The 1619 Project’s Historical Devolution v. The 1776 Patriotic Revolution
“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.”
~John Jay, Founding Father, Federalist Papers No. 2
“The first battlefield is to rewrite History.“
~ Karl Marx, Father of Socialism & Communism
Examining the realities behind the 1619 project
As Independence Day quickly approaches and Americans prepare to celebrate our nation’s 245th birthday, it is important to ensure that every American fully understands why we celebrate our nation’s birth on this solemn day. In recent years, many on Progressive Left have worked hard to develop a re-engineered focus for America’s heritage and history as a nation, seeking to dissuade away from the celebrated exceptional achievements of our nation, such as declaring war on Great Britain or the Founding Fathers fashioning and signing the U.S. Constitution to cement the laws of our revolutionary establishment as a nation, free from the restraints of colonial tyranny. In particular, the once venerated American newspaper turned primary propaganda press machine, the New York Times, facilitated the creation of the 1619 Project, formerly unveiled in August 2019.
Produced by liberal activist and journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones, the controversial 1619 Project sought to centralize the issue and controversy of slavery as being front and center to core aspects of America’s founding. Its title is an intentionally direct affront to America’s birth year of 1776 and seeks to overshadow the profound patriotism of that day by placing the year that the first Black slaves were transported across the Atlantic to set foot on American soil. It directly challenged America’s political establishment as a nation in 1776, while also side-stepping the foundation of America’s religious conception in the year 1620, when the first Pilgrims escaped religious persecution from the Anglican church of England and sailed across the Atlantic to America on the Mayflower. They would formerly establish the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620, constructing the nation’s first congregationalist churches and establishing the nation’s Protestant roots.
The 1619 Project has been heavily derided for containing a host of historical errors, misinformed notions of America’s founding, and for a depiction of America’s political history as being perceived narrowly through the lens of African slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. Initially, the NY Times has refused to acknowledge that the original Project was riddled with many such errors and falsities, nevertheless the paper with the motto—“All the news that’s fit to print” was forced to issue substantial corrections. The Project was produced under the pretense of shedding light on many of the unnoticed aspects of the terrible suffering Blacks endured in slavery, but in reality, seeks to promote a politicized revisionist portrayal of American history in order to denigrate the exceptional qualities of America’s founding, instead portraying America as a racist nation founded for the sole reason of oppressing Black people. The Project falsely insinuates that “all of” the Colonists primary goal was the protection and preservation of slavery when waging war against Great Britain in the American Revolution (1775-1783); the New York Times would only issue a partial revision to change “all of” to “some of” the American Colonists.
In line with the unapologetic lies peddled by the NY Propaganda Times, Hannah-Jones refused to acknowledge the truth about her peddling the lie of America’s founding year as a nation being in 1619 with the arrival of the first African slaves, not in 1776, commemorating the issuance of the Declaration of Independence. By this, it is evident that Hannah-Jones and every liberal proponent of the 1619 Project view the year African slaves were transported to the American colonies while under Great Britain’s control, as presenting a more significant year in the history of the United States than the year 1776, when the 13 original colonies issued the boldest act of defiance to break away from the most powerful nation in the world at the time in order to obtain sovereign independence. When one of the many revisions to this report was pointed out, Hannah-Jones feigned ignorance to this claim, stating that she was only being rhetorical, despite the long list of times she peddled the same claim of 1619 representing America’s true founding.
Beyond her disdain of historically accurate information pertaining to colonial American history, Hannah-Jones is also enshrined in a separate bout of controversy over her relationship with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Because of the university’s refusal to grant tenure to Hannah-Jones, despite widespread praise from the Left toward her prominent investigative journalism and being a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for her work exposing “systematic racism” (the false pretense that every institution in America is inherently racist). Hundreds of students gathered in protest last week with signs promoting messages like, “1619 … 2021. Same Struggle,” and “I can give you 1,619 reasons why Hannah-Jones should be tenured”, which absolutely no acknowledgement to the facts that undermine the controversial 1619 Project. The protestors also ignore the fact that Hannah-Jones is steeped in historical illiteracy about key facts pertaining to the American Founding Fathers and the arrival of the first European colonists.
Perhaps the most apparent justification for Hannah-Jones’s denial of tenure is the fact that she lacks a traditional academic background with distinction, typically required of recent faculty hires at a university seeking tenure. For example, Hannah-Jones lacks a PhD, which has become the rite of passage for obtaining a tenured Professorship at a top-ranked public university. She also lacks any previous teaching experience or university publication experience, with a career exclusively steeped in journalism. Many more highly qualified candidates possessing an actual teaching background and penchant for facilitating higher learning are denied tenure with no added controversy or attention from the mainstream media, as seen in this case. Hannah-Jones is only being considered for tenure by those who have propelled her to stardom in supporting the 1619 Project. Her lawyers have even been so bold as to declare that she will not join the faculty without grant of tenure, with complete disregard to how unqualified Hannah-Jones is for even a non-track tenure position. This with the intent to embolden the manufactured issue of a black woman being denied tenure on an account of her race or as a victim of “systemic racism”.
This Independence Day: Choose the patriotic virtues of 1776 over the revisionist lies of 1619
In September 2020, the venerated 1776 Commission was established from an executive order written by President Donald Trump and officially released on January 18th, 2021. The commission was established with the intent to produce a “patriotic education” that can proficiently combat a toxic curriculum of indoctrination in K-12 education, through the toxic spread of Critical Race Theory (CRT), “systematic racism”, “White Rage”/White Supremacy, and institutional racism. President Trump rightfully denoted such hateful and anti-American teachings to young children as a form of “child abuse”, citing an urgent need for schools to return to the basics of teaching traditional, non-politicized and non-racist curriculum focused on promoting American nationalism and pride in one’s country.
An advisory committee composed of 18 of the leading conservative historians, politicians, and activists. The Chair was Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, and Co-chaired by former Vanderbilt Political Science Professor, Carol Swain. Among those selected for the Commission were—Hoover Institution Fellow Victor David Hanson, TPUSA Founder Charlie Kirk, former Governor Phil Bryant, Thomas Lindsay, and Bob McEwan. Grounded in promoting an accurate portrayal of America’s founding—the antithesis of the lies pushed by the 1619 Project—the establishing intent of the 1776 Commission is to, “enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.”
The education that the 1776 Commission conveys in unifying, as compared to the divisive conflictions with the core elements of the 1619 Project. The Heritage Foundation produced a very educational video that reinforces the proponents of the 1776 Commission, while eviscerating the delusional disinformation about the history of slavery and America’s colonial history, as promoted by the 1619 Project. Its primary goal is to promote the founding principles on which the United States was established and how these principles have shaped the most exceptional nation in the history of the world. By this, the report states,
“The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission presents this first report with the intention of cultivating a better education among Americans in the principles and history of our nation and in the hope that a rediscovery of those principles and the forms of constitutional government will lead to a more perfect Union.”
The 1776 Commission also seeks to put an end to the current “radicalized view of American history” plaguing K-12 and higher education, which has “vilified the United States Founders and its founding”. The Commission appropriately equates far-left teachings, philosophical tenets, and political factions, i.e., white guilt, identity politics, and progressivism, with being the modern day evolved forms of communism, fascism, and racism. In speaking to the unique nature of the birth of the American Republic, the Commission’s report reads,
“In two decisive respects, the United States of America is unique. First, it has a definite birthday: July 4th, 1776. Second, it declares from the moment of its founding not merely the principles on which its new government will be based; it asserts those principles to be true and universal: ‘applicable to all men and all times,’ as Lincoln said.”
And the Commission report so accurately defines the essential significance of Natural Law and Natural Rights as being intertwined within the core promises made within the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution; promises that would later be fully fulfilled with the Union victory in the Civil War, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Amendments, and the Civil Rights Act of 1965. On the essence of Natural Law in America’s governance, the report reads,
“Natural equality requires not only the consent of the governed but also the recognition of fundamental human rights—including but not limited to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—as well as the fundamental duty or obligation of all to respect the rights of others. These rights are found in nature and are not created by man or government; rather, men create governments to secure natural rights. Indeed, the very purpose of government is to secure these rights, which exist independently of government, whether government recognizes them or not. A bad government may deny or ignore natural rights and natural rights, and even prevent their exercise in the real world. But it can never negate or eliminate them.”
Since the early 1990s my father, Professor Ellis Washington, a historian and legal scholar, has written several dozen law review articles and 11 books upholding a Natural Law and Natural Rights worldview. The book cited above was accepted into the Chamber Library of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Royal Archives of HRH Queen Elizabeth of England.
In conclusion, this Independence Day on the 245th anniversary of America’s birth as a God-ordained nation, it is pertinent for every American to honor and uphold the year 1776 as a glorious day of celebration. Americans should read the 1776 Commission in its entirety to re-educate (or in many cases educate) those who are oblivious to the true facets of what established America as the greatest nation in the world, and what a historically accurate account of American history really looks like. On July 4th, 2021, be sure to celebrate true American Independence and patriotic unity, not the historically inaccurate, socially degenerative propaganda lies contained in the 1619 Project, which seems only interested in following the perverse worldview of Communism Founding Founder, Karl Marx. . . “The first battlefield is to rewrite History.”
Category: Socrates Corner
