In two different states we’re seeing the immediate negative effects of recent elections.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised lots of freebies on the campaign trail, along with higher taxes on the wealthy. No freebies yet, but multimillionaires are already packing their bags. The Mamdani administration further displayed its incompetence during the recent snowstorm, with long delays in getting streets plowed and trash bags piled high. No one’s happy except NYC’s army of rodents.

Meanwhile, Virginia’s newly-elected Gov. Abigail “Affordability” Spanberger and the Democrat-controlled General Assembly wasted no time in raising taxes. Increasing taxes on guns and ammunition was expected, but imposing taxes on such goods as dog walking, dry cleaning, and home repairs reveals the petty overreach of leftist government.

Which brings me to Yeonmi Park.

Several years ago, I wrote a piece about this escapee from the North Korean hellhole, her life in the United States, and her book, “While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America.” The book was Park’s warning about the real possibility of the United States being strangled until liberty and our way of life vanished. She noted that the Chinese regard left-wing attacks on America by Americans as “a hilarious joke”:

[Our country] is producing more and more people who want to destroy the system because they don’t understand it. They don’t appreciate how fragile their freedom is, how precious their system of government, how rare their way of life. And so they entertain fantasies of tearing it down. In some cases, those fantasies are becoming reality.

True then and even truer now.

I was reminded of Park when I read Warren Bonham’s poem, “Yeonmi Park’s Advice to America.” Here are the first four verses:

You don’t ever want to be a
country that’s like North Korea,
where a massive central power
makes its citizenry cower. 

But each year, you cede control of
more and more, which is the goal of
those who run in each election,
so you move in that direction. 

Every winner’s non-stop waxing
about fairness as they’re taxing
then regifting every dollar,
means you’ll live in equal squalor. 

Meanwhile, their nests get more padded
thanks to all the wealth they’ve added
through the microscopic sliver
skimmed from handouts they deliver.

It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s a concise and lively account of what has happened in our country during the 21st century. “Democratic socialism” is still on the march.

Some ask why so many people continue voting for candidates who promise sky candy, only to find that the elected really mean “you’ll live in equal squalor.” Some moderates or conservatives I know believe these voters are either dumb or stupid.

I would contend that they’re brainwashed. They’re products of an education that has held sway over our young people for 20 years, and three decades longer in the universities. “Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world” is a quote attributed to Vladimir Lenin. He may not have used those exact words, but he absolutely believed in the concept, and we see it deconstructing America today.

Whether masterminded by true believers or regurgitated by dupes, anti-American and anti-Western versions of the past are today run-of-the-mill in far too many of our classrooms. Moreover, millions have graduated from such schools. The rioters and looters are likely paid tools of an ideology, but the voters who cast their ballots for the likes of Spanberger and Mamdani are the products of propaganda.

One sure antidote for this poison distorting our history is, ironically, history.

If we wish to return future voters to common sense and an accurate understanding of their past, we must teach them the truth about America, about its wrongs, yes, but much more about what it got right. We must show the young how the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution transformed both the country and the world, bringing a unique vision of liberty to the world stage. We must create cadres of rebels like the American founders who are willing to stand toe-to-toe against the collectivists produced by the last 50 years of education.

The tools are there. Readily available are biographies and histories, loads of excellent historical novels, movies, and podcasts, and even cartoons for the elementary school crowd. Scattered across the nation are museums, historic homes, and battlefields, most of them presenting visitors with accurate accounts and displays from the past.

In the final days of the first Trump administration, the “The 1776 Report” was released. The second paragraph reads:

The declared purpose of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission is to ‘enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.’ This requires a restoration of American education, which can only be grounded on a history of those principles that is ‘accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling.’ And a rediscovery of our shared identity rooted in our founding principles is the path to a renewed American unity and a confident American future.

One of the first acts of the Biden administration was to dissolve the commission and delete the report from the White House website.  On taking office a year ago, Trump reinstated the commission.

Clio, muse of history, is often depicted with a trumpet in hand, symbolizing her role in proclaiming historical events and great deeds. The Introduction to “The 1776 Report” sounds that trumpet. In this 250th anniversary year of America’s founding, let’s light the candles on that birthday cake by teaching our young people the real history of their country and then keeping them lit once the party is over.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image credit: Picryl