Bring back The 1776 Report

Donald Trump is back, and he promises to bring in a new golden age of unity and prosperity for America. It’s gonna be HUGE. Tremendous. The best. And one of the items on his immediate agenda really does have the potential to bring the country together. President-elect Trump can now immediately reinstate his 1776 Commission, and we should rally around its message.

As you might remember, the once and future president created the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission at the tail end of his first term. Its goal was to promote civic identity and unity, especially in the way that our schools and educators present American history. Largely understood to be a corrective to The New York Times’ revolutionary “1619 Project,” the 1776 Commission brought together academic thinkers and historians, many of whom were associated with Hillsdale College in Michigan, to help Americans tell a better national story. Instead of lamenting America as a fatally flawed nation, the commission’s final report held up the United States as exemplary, founded on virtuous and universal principles. It argued that we should be proud to be Americans.

Sadly, The 1776 Report was quickly buried. President Trump had only called for its creation a few months before the 2020 presidential election, and the report was not released until January 2021, after he lost his reelection bid. It was also after the disastrous events of Jan. 6, 2021, which created an overwhelmingly negative national mood toward the former president. Two days after its publication, the new Biden administration revoked The 1776 Report, and it faded from the public eye.

During its short shelf life, The 1776 Report came under constant criticism from the media and many academic historians. They said it was hagiography, that it minimized America’s flaws, and that it left out important minority groups. When I first read it, I was expecting some sort of comically triumphalist presentation. Instead, what I found was a rather straightforward argument that American identity should not be grounded in race, ethnicity, or class but rather in the universal values expressed by the Declaration of Independence. The heroes held out by the report included not only Thomas Jefferson and George Washington but also Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. Equality and human rights were argued for as essential to the American project. This isn’t weird, I thought. In fact, this is the sort of presentation that would have been entirely commonplace in recent times. For something produced by the joint forces of government and academia, The 1776 Report is amazingly normal.

And despite the outrageous claims that The 1776 Report was racist, it actually makes a powerful argument against the racial identity politics of John C. Calhoun and the Confederacy. Slavery is condemned as fundamentally incompatible with the founding values of America. Yes, the report notes the inconsistencies and tensions that had been present from the beginning of the nation, but it argues that Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were correct, that the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence actually contained the great argument that eventually but necessarily brought about the abolition of slavery.

There is even a section in the report criticizing fascism. There is no dissident extremism, no calling for a dramatic rethinking of the American founding. Instead, the Trump-Hillsdale version of American history foregrounds universal human rights, chiefly freedom and equality, which are accessible to all through the right use of both reason and divine revelation interpreted harmoniously. It holds out limited government and the separation of powers, founded on the common rule of law applicable to all, as “the bedrock upon which the American system is built.” The report says that this is the main reason America is worthy of being defended and celebrated.

Whereas most critics could only see how The 1776 Report criticized left-wing threats, the truth is that the same report also criticizes ideas promoted by the far right. Critical race theory and progressivism are presented as great errors, and so are the ideologies of the Confederacy and Nazi Germany. The main argument throughout The 1776 Report is that American political principles are incompatible with illiberalism, authoritarianism, and identity politics. Universal human rights, grounded in eternal truths, are the true guides. America’s sins are not hidden, but they also aren’t used as an excuse to throw our country under the bus.

Those who actually take the time to read The 1776 Report will see that the American story told by President Trump’s commission is a report for all Americans. It’s the only version of our story that can bring true national pride and unity.