865 to officially free all of America’s slaves.  Border states were not included in the Emancipation (Kentucky still had 40,000).  Over the next year, Federal officials had to personally enforce the Amendment as some slaveholders withheld news of Emancipation so their slaves could be used for additional harvests.

Elevating Juneteenth as the end of slavery and the Civil War is like celebrating the end of World War II based on Japanese soldiers surrendering on isolated Pacific islands in the 1950s.

Making Juneteenth a national holiday must be opposed at all costs.

COLUMBUS - UNITER NOT DIVIDER

[Published in Newsmax]

Columbus and his achievements are about unity. The forces of political correctness have no idea what they are talking about. 

Columbus’ discovery of the Western Hemisphere permanently reconnected the Earth for the first time since the Pangea super continent broke apart 175 million years ago.

A brief period of record low sea levels, caused by the last Ice Age, allowed pre-history humans to migrate into the Americas from Europe around 20,000 BC.  An Asian land bridge opened another short-lived migration corridor along the Alaskan coast in 12,000 BC.  The indigenous people of the Americas were actually its “first immigrants”. Rising seas then sealed them off from the rest of the world.

It was inevitable that humankind would ultimately reconnect.  It was only a matter of time.  The Viking sagas chronicle exploration and fishing settlements in Newfoundland around 1,000 AD.  This is when warmer global temperatures made Greenland and the Arctic waters suitable for navigation and far northern lands viable for habitation.  Others may have stumbled upon the Americas, but their interactions were short lived and isolated.  The reunification of Earth would have to wait another 400 years.

Unique forces of economics, history, and knowledge eventually led to reunifying humankind and the world’s ecosystems. 

The events that set Columbus and his three ships towards destiny began with the fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453 to the Ottoman Empire.  The Islamic Ottomans took control of all the overland connections to India and China.  They made the Silk Road, and other lucrative trade links to the East, prohibitively expensive and problematic.

In 1412, the Portuguese began methodically establishing an alternative sea-based trade route to Asia.  In 1488, Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Portugal, with its line of African forts and massive fleet, aspired to join the Ottomans in controlling  Asian trade.

No other European power was capable of competing against these two international forces as most were locked in internal strife or were content with being regional powers.

On January 2, 1492, Spain defeated the last Islamic forces on the Iberian Peninsula.  The duel monarchy of Ferdinand and Isabella turned their vision of conquest to competing with Portugal.

Christopher Columbus was uniquely situated to make the Spanish Monarchs’ dream come true.  Besides being a skilled seaman, Columbus was a highly astute scholar.  He spent years acquiring knowledge about the Atlantic Ocean, including what would become known as its “trade winds”, which would speed travel.

Columbus was at the center of the debate over the size of the Earth.  Educated people knew the Earth was round, but they differed on its size.  No ship’s crew could be provisioned to sail west over a vast ocean all the way to China.  Columbus was armed with knowledge of the Vikings and knew a large land mass was much closer than current wisdom assumed.  His mistake was thinking it was Asia, not an entire undiscovered hemisphere. 

Columbus convinced the Spanish Monarchs it was good business and a wise investment to underwrite an expedition sailing west into the unexplored areas of the Atlantic Ocean.  The Monarchs knew that Spain would become a major world power by building their own trade monopoly if Columbus was successful.

Starting on August 3, 1492, the single most pivotal action in the Earth’s human history began.  On October 12, 1492, Columbus and his landing party stepped onto a Caribbean beach and nothing would ever be the same.

The “Columbian Exchange” fundamentally altered the Earth’s ecosystem and its human history.  The “New World” introduced dietary staples like corn, potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, pineapples, avocados.  “Old World” domesticated animals such as horses, pigs, cattle, cows, and goats fanned out through the Americas, while onions, lettuce, peaches, wheat, rice, sugar, and apples took root.

Detractors scoff, stating that the people of the Americas knew where they were and did not need to be discovered.  Anti-Columbus historians decry the spread of disease and conquest that devastated the first peoples of the Americas.  Reunifying the world after 175 million years had irreversible consequences, good and bad. None of Americas’ cultures had a maritime tradition outside of brief fishing and hunting sojourns within sight of land.  Reunifying the Earth was only going to happen from the “Old World”.  The mingling of flora and fauna created impacts that resonate to this day.

Columbus is rightly recognized as the person who changed the world.  He embodies humanity’s striving to acquire and apply knowledge, and our desire to explore.  Many South American nations, along with Italy and Spain, celebrate Columbus and the day everything changed. 

The United State celebrated the 300^th Anniversary of this epic moment in 1792.  It became our nation’s official holiday in 1937.

We should be honoring this unifying moment in history instead of trying to erase it.

[Scot Faulkner advises corporations and governments on how to save billions of dollars by achieving dramatic and sustainable cost reductions while improving operational and service excellence. He served as the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives.  He also served on the White House Staff, and as an Executive Branch Appointee.]