Thread by @sentantiq

This report's reductive, revisionist, and racist idolatry is exactly why I come down so hard on approaches to the humanities that use similar strategies even if they adjust the content and make it "centrist" or "apolitical"

https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1351284612476137474

The construction of the past is always political. Claiming otherwise is political.

sententiaeantiquae.com/2021/01/11/sav…

Hoo, boy! This cacata carta makes all sorts of squishy claims about founding fathers feeling bad about slavery, equates progressivism with relativism (on a walk towards fascism and communism) and claims that the only
"authentic education" includes "moral education" (41)

[Can one vomit and scream] "Rather than learning to hate one’s country or the world for its inevitable wrongs, the well-educated student learns to appreciate and cherish the oases of civilization: ..."

"....solid family structures and local communities; effective,
representative, and limited government; the rule of law and the security of civil rights and private property; a love of
the natural world and the arts; good character and religious faith."

These are apolegetics for white supremacist history posing as no-nonsense defense of american exceptionalism offering an aw-shucks version of history to buy into when you're really supporting white supremacy

https://twitter.com/KosherSoul/status/1351335134272872449?s=20

Some champion fucking work here: "In the pre-Christian
world, all subjects or citizens of any given political community were expected to believe in and worship the same God or gods by the same rites and ceremonies."

ok....no. "The American Revolution might not have taken place or succeeded without the moral ideas spread through the pulpits, sermons, and publications of Christian instructors."

not enough profanity for the horror: "As the 1960s advanced, however, many rejected King’s formulation of civil rights and reframed debates about equality in terms of racial and sexual identities...to abandon the
nondiscrimination and equal opportunity of colorblind civil rights"

fuck: "other activists constructed artificial groupings to divide Americans by
race, creating new categories like “Asian American” and “Hispanic” to teach Americans to think of themselves in
terms of group identities and to rouse various groups into politically cohesive bodies."

Really, powerful distillation of supremacy motifs here: "Identity politics is fundamentally incompatible with the principle of equality enshrined in the Declaration of
Independence."

This could come out of the sokal-squared hoax reports: "Proponents of identity politics rearrange Americans by group identities, rank them by how much oppression
they have experienced at the hands of the majority culture, and then sow division among them."

I'm not propaganda, you're propaganda!

"States and school districts should reject any curriculum
that promotes one-sided partisan opinions, activist
propaganda, or factional ideologies that demean
America’s heritage, dishonor our heroes, or deny our
principles."

Death before dishonor!

"Any time teachers or administrators
promote political agendas in the classroom, they abuse
their platform and dishonor every family who trusts
them with their children’s education and moral
development."

COMMUNIST PROFESSORS!

"Universities in the United States are often today
hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that
combine to generate in students and in the broader
culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright
hatred for this country."

This is how you start targeting universities and faculty:

"Deliberately destructive scholarship shatters the civic
bonds that unite all Americans. It silences the discourse
essential to a free society by breeding division, distrust,
and hatred among citizens. "

It keeps going

"And it is the intellectual force behind so much of the violence in our cities, suppression of free speech in our universities, and defamation of our treasured national statues and symbols."

Earlier: "Colleges peddle resentment and contempt for
American principles and history alike, in the process weakening attachment to our shared heritage"

But we can fix it! "To restore our society, academics must return to their vocation of relentlessly pursuing the truth and engaging in honest scholarship that seeks to understand the world and America’s place in it."

Give the people what they yearn for: cartoon heroes!

"Americans yearn for timeless stories and noble heroes
that inspire them to be good, brave, diligent, daring,
generous, honest, and compassionate."

Um, #1776Report, you do know who you're working for, right?

"When crimes go unpunished or when good men do
nothing, the lawless in spirit will become lawless in
practice, leading to violence and demagoguery."

There's dishonest then there's cherrypicking GW quotes to support this:

"The idea that faith sustains the principles of equality and natural rights is deeply rooted in American society
and proven through human experience."

IDK, a US govt manifest probably shouldn't have this subtitle:

"The Common Ground of Reason and Revelation"

Puking in Aristotle and Christian

"The answer to this rising concern must begin by frankly and humbly admitting that the common ground of
equal natural rights on which our common morality is based is no longer visible to many Americans."

Wait! Appendix III
Created Equal or Identity Politics?

"the creed of identity politics ranks these different racial and social groups in terms of privilege and
power, with disproportionate moral worth allotted to each. It divides Americans into two groups: oppressors and
victims. ...."

"The more a group is considered oppressed, the more its members have a moral claim upon the rest of
society."

Translations: wE SHoulD NoT haVE to feeL BAD about being BAD

"...the creed of identity politics teaches that America itself is to blame for oppression. America’s
“electric cord” is not the creed of liberty and equality that connects citizens today to each other and to every
generation of Americans past, present, and future"

SO, I am not a denizen of right wing theories, but making John C. Calhoun the "father of identity politics" is a real bold piece of bullshit

that's enough. This is hateful, deceptive, misleading, and harmful all the way through. A perfect companion to Trumpism