In his address at Mt. Rushmore on July 3, President Donald Trump warned: "There is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought, struggled, and bled to secure.
"Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they are doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive. But no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them," the president said.
Columnist Roger Kimball, writing for American Greatness on July 4, noted: "Looking back on the 2020 election, historians will say the Mt. Rushmore speech was the moment that Donald Trump won re-election. It was a magnificent speech that will, I predict, take an honored place in the library of great American political addresses."
In his address at the monument that has been targeted for destruction by the leftist mob, Trump said: "Let me also say a word to those in the media, who falsely and consistently label their opponents as racists, who condemn patriotic citizens, who offer a clear and truthful defense of American unity.
"That’s what our people are doing. We want a clear and faithful defense of American history and we want unity. When you level these false charges, you not only slander me, you not only slander the American people, but you slander generations of heroes who gave their lives for America.
"The more you lie, the more you slander, the more you try to demean and divide, the more we will work hard to tell the truth, and we will win."
The president then spoke about the Executive Order he signed Friday to create a monument called the National Garden of American Heroes, an outdoor park featuring statues of American icons.
“We will honor extraordinary citizens from every community and from every place and from every part of our nation. Great men and great women. People that we can look up to forever,” Trump said, adding that many of the names had already been selected.
The president’s speech was, Kimball wrote, "a passionate celebration of American freedom and American greatness — a greatness, he noted, that was embodied by the sublime majesty of the heads of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt sculpted into the granite pinnacle of Mt. Rushmore."
Just as Lincoln had spoke on the eve of civil war, Trump spoke "in the midst of widespread and organized violence against the emblems and the spirit of the American promise," Kimball noted.
Trump "was not content with generalities. He sees deeply into the nature and the source of the forces besieging our country, and he is refreshingly forthright and specific about describing the malady and outlining his intended response," Kimball wrote.
The president in his Mt. Rushmore address challenged politically correct intolerance that has come to be called “cancel culture.”
Kimball wrote: "In essence, cancel culture is the malignant inversion of liberalism’s defining virtues, openness and tolerance. It is born of historical ignorance and a stunning lack of empathy — an ironic fact, since one of the chief premises of cancel culture is its own supposed superior sensitivity.
"In fact, the emotional payload of cancel culture is not more sensitive than its accommodating alternative, just more narcissistic. It operates by proxy, filing claims for redress on behalf of a ghostly population of abstractions: 'indigenous peoples,' slaves of yesteryear, and on and on in an endless litany of complaint."
What is not at all abstract, however, "are the effects of cancel culture," Kimball wrote.
As Trump noted, cancel culture is wielded as a weapon, “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.” In a word, cancel culture is “the very definition of totalitarianism” and is “completely alien to our culture and our values.” It should have “absolutely no place in the United States of America.”
Kimball noted it was at this point where Trump's speech took on a steely seriousness.
“This attack on our liberty must be stopped,” Trump said, “and it will be stopped.”
Kimball noted: "The enemies of civilization routinely use and abuse its freedoms in order to destroy it."
"We know that all of our most pathological cities have been run as Democratic monopolies for decades," Kimball added. "Donald Trump had the temerity to point this out. We know that our public schools are increasingly factories of left-wing, anti-American indoctrination."
The president "had the temerity to point that out as well. The narrative is that Trump is a crude and bumbling ignoramus, but can you imagine Joe Biden or any other Democrat in office today having the moral courage and clarity of mind" to say the following:
The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities run by liberals, is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism and other cultural institutions. Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country — and to believe that the men and women who built it, were not heroes, but villains. The radicals’ view of American History is a web of lies — all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted, and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition."The gospel of the radicals assailing our society today is a gospel of self-abasement," Kimball wrote. "The president preaches a different message: 'We stand tall, we stand proud — and we only kneel to Almighty God.' "
Free Press International
