On Oct. 6, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intent to create a “1776 Commission” to combat “anti-American historical revisionism,” “critical race theorists,” “cancel culture adherents,” and “flag-burning mobs” by promoting “patriotic education.” The commission itself was established a month later, just a day before the election that cost Trump a second term as president. A mere two days before Trump reluctantly left office this week, the commission finally published its report.
Newly inaugurated President Joe Biden has already canceled the commission itself, but the report stands as a disturbing memorial of the Trump era and the modern American conservative movement. Mercifully, it does not propose any particular course of action for imposing “patriotic education”—itself a familiar buzzword from authoritarian states like Russia and China for the imposition of nationalist propaganda. Rather, it is primarily a long-form persuasive essay putting forth a specific narrative of the American founding and American national identity, in direct and explicit opposition to “progressivism” and “identity politics” alike. But most of all, it reads as an attempt to patch back together the fraying fusionist alliance of right-libertarians and conservative Christians—a compromise of social conservatism and economic laissez faire that found its greatest success under President Ronald Reagan—while remaining aligned with Trumpism.
