Actor Kelsey Grammer warned that America’s education system has been falling short of teaching young people about their country’s founding history. “If you don’t know who you are, you can be controlled,” the Cheers star asserted.
“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,” Grammer warned during a Tuesday appearance on the Planet Tyrus podcast, adding, “It does start with our education system.”
“There’s a whole bunch of things that just have got to stop with our educational system, and we got to retool it. There’s no question,” the Frasier star added.
Grammer — who recently starred as Lord Fairfax in the 2026 film, Young Washington — then pushed back against critics who dismiss the Founding Fathers as merely “old” and “white” men, saying, “I’m pretty tired of the ‘old white guy in [a] wig’ thing.”
“I mean, Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he wrote what is arguably the most important political document in the history of man,” the X-Men: The Last Stand actor continued.
“It never had anything to do with the way you looked,” Grammer added. “It had everything to do with the way you thought and the way you dreamed, and that’s all America.”
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The actor — who also hosted Fox Nation’s miniseries The Patriot War, on which he narrated major events in the American Revolution — went on to describe Americans as the “children” of the nation’s Founding Fathers.
“They did this for us, and now we owe it to them. I mean, that’s the way I see it,” he said. “I always feel grateful to them for the things they did. Men, women, and children. Every one of them that sacrificed what they did.”
“Of the 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence, most of them ended in ruin,” the Transformers: Age of Extinction star continued. “And that’s what they pledged. Some of their children were murdered. Some of their wives were raped.”
“They paid the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate one. And they would probably do it again,” Grammer added. “And I think that sort of character is what still is most of us. I believe in America that way.”
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.