Re-curating our history

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

When you visit a national history museum, what story should you expect it to tell? WORLD commentator Joe Rigney says that’s no longer a simple question.

JOE RIGNEY: It’s become commonplace to say that many of today’s culture-war battles are really fights over definitions. What is a man? What is a woman? What is a citizen?

But they’re also fights over history.

I visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History with my family earlier this year expecting to revisit the story of America’s founding.

Instead, we found ourselves walking through exhibit after exhibit devoted to today’s political causes.

That experience now has official backing. It comes in a new, 162-page Trump administration report called “Saving America’s Story.” The claim is that activists have captured the museum. The report argues they are telling our history through the lens of race, gender, and sexuality, instead of focusing on the nation itself.

The report says the museum has embraced what it calls “restorative history” … making social justice—not American history—the organizing principle of its exhibits.

The result is striking. The Pilgrims and Puritans are largely absent. The founding generation receives little sustained attention.

Instead, visitors encounter exhibits celebrating illegal immigrant activism and gender ideology. Contemporary political causes have become the museum’s organizing story about America.

Now, every nation has failures that deserve honest examination. A national museum shouldn’t become a shrine to patriotic mythology.

But neither should it become a vehicle for political activism.

A museum of American history ought to tell the American story honestly—with both gratitude and candor. It should help citizens understand the nation they inherited, not persuade them to despise it.

The Trump administration has done the country a service by documenting what is happening. But reports alone aren’t enough. Congress funds the Smithsonian. Its board oversees the institution. If the museum has abandoned its mission, then its leadership should be held accountable.

The Bible reminds us that rewriting history often accompanies abandoning truth. After Aaron fashioned the golden calf, the people declared, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

In turning from the true God, they first rewrote their own past.

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, the battle over our history matters. A nation that teaches its children to be ashamed of its past will eventually find little worth preserving in its future.

For WORLD, I’m Joe Rigney.

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