Eric Schmitt’s conservative history isn’t the America I want my kids taught | Opinion
At the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt gave a speech about American history in which the only brown person mentioned was George Floyd, a Black man murdered when a police officer kneeled on his neck for nine minutes over a $20 counterfeit bill.
That’s not the kind of history I want my kids taught.
“We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian Pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith. Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God,” Schmitt thundered.
Actually, as I want my kids taught, we are a lot more than that.
Oh, that’s how it started, true enough. But the American idea was always bigger than the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who invented it and unsuccessfully defended its purity for the last 250 years.
First, America opened to the Catholics and Jews. We let in the Irish and the Italians, who were the brown people of their day. Not good enough, sniffed the WASPs.
Good thing they didn’t get their way, too. Imagine American history without Italians and Irish and Jews. Imagine America without Frank Sinatra. Imagine invading the beaches of Normandy with just the Pilgrims’ kids.
Then America started to open to Blacks who had been dragged from Africa’s shores in chains to baptize a new world in the old world’s universal sin. Send them back to Africa, sniffed the WASPs. It took a cataclysym in which every drop of blood drawn with the lash was answered with one drawn with the minie ball and the bayonet.
Good thing they didn’t get their way. Imagine American history without Blacks. Imagine fighting the battles of America’s Cold War triumph from Korea and Vietnam and on with just the Pilgrims’ kids. Imagine America without Rosa Parks. Imagine our culture with just the Pilgrims’ kids.
Then America started to open to Asians who trickled from their continent to fuel America’s gold rush and build her railroads. A century later, a WASP president put them in camps.
Good thing he didn’t get his way. Imagine American history without Asians. Imagine America’s economy today without the silicone-inspired contributions of the tech immigrants. Imagine America without Jensen Huang, the founder of the most valuable company in our history. Imagine tackling the future with just the Pilgrims’ kids.
For some reason, to Schmitt America is five white guys on a mountain. “On July 4, 2020, as the George Floyd riots raged across our nation, President Trump traveled to Mount Rushmore to address the nation. On our nation’s anniversary, as anarchists looted and defaced and tore down statues and monuments all across the country, the president stood before the granite cliff face and declared: ‘This monument will never be desecrated, these heroes will never be defaced, their legacy will never, ever be destroyed.’”
If you want to know who we are, look no further than the monument that stood behind him. Mount Rushmore took 14 years and hundreds of men to build. They climbed 700 stairs every day to be lowered down on ropes over the cliff face — sometimes in the blazing heat, sometimes in the bitter cold — to carve the faces of our heroes into the side of the great mountain.”
There’s a funny thing about Mount Rushmore. Despite its perilous location, the death-defying contortions of those who carved it and tons and tons of dynamite, nobody died in making it.
That’s not the American history I want my kids taught.
America has always been a flawed nation. We have sinned and suffered and struggled and, yes, died, but we have always triumphed. It is our flaws that make our story heroic. It is our flaws that make our triumphs majestic. It is the fact that America could have turned away from history but didn’t, that makes this the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Schmitt says, “America is not just an abstract ‘proposition,’ but a nation and a people with its own history, heritage and interests.” He’s right.
We are a nation, but our heritage, history and interest are that we are a people who never finish. We are still becoming the people we can be. If we ever settle for being just the same old thing, we’ll have given up on what has always made us great.
That’s not the American history I want my kids to live.
David Mastio is a national columnist for McClatchy and The Kansas City Star.
This story was originally published September 3, 2025 at 6:36 AM.
