So here we are, at Thanksgiving, surrounded by a crowd of arrogant, ignorant, self-proclaimed superior people who proclaim, as was once declared about Vietnam, that the only way to save the country is to destroy it. That the European welfare state is the proper model for us, and that our electoral choices are mostly wrong. And evil. The first anti-American president put it bluntly in an interview with with one of his cronies, saying Americans are “confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism, mommy issues.”

In Obama’s view, we’re unworthy of him and his ruling class. All 57 states’ worth, I suppose. If we dare vote for candidates they don’t like, they feel entitled to change the results. And it isn’t just the usual suspects in the media and the schools; it includes the sorry case of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Mr. Roberts, who now suggests that judges are fully empowered to undo the clearly expressed preferences of the American people, and that somehow criticism of them, not their outrageous rulings, was the inappropriate act. It was deliciously satisfying to see him slapped down by Senator Grassley, an Iowa farmer who understands better than most how politicized the judiciary has become. He knows how often our judges have somehow come to believe that we have a lot to learn from foreign laws and judges, an amazing development that would have us turn the obvious lessons of the past 250 years upside-down. Just check out where our judges go during summer vacation, and what they do, and you’ll see it.

From Obama to Roberts, our self-proclaimed ruling class have missed the import of the global revolution ushered in by the American Revolution. Indeed, they seem to think that we never should have broken with Britain, so that the confused, blind, hate-filled, angry racists (I don’t quite understand what “mommy issues” refers to) would never have wrecked the world. They do not tell us if we would speak German or Japanese, or maybe Russian.

My Russian (or maybe Latvian) grandmother brought her children across the Atlantic in 1906, lived for a few years in Harlem, then relocated to Toledo, Ohio. Three of her boys graduated from university and went on to successful careers in engineering and business. Only in America. None of them was a confused racist. All of them learned American history and knew what we Americans were really all about. Imagine the shock when our daughter came home from school one autumn, excited at the prospect of giving thanks to the redskins. Her teachers’ politically correct version of American history is now standard, and we recently elected and reelected a president who has a very garbled understanding of our past and present. Does Obama not know that a foreigner can come here and become an American? Try that in Europe. I’ve been going to Italy for more than fifty years, have taught at her universities, written books about her history, made myriad close friends, but I would never be accepted as an Italian by the Italians. That sort of assimilation only happens here. And in Israel. Note that Obama doesn’t much like Israelis, either.

If you want to see a virtually identical anti-Americanism at work, have a peek at The Nation, which recently described the United States as a failing country, whose citizens are increasingly miserable and pauperized, maybe on the edge of ruin. This at a time when employment is sky-high, most Americans are better off than they were a couple of years ago, and foreign leaders are racing to Washington to befriend our confused racists.

How did a former president—and a crowd of loyal followers—come to embrace a totally wrong-headed vision of this country and its citizens? It took quite a while, but it was finally accomplished when the anti-American left came to dominate “the culture,” from movies and theater to schools and universities, from the big publishers to the major media, and on to the social media. The Obama generation, and beyond, was trained by the know-nothings. I’m afraid there is more to come.

Can it be fixed? Yes, but it costs money and energy. It’s long past time that wealthy Americans stop pouring money into universities that educate students to hate successful entrepreneurs. Not so long ago, people like Steve Jobs were national heroes. Such icons of capitalism still exist, but they’re taught to despise the country that made possible their great success. The remedy: withhold support from the educational establishment until it presents students with a variety of ideas. Rich Silicon Valley luminaries are now creating their own school system. Provide these schools with top-notch teachers. Many politically correct colleges and universities are out of money. Buy them, and restaff them, hiring our best minds in place of the glut of conformist administrators.

We need to restore the tradition of rebellious nonconformity. If you believe that the truth will eventually prevail, you must now work to enable it.

Faster, please.