Public schools across America spent years telling kids the founders were villains.
Kelley Paul just walked into a Christian school in Kentucky and reminded children what they actually were.
What Kelly Paul saw in those kids’ eyes is exactly what the Left has spent twenty years trying to extinguish.
Why the Left Has Been Losing the Classroom War
America’s radical Left has been methodically gutting patriotic history from public school classrooms for decades.
Iowa bureaucrats just defied their own legislature’s clear mandate to restore founding principles to the state curriculum – handing the rewrite to a DEI advocate instead.
That’s not an accident.
It’s a calculated effort to raise a generation of Americans who feel ashamed of their country’s founding instead of inspired by it.
Kelley Paul – author, advocate, and wife of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul – decided she’d had enough of watching that happen.
She wrote Good Night, Young American, a children’s picture book published in June by Regnery Kids, timed specifically for America’s 250th anniversary.
The book walks kids through the Mayflower, the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere’s ride, the Declaration of Independence, George Washington crossing the Delaware, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
It’s the history that used to be standard in every American classroom.
https://twitter.com/KelleyAshbyPaul/status/2098061881797673277?s=20
For Paul, the recent 250th anniversary brought back memories of the nation’s bicentennial in 1976, when she was growing up in Russellville.
“The whole town got so into it,” she said.
Paul recalled dressing in colonial clothing as a child.
“I remember how I felt like, ‘I am part of this story. All these incredible statesmen who did these brave things — this is a part of my story.’ And that’s what I hope kids will feel and connect with in the books,” she said.
On Wednesday, Paul brought it to Grace Christian Academy in Owensboro, reading to students as part of the school’s yearlong focus on American heritage and the semiquincentennial.
What Kelley Paul Saw in Those Kids’ Faces
Paul didn’t just read the book and sign copies.
She told those kids they have a “special birthright” – individual rights secured by brave men who went up against the most powerful king in the world.
“I wanted to connect with kids, with parents about our amazing revolutionary history and how heroic our founders really were,” Paul said. “I think we’ve kind of gotten away from the sheer bravery of what they did in creating the United States of America and going up against the most powerful king in the world.”
She pointed to a map in the book and encouraged students to visit Washington, D.C., Boston, and the National Archives – to stand in the actual places where the founding happened.
https://twitter.com/KelleyAshbyPaul/status/1862292387583676799?s=20
Then she told them what she remembered about America’s bicentennial in 1976 – growing up in Russellville, dressing in period clothing, feeling for the first time that history was hers.
“I remember how I felt like, ‘I am part of this story,'” Paul said. “All these incredible statesmen who did these brave things – this is a part of my story.”
“I just hope it’s lighting a spark, and I can see it in their eyes that it is,” Paul said. “They want to learn more.”
While Iowa Bureaucrats Rewrote History, Kelley Paul Taught It
Trump’s 1776 Commission – restored by executive order in January 2025 – is fighting back at the federal level, establishing a Presidential 1776 Award for student knowledge of the founding and broadcasting patriotic education lectures throughout 2026.
But the real battle is happening in living rooms and church school classrooms.
It’s happening every time a parent reads their kid a book that tells the truth about who Washington and Franklin and Paul Revere actually were – not oppressors, but heroes who risked everything for an idea that had never been tried before.
The left can have Iowa’s curriculum bureaucrats.
We’ll take the room in Owensboro full of kids whose eyes just lit up.
Sources:
- Ryan Richardson, “Kelley Paul shares children’s book, American history with GCA students,” Owensboro Times, September 10, 2026.
- “Kelley Paul releases new children’s book celebrating America’s early and colonial history,” Fox News, July 10, 2026.
- Joy Pullmann, “Red States Struggle To Deliver Pro-American History In Schools,” The Federalist, February 18, 2026.
- “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” White House, January 29, 2025.
- “Freedom 250,” White House, 2026.