Thread by @docMJP

Thread. @RpwWilliams & me in @nypost vs @nytimes’s #1619Project:

“It isn’t an overstatement to describe The New York Times’ 1619 Project as a journalistic declaration of war against America.

nypost.com/2020/03/01/nyt…

As eminent scholars (including many stalwart liberals) have pointed out, the project makes utterly preposterous claims—above all, the notion that protecting slavery was a central motivation in launching the Revolutionary War and thus the American project.

While @nhannahjones has tried to brush off the criticism of distinguished historians like @seanwilentz by claiming that such disagreement is how historiography always proceeds.

But #1619Project isn’t historical scholarship & it isn’t journalism, & it isn’t really trying to be.

In fact, it doesn’t *have* to meet standards of actual journalism or scholarship. It will continue to be praised & protected b/c, in truth, it is political propaganda. Those who oppose it will continue to be shouted down, often by means of accusations of racism & racial bias.

“Make no mistake — 1619 is a political project, aimed at piercing the heart of the US regime by overturning the American understanding of justice.”

As James Madison said, “Justice is the end of government,” it is “the end of civil society.” We seek justice “until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.” To transform America, you have first to destroy its understanding of justice—and that’s #1619’s real aim.

American justice = 1) recognition that we are all unequal in many if not most respects, but our fundamental equality as human beings means that all citizens should be treated equally under the law. 2) Law should be ordered toward common good of all, rather than classes or groups.

The American mind in 1776 established equal protection of the equal rights of all citizens as the ideal at the center of our political life. We have made much progress since— most strikingly w/Civil War & const amendments—in making this ideal a political and cultural reality.

1619 rolls back the clock to tribal justice. It’s justice = abandoning individual equality of rights under the law & replacing it w/racial & identity politics based on group rights arranged in a new caste system based on varying histories of oppression & formulas of “privilege.”

When we adopt identity politics, the identity and the good of our group ultimately defines us, rather than our citizenship and individual humanity — an ­affront to the vision of abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and civil-rights champions such as Martin Luther King.

It’s very unclear if the 1619/identity politics worldview holds there *can be* a real common good between identity groups & whites, as “whiteness” is increasingly spoken of as intrinsically & historically evil/bigoted. (Of course, so are males, heterosexuals, and Christians.)

So 1619 doesn’t just write the American principles/ideas that finally enabled us to get rid of slavery and Jim Crow out of our history, but it replaces those principles w/the intrinsic evil of slavery and its protection—in other words, America is intrinsically evil & pro-slavery.

Here’s the irony: the hierarchy of racial groups/group rights that 1619 wants to establish instead of the equality of individual natural rights & equal protection of the laws...is very similar to what John C. Calhoun and slavery’s proponents argued.

I repeat: proponents of 1619 & identity politics argue the same as slavers & pro-slavery proponents, asserting that the law must treat racial groups differently rather than treating us all each equally as citizens. They reject natural rights and their equal protection under law.

Just like the leaders of the Confederate States of America, and Justice Taney in Dred Scott, and innumerable racists over the centuries, the proponents of 1619 and identity politics argue that America was based on slavery/racial inequality and advocate for race conscious law.

So when we say about 1619 that “What is at stake is nothing less than the dissolution of America”, this is no exaggeration. Such “education” is already leading to the balkanization of America.

Look around you. Look to the past.

If we keep this up our nation will break apart.

Of course, many on the Right no less than the Left are too afraid or blind to see the truth. We have systematically taught less and less about our past and our civic principles and we are now reaping the results of that ignorance.

The next step is 1619 & the like: after teaching that America is an intrinsically evil regime, it’s clear a new form of government w/new understanding of woke justice must be established w/power of governmental force. And that’s what our schools are increasingly pointing to now.

Do Republicans or Conservatives care? Will they do anything about it? If the last 70 years tell us anything, the answer may be no—nothing but lip service as the America mind is hollowed out from within.

“Abraham Lincoln once said that if America were to be defeated, it would be by suicide from forces within rather than by conquest from without. The 1619 Project is the latest manifestation of an ideology that will destroy us from within — if we don’t sound the alarm and act.”

“Every American & every political leader—from local school board to national legislature—must start thinking creatively & acting aggressively to deny the 1619 Project legitimacy & efficacy.”

Otherwise—racialized politics & tribalism will rip us apart.

nypost.com/2020/03/01/nyt…