Kelsey Grammer warns forgetting nation’s history invites control

Actor Kelsey Grammer is warning that Americans who don’t know their country’s founding history are vulnerable to manipulation, and he’s placing the blame squarely on the education system.

“If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know who you are. If you don’t know who you are, you can be controlled,” Mr. Grammer said during a Tuesday appearance on the “Planet Tyrus” podcast, as first reported by Fox News. 

The “Frasier” star said schools have failed to properly teach the nation’s founding story and called for the curriculum to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Mr. Grammer, who recently played Lord Fairfax in the 2026 film “Young Washington,” also pushed back on critics who reduce the Founding Fathers to their age and race. He noted that Thomas Jefferson was only 33 when he drafted the Declaration of Independence, arguing the document’s importance had nothing to do with how its authors looked and everything to do with the ideas behind it.

Mr. Grammer, who hosted the Fox Nation series “The Patriot War” narrating events of the American Revolution, described modern Americans as inheritors of a debt owed to the Founders. He said most of the 56 signers of the Declaration ultimately ended in financial ruin, claiming some had children killed or wives assaulted as a consequence of their support for independence.

He argued that same willingness to sacrifice still defines the national character today.