Museums, Monuments, & Quarter-Millennial Project

Civic education, which is vital to America’s future, doesn’t occur merely in schools or in homes but is also profoundly affected by how our nation’s history and heroes are depicted at our monuments and museums. In recent years, such historic sites have increasingly been hijacked by the Left, and the norm is for our founders and pioneers to be reflexively depicted as oppressors and racists rather than as brave, liberty-loving Americans or American heroes.

Likewise, the Quarter-Millennial, or 250th, anniversary of American independence represents perhaps the best chance in the past 50 years—since the Bicentennial—to remind Americans about the extraordinary nature of America’s founding and subsequent history. 

AMSI, in collaboration with policymakers, pundits, and think-tank partners, is combating efforts to denigrate rather than to celebrate America’s rich heritage. And we are working hard to ensure America has the 250th birthday it deserves.

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Check out what we’ve been up to below.

AMSI Helps Reclaim President Washington’s Home

Our recent Claremont Review of Books essay, “Hijacking America's Story,” takes aim at the President's House Site at Independence Park in Philadelphia. Rather than focusing on the watershed events of the George Washington and John Adams presidencies, the site’s signage focused almost exclusively on slavery. It criticized Washington in particular, portraying our first president as having “mocked the nation’s pretense to be a beacon of liberty.” Our article, drawing attention to such slanders, was influential with Trump administration.

The signs have come down, and new ones have replaced them. Our latest article at RealClearPolitics provides the concluding chapter of this struggle. Now George Washington is no longer the most heavily criticized individual at Independence Park. The longstanding statue that honors him in front of Independence Hall is no longer contradicted by language on signs across the street. And importantly, the replacement signs celebrate our rich history with accuracy and nuance.

This victory is an encouraging and important developments in reclaiming the telling of America’s story from the woke Left. Especially during the Quarter-Millennial celebrations, our founders deserve to be portrayed as the extraordinary, world-historical men that they were, not maligned by those who couldn’t hold a candle to them.

White Paper: Combating Woke Efforts to Hijack the Telling of America’s Story 

In recent years, such monuments and museums have increasingly been taken over by the woke Left. When Americans now visit these important sites, they are often told that their country’s history has not been defined by justice and freedom but rather by injustice and oppression; that this has been a “systemically racist” nation from the beginning and remains one today. In short, while most conservatives haven’t been paying much attention, leftists have hijacked the telling of America’s story. 

Read the White Paper