The humiliation of Western history

Spiked Online ^ | 5 Aug 2020 | Frank Furedi

[Rummyfan]

Unlike previous initiatives designed to encourage people to look critically at uncomfortable truths about their past, the 1619 Project offers a ‘take it or leave it’ version of history. Its aim is not to criticise existing historical narratives about the US. It is to negate and even morally annihilate the very foundation on which the US was built. As the NYT put it: ‘Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written. Black Americans fought to make them true. Without this struggle, America would have no democracy at all.’

In rejecting the founding ideals of liberty and equality as false, the 1619 Project strips America’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, of every shred of moral authority. It also erases the profound contribution the American Revolution made to the development of the Western ideal of freedom.

The 1619 Project does not offer any new insights into the past. Rather, it seeks to contaminate the past and render it toxic. Indeed, one of the main contributors to the project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, admits that its principal objective is not to shed light on the past, but to undermine the moral authority of the present. ‘I’ve always said that the 1619 Project is not history’, she writes. ‘It is a work of journalism that explicitly seeks to challenge the national narrative and therefore national memory. The project has always been as much about the present as it is about the past.’

[mjp]

Perfectionism is a bad criterion for greatness. Every person or country is imperfect in some way. But that should not and does not negate or nullify objectively true greatness.

[dfwgator]

Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien
Dit que le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

[RatRipper]

None of us are blameless or anywhere approaching perfection, ESPECIALLY lying, stealing, conniving, murderous Commie Rats. Shine a very bright light on each and every one of them to expose the filthy reality of who these people are. As Alinsky would say,”personalize it”. Put their sorry lives and deeds on display for everyone to see what this gaggle of scum is all about. Should have already been doing it . . . one by one . . . in exacting detail . . . . THEN, and only then, can America make truly informed judgements about who these “people” really are and why we should be fighting against them tooth and nail. Once again, the media abdicates its responsibility in this regard in favor of supporting evil.

[SunkenCiv]

• 75 Years Later, It's Clear Truman Was Right To Drop The Atomic Bomb

[Red6]

Wow-

I looked this 1619 up.

What a bunch of junk.

[a fool in paradise]

the same Leftists offer no apologies for the 100,000,000 dead from Communism or 50,000,000 dead children in the USA alone from abortion.

[krizzy]

One Question, If the Black Africans are to be credited with the creation of America, why do they wish to be called African Americans? If I created a country, I wouldn’t want to be a hyphenated anything.

[colorado tanker]

The plan was to secure southern Kyushu and use that as a base for a landing on the Tokyo Plain. We discovered after the war the Japanese had figured out our approach and there were about 700,000 Japanese troops on Kyushu alone.

Even if we took Tokyo, they planned on fighting on. Here's some trivia. Bunkers were built into the mountains around Nagano to house the General Staff and Royal Household. A tight lid was put on them during the Nagano Olympics so no reporter would stumble onto them and report what they were. An invasion would have been a nightmarish bloodbath of both Japanese and Americans.

[blam]

Get your kids away from public schools as quickly as possible. They’re being taught to hate you there.

[ThanhPhero]

that is what I tell everyone I hear talking about how awful it is that the schools are closed due to the China Virus.

[nicollo]

Leftist historical academics denounce use of counter-factuals, claiming their use is ahistorical and thereby wrong.

The real problem is that their entire historical point of view is easily dismantled through simple regression, which is a counter-factual, such as:

“America was founded on slavery.”

Okay, so let’s remove slavery as a contingency for the Founding. Does America then not exist?

Argument over.