The New York Times Has Abandoned Liberalism for Activism

NYMag ^ | Andrew Sullivan

[RoosterRedux]

“Our democracy’s ideals were false when they were written.”

I’ve been struggling with that sentence — the opening statement of the introductory essay to the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project on the legacy of slavery in America — for a few weeks now.

It’s a very strange formulation. How can an enduring “ideal” — like, say, freedom or equality — be “false” at one point in history and true in another? You could of course say that the ideals of universal equality and individual liberty in the Declaration of Independence were belied and contradicted in 1776 by the unconscionable fact of widespread slavery, but that’s very different than saying that the ideals themselves were false. (They were, in fact, the most revolutionary leap forward for human freedom in history.) You could say the ideals, though admirable and true, were not realized fully in fact at the time, and that it took centuries and an insanely bloody civil war to bring about their fruition. But that would be conventional wisdom — or simply the central theme of President Barack Obama’s vision of the arc of justice in the unfolding of the United States.

No, in its ambitious and often excellent 1619 Project, the New York Times wants to do more than that. So it insists that the very ideals were false from the get-go — and tells us this before anything else. Even though those ideals eventually led to the emancipation of slaves and the slow, uneven and incomplete attempt to realize racial equality over the succeeding centuries, they were still “false when they were written.” America was not founded in defense of liberty and equality against monarchy, while hypocritically ignoring the massive question of slavery. It was founded in defense of slavery and white supremacy...

[OddLane]

At least Abe Rosenthal kept them sane-for a while, at least.

[Right Wing Assault]

Nothing has changed.

Yes. Leftism and activism, same words for lying.

[MarkL]

This from the "Paper of Record" that actively lied to hide the slaughter of millions of Ukrainians by Stalin in the 1930s, and to this day, brags of the Pulitzer Prize won by Walter Duraty and his lies. The "Paper of Record" that helped hide the Holocaust from the West. The "Paper of Record" that helped hide the murderous reign on Stalin until his death. And just recently, "The Paper of Record" waxed rhapsodic about what a wonderful guy Mao was, until they had to take the tweet down when it was pointed out that they were celebrating the life of what was most likely the single worst mass murderer in human history.

Mark

[SuperLuminal]

"he New York Times Has Abandoned Liberalism for Activism

Not sure how old the author is, but he apparently is clueless about NYSlimes history...

I'm old enough to remember when the Slimes couldn't resist getting a woody over both Hitler and Stalin... For an organization driven by Marxism, the Slimes did not care which flavor of Marxism that Hitler & Stalin espoused...

The only possible change the Slimes can take at this present juncture is to foster a 2nd communist revolution here in the U.S... It now appears that "activism" is now a synonym for "revolution"...

While the first communist revolution may have been saved, when on it's deathbed after just a short existence, there is no Felix Dzerzhinsky here in the U.S. who could save it from 80-million fully armed Americans...

The 2nd Amendment, in some part, prevented the Japs from following up their victory at Pearl Harbor with the next logical move... The 2nd Amendment will defeat the coming bloody 2nd communist revolution when it occurs here in the U.S.

Tick...Tock...

[elbook]

They abandoned journalism long ago ...