The Sacred Cow of American Culture: The Smithsonian Institution and Its Unquestioned Reverence By Julian Raven | Voice in the Wilderness

Every country houses a “sacred cow” so revered that critique feels like heresy. Britain has the monarchy, Spain the Catholic Church, and the United States—cloaked not in robes but in red-sandstone towers—has the Smithsonian Institution.

Its marble corridors echo with more than artifacts; they hum with national mythology. Media pundits, federal judges, and schoolteachers reflexively defend it, as if loyalty to the museum were loyalty to the flag itself. Yet I, born in London and raised in Marbella, never made the childhood pilgrimage to Washington. I view the Castle without nostalgia—and the spell breaks.

A Royal Bastard’s Bequest

The Smithsonian  ...