An incident at an Ohio high school football game on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks reflects the concerns that many conservatives - including the president - have about the liberal thought propagated by public school officials.

To honor the fallen heroes who died in terror attacks nearly two decades ago, two football players - one the son of a policemen and the other the son of a firefighter - carried first responder flags onto the field before the game while another teammate carried an American flag. Although the game was advertised as “Patriot Night,” the Little Miami Local Schools Board of Education had denied the players’ request for permission to carry the flags.

On Monday, the players were suspended from the team. The board said there were no political motivations behind this display of support for first responders on 9/11 but that the board acted because of the students’ insubordination.

After a blast of negative feedback, the players were reinstated on the team and the district said that any potential punishment for failing to follow instructions would come from their coaches, not district administrators. The athletic director said he had concerns that the flags were political in nature, had the potential to stir up political controversy and could set a precedent.

One of the suspended players said if he was a 9/11 victim, he would have wanted someone to do it for him and the second player said he didn’t care what the consequences were long as the message got across.

Last Thursday at the National Archives to mark the anniversary of the Constitution’s signing, President Trump certainly got his message across with one of his greatest speeches.

To promote “patriotic education, he announced the formation of a new a federal “1776 Commission,” which “will encourage educators to teach about the miracle of American history. Trump said this is to counter the Democrats’ liberally based 1619 project initiated by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for The New York Times. Many schools are already using its materials which teach that the institution of slavery was so embedded in the country’s DNA that the country’s true founding could be said to have occurred in 1619, rather than in 1776.

The 1619 Project, Trump said, “rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom. America’s founding, he stated, set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism and built the most fair, equal and prosperous nation in human history.

The president warned of a radical movement attempting to demolish our history by tearing down statues of our founders, desecrated our memorials, and carrying out a campaign of violence and anarchy. The left, he said, has also launched a vicious and violent assault on law enforcement - the universal symbol of the rule of law in America - and the radicals have been aided and abetted by liberal politicians, establishment media, and even large corporations.

The students in our universities, Trump explained, are inundated with critical race theory which is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation, that even young children are complicit in oppression, and that our entire society must be radically transformed. He said that this critical race theory is being forced into our children’s schools, imposed into workplace trainings, and deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors and families.

The president said this is offensive and outrageous to Americans of every ethnicity, and it is especially harmful to children of minority backgrounds who should be uplifted not disparaged.

In 1995, while a sophomore at Notre Dame, Hannah-Jones wrote a letter to the editor of the student newspaper criticizing an article titled “God Bless Columbus.” Her letter condemned Columbus as being “no different” from Adolf Hitler and demonized the “white race” as true “savages” and “bloodsuckers” and being the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager and thief of the modern world.

Opponents of the 1619 Project include Latasha Fields, co-pastor of Our Report Ministries, who encourages parents to “take their God-given responsibility” to teach their children, and not let the government do it for them with such curriculum about slavery identity. She is a member of “1776 Unites,” a project started earlier this year by African American civil rights activist Robert Woodson, which aims to reframe American history through the lens of slavery.

Fields said she believes in the American dream because it adheres to personal responsibility, including hard work, and many of the same ideals the president talked about in his speech last week. It certainly counters 1619 Project, which can promote the kinds of distorted views on history that precipitates the kinds of actions we saw when the Ohio football players were punished for carrying an American flag and a first responders’ flag onto the field before their game.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com