For more than 170 years, Americans have been enriched by the Smithsonian Institution's incredible archive of artifacts, displays, and knowledge in every field. This excellent resource was bequeathed to the American people by a mysterious English benefactor. However, today the Smithsonian is curated by some whose motives are not in harmony with the benefactor's will or the people the Institution was intended to serve. What began as a project "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge" has become yet another tool of ideologues who, along with mainstream media, academia, the arts, and other institutions, are dedicated to shaping our knowledge with an invisible hand to further an un-American cultural end.
Institutional transparency and clarity of mission are essential in protecting against those corrupt deeds that thrive under cover of darkness and confusion. In the case of the Smithsonian Institution, we find a conundrum of identity resulting in smoke and mirrors that enables a culture of corruption. It is uniquely ill-defined as a legal entity, which has been an open door for opportunists since its founding. Due to the efforts of dedicated members of Congress seeking Smithsonian accountability, we have been given a glimpse into some of the more recent examples of this corruption. We have good reason to be concerned, considering the bloated budget and influence of the Smithsonian.
In the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, the founders spelled out a protection for the people of the United States against restricted speech. At the time of its writing, Americans had just broken free from England and declared their independence as a new nation. On the heels of this cataclysmic new birth, the founders looked not to government but to God and natural law as the highest source of authority in guarding freedom of thought, expression, and conscience. Congress shall make no law abridging free speech.
You are about to read a quintessentially American story about one man, an immigrant from England, and his struggle against a powerful institution. Was Raven's unalienable right of speech abridged-forbidden by Smithsonian curators with a political axe to grind-and his right to due process curtailed? This is a story about every American who seeks fairness, free speech, and due process of law. Raven's story cuts to the very heart of America's founding values of liberty for all. What will Lady Justice say in the contest between the influential, moneyed, and conveniently ill-defined Smithsonian Institution and one man backed by the Bill of Rights?
Craig Shirley is an acclaimed historian and the author of six books on President Reagan, including Reagan Rising, Rendezvous with Destiny, Reagan's Revolution, Last Act, and also the New York Times bestseller December 1941, and his most recent book April 1945: The Hinge of History. He is a regular commentator throughout the media and a contributor to national publications and was hailed by the London Telegraph as "the best of the Reagan biographers."
