How the Smithsonian Lost America’s Plot
The press is attacking the report as an attempt to censor independent museum curation, but that’s not how we read it. The 162-page “Saving America’s Story,” produced by the White House Domestic Policy Council, lays out in persuasive detail how the museum offers a largely critical view of American history that “no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated.”
Instead, the museum offers the message, captured in one exhibit, that when they founded the U.S., “early leaders envisioned a country that promised opportunity and freedom—but only for some.”
The report isn’t a cheerleading document seeking to hide America’s warts. What it seeks is a history of the U.S. that doesn’t resemble the 1619 Project in its partisan bias.
The report’s examples show the degree to which progressives have captured the history museum. In one exhibit, the Pledge of Allegiance was described as a tool to “instill American nationalism through flag ceremonies.” Nationalism? That’s a needlessly pejorative edge. How about patriotism?
