by Newt Gingrich
June 17, 2020
As we watch radicals
tear down statues, deface monuments, intimidate people who want to stand for
the National Anthem, demand the firing of people who write or say something
deemed inappropriate to the Leftist Anti-American Theology, it is utterly clear
that many Americans today hate America.
People ask me how
we’ve gotten to this point. All of this is the result of three generations of
brainwashing going back at least to Herbert Marcuse, the German-born University
of California, San Diego professor who taught young Americans the philosophical
foundation of Marxism in the 1960s. As early as 1972, Theodore White was
warning that the liberal ideology was becoming a liberal theology and dissent
was less and less acceptable to the left.
We have watched the
hard left, the America hating totalitarians who want to define acceptable
speech, as they took over the academic world. The college boards – made up of
supposedly sound community leaders – refused to fight. Public universities and
colleges continued to hire vehement anti-American professors, the state
legislatures and governors refused to fight. Alumni continued to give to
schools, which were teaching their own children and grandchildren to despise
them.
We did not think
through the eventual reality that graduates who had been taught systematic
falsehoods would take those falsehoods into their jobs. As President Ronald
Reagan said, “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re
ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
As I write in my
upcoming book, Trump and the American
Future, this educated ignorance has now infested our news media,
bureaucracies, and corporate headquarters. These are sincere fanatics. It is
this fanaticism which has been so visible in the last few weeks.
The uprising by the
self-righteous fanatics of The New York Times got their opinion
editor fired for the sin of publishing a conservative senator’s op-ed. The
fanatics at The Philadelphia Inquirer got their editor fired for
running the headline “Buildings Matter Too.” In case after case, the new
fanaticism is imposing a thought police model reinforced by the Maoist
tradition of public confession and group solidarity.
We were warned that
this could happen. Having defeated Marxism in the Soviet Union, President
Reagan was worried by the rise of anti-Americanism in our own country. He
warned of the collapse of support for America in his farewell address on Jan.
11, 1989. It is lengthy, but I want to include it here, because it is important
to recall now:
“There is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells,
and I’ve got one that’s been on my mind for some time. But oddly enough it
starts with one of the things I’m proudest of in the past eight years: the resurgence
of national pride that I called the new patriotism. This national feeling is
good, but it won’t count for much, and it won’t last unless it’s grounded in
thoughtfulness and knowledge.
“An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good
enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the
long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew
up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be
an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an
appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your
family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who
fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a
sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed you could get a sense
of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values
and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that,
too, through the mid-60s.
“But now, we’re about to enter the 90s, and some things have
changed. Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of
America is the right thing to teach modern children.
And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded
patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t
reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that
America is freedom — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of
enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs production
[protection].
“So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but
what’s important — why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and
what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, four years ago on the 40th
anniversary of D-day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late
father, who’d fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she
said, `we will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy
did.’ Well, let’s help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won’t
know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that
could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let’s start
with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on
civic ritual.”
It would have been a
struggle to win this fight for America 31 years ago when President Reagan
warned us of the consequence of teaching falsehoods and anti-American lies. Now
it will be much, much harder.
If we want America to
survive as a constitutional republic under the rule of law, which protects the
right of free speech and is dedicated to the belief that each one of us is endowed
by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, we have no choice but to fight to defeat the
anti-Americans and reassert our nation.
Reagan would
understand.
Lincoln would
understand.
Freedom itself is at stake.
