A destructive senator tearing down our history

One of the good guys in the battle for celebrating America at 250 is PragerU, founded by the Jewish scholar and author Dennis Prager.

But a state senator from Omaha, Nebraska, might not agree. Last week, Michaela Cavanaugh, upset at seeing historical displays outside her office at the State Capitol building in Lincoln, tore them down. She claims she tried not to destroy them as she yanked them off the walls.

Her rationale for removing these things is that, supposedly, nothing should adorn the walls outside of those offices. Although she has since apologized, thankfully, the incident still provides an important teaching moment.

PragerU fits in this story because PragerU created The Founders Museum traveling exhibit on behalf of the White House in order to celebrate the 250th birthday of the nation.

These materials include images of key Founding Fathers and key founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, related to the birth of America.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen posted about this incident, “Celebrating America during our 250th year should be a moment of unity and patriotism, not divisiveness and destructive partisanship. I am disappointed in this shameful and selfish bad example.”

Dennis Prager founded PragerU, which is not a real university giving out real degrees. But it’s a powerhouse of important information on America’s true history (among other subjects). Its hallmark content are 5-minute videos on key subjects, including some on American history.

I interviewed Prager for my Providence Forum film series on America’s Judeo-Christian roots, “The Foundation of American Liberty.” The interview was in 2019, long before they created The Founders Museum.

Prager told our viewers: “Christians rooted in the Jewish Scriptures founded the United States. You cannot say that about any other country. One very good example is the Liberty Bell. … It has only one verse on it, one statement, one anything, except for who made the Bell, and that is from the Torah, from the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. And [America’s founders] knew their Hebrew Scriptures well.”

The Liberty Bell has Leviticus 25:10 (in the King James Version) embossed on it: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.”

Another point Prager made is that secularizing the founders presents a very inaccurate picture: “There are two dishonest ways of depicting the founders. One, that they were deists, and the other is that they wanted a secular society. They wanted a government that was not a theocracy, that is clear. Ultimately, they wanted people to be free to practice their religion and relate to God in their way, and, for that matter, for an atheist to be a free citizen. … But they knew, all of them, except for Tom Paine, all of them knew that without God, this experiment would not work. God is the source of liberty, God is the source of rights, and that is central.”

Interestingly, when Thomas Paine wrote the influential “Common Sense” in 1776, he used the Bible positively to bolster his arguments. But later he became a complete skeptic.

Prager lamented the way history is often presented today, including in our schools: “The American past is erased, except for the isolated awful moments. Kids today are learning how bad America was, but they’re not learning that every country had slavery, every country killed indigenous people, because everybody who made a country often killed the people who were living there. I’m not excusing it; I’m just noting a fact. Where America differed is in its goodness. Badness is universal; goodness is relatively unique. … And there isn’t a kid in an American school who knows that.”

When I asked him if the Bible played an important role in the founding of America, he retorted: “Do bats and gloves play an important part in the founding of baseball? Bats are to baseball what God is to the founding of America, instrumental. There is no baseball game without a baseball and without a bat. There’s no America without God. … We are completely losing our heritage. We were founded to be one nation under God.”

There were a lot of struggles to create the United States of America. There was a great deal of sacrifice to make it all come to be. Much of that sacrifice is not appreciated by many modern Americans today. Tearing down reminders of our heritage, one image at a time, is an example to me of such modern ingratitude.

Perhaps John Adams, our second president, said it best in one of the letters he sent his wife Abigail (April 26, 1777): “Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.”