June 27, 2026 • 32 mins
Newt talks welcomes Brenda Hafera of The Heritage Foundation to discuss the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites, an interactive website launched ahead of America's 250th anniversary that profiles historic sites across the original 13 colonies, with more states to follow. Hafera and Newt reflect on the power of visiting places like Mount Vernon, Gettysburg, and Independence Hall, where history can be felt rather than just read. The conversation turns to growing efforts to distort America's founding story, including a major foundation's push to remove monuments to figures like Washington and Lincoln in the name of "inclusivity." Hafera explains why preserving accurate, accessible history at the local level is essential to civic education and to passing on an informed, grounded patriotism to the next generation.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to News World Podcasts on the iHeart podcast Network.
The greatest American inventions today the invention that put the
power of computation in the hands of ordinary people, not governments,
not corporations, ordinary people. That was a radical idea, and
it changed everything the personal computer. For the first thirty
(00:29):
years of the computer age, a computer was a room.
It occupied thousands of square feet, required teams of trained operators,
and was owned by governments and large corporations. The idea
an individual might own one was simply absurd to most
people in the industry. Then, in January of nineteen seventy five,
(00:51):
Popular Electronics magazine put the Altair eighty eight hundred on
its cover. A kit computer, four one hundred and thirty nine,
no keyboard, no screen, no operating system. You programmed it
by flipping switches on the front panel. The magazine sold out.
(01:11):
The company was overwhelmed with orders. Among the readers was
a twenty year old Harvard student named Bill Gates and
his friend Paul Allen. They saw that a computer without
software is useless. They called the manufacturer told them they
were writing an interpreter for it. They were bluffing. They
hadn't written a line, then spent the next eight weeks
(01:33):
building one he had worked. They founded Microsoft also galvanized
an engineer in Silicon Valley named Steve Wozniak who showed
his personal computer designs to his employer, Hewlett Packard. HP
declined Sosniak partner with his friend Steve Jobs, and they
(01:53):
founded an Apple in a garage in Los Altos, California,
in nineteen seventy six. The Apple too, introduced in nineteen
seventy seven, was genuinely new, the first mass market personal
computer with a building keyboard, a color display, and an
(02:17):
open architecture that let others build software for it. Busyicalc
the first spreadsheet ran on the Apple two and was
by itself enough justification for businesses to buy the machine.
It did in minutes what accounts that spent hours doing
by hand. Then, in nineteen eighty one, IBM entered the market.
(02:41):
When IBM released its PC, it sent a signal to
the entire business world personal computers are legitimate. The floodgates open.
IBM made a fateful decision. Rather than designing proprietary components,
they used off the shelf parts and since then operating
system from Microsoft that meant the architecture could be copied
(03:05):
by the manufacturers, and it was prolifically. The IBM compatible
PC became the dominant standard. MICROSOFT'SDS and later Windows ran
on hundreds of millions of machines. The nineteen eighties and
nineteen nineties brought the personal computer into American homes and
(03:25):
offices at a pace and no one had predicted. Word
processing replaced the typewriter, spreadsheets replaced the ledgerbook, Desktop publishing
let small organizations produce professional documents without a printing press,
and as the Internet arrived in the mid nineteen nineties,
the personal computer became the gateway to a new world.
(03:50):
I want to reflect on them what this revolution tells
us about how innovation happens. The conventional wisdom in nineteen
seventy five was that computers were for institutions. The experts
understood computers has large shared resources. The idea of a
personal computer violated their intuition about what the technology was for.
(04:12):
It took outsiders to see things differently. Bill Gates was
a college student Steve Wozniak who was an engineer who
couldn't get his employer interested. Steve Jobs was a college
dropout They didn't have decades of received wisdom telling them
what a computer is supposed to be. They looked to
what was becoming possible and imagined something new. This is
(04:35):
a recurring pattern in American innovation. The people who change
industries are often not the people who run them. The
people who see what's coming are often the ones who
are the least invested in what's already here. That's uncomfortable
for incumbents, and it's the engine of American economic dynamism.
Next time, we follow another kind of innovation, not a device,
(04:59):
but system, the invention that didn't just make one product affordable,
it made everything affordable. The moving assembly line coming up.
Brendan Hafera. She is the Assistant Director and research Fellow
for the Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
(05:23):
That's next ahead of the two hundred and fiftieth Anniversity
United States, The Heritage Foundation has launched a new website
and interactive experience, the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites. The
website is historic Sites dot Heritage dot org. They profile
(05:48):
historic sites in the first thirteen colonies. And I am
really pleased to say that I help with this project
with a focus on Gettisberg. Brenda, welcome and thank you
for joining us in this world.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
It's a real pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Before we get into the Heritage Guide, I just have
to ask you, Remema, how did you get involved with
this and what's your background?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
So my background is an American political thought. I got
to study primarily the American Founding George Washington, James Madison,
with a fair dose of history, of course, because those
two things go hand in hand. So I studied the
American Founding and that's my first and great love, as
I tell people. So it really came out of that
(06:32):
my personal experience of going.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
To historic sites and like a lot of people, seeing
that sometimes things had gone awry.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I think this is an important project, and I should
mention that the Heritage Foundation is probably the pre eminent
conservative intellectual center in the United States, a remarkable institution
which I've been involved with almost from the very beginning.
It's totally appropriate that Heritage were this project describe for
(07:02):
us the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
So it's an online interactive map that's geared towards tourists specifically,
and most importantly parents and grandparents and teachers thinking about
leading class trips to historic sites across the country. So
the main web page is an interactive map that pinpoints
(07:26):
notable significant historic sites. We've just launched sites in the
thirteen original colonies. We'll be launching sites in every state
plus the District of Columbia in early twenty twenty six,
so people have time to plan your summer vacations and
figure out where you're going to go to commemorate America
to fifty this summer. So that's the main page, and
(07:48):
then each site has an individual page that offers book recommendations,
that explains why the site is significant, that gives people
a sense of what to expel. You know, what are
the main toures, what are the main exhibits there, So
you're kind of giving some help with navigating the site.
And then considerations for families because it's really geared towards parents.
(08:11):
Parents with young children. You know, you might not consider
going to this exhibit, not because it's inaccurate, but because
it might not be age appropriate if you have young kids,
So drawing attention to that, and then also unfortunately the
ideological problems that are sometimes occurring of sites that teach
LGBTQ plus history and alerting parents and families to that content.
(08:34):
So that's the positive side of it, I would say.
And then there's the accountability piece that each site is
given a grade of historical accuracy a B or C
based on accuracy and comprehension, ideological bias, and proportionality. So
the evaluations the individual site page also alert if there
(08:56):
are historical distortions going on at the sites.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I think that's particularly important because under Obama and Biden
there was a real effort to rewrite American history. If
you will take just a minute, talk about the challenges
you faced in dealing with that.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yes, so this big project was a bit of an
extension of other works. So in twenty twenty two, I
released a report on Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Montpelier called
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, with Mount Vernon
being the good, Monticello being the bad, and Montpelier being
the ugly. So very sadly, today, if you go to
(09:36):
Montpelier there are no exhibits aimed at James Madison and
explaining his contributions and accomplishments to the American experiment. And
that's a problem, I would say.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Well, I would the Board of Montpelier not be describing
the person whose house it was.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
So part of this story, I think is what's happened
in the country overall that you mentioned since twenty twenty two.
It's been described as the great awokening right of movements
towards critical race theory, towards DEI revisionist history, and sites
of museums have gotten swept up in that movement. And
then there's the individual story of what had happened at
(10:16):
sites like Montpalier, and Montpailier invited associates of the Southern
Poverty Law Center in helping with the exhibits, and if
you look at the curriculum of the SPLC and the
exhibits at Montpelier, they're very similar. And then there was
a change in leadership where what was called the Montpailier
(10:37):
Descendants Committee argued that descendants of those who were enslaved
should have half the seats on the board. But if
you look at their guidelines, how they'd find descendants is
those who are genealogical descendants, but anyone who feels connected
to the institution, whether they know of a genealogical connection
(10:57):
or not. So it was really politically motivated and they
put together the s rubric a few years back on
how to teach slavery engage with descendants at historic sites,
and they say things like, it's not enough to discuss
the humanity and contributions of the enslaved, you also have
to unpack and interrogate white supremacy. So it's really the
(11:21):
shift of we're going to tell history the full story
to we're going to engage in political activism and use
museums and historic sites to do so.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
If a parent or a grandparent taking their children around,
if they turn to heritage, do you sort of help
describe each of these in a way that gets them
back to the original American meaning.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
So one of the advantages of this guide is we
have sent evaluators whose background matches the particular site. So,
for example, a poet review edgar Allan Poe's house, and
that's really lovely because it brings a unique perspective, a
really valuable perspective. But it also helps with that accountability piece,
(12:11):
because when you go to historic sites there are sometimes
obvious distortions, Like Montpailier puts forth that the Constitution is
a pro slavery document, and you might be aware of that,
or other sites like Monticello claim that all men are
created equal meant white property owning men, and so a
(12:31):
casual visitor might say that's that's inaccurate and be aware
of it. But then they're the unknown unknowns, right of
no one can be an expert in all areas of history,
and you're going to this historic site to learn, and
you might not even be aware that things are amok.
So to give one example, at Montpelier, in their constitution exhibit,
(12:55):
they point to the domestic and Insurrection clause and say
that's primarily about slaver volts, and it certainly would have
applied to slaver volts, but the impetus for that was
Shay's rebellion, right, because the founders realized that the Articles
of Confederation were too weak. They didn't have those basic
police powers, and that was something they needed to include.
(13:18):
So there's that historical context. And then Mopelier also lists
five slaver volts to try and back up their thesis,
and three of them happened after the Constitution was written,
so they're those sorts of distortions were pointing out in
the guide.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I should say along that line that The first real
use of the Insiration Act actually involved Western Pennsylvania whiskey distillers,
had nothing to do with slavery, and was an effort
to challenge the authority of George Washington and the federal government,
and Washington as a result, I think, called out thirteen
thousand militia in order to convince them that they had
(13:58):
to back down, which they did at that point, but
it had nothing to do with slavery.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
I don't know if people were considered taking everything you've
already learned and really producing a book that says, this
is what the woke left says, this is what historically happened.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
I think that's part of what this project does. The
advantage of doing it online is it's easier to update.
Right There is a form at the bottom of each
page that allows people to indicate if a site has
changed since we were last there, so we can update
it regularly. We can keep up to date with things.
They can recommend another site that we should go to,
(14:36):
or they can voice disagreement, so that allows us to
actually crowdsource some of this work to the American public,
which I think is an advantage.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Part of what you mean by interactive is literally they
can interact with the Heritage Foundation. That's right, as well
as interacting with the website.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yep, that's a good point. You can reach us.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
One of the great breakthroughs that Heritage over the last
twenty five years is how much it's now a grassroots organization,
not just an intellectual organization when you go through this process.
In your opinion, how much is the two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the deac closure independency. How much will
that increase public curiosity about American history and about how
(15:31):
we became the country that we are.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Anniversaries are times to reflect, and we all know the
state of civic education. We're aware of the statistics of
For example, three out of four members of gen Z
believe the founding fathers could be more aptly described as
villains rather than heroes. So I think America two fifty
(15:54):
is a unique opportunity to rediscover the American story, to
discover our history, to revisit the principles that were dedicated
to Calvin Coolidge gave a superb speech on the occasion
of our one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, and he said
something to the effect of you know, there's no progress
(16:16):
beyond the proposition that all men are created equal. If
anyone wants to deny the truth of that claim, they're
not going to proceed forward. They're going to proceed backward
historically to a time where there's no individual rights, no
consent of the people. And I think that's a tremendous point,
(16:37):
that these are eternal principles, that they're true, and they're
true for all men at all times, at Abraham Lincoln says,
So returning to that history, I think is so incredibly
important for us as a people.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
It's really vital in a free society for citizens to
have a sense of the core values that make up
their country, because in dictatorships it doesn't matter much because
the dictator doesn't care what you think. But in a
free society, having an informed citizenry is really really important
(17:14):
because ultimately, if you're going to have government of the people,
by the people, and for the people in Lincoln's formula,
the people had better be pretty knowledgeable because they're going
to have a dramatically bigger impact on their country's future
than they would if they were in a dictatorship. And
I think what you're doing in that sense is really important.
Do you hope to see families actually sort of take
(17:38):
this site and then use it to plan out a
summer trip and be able to go around from historic
site to historic site.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yes, that's the goal. So right now we have about
forty five sites available on the website in those thirteen
original colonies. We're aiming to release the full map around
February of next year, so the timing is good, so
families will be able to plan those summer vacations and
figure out where they're going to go to celebrate America
(18:07):
to fifty and there'll be about one hundred and thirty
five sites at that time. So this is a state
driven project, and that's particularly because you know, we believe
in federalism here at the Heritage Foundation. We believe that
there are a lot of sites, especially the local and
state sites, that are still doing a very good job
(18:27):
and stewarding our history well, and we want to recognize
those sites. And our hope is also that in doing
it this way, that there'll be at least one site
in every state. Families will be able to find one
that's within driving distance, right because most families can't afford
airline tickets to come to DC and go to the Smithsonians.
(18:48):
And also there's real value and going to the places
where history really happened.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
I like the Smithsonians. They bring together history that occurred elsewhere.
But there's something about going to Mount Vernon, Right, there's
only one Mount Vernon. This is where Washington really lived.
And you get a sense of his character as you're
walking through there and you see the paintings of the
(19:16):
Potomac for example, and Washington really took up the Potomac
River Project, which was having waterways and roads that connected
the country because he thought that was really important for
national unity and to be able to converse and interact
with your fellow citizens. So these sites teach you things
(19:37):
that you don't know. They teach you things about the
character of the American people.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Every time I'm there and I think about Washington literally
physically being them. And this was his home, this was
where he was a farmer. You can actually stand where
they stood, and I think it brings to life history
in a way that Sweeting in the book doesn't have
the same impact.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I completely agree.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
There's something humbling about it. To be in those locations.
It helps give you a sense of gratitude for the
sacrifice of these men and women who built this country.
My personal experience, and this is again why I think
this project is so important. I remember going to Gettysburg
when I was a kid. Good things come from Pennsylvania.
(20:27):
I grew up in Pennsylvania and that was our historic
site that I went to. So thank you for reviewing that.
And I remembered seeing the cyclorama and how cool that was,
and my dad thought it was the best thing in
the world. And he said, you know, we have to
come back and we have to spend six days here
so we can trace three days of the battle from
(20:48):
the Union side and three days of the battle from
the Confederate side. It explains so much of how I
am today. But it sticks in your mind, right, Those
things stick in your mind as a child, you remember
that experience.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Guttisburgh, I think is just in terms of learning, one
of the most amazing places to go and to see
how the battle unfolded. It's all physically right there. You
really can get pretty good sense of what happened in
those three days, which were in many ways decisive about
(21:32):
whether or not the Union would survive or whether we
would break into two different countries to go to a
place like Gettysburgh to realize the sacrifices that people made,
their willingness to put their lives on the line for
an idea, for the idea of freedom, the idea that
our rights come from God. It's I think an amazing experience.
(21:53):
And I think that the ability to go to the
Heritage website then think about what you want to do
this summer or some future summer where you want to
take your children or your friends to go and experience
history is a very important public service by the Heritage Foundation.
You are a key part of public education in a
(22:15):
different way than we mean by bureaucratic school based education.
How do you see that as part of the Heritage
Foundation mission?
Speaker 3 (22:23):
So I think that's such an important point. You know,
civic education doesn't just happen in the classroom, and sadly
these days it happens in the classroom less and less
so historic sites. This is why they're so important. There
are places of public education where we go with our
families to learn the American story. And so this map
(22:46):
as a whole is telling the American story through place.
It includes things like Gettysburg, Antietam, the battlefields It includes
things like Edgar Allan Poe's House and Mark Twain's house,
these notable figures literature and art. It includes the spirit
of American enterprise because they're the Right Brothers Memorial and
(23:07):
we carry that forward to the Challenger and that's part
of our DNA as Americans and what that says about us.
And I think that's incredibly important one for families because
it's a touch grass opportunity that is coming increasingly rare
that grandparents, parents and children can all do together. And
(23:29):
those real world activities are very, very important, and it's
important for the individual in that showing our children these
heroes of something to aspire to. It motivates them right
as opposed to always saying that you're a victim or
that this country is not good. And then it's important
for our civic component. Part of the reason these places
(23:53):
are a target is that transforming them is a way
to transform America. It's not simply that Madison's Home is
about Madison, and he deserves our gratitude. He was a
remarkable American who did a great deal. But his home
also stands for the Constitution, and that's part of why
(24:13):
it's so important and part of why it's a target.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
I do think in that sense that there's been a
real effort on the left to undermine and deliberately distored
and weaken the whole sense of being American. Do you
have that same feeling.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I do, sadly a certain segment I think it is.
I'm still hopeful that it's a very loud and active minority.
But I do believe that it's a deliberate effort. It's
not simply a lack of conscientiousness.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I don't think it's just a random effort to get
to a quote more accurate understanding. I think it's an
effort to replace the accurate understanding with a deliberately eyedda
iological bias that would basically create a false history and
(25:07):
profoundly mislead us about how the world works. And that's
why I think what you're doing is fundamental to the
survival of free society. If we don't have some kind
of grounded truth, we can't function in the long run.
And I think what Heritage is trying to do is
(25:27):
reassert historic facts and historic truths at a time when
there has been an astonishingly large effort by our elites
to convince us about a false history and a false
narrative as a country. And that's why I think what
you're doing is historically very important.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
I completely agree. We can't let go of the truth
of equal human dignity. If we let go of that,
if we let go of natural law, I think we
fundamentally change who we are the people. And I think
it's absolutely correct that this is a deliberate effort. One
example of this is the Andrew Mellon Foundation is the
(26:09):
largest donor to arts and humanities in the country, and
they've dedicated five hundred million dollars to transforming our monument's landscape.
And they say it's very much from a postmodernist lens
that we need to take down monuments because there are
no LGBTQ plus individuals in the list of the top
(26:32):
fifty people most often commemorated, So the top two are
Washington and Lincoln. And so what that would involve is
removing statues of Washington and Lincoln to replace them with
other people, which is not historically accurate. At a certain point,
actually inclusivity and historical accuracy but against one another. And
(26:56):
you have to make a choice of we can't bend
history to make it match inclusivity. That's not accurate, right,
Lincoln and Washington did great things for this country, and
so I think it is a movement. And they say
also in their guide, you know, we have a history
of a people as taking down monuments, and the example
(27:18):
they note is taking down the statue of King George
during the American Revolution. But I think it's important to
point out that was a regime change, right, that meant
a fundamentally different country. And I think there are people
that's what they're after, right, they want to transform the country.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
No, I think that's right, and that's why Heritage and
its effort to create a guide which allows people to
see accurate history is directly engaged in the survival of
the United States as a country and as a culture
and as a set of values. And I think what
(28:01):
you're doing in that sense is amazing. I mean ask
you Allen not saying, which is, if you look back, say,
ten years from now, how will you know if the
Heritage Guide to Historic Sites has been a worthwhile and
effective project.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
This is a very good question. I think my hope
is maybe to illustrate this. I have three different visions
in my mind of what could happen. So there's the
negative experience, which is parents take their children to Montpellier
and the only exhibit for kids is one on race
(28:37):
and Slavery to teach children about race and slavery with books,
all of which were recommended by the Southern Poverty Law Center,
and one of those books encourages children to imagine themselves
not as the victim, but as the aggressor whipping a
slave into quote his flesh cried blood, with a picture
(29:00):
of a man hanging from a rope with his back
bloodied from whip marks. And that's the experience that children
have when they go to Montpelier, and it doesn't inculcate gratitude,
it doesn't inspire them, it doesn't make them want to
be strong and gracious individuals. That's one vision. The other
(29:22):
vision is a vision where those things are simply lost.
Our historic sites are gone and there's no opportunity for
families to go to them and learn. And then there's
the positive vision, right of being able to go to
Mount Vernon and learn about how Washington formed an American
(29:44):
national character, and being able to go to Monticello and
learn about how Jefferson gave expression to the American mind,
and how in Lincoln's words, we owe all honor to
Jefferson for introducing into a merely revolutionary document a principle
(30:05):
applicable to all men and all times. And then to
go to Montbaillier and learn how this Virginia scholar was
first and foremost an American patriot and he became the
father of the Constitution and made possible the miracle of Philadelphia.
That's what I want. And if we're able to do
(30:27):
that for America's children, for the next generation, I will
consider this guy to success.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Let me commend you because you have described a life
of moral purpose which all of us can be impressed
by and can aspire to. And I should remind everybody
everybody listening can go to historic Sites dot Heritage dot
org and see the remarkable work that Brenda has launched,
(30:55):
and can take their families and their friends and go
to these historic sites and know that they have an
introduction to them that is historically accurate, faithful to the
American culture, and an important contribution to an informed, educated patriotism.
And Brenda, I just want to thank you personally for
(31:15):
dedicating so much of your life to working to sustain
America and help pursue the truth so every American can
have a chance to learn what made this sense a
remarkable country.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Well, thank you for being part of it. It would
not have been possible without evaluators like you who were
willing to go out and defend the principle and the
history and the country that we all love.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Thank you to my guest, Brenda Hafera. Newts World is
produced by Gettinglish three sixty in iHeartMedia, our executive producers
Guarncie Sloane, our researchers Rachel Peterson. Special thanks to the team
at Gingish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I
hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us
with five stars and give us a review so others
(32:05):
can learn what it's all about. Join me on substack
at Gingrich three sixty dot net. I'm new Gingrich. This
is neut World.
Welcome to News World Podcasts on the iHeart podcast Network.
The greatest American inventions today the invention that put the
power of computation in the hands of ordinary people, not governments,
not corporations, ordinary people. That was a radical idea, and
it changed everything the personal computer. For the first thirty
(00:29):
years of the computer age, a computer was a room.
It occupied thousands of square feet, required teams of trained operators,
and was owned by governments and large corporations. The idea
an individual might own one was simply absurd to most
people in the industry. Then, in January of nineteen seventy five,
(00:51):
Popular Electronics magazine put the Altair eighty eight hundred on
its cover. A kit computer, four one hundred and thirty nine,
no keyboard, no screen, no operating system. You programmed it
by flipping switches on the front panel. The magazine sold out.
(01:11):
The company was overwhelmed with orders. Among the readers was
a twenty year old Harvard student named Bill Gates and
his friend Paul Allen. They saw that a computer without
software is useless. They called the manufacturer told them they
were writing an interpreter for it. They were bluffing. They
hadn't written a line, then spent the next eight weeks
(01:33):
building one he had worked. They founded Microsoft also galvanized
an engineer in Silicon Valley named Steve Wozniak who showed
his personal computer designs to his employer, Hewlett Packard. HP
declined Sosniak partner with his friend Steve Jobs, and they
(01:53):
founded an Apple in a garage in Los Altos, California,
in nineteen seventy six. The Apple too, introduced in nineteen
seventy seven, was genuinely new, the first mass market personal
computer with a building keyboard, a color display, and an
(02:17):
open architecture that let others build software for it. Busyicalc
the first spreadsheet ran on the Apple two and was
by itself enough justification for businesses to buy the machine.
It did in minutes what accounts that spent hours doing
by hand. Then, in nineteen eighty one, IBM entered the market.
(02:41):
When IBM released its PC, it sent a signal to
the entire business world personal computers are legitimate. The floodgates open.
IBM made a fateful decision. Rather than designing proprietary components,
they used off the shelf parts and since then operating
system from Microsoft that meant the architecture could be copied
(03:05):
by the manufacturers, and it was prolifically. The IBM compatible
PC became the dominant standard. MICROSOFT'SDS and later Windows ran
on hundreds of millions of machines. The nineteen eighties and
nineteen nineties brought the personal computer into American homes and
(03:25):
offices at a pace and no one had predicted. Word
processing replaced the typewriter, spreadsheets replaced the ledgerbook, Desktop publishing
let small organizations produce professional documents without a printing press,
and as the Internet arrived in the mid nineteen nineties,
the personal computer became the gateway to a new world.
(03:50):
I want to reflect on them what this revolution tells
us about how innovation happens. The conventional wisdom in nineteen
seventy five was that computers were for institutions. The experts
understood computers has large shared resources. The idea of a
personal computer violated their intuition about what the technology was for.
(04:12):
It took outsiders to see things differently. Bill Gates was
a college student Steve Wozniak who was an engineer who
couldn't get his employer interested. Steve Jobs was a college
dropout They didn't have decades of received wisdom telling them
what a computer is supposed to be. They looked to
what was becoming possible and imagined something new. This is
(04:35):
a recurring pattern in American innovation. The people who change
industries are often not the people who run them. The
people who see what's coming are often the ones who
are the least invested in what's already here. That's uncomfortable
for incumbents, and it's the engine of American economic dynamism.
Next time, we follow another kind of innovation, not a device,
(04:59):
but system, the invention that didn't just make one product affordable,
it made everything affordable. The moving assembly line coming up.
Brendan Hafera. She is the Assistant Director and research Fellow
for the Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
(05:23):
That's next ahead of the two hundred and fiftieth Anniversity
United States, The Heritage Foundation has launched a new website
and interactive experience, the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites. The
website is historic Sites dot Heritage dot org. They profile
(05:48):
historic sites in the first thirteen colonies. And I am
really pleased to say that I help with this project
with a focus on Gettisberg. Brenda, welcome and thank you
for joining us in this world.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
It's a real pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Before we get into the Heritage Guide, I just have
to ask you, Remema, how did you get involved with
this and what's your background?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
So my background is an American political thought. I got
to study primarily the American Founding George Washington, James Madison,
with a fair dose of history, of course, because those
two things go hand in hand. So I studied the
American Founding and that's my first and great love, as
I tell people. So it really came out of that
(06:32):
my personal experience of going.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
To historic sites and like a lot of people, seeing
that sometimes things had gone awry.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I think this is an important project, and I should
mention that the Heritage Foundation is probably the pre eminent
conservative intellectual center in the United States, a remarkable institution
which I've been involved with almost from the very beginning.
It's totally appropriate that Heritage were this project describe for
(07:02):
us the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
So it's an online interactive map that's geared towards tourists specifically,
and most importantly parents and grandparents and teachers thinking about
leading class trips to historic sites across the country. So
the main web page is an interactive map that pinpoints
(07:26):
notable significant historic sites. We've just launched sites in the
thirteen original colonies. We'll be launching sites in every state
plus the District of Columbia in early twenty twenty six,
so people have time to plan your summer vacations and
figure out where you're going to go to commemorate America
to fifty this summer. So that's the main page, and
(07:48):
then each site has an individual page that offers book recommendations,
that explains why the site is significant, that gives people
a sense of what to expel. You know, what are
the main toures, what are the main exhibits there, So
you're kind of giving some help with navigating the site.
And then considerations for families because it's really geared towards parents.
(08:11):
Parents with young children. You know, you might not consider
going to this exhibit, not because it's inaccurate, but because
it might not be age appropriate if you have young kids,
So drawing attention to that, and then also unfortunately the
ideological problems that are sometimes occurring of sites that teach
LGBTQ plus history and alerting parents and families to that content.
(08:34):
So that's the positive side of it, I would say.
And then there's the accountability piece that each site is
given a grade of historical accuracy a B or C
based on accuracy and comprehension, ideological bias, and proportionality. So
the evaluations the individual site page also alert if there
(08:56):
are historical distortions going on at the sites.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I think that's particularly important because under Obama and Biden
there was a real effort to rewrite American history. If
you will take just a minute, talk about the challenges
you faced in dealing with that.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yes, so this big project was a bit of an
extension of other works. So in twenty twenty two, I
released a report on Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Montpelier called
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, with Mount Vernon
being the good, Monticello being the bad, and Montpelier being
the ugly. So very sadly, today, if you go to
(09:36):
Montpelier there are no exhibits aimed at James Madison and
explaining his contributions and accomplishments to the American experiment. And
that's a problem, I would say.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Well, I would the Board of Montpelier not be describing
the person whose house it was.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
So part of this story, I think is what's happened
in the country overall that you mentioned since twenty twenty two.
It's been described as the great awokening right of movements
towards critical race theory, towards DEI revisionist history, and sites
of museums have gotten swept up in that movement. And
then there's the individual story of what had happened at
(10:16):
sites like Montpalier, and Montpailier invited associates of the Southern
Poverty Law Center in helping with the exhibits, and if
you look at the curriculum of the SPLC and the
exhibits at Montpelier, they're very similar. And then there was
a change in leadership where what was called the Montpailier
(10:37):
Descendants Committee argued that descendants of those who were enslaved
should have half the seats on the board. But if
you look at their guidelines, how they'd find descendants is
those who are genealogical descendants, but anyone who feels connected
to the institution, whether they know of a genealogical connection
(10:57):
or not. So it was really politically motivated and they
put together the s rubric a few years back on
how to teach slavery engage with descendants at historic sites,
and they say things like, it's not enough to discuss
the humanity and contributions of the enslaved, you also have
to unpack and interrogate white supremacy. So it's really the
(11:21):
shift of we're going to tell history the full story
to we're going to engage in political activism and use
museums and historic sites to do so.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
If a parent or a grandparent taking their children around,
if they turn to heritage, do you sort of help
describe each of these in a way that gets them
back to the original American meaning.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
So one of the advantages of this guide is we
have sent evaluators whose background matches the particular site. So,
for example, a poet review edgar Allan Poe's house, and
that's really lovely because it brings a unique perspective, a
really valuable perspective. But it also helps with that accountability piece,
(12:11):
because when you go to historic sites there are sometimes
obvious distortions, Like Montpailier puts forth that the Constitution is
a pro slavery document, and you might be aware of that,
or other sites like Monticello claim that all men are
created equal meant white property owning men, and so a
(12:31):
casual visitor might say that's that's inaccurate and be aware
of it. But then they're the unknown unknowns, right of
no one can be an expert in all areas of history,
and you're going to this historic site to learn, and
you might not even be aware that things are amok.
So to give one example, at Montpelier, in their constitution exhibit,
(12:55):
they point to the domestic and Insurrection clause and say
that's primarily about slaver volts, and it certainly would have
applied to slaver volts, but the impetus for that was
Shay's rebellion, right, because the founders realized that the Articles
of Confederation were too weak. They didn't have those basic
police powers, and that was something they needed to include.
(13:18):
So there's that historical context. And then Mopelier also lists
five slaver volts to try and back up their thesis,
and three of them happened after the Constitution was written,
so they're those sorts of distortions were pointing out in
the guide.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I should say along that line that The first real
use of the Insiration Act actually involved Western Pennsylvania whiskey distillers,
had nothing to do with slavery, and was an effort
to challenge the authority of George Washington and the federal government,
and Washington as a result, I think, called out thirteen
thousand militia in order to convince them that they had
(13:58):
to back down, which they did at that point, but
it had nothing to do with slavery.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
I don't know if people were considered taking everything you've
already learned and really producing a book that says, this
is what the woke left says, this is what historically happened.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
I think that's part of what this project does. The
advantage of doing it online is it's easier to update.
Right There is a form at the bottom of each
page that allows people to indicate if a site has
changed since we were last there, so we can update
it regularly. We can keep up to date with things.
They can recommend another site that we should go to,
(14:36):
or they can voice disagreement, so that allows us to
actually crowdsource some of this work to the American public,
which I think is an advantage.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Part of what you mean by interactive is literally they
can interact with the Heritage Foundation. That's right, as well
as interacting with the website.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yep, that's a good point. You can reach us.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
One of the great breakthroughs that Heritage over the last
twenty five years is how much it's now a grassroots organization,
not just an intellectual organization when you go through this process.
In your opinion, how much is the two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the deac closure independency. How much will
that increase public curiosity about American history and about how
(15:31):
we became the country that we are.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Anniversaries are times to reflect, and we all know the
state of civic education. We're aware of the statistics of
For example, three out of four members of gen Z
believe the founding fathers could be more aptly described as
villains rather than heroes. So I think America two fifty
(15:54):
is a unique opportunity to rediscover the American story, to
discover our history, to revisit the principles that were dedicated
to Calvin Coolidge gave a superb speech on the occasion
of our one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, and he said
something to the effect of you know, there's no progress
(16:16):
beyond the proposition that all men are created equal. If
anyone wants to deny the truth of that claim, they're
not going to proceed forward. They're going to proceed backward
historically to a time where there's no individual rights, no
consent of the people. And I think that's a tremendous point,
(16:37):
that these are eternal principles, that they're true, and they're
true for all men at all times, at Abraham Lincoln says,
So returning to that history, I think is so incredibly
important for us as a people.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
It's really vital in a free society for citizens to
have a sense of the core values that make up
their country, because in dictatorships it doesn't matter much because
the dictator doesn't care what you think. But in a
free society, having an informed citizenry is really really important
(17:14):
because ultimately, if you're going to have government of the people,
by the people, and for the people in Lincoln's formula,
the people had better be pretty knowledgeable because they're going
to have a dramatically bigger impact on their country's future
than they would if they were in a dictatorship. And
I think what you're doing in that sense is really important.
Do you hope to see families actually sort of take
(17:38):
this site and then use it to plan out a
summer trip and be able to go around from historic
site to historic site.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yes, that's the goal. So right now we have about
forty five sites available on the website in those thirteen
original colonies. We're aiming to release the full map around
February of next year, so the timing is good, so
families will be able to plan those summer vacations and
figure out where they're going to go to celebrate America
(18:07):
to fifty and there'll be about one hundred and thirty
five sites at that time. So this is a state
driven project, and that's particularly because you know, we believe
in federalism here at the Heritage Foundation. We believe that
there are a lot of sites, especially the local and
state sites, that are still doing a very good job
(18:27):
and stewarding our history well, and we want to recognize
those sites. And our hope is also that in doing
it this way, that there'll be at least one site
in every state. Families will be able to find one
that's within driving distance, right because most families can't afford
airline tickets to come to DC and go to the Smithsonians.
(18:48):
And also there's real value and going to the places
where history really happened.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
I like the Smithsonians. They bring together history that occurred elsewhere.
But there's something about going to Mount Vernon, Right, there's
only one Mount Vernon. This is where Washington really lived.
And you get a sense of his character as you're
walking through there and you see the paintings of the
(19:16):
Potomac for example, and Washington really took up the Potomac
River Project, which was having waterways and roads that connected
the country because he thought that was really important for
national unity and to be able to converse and interact
with your fellow citizens. So these sites teach you things
(19:37):
that you don't know. They teach you things about the
character of the American people.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Every time I'm there and I think about Washington literally
physically being them. And this was his home, this was
where he was a farmer. You can actually stand where
they stood, and I think it brings to life history
in a way that Sweeting in the book doesn't have
the same impact.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I completely agree.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
There's something humbling about it. To be in those locations.
It helps give you a sense of gratitude for the
sacrifice of these men and women who built this country.
My personal experience, and this is again why I think
this project is so important. I remember going to Gettysburg
when I was a kid. Good things come from Pennsylvania.
(20:27):
I grew up in Pennsylvania and that was our historic
site that I went to. So thank you for reviewing that.
And I remembered seeing the cyclorama and how cool that was,
and my dad thought it was the best thing in
the world. And he said, you know, we have to
come back and we have to spend six days here
so we can trace three days of the battle from
(20:48):
the Union side and three days of the battle from
the Confederate side. It explains so much of how I
am today. But it sticks in your mind, right, Those
things stick in your mind as a child, you remember
that experience.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Guttisburgh, I think is just in terms of learning, one
of the most amazing places to go and to see
how the battle unfolded. It's all physically right there. You
really can get pretty good sense of what happened in
those three days, which were in many ways decisive about
(21:32):
whether or not the Union would survive or whether we
would break into two different countries to go to a
place like Gettysburgh to realize the sacrifices that people made,
their willingness to put their lives on the line for
an idea, for the idea of freedom, the idea that
our rights come from God. It's I think an amazing experience.
(21:53):
And I think that the ability to go to the
Heritage website then think about what you want to do
this summer or some future summer where you want to
take your children or your friends to go and experience
history is a very important public service by the Heritage Foundation.
You are a key part of public education in a
(22:15):
different way than we mean by bureaucratic school based education.
How do you see that as part of the Heritage
Foundation mission?
Speaker 3 (22:23):
So I think that's such an important point. You know,
civic education doesn't just happen in the classroom, and sadly
these days it happens in the classroom less and less
so historic sites. This is why they're so important. There
are places of public education where we go with our
families to learn the American story. And so this map
(22:46):
as a whole is telling the American story through place.
It includes things like Gettysburg, Antietam, the battlefields It includes
things like Edgar Allan Poe's House and Mark Twain's house,
these notable figures literature and art. It includes the spirit
of American enterprise because they're the Right Brothers Memorial and
(23:07):
we carry that forward to the Challenger and that's part
of our DNA as Americans and what that says about us.
And I think that's incredibly important one for families because
it's a touch grass opportunity that is coming increasingly rare
that grandparents, parents and children can all do together. And
(23:29):
those real world activities are very, very important, and it's
important for the individual in that showing our children these
heroes of something to aspire to. It motivates them right
as opposed to always saying that you're a victim or
that this country is not good. And then it's important
for our civic component. Part of the reason these places
(23:53):
are a target is that transforming them is a way
to transform America. It's not simply that Madison's Home is
about Madison, and he deserves our gratitude. He was a
remarkable American who did a great deal. But his home
also stands for the Constitution, and that's part of why
(24:13):
it's so important and part of why it's a target.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
I do think in that sense that there's been a
real effort on the left to undermine and deliberately distored
and weaken the whole sense of being American. Do you
have that same feeling.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I do, sadly a certain segment I think it is.
I'm still hopeful that it's a very loud and active minority.
But I do believe that it's a deliberate effort. It's
not simply a lack of conscientiousness.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I don't think it's just a random effort to get
to a quote more accurate understanding. I think it's an
effort to replace the accurate understanding with a deliberately eyedda
iological bias that would basically create a false history and
(25:07):
profoundly mislead us about how the world works. And that's
why I think what you're doing is fundamental to the
survival of free society. If we don't have some kind
of grounded truth, we can't function in the long run.
And I think what Heritage is trying to do is
(25:27):
reassert historic facts and historic truths at a time when
there has been an astonishingly large effort by our elites
to convince us about a false history and a false
narrative as a country. And that's why I think what
you're doing is historically very important.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
I completely agree. We can't let go of the truth
of equal human dignity. If we let go of that,
if we let go of natural law, I think we
fundamentally change who we are the people. And I think
it's absolutely correct that this is a deliberate effort. One
example of this is the Andrew Mellon Foundation is the
(26:09):
largest donor to arts and humanities in the country, and
they've dedicated five hundred million dollars to transforming our monument's landscape.
And they say it's very much from a postmodernist lens
that we need to take down monuments because there are
no LGBTQ plus individuals in the list of the top
(26:32):
fifty people most often commemorated, So the top two are
Washington and Lincoln. And so what that would involve is
removing statues of Washington and Lincoln to replace them with
other people, which is not historically accurate. At a certain point,
actually inclusivity and historical accuracy but against one another. And
(26:56):
you have to make a choice of we can't bend
history to make it match inclusivity. That's not accurate, right,
Lincoln and Washington did great things for this country, and
so I think it is a movement. And they say
also in their guide, you know, we have a history
of a people as taking down monuments, and the example
(27:18):
they note is taking down the statue of King George
during the American Revolution. But I think it's important to
point out that was a regime change, right, that meant
a fundamentally different country. And I think there are people
that's what they're after, right, they want to transform the country.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
No, I think that's right, and that's why Heritage and
its effort to create a guide which allows people to
see accurate history is directly engaged in the survival of
the United States as a country and as a culture
and as a set of values. And I think what
(28:01):
you're doing in that sense is amazing. I mean ask
you Allen not saying, which is, if you look back, say,
ten years from now, how will you know if the
Heritage Guide to Historic Sites has been a worthwhile and
effective project.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
This is a very good question. I think my hope
is maybe to illustrate this. I have three different visions
in my mind of what could happen. So there's the
negative experience, which is parents take their children to Montpellier
and the only exhibit for kids is one on race
(28:37):
and Slavery to teach children about race and slavery with books,
all of which were recommended by the Southern Poverty Law Center,
and one of those books encourages children to imagine themselves
not as the victim, but as the aggressor whipping a
slave into quote his flesh cried blood, with a picture
(29:00):
of a man hanging from a rope with his back
bloodied from whip marks. And that's the experience that children
have when they go to Montpelier, and it doesn't inculcate gratitude,
it doesn't inspire them, it doesn't make them want to
be strong and gracious individuals. That's one vision. The other
(29:22):
vision is a vision where those things are simply lost.
Our historic sites are gone and there's no opportunity for
families to go to them and learn. And then there's
the positive vision, right of being able to go to
Mount Vernon and learn about how Washington formed an American
(29:44):
national character, and being able to go to Monticello and
learn about how Jefferson gave expression to the American mind,
and how in Lincoln's words, we owe all honor to
Jefferson for introducing into a merely revolutionary document a principle
(30:05):
applicable to all men and all times. And then to
go to Montbaillier and learn how this Virginia scholar was
first and foremost an American patriot and he became the
father of the Constitution and made possible the miracle of Philadelphia.
That's what I want. And if we're able to do
(30:27):
that for America's children, for the next generation, I will
consider this guy to success.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Let me commend you because you have described a life
of moral purpose which all of us can be impressed
by and can aspire to. And I should remind everybody
everybody listening can go to historic Sites dot Heritage dot
org and see the remarkable work that Brenda has launched,
(30:55):
and can take their families and their friends and go
to these historic sites and know that they have an
introduction to them that is historically accurate, faithful to the
American culture, and an important contribution to an informed, educated patriotism.
And Brenda, I just want to thank you personally for
(31:15):
dedicating so much of your life to working to sustain
America and help pursue the truth so every American can
have a chance to learn what made this sense a
remarkable country.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Well, thank you for being part of it. It would
not have been possible without evaluators like you who were
willing to go out and defend the principle and the
history and the country that we all love.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Thank you to my guest, Brenda Hafera. Newts World is
produced by Gettinglish three sixty in iHeartMedia, our executive producers
Guarncie Sloane, our researchers Rachel Peterson. Special thanks to the team
at Gingish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I
hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us
with five stars and give us a review so others
(32:05):
can learn what it's all about. Join me on substack
at Gingrich three sixty dot net. I'm new Gingrich. This
is neut World.
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