BATTLING OVER AMERICA’s MEMORY

 

[Published in the Sunday Guardian of India]

The battle for America’s collective memory is erupting once again.

Leftists spent the last decade destroying America’s traditional identity and well-established historic narrative.  The Left filled classrooms, books, articles, parks, and museums with their mantra of a nation “built on stolen land and by slave labor”.  At the same time, they wantonly assaulted the physical touch stones of America’s origins by removing statues and other monuments. 

The Left intended to replace the connective fabric of American society with an alternative reality promoting a tyrannical communist government. They embraced the cautionary words from George Orwell’s “1984”: "Who controls the past controls the future”.

They are now howling from the roof tops as President Donald Trump is reversing their plans to reshape America.

America is unique.  It is a country based upon ideas - not based on geography, language, or tribe.  Our historic sites and markers ground us in who we are, and why we are. 

History is about collective memory and frames of reference.  Statues and historic sites are there to commemorate and remind, not to celebrate. Knowing and discussing our origin is fundamental to a civic culture where shared values hold us together.  Civil dialogue with those we disagree is the structure that allows our institutions, our communities, and ourselves to exist. 

Our Constitution is about forming “a more perfect union”.  This means America is always a work in progress.  The Constitution itself is the greatest “rules of engagement” for collective action that has ever been written.  Looking beyond ourselves to our origins reaffirms our nation and our individual and collective roles in it.

Starting in 2009, the Left anointed itself as morally entitled to determine what memories should be saved or destroyed. The chorus of Leftist commentators from the media, academia, and politics wove a tapestry of excuses justifying official and unofficial acts of destruction and desecration. Tax dollars were used to dismantle memories and insert radical anti-white, anti-capitalist, and anti-American content into classrooms, museums, and parks. This is the very essence of tyranny and fanaticism.

Humans have attempted to alter collective memory since competing Pharaohs chiseled away Cartouches and defaced hieroglyphs.  Carthage was destroyed, Rome was sacked.  Mongol hordes obliterated cities along the Silk Road.  Islamic hordes burned the Library of Alexandria.  Vikings ravaged monasteries and burned centuries old manuscripts.  Cromwell’s Puritan army smashed stained glass windows in countless churches.

World history has been saved by those who transcended their immediate impulse for destruction.  Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella calmed their Christian fervor when they saw the wonder of the Alhambra.  Napoleon’s armies avoided destroying European cities and towns during nearly twenty years of war. 

The Twentieth Century saw a disturbing shift in how history was viewed.  The rise of Communism and Nazism led to intentionally obliterating history on a strategic scale.  Worse, the followers of these dogmas made fabricating history a priority.  Destroying reality and then faking an alternative became one of the greatest threats to civilization.  Cultural treasures were lost to the ages as the Nazi’s raped Europe, the Soviets raped Eastern Europe, and Mao’s minions unleashed their Cultural Revolution.

The 21^st Century brought a new wave of Islamic hordes whose primary mission was to destroy anything, and anyone, not sufficiently promoting their fanaticism.  From the Taliban blowing up thousand-year-old Buddhist statues, to ISIS smashing the Tomb of Abraham and leveling Palmyra, the erasure of irreplaceable historic sites and artifacts has known no bounds.

Fanaticism is all about intolerance and silencing opponents.  It is all about indoctrination and erasing individualism.  Fanatics are not satisfied until they completely destroy independent thought.  Their dream is a “hive mind” - thinking and acting as one.  Leftists, Islamic radicals, and Communists want to anoint one leader who is all powerful, surrounded by blind devotion.  Their goal is the end of civilization as we know it. 

George Orwell, a Socialist who grew to understand the threat of tyranny, sent us a timeless warning: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

On March 27, 2025, President Donald Trump set about stopping the Left’s obliteration of America’s identity. He issued Executive Order 14253, stating:

“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.  This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.  Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

Trump’s Executive Order requires the Secretary of Interior to “determine whether, since January 1, 2020, public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history”.

As with most Executive Orders, the Interior Secretary then issued his own detailed guidance to implement the President’s policy.  On May 20, 2025, Secretarial Order 3431 required the heads of the  various federal land units to: “take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times).”

The Secretary’s Order outlined a process for compiling and reporting on such instances, including soliciting public input.  These reports will be reviewed and appeals heard before actions occur.  It will be months before this process is completed.

America’s Leftists are spreading false rumors of widespread removals of slavery documents and displays.  These same Leftists previously demanded the removal of Confederate statues and tore down memorials to Lincoln and the Founding Fathers.  These same Leftists are now waving signs, “Hands Off History!” to preserve their woke legacy. 

The absurdity of the Left’s outrage is that promoting slavery was at the core of the 19^th Century Democrat Party while stopping the spread of slavery was the founding principle of the Republican Party.  This divide continued beyond the Civil War as Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan as a paramilitary force to kill freed Blacks and their Republican supporters.  In the 20^th Century, Democrats promoted lynching of Blacks and opposed Republicans who tried to prevent this terror. 

The Left’s accusation about President Trump, and his Department of Interior, wantonly removing slavery displays is baseless.  Republicans would not erase their Party’s original reason to exist.

The Honorable Scot Faulkner served as the first Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives, Director of Personnel for Reagan’s 1980 Campaign, Administrator of Personnel for the Presidential Transition, and on the White House Staff. His best-selling memoir, “Naked Emperors” is available on Amazon.com.

 

HILL TOP REALITIES

SWaN Investors have done a masterful job orchestrating an “echo chamber” of positive media.  Countless Letters to the Editor purportedly from Harpers Ferry “residents”, news releases, and unsubstantiated assertions, have flooded local media.

SWaN’s goal is to stampede four of the seven voting Members of the Harpers Ferry Town Council to ignore, bend, and invent rules in order to give the out-of-state billionaires everything they desire as quickly as possible.

Facts and laws must drive the decision that will shape the next century of Harpers Ferry. 

The first reality check is to remember that the Hill Top Hotel was fully operational the day SWaN bought it.  Tour groups filled its rooms, hungry customers lined up for Hill Top’s famous fried chicken and buffet, and community groups regularly met there. 

The second reality check is to remember that it was SWaN, no one else, who closed the Hill Top Hotel. They asserted that Hill Top must be completely torn down.  To validate their assertion, SWaN allowed Hill Top to become derelict.  No repairs occurred, windows were broken, and water seeped in, collapsing the hotel’s front facade.  Those saddened by Hill Top’s current state of disrepair should remember who is responsible.

The third reality check is that the Town of Harpers Ferry owns the roads and undeveloped paper streets that SWaN so desperately craves.  These streets were laid out by War Department engineers under President George Washington.  They were officially documented in the 1869 War Department plat.  These streets are not “fake”.  They contribute to the integrity of Harpers Ferry’s Historic District, which was established by the Department of Interior in 1976.  Harpers Ferry’s Town Ordinances do not allow for the sale or transfer of these streets to anyone. The 2016 Ordinance amendment was only intended for disposing of Personal Property. No street has ever been given, sold, or ceded to anyone since 1790.  No amount of undocumented assertions changes this.

The fourth reality check is SWaN’s heavy-handed efforts to control public access to the Promontory.  Armed thugs brandishing guns have accosted members of the community when they are on paved portions of East Ridge and Columbia Streets.  In one instance, Harpers Ferry police had to order a SWaN thug to “stand down” and retreat to actual SWaN property.  SWaN refuses to release its “Security and Safety” Policy that will dictate when the community can access the Promontory.  Their secret policy could all but eliminate access. 

SWaN’s proposed land swap of their nearly vertical property for all the adjoining paper streets would bankrupt Harpers Ferry.  Accessing the Promontory using a massive zig-zagging wooden stairway would generate lawsuits and costs for making the 45% incline comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.  No-one in a wheel chair, on crutches, or infirm may be able to enjoy one of our region’s greatest vistas.

The fifth reality check is that the number of Harpers Ferry visitors has increased since Hill Top Hotel closed in March 2008.  That year 260,000 visitors entered the Park.  In 2017, there were 342,534 Park visitors, an increase of 31.7 percent.  Since Hill Top closed, Harpers Ferry has been listed as one of America’s top tourist destinations in countless travel magazines and websites.  Harpers Ferry is certainly not a dying ghost town portrayed by SWaN’s acolytes.

The final reality check is about the true nature of SWaN and its proponents.  None of those appearing at Town meetings, or writing as “residents”, were involved, in any way, with the thirty preservation initiatives, since 1988, that saved the historic and scenic resources of the Harpers Ferry area from being destroyed. None of SWaN’s “community” proponents helped with the 50^th Anniversary of the Park, the Centennial of the Second Niagara Movement, or any of the Sesquicentennial commemorations of the John Brown Raid or the area’s Civil War battles. 

No one from SWaN even had the decency to attend the funeral of Bill Stanhagen, the person who sold Hill Top to SWaN.

These are the realities of the Hill Top project, and its supporters. 

Hopefully, they will be aired during the March 9 Town Workshop on the Concept Plan.

Scot Faulkner is President of Friends of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and co-chaired the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Park.

SAVING AMERICA'S HERITAGE

Harpers Ferry NHP 1985

Harpers Ferry NHP 2004

[Published on Newsmax]

Imagine America without scenic vistas or historic sites. These physical touch stones define American Exceptionalism, and remind us who were are and why we are.

One of the reasons our defining landscape remains mostly in tact is the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). On September 30, this Fund vanished. Lack of Congressional action allowed this fund to expire and with it countless opportunities to preserve uniquely American places threatened by sprawl and short-sighted development schemes.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund is funded by a small percentage of federal oil royalties from offshore drilling in public waters. No tax dollars are involved.

Each year, four percent of $20 billion collected in offshore royalties is deposited in the LWCF account in the federal treasury. It is less than the rounding errors across the Federal Budget. It is less than one quarter of one percent of the annual documented waste throughout the Federal Government.

Over its 50-year history, LWCF has protected land in every state and supported over 41,000 state and local park projects. It pays dividends well beyond preserving what makes America America. Outdoor recreation, natural resource preservation, and historic preservation activities provide a powerful building block in our national economy that supports 9.4 million jobs and contributes a total of $1.06 trillion annually to the U.S. economy, according to the National Fish and Wildlife Federation.

West Virginia is an excellent example of what the LWCF can do. West Virginia has received approximately $241 million in LWCF funding over the past five decades, protecting places such as the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge, Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, Monongahela National Forest and New River Gorge National River.

The Outdoor Industry Association has found that active outdoor recreation generates $9 billion in consumer spending in West Virginia, 91,000 jobs which generate $2.4 billion in wages and salaries, and produces $660 million annually in state and local tax revenue.

There are amazing stories behind these numbers – here is one.

In the late 1980’s, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park (HFNHP) was threatened on all sides. Neighboring Loudoun County, Virginia was the fastest growing county in America. Developers looked to land around HFNHP for intensive development. They hoped the Loudoun real estate boom would spill over Loudoun Heights and create a deluge of new housing and strip malls. The developers saw riches on the hallowed ground where Americans fought and died during the Civil War. Access to the Washington, DC MARC commuter trains trumped historic preservation.

In March 1988 a small group of concerned local citizens met with the Superintendent of HFNHP. The result was chartering Friends of HFNHP as the official Friends Group for the Park. Its mission was to preserve precious historic and scenic resources before the bulldozers arrived.

Senator Robert Byrd became the “patron saint” for the preservation forces. He funded a Resource Study that defined core battlefield land (where troops actually engaged in fighting and tactical movement) and buffer lands that preserved the vistas and maintained the contextual integrity of the many battles fought in the area.

The study, adopted after extensive scholarly documentation and public meetings, became the new “battle map” for the preservationists.

What followed was forty separate preservation projects over thirty years. Twenty six successful legal and regulatory actions stopped developers from destroying earthworks, and blighting vistas with townhouses, apartments, subdivisions, strip malls, and in one instance, a strip club. In their place is now over 1,500 preserved acres in three states, which were ultimately transferred into the National Park system.

The preservation battles in the Harpers Ferry area all banked on the Land and Water Conservation Fund being all or part of the final financial arrangements. In some cases, the LWCF allowed the Friends’ group and its partners to outbid developers for unspoiled farmland. Willing sellers desired their legacy to be open land, not concrete and vinyl. In other cases, legal actions slowed or stopped developers, forcing them to the bargaining table.

Through it all, the LWCF was the financial “cavalry” that would arrive just in time to acquire land or reimburse preservation partners who were holding land in trust.

Today, 500,000+ visitors, from all over America and the world, can roam one of the nation’s most fully preserved battlefields. Countless travel and history rankings list Harpers Ferry as the top historic & scenic community in the U.S. None of this would have been possible without the tireless commitment of local citizens, the hard work of preservation and conservation groups, and the LWCF.

Permanent reauthorization, and full dedicated funding, of the LWCF will ensure other communities have this same access to vital preservation resources for facing current and future challenges.