New Capitol Center Reconstructs History

The U.S. Capitol’s long awaited mega visitor center—designed to tell government’s history and purpose—is finally complete but deficient in various important areas, including accurate historical facts, Constitutional interpretation and the undisputed role of religion in the nation’s government.

The massive project, the largest addition ever to the 215-year-old U.S. Capitol, has been mired with controversy since its 2000 groundbreaking for taking twice as long as originally predicted to complete and more than double the money. It was set to open in 2004, but wasn’t nearly done by then and predicted to cost $265 million but ended up costing $621 million.

Now that it’s finally open, the new 580,000-square-foot Capitol Visitor Center—often referred to as a symbol of Washington waste—is embroiled in controversy for what its designers omitted, especially historical facts and events that include God.  

A lengthy and informative report (Reconstructing American History), published by a Virginia-based organization, offers numerous examples that help illustrate that the center’s planners presented a biased view with regard to America’s Godly heritage, American governance and Constitutional interpretation and ideology. 

The publication documents a number of historical inaccuracies throughout the new Capitol center that clearly present a biased, incomplete and in many cases inaccurate history of America and the Capitol. Among them is the incorrect identification of the national motto as “E pluribus unum” when in fact, the national motto has been “In God We Trust” since 1956.

Other examples of inaccuracies are seen in exhibits of the country’s system of governance, the Constitutional interpretation relating to the Three-Fifths Clause and the Executive Branch’s Constitutional powers involving foreign policy. A series of other factual errors also contribute to the distortion of history, according to the report, which lists examples of all.