The Republican National Committee could have scripted Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade’s attack on the Advanced Placement U.S. History course today. Yet Kilmeade and his guest pretended there was no agenda behind the complaints.
In February, NPR’s Cory Turner and Steve Inskeep discussed conservative efforts against the course in Oklahoma and elsewhere.
TURNER: … State Representative Dan Fisher …says he doesn’t like the new AP framework because it doesn’t emphasize the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the war of independence. He’s also complained that the founders are hardly even mentioned. And it’s not just the founders. Critics are quick to point out that the new AP guidelines don’t mention Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr. either.
But it’s bigger than that, Steve. Much of the language in these state bills echoes a resolution that the Republican National Committee adopted at its big meeting last summer, and that said that the new AP framework, quote, “reflects a radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative aspects while omitting or minimizing the positive.”
From the RNC meeting to Kilmeade’s mouth on Fox News!
In his introduction, Kilmeade cited a group of (undoubtedly conservative) scholars who wrote a letter to the College Board, complaining that the AP test focuses “only on America’s shortcomings while highlighting conflicts between different groups,” as Kilmeade put it. Later, he said, “They’re de-emphasizing things like the success of the U.S. Constitution.”
It wasn’t clear if history professor Susan Hanssen was one of the letter's signers. But, clearly, she stood in solidarity with them.
HANSSEN: Really, for the past 50 years, the most exciting thing that’s been happening in American education is just a lot of startups. You have a lot of charter schools, home school curricula, parent-led co-ops, a lot of independent and classical Christian academies, but there’s going to be very little independent thinking at these independent schools if they submit to a government monopoly on the teaching of history.
…There’s no discussion of limited government, checks and balances, the idea of natural rights, the ideas of the laws of nature and nature as God. So there’s a real gap in the teaching of American history.
If you’re not familiar with the term “natural rights,” it’s a conservative belief that our rights come from God, not law.
In other words, Hanssen and Kilmeade were promoting a one-sided (Republican) view of the matter.
Yet Kilmeade insisted, “There’s no agenda here” on the part of those who objected. They’re “just concerned with what’s going on with history,” Kilmeade insisted.
“There’s a kind of pervasive anti-patriotism that’s being in taught in schools,” Hanssen added. She accused schools of teaching “cynicism” about America’s founding and its ideals. She claimed, “That’s going to be very damaging.”
Kilmeade took it a step further. “I just don’t know where that school of thought comes from. I mean, usually, people are pulling for their home team and have to be pulled back. We’re cheering against the home team and have to be pushed back to the correct truth.”
But Kilmeade and Hanssen threw “patriotic” stones from the Fox News glass house where a law-breaking rancher threatening armed insurrection against the U.S. was a hero. The network has also promoted Donald Trump's bogus attacks on our president’s citizenship, has carried on a prolonged – and bogus – campaign to suggest our attorney general was too black to prosecute a case of (non-existent) voter intimidation, and has accused our First Lady of being too fat to promote healthy eating.
Watch the RNC propaganda disguised as patriotism, below.