Thread by @usacsmret

How the war on history is rewriting America's past. @JarrettStepman dailysign.al/2mNP51Y via @LRacheldG @DailySignal

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal A generation ago, America’s Founding Fathers were venerated. Today, they’re more likely to be under attack from the media, teachers, and politicians.

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal And it’s not just the Founders, but our founding documents, institutions, and other leaders from our past. Our colleague, Jarrett Stepman, has written about all this in a new book called “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.”

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal Stepman: I think it’s a large part about politics, which a lot of this directly connects to. It’s not just about the details of history. I think a lot of this comes from especially, I think, in the last part of President Obama’s term and some early parts of President Trump’s.

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal I think you’ve seen the rise of what people call identity politics and I think that has fueled a large part of what we see as this kind of attack on history and statues, the statues represent for many the things they see as a problem with America, a problem with our history.

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal People who maybe are uncomfortable with history or, frankly, a lot of times don’t know much about it, but have this idea that America is somehow bad and wrong, they see those symbols as something they need to destroy.

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal So it becomes part of this kind of power politics of today. Instead of winning arguments and debates with people, we need to destroy them and it’s hard to have a debate with the past. What do you do with it? You simply tear it down.

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal It started kind of small, and now it spreads from everything—as you introduced this, Christopher Columbus to Founding Fathers. We’re talking across the board now. These things are up for discussion now in a way that they certainly weren’t even 10 years ago.

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal History is a proxy and a cudgel. And I think that for many, especially on the hard left in America, I’m not just talking about generally liberals, I’m talking about the hard left, they really do see American principles and values as antithetical to their own views.

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal I think especially with the rise of President Donald Trump, they saw it as an imperative for them not just to win the arguments and debates with those who they disagree with, but to simply wipe them out and destroy.

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal This is kind of the idea of the deplorables and stuff like that. A lot of people in our history have been turned into the deplorables, and this is what they see as what’s wrong with America now is based on what it was before.

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal Of course, they want to fundamentally transform the United States. For many of them, they are often radicals and socialists, and they see a lot of the ideas at the heart of America, not just these individuals on these statues, but these real ideas, the Constitution, Declaration,

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal They see these things as impediments to what they really want to accomplish in this country and I think they see American culture as also an impediment.

@JarrettStepman @LRacheldG @DailySignal So that’s why they’ve turned and tried to turn Americans against these things. If they can’t make them forget, then they will simply go out and destroy.