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If everyone’s value was measured by their worst decisions there would be no heroes to look up to. Nobody would aspire to be like George Washington. The list of our Founding Fathers would be much shorter, if it existed at all. We couldn’t celebrate the courage of the men who took up arms against the British, or those hundreds of thousands of young men who died to put an end to slavery. The brave men and women who went west to finish the project of creating the greatest nation on earth would have to be erased. As would the Native Americans who fought for their way of life. Two world wars were won by heroic efforts on the battlefield, and by less than perfect Generals, and Presidents. Civil rights leaders, astronauts, scientists, and countless others we look up to would have to be purged if we choose to hold them to a standard of perfection. The truth is every human being who ever lived has made mistakes. Those who are still alive will make more. We mustn’t be so righteous as to hold people, who lived in previous centuries, to standards that we set today. Imagine what people 100 years from now will say about our handling of the pandemic. Do you think they will be kind as they study our decisions to sacrifice the well-being of our children, to protect adults?

What follows are a few things that our children must understand if our country is going to continue to be the greatest nation on earth, and the leader of the free world. First, and paramount, our country was founded in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Until that document was signed everyone who came here from Europe were subjects of a monarchy. If your school is teaching that 1619 is our actual founding date they are teaching false history. PERIOD! If you want your children to learn the truth about our history and to love their country you must demand that any teaching of the 1619 Project cease immediately.

They must be shown why America is good, and that it is okay that it isn’t perfect. The Declaration of Independence didn’t say we were a perfect Union. It stated that we were striving to become a MORE perfect Union. We are still striving for that today. It is correct to teach that our leaders allowed slavery to exist far too long. It is important for them to understand that there would have been no Constitution, indeed no U.S., had the states that demanded an end to slavery not compromised with those who demanded that it remain. The Constitution was the document that made the end of slavery possible. Four score and seven years later the bloodiest war in our history was fought to end slavery. It is estimated that between 500,000-750,000 soldiers died in the Civil War. I pray that slavery will forever be the darkest time in American history. It must be taught in any legitimate American history curriculum. That curriculum must include the fact that hundreds of thousands of those dead soldiers were white kids striving for a more perfect Union.

There are other dark times in our history. The way we treated Native Americans is shameful. The internment of over 100,000 Japanese, the majority of whom were Americans, during WWII is a national disgrace. These, and other transgressions by our government, should be taught in their entirety in U.S. History classes. The intent of this blog is not to point out our mistakes. It is meant to offer lessons that may otherwise be overlooked by a shrinking amount of classroom work. In 1900 Hawaii became a territory of the U.S., baseball launched the American League, and the Davis Cup was started in tennis. I mention these to make a point. The USA, on a relative basis, is an infant among countries. We literally have twice as much U.S. History to study today than in 1900. Yet in 2021, our young people have less time to spend studying it than we did 50 years ago.

Students should be reminded that it was the U.S. that swung the outcome of both world wars in favor of the allies. After WWII America was the only country left virtually unscathed. It would have been pretty easy for us to become a colonial power.. We did just the opposite. In 1948 we put together the European Recovery Program, aka the Marshall Plan. We made over $110 billion in today’s dollars available to devastated Western European countries. We followed that with a plan to rebuild Japan. A plan that saw Japan become an economic powerhouse, and one of our biggest trading partners, and allies. We saved the world from devastation, then from starvation, and depression. We are a good country, not perfect.

Sir Winston Churchill once said “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the others that have been tried.” The same could be said about capitalism. No economic system has been responsible for creating more middle class prosperity, or lifting more people out of poverty, than capitalism. Wherever socialism has been established there has been poverty, disaster, and death.

We have to do a better job of explaining the virtues of capitalism versus the devastation of socialism to our young people. It is perhaps the greatest failing of our educational system that as many as 1/2 of Americans under the age of 40 say they approve of socialism. There may be a number of reasons why this is true. The most obvious is ignorance. When an honest comparison of capitalism vs. socialism is skillfully presented, any student with an IQ north of a pet rock would quickly understand. The task is to get honest textbooks in the hands of good teachers. Parents need to continue their current push to be more involved with their K-12 school curricula. A lot of high school history and economics textbooks are written by Progressive professors. They must be sure that the books their children are learning from are painting an honest picture of the competing systems. Once our kids have a solid understanding of both systems they will be better prepared to fend off the persistent indoctrination of the far left professors. We have to inform ourselves and confront our progeny with facts when they spew the nonsense they learn in school.

We can’t expect our young people to be proud, and patriotic, and love their country, if we don’t make the effort to show them why the USA deserves their pride. It is important they understand the freedoms they enjoy are enjoyed by very few people on earth. They need to know the price their forefathers paid to ensure that freedom. They deserve to know the names and deeds of our Founding Fathers. Ask them, how much courage do you think it took for farmers and shopkeepers to challenge, and defeat, the greatest military in the world in our Revolutionary War? Tell them about the D-Day invasion. How many people died storming the beaches in France? What made them do that? How much courage did it take for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to stand up for racial freedom? Could he have done that in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, or Mao Tse Tung’s Communist China? Ask them this question. If the USA is so bad, why are millions of people risking their lives to come here? These are fair questions. Our kids have the capacity to think. When given all of the information our kids will make good decisions. They need us to be sure they get all of the information. If you found this post informative or interesting please tell your friends about it. Thanks, Bob