The Smithsonian's Patriotism Problem

   "Warning: The exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don't want you to love your country."

   That's a disclaimer every entrance to the National Museum of American History ought to display, according to a new report by the White House excoriating the Smithsonian Institution and its flagship museum.

   But it doesn't take a 160-page report to show what's wrong with the Smithsonian -- just walk into any of its museums.    

   With a bit of time on my hands in the Chinatown area of Washington, D.C., last year, I decided to take a stroll through the National Portrait Gallery.

   The art is as magnificent as ever, but it seemed every historical portrait had to be accompanied by two sets of explanatory text: one talking about the portrait itself, the other describing its subject's connection to slavery, however distant.

   For the Smithsonian's leadership, it often seems less like slavery is a part of American history -- an important and awful part, to be sure -- than American history is part of the story of slavery.

   That casual impression from the National Portrait Gallery is confirmed by the White House Domestic Policy Council's report "Saving America's Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage."

   The National Museum of American History was pitched to Congress in the 1950s as "intended to instill in each citizen a deepened faith in our country's destiny as champion of individual dignity and enterprise," as well as to impress foreign visitors with a show of "our ever-expanding social technological horizons."

   Yet Anthea Hartig, director of the museum today, has other priorities, including using history as a "prime tool of social justice."

   Hartig is white, but rather than punishing herself for her "privilege," she's trying to lay a guilt trip on the whole country, using taxpayer dollars to "problematize" the history she's supposed to preserve.

   The Smithsonian's museums do have to tackle shameful subjects like slavery -- but can the public trust that responsibility to someone like Hartig, who claims to have been "propped up ... by the cushions of whiteness and the pillows of the bourgeoisie"?

   Her language is telling: Not only is it embarrassingly florid, its idiom is Marxist.

   This is not someone who should be teaching a class of kindergartners, much less leading one of the premier institutions of our national memory.

   Personnel is policy, and the results of having leaders like Hartig are thoroughly documented in the White House report.

   It notes the lack of exhibits on such fundamental figures of American history as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.    

   Christopher Columbus is characterized as a "thief," and the European settlement of the New World gets presented as the "profound unsettling of the continent."

   "Museum materials repeatedly suggest that Christianity functioned principally as an instrument of conquest, exclusion, or cultural erasure," the report finds, while other materials promote gender confusion to children.

   Visitors are asked to speculate whether Benjamin Franklin's experiments with electricity and "electric shocks" ever involved "an indentured servant or an enslaved person," though no actual evidence suggests they did.

   Smithsonian officials respond to criticisms by claiming the institution is "independent."

   Yet it isn't independent of taxpayers' dollars -- Smithsonian museums receive more than 60% of their funding from the public.

   The Smithsonian's independence is only independence from accountability to the public and its values: The institution is independent of patriotism.

   That would be fair enough if socialists and gender activists wanted to build their own museums using their own money to promote their revisionist view of America.
   Instead they feel entitled to use your taxes to teach you and your children to feel ashamed of your country.

   The problem isn't limited to the National Museum of American History or the rest of the Smithsonian's museums, unfortunately.

   Historical sites around the country have been colonized by ideologues looking to turn American history into a history of victim groups and oppression, with the heroes of the traditional telling -- our Founders and greatest statesmen -- recast as villains, even in their own homes.

   James Madison's estate of Montpelier, for example, has been thoroughly co-opted by progressives, as documented by my Heritage Foundation colleague Brenda Hafera.

   Hafera, assistant director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center, has spearheaded a "Heritage Guide to Historic Sites" to evaluate hundreds of historic sites and museums -- including the Smithsonian's -- for their relative historical accuracy or leftist bias.

   The undertaking is vast, given the scale of the problem, but the new White House report demonstrates just how urgent the need is.

   Americans are proud of what they've achieved in the name of liberty over 250 years -- but if we leave the teaching of our history to progressives, our achievements will forever take second place to our failures.

   Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com.

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