In a rational world, the 250th anniversary of the founding of America should be a cause for celebration from sea to shining sea.
Sadly, it won’t be.
The astounding feat of breaking away from a mother country that would not grant its greatest colony the freedom it deserved was followed by the even more incredible feat of forming a nation built solidly on liberty and freedom.
Because those precious rights were woven into the fabric of the flag, the nation prospered. American exceptionalism allowed it to grow from a tiny colony into the most prosperous and powerful nation on Earth.
But too many Americans, 250 years later, don’t know what was accomplished in 1776, or even what nation America fought for its freedom.
Even worse, some of those who are so blissfully ignorant are college students – people who are supposed to be mastering basic facts about America.
What are they learning? On YouTube videos, they can’t name other countries on the globe (several offer “Africa”), couldn’t name the participants in the Mexican-American War or even, in one spectacular fail, place the date of the War of 1812!
History is not the only subject in which they are lacking. Several say the sun revolves around the Earth. Others can’t calculate 3 x 3 x 3. One tells the questioner that the inventor of the light bulb was “Thomas Jefferson.”
Many were stumped when asked how many minutes are in a “quarter of an hour” but the most common answer was “25 minutes.”
These are not spoofs. They are real questions being asked real American youths, who presumably went through 13 grades of school and were deemed competent to enroll in college.
But off-campus street interviews aren’t any better.
A question that stumped one youngster: “What country is the queen of England from?”
But the most dispiriting were the history answers, like the young lady who said she had no idea when the United States was founded but guessed it was around 1800 B.C.
Maybe there is a new paradigm. Maybe facts aren’t important when you can just ask the phone you always have in your hand and get an answer.
But if that is the case, why have schools and colleges? Just have Apple or Google tutor kids on how to operate phones.
Imagine, as the anesthetic was taking effect, if you heard the doctor say, “Siri, how do you repair a brain aneurism?”
On the 200th anniversary, I was at Concord and Lexington, where I saw a hole made by musket ball that still remains in a tavern door. It brought home the fearsome, seemingly hopeless struggle begun there by people determined to be free.
Yet today there are American citizens who don’t believe in the principles enunciated by the Founding Fathers and defended by the Minutemen, nor in the economic system the nation’s astounding growth rests upon.
If they should become dominant, there will be no 500th anniversary to celebrate.
One of our greatest presidents said, “Our victory will be a victory for America’s future and the land that President Lincoln called, ‘the last, best hope of Earth.’”
And Ronald Reagan was right.
In addition to many enemies of freedom outside our borders, some people who cast votes in America think it should become more like Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea or Somalia.
Reagan was a leader who believed America was the solution, not the problem. He once said:
“But in these moments, let us remember and draw strength from the most powerful, enduring truth in human history: Free men and women are not destined to be powerless victims of some capricious historical tide; free men and women are themselves the driving force of history. And our future is never trapped in the hands of fate; our future will depend on our own freedom, courage, vision, and faith.”
People who know and understand America’s history will resist reversing our chosen path to the death.
