There is one sense in which the 1619 Project's attempt to rewrite U.S. history in the image of slavery is right: America's founding was like nothing else seen in the history of human societies.
The 1619 Project is not history: it is polemic, born in the imaginations of those whose primary target is capitalism itself and who hope to tarnish capitalism by associating it with slavery.
The 1619 Project commits the Supply Chain Fallacy-that slavery was necessary for capitalism and as a result inhabits every level of capitalism's subsequent development.
Again: the 1619 Project is not history; it is conspiracy theory.
Like all conspiracy theories, the 1619 Project announces with a eureka! that it has acquired the explanation to everything, and thus gives an aggrieved audience a sense that finally it is in control, through its understanding of the real cause of its unhappiness.
The 1619 Project forgets, in other words, that there was an 1863 Project, and that its name was emancipation.
No nation can live without a history, and no free nation can flourish without a history that affirms-in Ralph Waldo Emerson's words in 1856-"That the evil eye can wither, that the heart's blessing can heal; that love can exalt talent" and "Overcome all odds." What the 1619 Project offers instead is bitterness, fragility, and intellectual corruption-not history.
https://www.city-journal.org/1619-project-conspiracy-theory
The 1619 Project is not history: it is polemic, born in the imaginations of those whose primary target is capitalism itself and who hope to tarnish capitalism by associating it with slavery.
The 1619 Project commits the Supply Chain Fallacy-that slavery was necessary for capitalism and as a result inhabits every level of capitalism's subsequent development.
Again: the 1619 Project is not history; it is conspiracy theory.
Like all conspiracy theories, the 1619 Project announces with a eureka! that it has acquired the explanation to everything, and thus gives an aggrieved audience a sense that finally it is in control, through its understanding of the real cause of its unhappiness.
The 1619 Project forgets, in other words, that there was an 1863 Project, and that its name was emancipation.
No nation can live without a history, and no free nation can flourish without a history that affirms-in Ralph Waldo Emerson's words in 1856-"That the evil eye can wither, that the heart's blessing can heal; that love can exalt talent" and "Overcome all odds." What the 1619 Project offers instead is bitterness, fragility, and intellectual corruption-not history.
https://www.city-journal.org/1619-project-conspiracy-theory
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