Can the Founding Fathers Help Us Rescue the Culture?

Our joyous Fourth of July holiday — full of big issues like capitalism vs communism, of small wonders like a hologram of Teddy Roosevelt, our 26th president, talking to Donald J. Trump, our 45th & 47th — has left us with one unexpected bonus.

The Founding Fathers are trending again. Amid a culture war between woke and normal, this is no small miracle.

Consider:

Angel Studios released its latest movie, Young George Washington, in theaters on the Fourth of July. To everyone’s surprise, it beat such big studio productions as Supergirl, Disclosure Day and Toy Story 5. The GW movie, a prequel to the more familiar narrative, was so successful that Angel Studios is working on a sequel called 1776.

Meanwhile, the highly promoted Supergirl was sinking in a hole of its own making. The lead actress was trashing the audience for sexism. Said Breitbart’s John Nolte, “Between production and promotion, Warner Bros. sunk around $250 million into Supergirl, which puts the break-even number at around $450 million, which means we’re looking at losses in the hundred million range.”

Talk about ‘Go woke, Go broke!’ Will this finally get Hollywood’s attention?

Today there is an extensive debate on X about the trashing of American history by the Smithsonian Institution, whose 2026 appropriation budget — for salaries and operations — approaches $1 trillion. As a report from the White House Domestic Policy Council made clear today, its exhibits disparage both the founders and the founding, instead cloaking American history in the DEI language of warrior justice.

In my new book, Trump’s Superpower: A Historical Novel About the Founding Fathers & One Founding Mother, I send the founders to the American History Museum, where they are horrified to learn that they were motivated by a desire to keep slaves. At the National Museum of African American History, they learn that “hard work, individualism and the nuclear family are all aspects of white culture.”

After the glorious America250 program that most of the country cheered, liberals claimed that President Trump had “sullied” our history. Sorry, guys, I know you’re trying to make way for your communist revolution, but we’re not buying it.

Elsewhere online, AI depictions of the founders are being interviewed by those with access to the technique. Sovey, an Asian American podcaster, recently interviewed George Washington about driving, men in women’s sports and gender confusion. Glenn Beck also interviews GW, who urges Americans to reclaim morality.

Even more striking is the debate about the founders, and their contributions. This morning I happened on a discussion of whether Lin-Manuel Miranda’s depiction of Alexander Hamilton was a distortion. “He took a man whose whole life was an argument for strong institutions, order, and national credit, and sold him to teenagers as an anti-establishment rebel,” wrote @EchoesOfWarYT. Another points out that John Adams, principal to the founding, is entirely missing from the rapper’s Hamilton.

Elsewhere there are references to presidents who have not had press in many a year. “We have room but for one flag in this country, and that is the American flag.”

The full quote was in a letter TR wrote to the All American Society, read aloud at their meeting the night before his death in January 1919.

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

No wonder TR’s making a comeback.

Our comeback will take longer. We are battling bands of well-funded terrorists. Our children are being fed a steady diet of anti-western propaganda. Out institutions — from the UN to the WHO — are riddled with woke nonsense that will take more than one movie to eradicate. More than once, we have fallen.

But as a young George Washington says to a British commander who dismisses his service during the French & Indian Wars, "Failure is a great teacher."