Trump Plants His Flag on Mount McKinley

We may be seeing the beginning of the end of the war on history.

The Left has waged a decades long effort to fundamentally transform America, to turn the people of this country against their own heritage so that they may redefine our national political and cultural institutions.

That effort reached a crescendo in 2020 as mobs literally tore down pieces of our past. Worse, American and Western “elite” institutions that should have been counted on to defend our past from attack were entirely complicit in the demolition.

Now we are experiencing a remarkable turning of the tide. The American people had already grown fatigued by the hysterical claims of statue demolishers that found a way to indict not only Confederate generals for all of America’s sins, but Abraham Lincoln, the Founding Fathers, and pretty much any once-venerated historical figure.

But now something different is happening. We are no longer fighting a defensive action to preserve whatever shreds of history we can from the iconoclasts.

Among the flurry of executive orders President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office was one called, “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.” The purpose of the order is to “promote the extraordinary heritage of our nation and ensure future generations of American citizens celebrate the legacy of our American heroes.”

Among the specific names chosen to honor American greatness are changing the name of Mount Denali back to Mount McKinley. The name is attributed to President William McKinley, who appears to be a favorite of Trump’s.

“In 1917, the country officially honored President McKinley through the naming of North America’s highest peak,” the order reads. “Yet after nearly a century, President [Barack] Obama’s administration, in 2015, stripped the McKinley name from federal nomenclature, an affront to President McKinley’s life, his achievements, and his sacrifice.”

The order further “honors President McKinley for giving his life for our great Nation and dutifully recognizes his historic legacy of protecting America’s interests and generating enormous wealth for all Americans.”

There has been some pushback on the issue, including from some Alaskan politicians who say the name “Denali” is just respecting the name used by the Koyukon Athabascans.

Perhaps, though I’d say that the name change under Obama was about ideology not some kind of appeal to localism. The mountain has many different names given by many different Alaskan tribes. It was always about wokeness. After everything that’s happened in the last few years, I’d say Americans broadly understand that.

McKinley is an American mountain, and it will have the name of an American president once again.

In addition to bringing McKinley back, Trump’s order will rename the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America,” and commits the executive branch to ensuring that the naming of America’s national and natural treasures will have names that “honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans in our Nation’s rich past.”

This order is a small—certainly symbolic—but significant step in not just saving American history but reaffirming American greatness as the title suggests. The Trump administration has an opportunity to go on offense, to restore the confidence of the American people themselves.

If the Trump restoration is to have lasting impact, this can’t be the end of his symbolic paeans to American history. He should bring back the Garden of American Heroes project. He should make the 250th anniversary event in two years a monumental reaffirmation of American values.

Trump has always been a great showman, but much like America itself, he’s proven that there is some substance to the spectacle.

The Left understood that stripping the United States of the symbols of its past was in important step in making the country turn to noxious ideas like critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion. The message was always, “accept these programs or you are racist, just like your awful ancestors.”

At the end of 2024, Americans of nearly all backgrounds rejected that mantra. They rejected the war on history.

Going forward, it’s essentially the Trump administration give Americans something to be proud of. Make DEI and wokeness and all that nonsense so unappealing that our future countrymen simply won’t believe that the country could have ever turned to such madness.

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