March 12, 2021
I wasn’t imagining the disappearance of the 1776 Commission and its Report. Breitbart.com ran an article titled, “Biden Admin Deletes ‘1776 Commission’ from White House Website Immediately After Inauguration.” The lead sentence read, “The 1776 Commission was removed from the White House website about an hour after President Joe Biden was sworn into office on Wednesday afternoon.” And, of course, the Report was deleted along with it.
Fortunately, the new administration was not able to hold the Report underwater long enough until it drowned. It has surfaced again. You can do a search for “1776 Commission Report” or just use this link to access it. If you have kids or know of anyone with kids, this is not only a must-read, it is a must-study. I feel confident in saying that not many schools teach the material in this report to their students.
In the movie Jazz Singer, Neil Diamond was physical and emotionally forsaking his Jewish heritage. He refused to listen to his father explaining it to him, so his father asked, “How can you know where you’re going when you don’t know where you’ve been?” That line stuck with me. Applying it to our kids growing up in today’s culture, how can they be good citizens and our country’s leaders if they don’t know where we’ve been?
Whether your kids are attending in-person or virtually, if it’s a public, private or parochial school, don’t rely on their history lessons to give them all they need to know. Print a copy of the 1776 Report from the site you access, and study it with your children. It has divisions, but if they seem too long, break them up into digestible bites.
First is an Introduction. I urge you not to skip over it. It is the habit of many readers to never read intros, prefaces, forewords . . . just get to the “good stuff.” Please don’t. This introduction will help you understand why you should read the rest. My guess is that you’ll be surprised at how much you’ve forgotten.