Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, is the quintessential American holiday. It’s where we celebrate our independence and freedom. National Public Radio, or NPR, has long celebrated Independence Day by reading the Declaration of Independence, but not this year.
NPR has been reading the Declaration of Independence, in its entirety on-air for over thirty years. They tweeted the words to the Declaration of Independence on their Twitter feed as well, sometimes.
This year, however, NPR decided to do a sort of dissection of the Declaration of Independence. Instead of honoring it on the Fourth of July for what the document represents, they decided to tear it apart, regarding parts that aren’t woke enough for them.
This year, on July 4, 2022, NPR talked about something they called “On this July 4th, what does equality mean?” At the beginning, they specifically say that this year they would be “updating an NPR Independence Day tradition, the reading of the Declaration of Independence.”
It is notable that last year, NPR started changing things up just a little bit, by adding a rather long introduction to their reading. They said they did so because the prior year’s “protests and our national reckoning on race, [cause] the words in the document [to] land differently. They mentioned that the document exclaims that “all men are created equal,” yet women, slaves and indigenous Americans were not considered to be equals at that time. And then they read the entire Declaration of Independence.
But this year, NPR did not. Leila Fadel tweeted, “This July 4th we break with tradition. Instead of a reading of the Declaration of Independence @NPRinskeep examines what equality means and has meant in this document. The important segment about our past and future…produced by @marcarivers and @bgordemer“
Many Americans didn’t appreciate NPR’s “break with tradition,” and move further toward wokeism. Here are just a few calls to #defundNPR:
“Anti american for this to air on 4th….. and they used my tax dollars to do it… let’s DEFUND npr[.]”
“They’ve been reading the Declaration of Independence on July 4th every year. Now this. #DefundNPR“
“Get over yourselves.”
Are you ready for a gay spiderman?
We could keep going but you get the gist. People love a good tradition, and NPR had a good one going. Why change it? We get that there was more to equality than what the Founding Fathers were living at that time. Of course women, black Americans and indigenous Americans are equal to anyone and everyone else. We do not need NPR to try to shove it down our throats. Did you ever listen to the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July? Should we #defundNPR?
