President Donald Trump has made another huge announcement which is being celebrated as a big win for conservatives.
President Trump issued an executive order on November 2 to create a new commission that focuses on educating the next generation about America’s Founding Fathers and the principles of the Constitution.
On December 18, Trump named 18 conservative leaders to serve on this new commission, the Advisory 1776 Commission.
The president’s executive order establishing the commission commission states that it will “better 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.”
Mike Gonzalez, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow and author of “The Plot to Change America,” was named by President Trump as one of the commission’s members.
Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum fellow at The Heritage Foundation, will be serving alongside 17 other important conservative political and thought leaders, including President of Hillsdale College Larry Arnn, who will serve as chairman of the commission.
“I look forward to rendering this service. Teaching the young to hate their country and its history is a recipe for national suicide, and a quick one at that,” Gonzalez said in a statement Friday.
This new commission was, in part, a response to the New York Times’ 1619 Project curriculum, which has taught students to “hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains,” according to the executive order.
Gonzalez also stated that the difficult parts of the country’s history shouldn’t be ignored, but neither should America’s accomplishments.
“America has had its trials and tribulations, and they should not be swept under the rug by history. But, all of America’s accomplishments have been achieved by those who inspired their countrymen to live up to the ideals contained in the founding documents. From James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr., our leaders have aspired to improve the republic by forcing it to live up to its promise, not to tear it down and build something new,” Gonzalez said.
According to Trump’s executive order, the 1776 commission has one year to complete a report that articulates “the core principles of the American founding and how these principles may be understood to further enjoyment of ‘the blessings of liberty’ and to promote our striving ‘to form a more perfect Union.’”
The work of the 1776 Commission will also focus on how the founding of the United States is taught in classrooms across the nation.
“At this divisive time in our nation’s history, it is more important than ever that all Americans, especially our youngest generations, come to know and love America for who she is—a nation unlike any other in recorded history. America is a nation that has been divinely used to not only safeguard the freedom of its own citizens, but also to unleash unprecedented freedom and flourishing on the rest of the world,” Kay C. James, president of The Heritage Foundation, said in a statement regarding the commision.
Here is the complete list of all 18 members of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission:
- Larry Arnn, of Arkansas, Chair
- Carol M. Swain, of Tennessee, Vice Chair
- Brooke L. Rollins, of Texas
- Vincent M. Haley, of Virginia
- Victor Davis Hanson, of California
- Phil Bryant, of Mississippi
- Mike Gonzalez, of Maryland
- John Gibbs, of Michigan
- Scott McNealy, of Nevada
- Gay Hart Gaines, of Florida
- Ned Ryun, of Virginia
- Charles Kirk, of Illinois
- Peter N. Kirsanow, of Ohio
- Charles R. Kesler, of California
- Thomas K. Lindsay, of Texas
- Jerry C. Davis, of Missouri
- Michael Farris, of Virginia
- Bob McEwen, of Ohio
