Patriotism and Antipatriotism
Trump administration and the MAGA movement has been working toward something remarkable that the leftwing media often ignores, overlooks, or distorts.
Trump administration and the MAGA movement has been working toward something remarkable that the leftwing media often ignores, overlooks, or distorts.
For nearly a decade, Trump and the movement have made a consistent effort to reverse decades-worth of antipatriotic policies and reassert the historic virtues of America and American history.
Where the left believes that any flaw outweighs virtue, the Trump approach has been to put people in the context of their times. The Trump-MAGA approach recognizes the courage great men and women have shown in rising above the prejudice of their era and struggling to make America’s promises in its Declaration of Independence and Constitution an integral part of American life.
One example of this struggle between patriotism and antipatriotism took place in Washington last weekend.
On Saturday, the Trump administration unveiled a statue of Caesar Rodney in Freedom Plaza near the Willard Hotel. It was symbolically an important moment in the continuing struggle between the patriotism and its opposite.
The Rodney statue had been on Rodney Square in Wilmington, Delaware from 1923 until it was removed at the Wilmington mayor’s orders on June 12, 2020. It was part of an effort to appease the antipatriot movement that had gained temporary strength during the riots that followed the death of the George Floyd while in police custody.
President Donald Trump responded to this surrender to antipatriotic forces in September of that year:
“Joe Biden said nothing as to his home state’s history and the fact that it was dismantled and dismembered. And a Founding Father’s statue was removed. Today, America will give this Founding Father, this very brave man, who was so horribly treated, the place of honor he deserves. I am announcing that a statue of Caesar Rodney will be added to the National Garden of American Heroes.”
Biden was running for president and didn’t want to fight with the leftwing that dominates the Democratic Party. So, he remained quiet while the most famous statue in Delaware was taken away.
This was ironic because in 1974 then-Sen. Biden added a pro-Rodney poem to the Congressional Record. At the time, he said that Rodney was a great patriot because the “ride from Delaware to Philadelphia enabled the Declaration of Independence to be approved.”
The fact was that Rodney, who had asthma and suffered from a disfiguring facial cancer, made an 80-mile ride through a thunderstorm to get to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. He was just in time to cast the vote making adoption of the Declaration of Independence unanimous among the colonies.
The Delaware American Revolution Bicentennial Commission described Rodney as “the patron saint of his native state. Delaware’s principal hero of the American Revolutionary War.”
The antipatriotic movement in America is devoted to presentism and applying modern mores and values to historic figures. It rejects the realities of historic times. Its fanatical purity requires it to tear down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as well as Rodney. Any historic figure that owned slaves is disqualified from historic recognition, along with all his or her achievements. It is an antihistorical effort to create a world of endless prejudice dominating facts.
After all, among the antipatriots, this year’s measure of exclusion could be slave ownership. Next year’s yardstick could be whether someone supported suffrage for women. The following yardstick could be whether he or she supported gay rights. Then will come support for every aspect of the transgender worldview. The list of who to exclude from history could become endless with each new standard driving out its predecessors.
Very quickly, all the Founding Fathers — and their ideas which planted the seeds for modern democracy and liberty in America and all over the world — will be erased.
American patriotism requires understanding the goals, intents, values, and lives of people in the context of their times. President Washington was truly, as one historian called him, the indispensable man. Without him there probably would never have been an America. To apply today’s values to disqualify honoring Washington would be a behavior worthy of a high school freshman but unworthy of learned adults.
President Trump understands that winning this cultural war between patriotism and antipatriotism may be more important than reorganizing government or any of a dozen issues the news media is more comfortable covering (and often distorting).
Rodney’s statue in Freedom Plaza is a down payment on writing a wrong and restoring a genuine American hero to his rightful place in history. And there are more to come.
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Newt, I am glad you are addressing the anti-patriot movement. It's everywhere and it bothers me hugely. I am born American but spent most of my adult life in Canada, and I never got used to the widespread anti- Americanism among Canadians, nor the hostility I encountered should I wear a T-shirt or jacket with an American theme.
Now that I'm back home, it shocks me to hear it here. I have a dear friend here in the US who stood in my kitchen and said "I can't think of a single reason to be proud of America." This comes from sheer ignorance and ingratitude from people who have never lived elsewhere and compared life in America to life in a country that does not have a Constitution that is as strong, as highly respected and as relevant to daily life as ours.