The battle over national governance is only a small part of the more fundamental battle over America’s core values and civic culture.
President Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) Movement are moving at lightning speed on a broad front to restore governmental integrity and restore American culture. His revolutionary change agents are now confirmed and taking the helms in their respective agencies. Along with legions of capable operatives, they are reversing decades of Leftist policies and eliminating large numbers of those loyal to the endless expansion of government.
Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are exposing billions of waste, fraud, and abuse. Their wide-ranging audits of Executive Branch operations are well on their way to exceeding the $2 trillion budget reduction goal.
The battle over national governance is only a small part of the more fundamental battle over America’s core values and civic culture.
America is unique. It is a country based upon ideas—not geography, language, or tribe. Our historic sites and markers ground us in who we are, and why we are.
America’s civic culture thrives because it has maintained a common frame of reference supporting freedom of expression, representative government, limited government, and government dispersed among states and locales—the fundamentals of a federal system and republican governance.
The resiliency and longevity of America’s civic culture is based upon its citizens learning and understanding how their government works and their role in supporting and participating in it.
America’s Constitution is about forming “a more perfect union”. This means America is always a work in progress. The Constitution itself is the greatest “rules of engagement” for collective action that has ever been written. Looking beyond ourselves reaffirms our nation and our individual and collective roles in it.
A critical element is our collective memory and frames of reference. Statues and historic sites exist to commemorate and remember, not to celebrate. Knowing and discussing our origin is fundamental to a civic culture where shared values hold us together. Civil dialogue with those we disagree is the structure that allows our institutions, our communities, and ourselves to exist.
America’s unique civic culture and collective identity is the antithesis to tyranny. President Ronald Reagan referred to America’s example of freedom and representative government as “the shining light on the hill” that inspired freedom loving people worldwide.
Those promoting Communism, Fascism, and other forms of oppression have continually assailed America to neutralize challenges to their power. Internally, those wanting unbridled political power have made common cause with outside forces in their attempt to undermine America.
In 1927, Stuart Chase, one of the founding members of President Franklin Roosevelt’s (FDR) “Brain Trust”, met with Stalin and Trotsky to gain inspiration for taking over America. In his 1932 “New Deal” book Chase mused, “Why should the Russians have all the fun of remaking the world?”
Guided by Chase’s vision, the Left set about to methodically capture and control America’s cultural levers. Hollywood fell first. Most news media fell by the late 1960s. Print media was corrupted from the start. Pro-America outlets like Time Magazine, succumbed as their conservative founders retired or died. Academia was conquered during the 1960s in the wake of the “free speech movement” and then the anti-Vietnam War protests.
During the 1980s, the Left targeted America’s 13,425 school districts. Leftist teachers replaced moderate pro-American teachers as they retired. These Leftist teachers promoted revisionist history supported by new textbooks like Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”, which became the standard high school textbook for a generation.
In some schools, world history courses narrowed to cover only events that occurred after 1200 AD. Large swaths of historical events and figures were eliminated. The Texas State Board of Education voted to remove 450 historical figures. This included significant individuals
A parallel project was shrinking civics education to the point where only 23 percent of eighth-graders perform at or above the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics exam, and only 26 percent of Americans can name all three branches of government.
The election of Barack Obama in 2008 ushered in an era of divisiveness. Obama campaigned as a proponent and symbol of racial harmony. Once elected, Obama and his Administration launched a wide range of actions to racialize America. By the end of his eight years, racial and sexual demographics became the lens through which private and public actions were viewed.
The era of “wokism” replaced meritocracy. Martin Luther King’s famous quote, “one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” was completely turned upside down. Divisiveness and “tribalism” ate away at America’s common framework and values.
An intensified phase of undermining America’s civic culture began after a 2011 Harvard Study revealed that participating in historical/patriotic celebrations promoted conservative voting patterns. The Left began to methodically demonize America’s founding narrative, encompassing events and people.
Denigrating the American Flag, removing the National Anthem, and ending 4th of July were the Left’s trinity for destroying America’s civic culture.
Statues were removed. Athletes “took a knee” to denigrate America’s National Anthem, a “Black National Anthem” was sung as the preferred “more inclusive” alternative.
The Left’s goal was to fundamentally shift the inspiring narrative of America’s founding in 1776 to the darker, anti-American narrative of the 1619 movement.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the intellectual force behind the 1619 movement, asserted the arrival of the first slaves at Jamestown was the true founding of America. This was launched in 2019 as a counter to celebrating the 400th Anniversary of the first democratically elected assembly in America. Hannah-Jones barnstormed cable news asserting, “Independence Day does not mean the same thing to everybody. We are forcing white people to confront what this holiday has meant to black people.”
On one show, Hannah-Jones’ assertion was supported by Leftist historian Jon Meacham, who reported that the July 4th was “only about a document not about shaping a nation”. Meacham asserted, “For generations we have looked at 1776 as our founding moment, our ‘nativity’, when it was actually 1619…For too long we have taught this one narrative that glorifies white supremacy, glorifies colonization.”
The Left elevated an obscure moment in America’s Civil War, “Juneteenth”, as the “more inclusive” alternative to celebrating the “white slave document” of the Declaration of Independence.
Juneteenth is based on the false narrative that slavery in America ended on June 19, 1865. That was the day a Union General marched into Galveston, Texas and announced the Civil War was over and the slaves being held in that region were free. It took ratifying the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865, to officially free all of America’s slaves nationwide.
The Left began an incessant drumbeat that America was “built by enslaved people on stolen land”. The noble narrative of a nation of immigrants thriving in freedom, commerce, and limited government, was replaced by shame.
The Left’s goal was to expand government to “right wrongs” and “make amends”. Key elements were reparations; Critical Race Theory (CRT); Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); and Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”).
The Left’s echo chamber of controlling media, academia, entertainment, and government reached its zenith with the George Floyd riots of 2020. Demonizing Trump and his supporters as racists, fascists, and Nazis became one of the vehicles for sweeping Joe Biden into power. Leftist control of social media silenced dissent. They were on the brink of totally remaking America in their image.
Then the world changed.
The Leftist agenda, to flood America with illegal immigrants, create chaos through weakening the police, and steer the justice system from going after criminals to going after Trump and his supporters ignited a massive backlash.
It became increasingly clear to a growing number of Americans, that they were being lied to by every entity they trusted. One by one, the Left’s carefully constructed reality fell apart. Crime spiralled out of control in cities. Inflation soared. America’s weakened foreign and military policy emboldened tyrants and Americans died.
On April 14, 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter. Suddenly, one of the most important components of the Left’s fraudulent reality became the chief forum for exposing their lies.
President Biden’s steady mental decline became harder to hide. Trust in those who lied in order to gain, expand, and retain their power vanished.
The 2024 election shocked the system back to reality. The MAGA revolution and the DOGE audits gave new hope that America could be saved.
The struggle to save America is just beginning.
“We’re in the middle of a cultural revolution in America, and one of the biggest battlegrounds is the schools,” explained Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice.
There are 98,577 public schools in 13,425 school districts. Each district is run by elected school boards where ultra-Leftist politicians dominate. The 3,827,100 public school teachers are mostly liberal to Leftist. 94 percent of teacher union campaign funds go to Democrats.
In West Virginia, America’s most conservative Republican state, public school leaders promoted Che Guevara as their 2022 role model for Hispanic Heritage Month.
President Trump joined the battle by issuing an Executive Order on January 29, 2025, titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling”: “In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight. Such an environment operates as an echo chamber, in which students are forced to accept these ideologies without question or critical examination. In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics…These practices not only erode critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity.
“Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority…Similarly, demanding acquiescence to ‘White Privilege’ or ‘unconscious bias,’ actually promotes racial discrimination and undermines national unity.”
Trump’s Executive Order directs federal agencies to end funding for any activities deemed undermining America’s civic culture. It is a clear signal that the decades long battle for the soul of America is a priority.
While Trump is waging an office-by-office struggle to gain control of the Federal Government, parents and local activists are fighting to regain America-affirming education school-by-school, and classroom-by-classroom.
Generations of young people are adults with at best ignorance about America, or at worst, a Leftist set of assumptions about their country.
What took the Left decades to destroy, may take years to reverse. Time is short.
All the world’s freedom loving people are watching.
* Scot Faulkner served as Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was Director of Personnel for the 1980 Reagan Campaign, served on the Presidential Transition team, and on Reagan’s White House Staff. He currently advises corporations on strategic change.