The exchange at the bottom of this post that I recently had on Facebook reflects a determination no longer to remain silent when Russian propaganda seeps into political discourse. Propaganda that creates false equivalencies, and narratives that depict all points of view as equally valid are corrosive to any democracy.
As Anne Applebaum states in her recent article, “What Marxism and critical Race Theory Have In Common”:
A few months ago I interviewed Charles Mills, a philosopher whose most famous book, The Racial Contract, published in 1997, offers an alternative reading (you could call it a critical race theorists’ reading) of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant—the Enlightenment thinkers who, anticipating liberal democracy, all argued (to put it crudely) that a legitimate government must have the consent of the governed. Mills pointed out that all of them left Black and other nonwhite people outside of the social contract, and he sketched out the consequences. I asked him whether this meant we should no longer read Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. He told me that, on the contrary, the last class he taught was about those philosophers and their modern critics, including himself: “To me, it’s a much more fruitful way of carrying on the tradition than saying, ‘These guys are racist and sexist. Therefore, stop teaching them.’”
Mills told me that not all of his colleagues understand him. “They say, ‘Why are you trying to keep this tradition alive? We should jettison this whole way of doing political philosophy and basically start anew.’” But he disagrees. “There is a dynamism inside liberalism that they miss,” he told me. The huge advantage of liberal democracy over other political systems is that its leadership constantly adjusts and changes, shifting to absorb new people and ideas. Liberal democracies don’t try, as Soviet Marxism once did, to make everybody agree about everything, all the time.
But to maintain that flexibility, a liberal-democratic society absolutely requires that its citizens experience a liberal education, one that teaches students, scholars, readers, and voters to keep looking at books, history, society, and politics from different points of view. If one of our two great political parties no longer believes in this principle—and if some of our scholars don’t either—then how much longer can we expect our democracy to last?
This was my own exchange with someone who posted the following response to a harmless post that asked the broad question, “If you could make one rule that everyone had to follow, what rule would you make?”
Someone volunteered in response, “No political indoctrination in schools from either side.“ They added: “I experienced a liberal agenda being jammed down my throat. It wasn’t about democracy. I’ll leave it at that.“
Rather than remaining silent, I thought about the fact that this kind of post, which implies that talking about politics is equivalent to “indoctrination”, is precisely the kind of Russian propaganda that is being aimed at democracies to convince their electorates that since democracy is no better than autocracy, all points of view – including the point of view that democracy itself is no better than autocratic rule – are equally valid and it is thus offensive to discuss politics in most settings – even at universities.
This was my response:
“In a democracy, politics may be discussed in any classroom. If you want to be shielded from politics, there are many dictatorships to choose from. One of the things that dictatorships have in common is that discussion of political context in the classroom, especially at the university level, is frowned upon.”
“As it happens, I had a conservative agenda pushed at me from the day I entered school as a child, including in journalism school (college), and in literature class (college).”
“So what?”
“That’s what college is for. To have our beliefs challenged and to get in the habit of using critical thinking skills, logic, and reason to come to our own conclusions as to our own beliefs on an ongoing basis throughout our lives, and to remain open to challenging our those opinions, biases, and beliefs.”
“That is what a liberal education is all about. I hope you understand that I am using the word “liberal“ in the classical sense, meaning a post-Enlightenment effort to free our minds from pre-existing beliefs, dogma, and all shibboleths, in order to free ourselves to use the powers of reason with which we are endowed.”
“By implying that you were helpless to resist indoctrination by liberal professors, you are propagandizing here, whether intentionally or not.”
“Argue for your own beliefs, but stop playing the victim.”
“Please think about what it’s like to live in countries in which the only opinions that are allowed at universities are those that support the line of the dictator.”
“You live in a free country, in which professors have the right to challenge your assumptions as they please.”
We will not keep our democracy long if the view prevails that it’s futile and unacceptable to allow free political discourse at universities.
I do wish education, especially in history, would not be weaponized. For example, I am in equal measure opposed to the 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission. The former seems to be all slavery, all the time, America founded on evil; the latter as slavery – what’s that? Nothing to see here; America is completely flawless. More generally it seems the Right thinks the USA can do nothing wrong while the Left seems to think we can do nothing right. The truth is of course somewhere in the middle.
I think the 1619 project raises a lot of interesting points and can be taught within a wider curriculum. I am wary that some
of it’s scholarship and conclusions have been challenged by academic historians, but I would much rather have the freedom to use my own professional judgment to salvage it’s good parts and discard its bad parts rather than being told I have to teach it or cannot teach it by an administrator or legislature. I also agree about your troubling dichotomy on both sides, although so far only the right wing legislatures are really canceling the history they don’t like.
In the legislatures it may be only the Right cancelling history, but among activists, the Left can certainly give them a run for their money (cough, “Confederate” statues, cough). Actually, the federal legislature IS working on removing several statues without much nuance.
I wonder if you would feel the same if you were surrounded by statues celebrating persecutors of Christians and especially Protestants.
The figures celebrated by these confederate statues were likely your great-grandparents (and mine). I suspect that if your family history had been dominated by the need to flee certain torture and death at the hands of such men, you might be less inclined to welcome those monuments on a public square.
Those statues belong, at best, in a museum where they can be put in actual historical context of what they actually did and to whom. They have no place on a town common or village green.
Well, I always use the King Edward I test. That is, I am Welsh on my father’s side and Scottish on my mother’s. England’s King Edward I (chief antagonist in the movie “Braveheart”) was absolutely brutal to both those peoples so by this logic gives me a couple reasons to not like him. Yet, I have absolutely no problem seeing a statue of him in public view. I’m sure I’ve seen statues of Christian-persecuting Roman Emperors in my day and lived to tell about it. We don’t have to approve everything they did, but at least some of the statues being slated for removal represent people with complicated legacies.
Which people have complicated legacies?
Longstreet and Lucious Quintus Cincinnattus Lamar spring to mind, but they do not have statues in the South. Precisely since they cooperated with Reconstruction and enforced the end of slavery and opposed the reinstatement of second class citizenship via Jim Crow.
Even Robert E. Lee quickly got with the program in a lot of ways, but he is a vessel through which we can tell the story of divided loyalties – one’s country vs. one’s state, especially when the latter was seen as your primary polity and the former more of an alliance, and the system of slavery into which owners were often just as much born into as the slaves themselves.
The slave owners are just as much victims of slavery as the slaves themselves? You’re really off the deep end into Lost Cause narrative. I’ll add many southerners freed their slaves, including George Washington a good 70 years before the civil war started, one of the reasons he is not as widely reviled as his step son in law. Taney also freed his slaves, something Lee was well within his right to do, but he choose not only to keep his slaves but betray his real nation to defend it.
Not just as much and please don’t call me a Lost Causer. Didn’t MLK even say things like nobody is free until everyone is free? Extricating themselves was more easily said than done. Many states made it illegal to manumit one’s slaves. Based on the understandings of the time I could just as easily prosecute as defend Lee on charges of treason. You are making this way too simplistic. As much as we would like to flip a switch and end slavery it doesn’t quite work that way.
Of the statues the House wants to get rid of, CJ Roger Taney, VP John C. Calhoun, and President John Tyler, all of whom held high US office as well. The first two were not Confederates (and Calhoun died before the CSA existed) and Tyler was elected to the CSA Congress, but died before he could take his seat. Taney in particular should not IMO be judged by a single case which strikes the modern conscience as horrific, but not that far outside the law and prevailing constitutionalism of the time.
A young lawyer from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln talked about how Dred Scott was a perversion of states rights since it essentially nullified the idea of a free state and the Fugitive Slave Act nullified anti-slavery laws passed by the voters of those states and compelled those states to participate in slavery by forcing their law enforcement to recapture. It’s ironic since this decision likely exacerbated tensions and radicalized and polarized the North into a more cohesive anti-slavery coalition giving rise to the Republican Party. I might add before Jan 6th, 1860 was the only other instance when a significant portion of the country refused to recognize the lawful election of the President. I think it’s important to remove the traitors of the past from the same capital attacked by the traitors of today. Taney and Calhoun defended treason and slave power and are ideological forebears of the Confederacy.
You said above Taney freed his own slaves, so it sounds like there’s one instance of good and bad. I agree with Lincoln on Dred Scott, but I don’t like letting one episode define a person. I’m certainly not a fan of Calhoun, but I wasn’t there and see no reason to not acknowledge he was VP, which I believe is the context in which he is represented in the Capitol.
I was pretty perturbed watching the Travelers Cup over the weekend there there was a town named for Cromwell in CT. I would push to rename that if I lived there.
As in Oliver? Not surprised a New England town is named after a Puritan leader. There’s no way I can get worked up about it.
You’re clearly not Irish Catholic. He’s a 17th century Slobodan Milosevic.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/big-question-was-cromwell-revolutionary-hero-or-genocidal-war-criminal-917996.html
I’m aware, but I don’t feel my ancestors’ pain, and I think we’d all be better off if fewer people did. I refer you to my Edward I comments above.
Again, your white privilege is showing.
You “don’t feel [your] ancestor’s pain” because the abusive behavior stopped for at least you and your parents.
The overwhelming majority of today’s black men, women, and children have a very different experience.
Did either of your parents have to have “the conversation” with you about how to avoid being killed by cops when you’re pulled over for a minor violation?
The abuses against our black brothers and sisters are mounting as we speak.
You make my point for me. Somehow we managed to treat me and my immediate predecessors OK even if a few statues to “our” people still exist. There’s enough to worry about in the present to save our energy for rather than wring our hands over representations of the past. Statues do not jump down off their pedestals and needlessly kill black people; living, breathing cops do that. Why can’t it just stop? Once upon a time the Irish were a scapegoated and discriminated against ethnic group in this country until somewhere along the line that stopped. They got into positions of power and I don’t recall a massive effort to correct past abuses; we just stopped abusing them. It’s high time black people got the same treatment. Doesn’t common sense say that the past is to be learned about and from, but not necessarily replicated? Just because there’s a statute doesn’t mean any of us is obligated to like what the person did or agree with the interpretation of that person’s life provided by those who erected the statue. I just don’t like the “oh my virgin eyes” attitude. The statues may be made of stone, but they are not Medusa or a Basilisk and will not turn anyone who gazes on them into stone.
It sounds as though you’re now saying that the racism that permeates today’s culture is the fault of its victims. Is that what you intend?
The Irish were not bought, sold, and bred like cattle for generations. For all your study of history, you show some apparent blind spots to the profound differences between — for example — the experience of the Irish and of blacks.
They embolden, celebrate, and affirm white racist violence — see Charlottesville, VA.
They send a clear message to black Americans, particularly when they stand in front of the courthouse.
Do you also support the actions of Roy Moore when he refused a court order to remove a marble monument of the Tend Commandments from the rotunda of an Alabama courthouse?
The front lawn of a courthouse is NOT an appropriate place for a monument to racism.
Of course I understand that Irish weren’t slaves, but they still went from being othered to being not. This CAN happen and if anything I am extremely impatient that this hasn’t happened for black people yet. I don’t blame the victims, precisely the opposite. Why can’t we just start treating black people fairly like we did the Irish. It just isn’t that hard! What happened in Charlottesville was horrific and prompted the first time I ever practically blurted out “YOU F***EN A**HOLE!” (language I never use) in response to comments by a President, but just because the haters in Charlottesville appropriated them doesn’t mean the rest of us have to concede the point. I understand, and largely share, the preference for putting the statues on battlefields rather than courthouse grounds, but for me time largely heals wounds and whatever racist value they may have once had fades in favor of historical value. As for Roy Moore and the Commandments, there is the constitutional issue of religious establishment that was at stake and Moore should not be defying court orders.
I think the only reason we are having this conversation is that African Americans are asserting their power and agency and saying enough is enough. I frankly don’t care whether or not you personally find the statues offensive, there was a time when I might have made the same arguments you are. I know John McCain did in the 2000 primary and later reflected on them and apologized for that and his vote against MLK Day. There are Republican legislators today who voted against Junteenth and a Republican majority on the Supreme Court just gutted the voting rights act.
Even Clarence Thomas argued that Confederate flags are racist and reminded him of cross burnings during a case where she swung the court against allowing them on state sanctioned license plates. So I think the time has come to put these statues away, they were made with an intent to scare black people into submission and to inculcate a sense of moral grievance in the white population that still clings to them. I can think of no other nation in modern history that has given as much leeway and succor as ours to the losing side in a Civil War. You don’t see any sons and daughters of Biafra. The few groups still flying the flag of Rhodesia or apartheid era South Africa are rightly stigmatized as racists living in the past. We can agree to disagree on whether that succor made sense after Reconstruction, but it’s important we properly teach this history for future generations. Removing the statues to a museum and away from centers of power can do this. I am not arguing they should be destroyed in some latter day iconoclastic orgy, I am saying they need to be preserved and set aside as examples of what once was so that citizens of this country CAN move on from the ghosts of the confederacy. It’s hard to do that when we still allow the selective idolization of slave holding traitors.
The Commandment says not to worship any graven image. It seems the difference is I don’t see the statues as idols to be worshipped or arguments for canonization, but simply a medium through which a story can be told. Once the story is told it is up to the receiver to decide whether to agree with it. I assume most will not agree with the original stories for many of these statues. I hope they provoke people to learn more comprehensively about the lives of the people they portray.
A statue in front of a courthouse or on a town common is more than just “a story” — it becomes effectively a statement of public policy. That’s why nativity displays are now forbidden. That’s why monuments to the Ten Commandments are now forbidden.
There is a difference between “a story” told in a rector’s study and the exact same utterance made from the pulpit. When you speak over a table in a bar or restaurant, you speak as yourself. When you speak in front of a classroom, you speak as a public official.
It is disingenuous to send racist and insulting messages from public officials in the form of these prominently placed public monuments and then blame “the receiver” when that receiver correctly internalizes those messages as statements of hate.
Nativities and Commandments have explicit Constitutional issues as forms of religious expression that the government is expressly forbidden to endorse.
Let’s try this, because I’m clearly not expressing myself well if you still think I am endorsing racist messages. Because our historical knowledge leaves something to be desired I’ll take any excuse I can get to put historical figures in the public consciousness. Suppose at a southern county courthouse there is a statute of Col. John Doe of that county’s Confederate regiment, someone not super well-known maybe even locally. If I pass by, or even have business at, that courthouse, I’m going to see this statue and be curious who it is. There may be a plaque on it saying “Col. John Doe b. 1830 KIA at Antietam 1862″, commander of the North Carolina 6th regiment based in this county”. If the folks who put the statue up wanted to elaborate maybe the plaque would say, “He bravely defended his homeland against Yankee aggression.” Yes, that spin would make us wince, but that is their story. Now my curiosity is piqued so I go home and Google Col. John Doe to find out more about this guy I had previously not heard of. The first link that appears is to Col. Doe’s Wikipedia article which I read and discover he was a local firebrand who had a reputation for more severely beating his slaves than others in his county and was a secessionist and disunionist before it was cool. Obviously I’m going to think he is a world-class SOB and I don’t have to like him, but now I’ve learned more history than I knew when I woke up that morning. That is always a good thing and I never would have found out about him had it not been for that statue at the courthouse.
I understand these statues are often of better known people, but unfortunately it never ceases to amaze me how often people don’t know even the most famous. There’s something to be said for historical representation to be squarely in front of all those folks who aren’t likely to visit a battlefield or open a book on these subjects. Again, the two main points are that the original message both fades over time and nobody is obligated to agree with it anyway.
You miss the point. People in the military are expressly forbidden from wearing their uniform while attending political events, lest their uniform give the impression that military endorses a particular candidate or party.
There you go again. The original message is heard loud and clear by our black brothers and sisters — that’s why they so passionately and correctly want these hostile messages removed.
Your last phrase is especially insensitive — it ignores the multitude of lynching victims killed by those inspired by these monuments. I promise you that if your skin and the skin of your family was black, you would know that a great many people feel that you in fact ARE obligated to agree with it.
This is still a culture where young black men are beat and worse for the “crime” of not crossing the street to clear the sidewalk for a group of whites or — even worse — for daring to visibly enjoy the beauty of a young white woman.
It took decades for the Christian church to acknowledge the role that the classic Palm Sunday liturgy played in the Holocaust. The message that “The Jews Killed Christ” did not fade over time. Holy Week was an exceedingly dangerous time for Jews in Europe long before the Holocaust.
These monuments were erected to convey a toxic, racist, and false message. That message is just as racist, toxic, and false today as it was when these were erected.
These monuments have no place on government owned property like parks and courthouse lawns.
Maybe there should be a ranked-choice system for naming towns. By the time a winner was announced, everyone would have had time to cool down.
It’s one thing to chastise the San Francisco School Board for trying to censor Lincoln or Washington. It’s quite another to defend confederate statues, not sure what your purpose is there. It’s verifiable that they sprang up after Plessy v Ferguson and the Wilmington Coup to reinforce white supremacy. Our own union soldiers found it offensive they went up and that they flew their battle flag of sedition rather than unite behind the American flag. So we part ways on that. Go to the Lynn GAR website and you’ll see these letters.
I’m inclined to let it be. Yeah, it seems a bit odd to have statues of those primarily known for levying war against the US in the Capitol building, but the states are the ones who got to choose which two statues to have therein. When I was growing up I would cringe and roll my eyes at the Lost Causers who seemed inclined to refight the Civil War, but in most recent years it seems that shoe has migrated to the other foot. Why can’t we all treat the Civil War more like the Revolutionary War in terms of historical study? I work at Minute Man NHP. We don’t refer to the British army as “the bad guys”, but interpret the events of April 19th from both points of view. We honor certain heroes, but do not currently vent our anger at the British. In fact the British and Canadians are our closest allies. I’m also not aware of current British resentment over their loss of the American colonies. One of the ranger programs we give is about history and memory. We talk about the monuments erected near the North Bridge and how the spin placed on events evolves and reflects as much about the generation that put them there as it does the events and people they intend to commemorate. That IMO is how we should treat any monument which may discomfort the current generation.
The Revolution was not fought over a moral issue like slavery.
No historian who studies WWII can evade confronting the moral issues of the Holocaust. No historian who studies the American Civil War (I fear we should start calling it “Civil War I”) can evade the moral issues of slavery.
There are no statues honoring Mr. Goering, Mr. Himmler, Mr. Bormann, Mr. Eichmann, and other Nazi leaders on town commons in Germany. No legitimate historian would “interpret” the actions of those men in any neutral way.
The American Civil War was NOT like the American revolution. It was fought to preserve and perpetuate slavery.
Your comparison of the monuments near the North Bridge and the statues of confederate generals is both racist and insulting. They are fundamentally DIFFERENT — unless you embrace the lies of the “Lost Cause” narrative.
Liberty and rights are not moral issues? Do you really not think that with a degree and license in history with several courses under my belt on these wars that I don’t know exactly what they were about? If anything, because slavery is so obvious as a moral issue (Nobody still thinks it’s OK, right?) it would seem easier to put that behind us. I really wish you would stop casting aspersions on my motives, which I try so hard to keep to the academic and stay away from the emotional side. Slavery was wrong goes without saying, but when you go right to “racist and insulting” that accomplishes nothing and if anything is counterproductive. It’s fine to say these things were wrong. Nazism is even easier to condemn because even within its own time the Holocaust was evil. I am not saying we at all have to sympathize with viewpoints we find abhorrent. I am saying we should allow the story of previous generations to provoke us. Plus, our efforts should focus on making things better for the present and future rather than fixing the past to make it more to our liking.
Who’s liberty and who’s rights? I think a fair case can be made that Black Loyalists got a better deal than the Black Patriots. The former got land and citizenship in Nova Scotia while the latter had to fight another hundreds years to end slavery and wait another hundred to get the full blessings of voting rights, which yesterday the Supreme Court narrowed even further.
Obviously we didn’t do it all at once, even for all whites (those without property and women), but we can celebrate the progress and recall that the Old World didn’t even pretend.
Yes, there are plenty of differences in the specifics (and I for one hate the interpretation of the Revolution as a “civil war” because I think that lets the South off the hook over our actual Civil War), but what they have in common is that both were fought scores of years before anyone currently alive was born. As such we ought not to feel them emotionally so much and we’ve been successful in that regarding the Revolution. I hate emotional history. In my experience all that accomplishes are unresolvable flashpoints such as Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, Kashmir, and the Holy Land. There is at least one monument at the North Bridge that is heavy on rah-rah mythology that has not aged well. We don’t take it down, but rather explain to visitors how and why it hasn’t aged well.
My rebuttals to that are the following:
1) The descendants of slaves and Jim Crow want those statues and flags taken down and we should listen to them. The folks who want to keep them up overwhelmingly mythologized the Confederacy and downplay the role racism and slavery played in the Civil War using false history.
2) States do not have the right to fly a flag of treason against the federal government. We settled that issue at Appomattox.
3) What is the context of these flags and statues?
They came up a generation after the war to celebrate the resumption of white supremacy under Jim Crow. They are a direct celebration of the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of Northern troops. There were not put in place right after the war when multiracial democracy was happening in the South and black officeholders were getting elected to Congress and state legislatures. They only came into place after poll taxes, the Wilmington coup, and the Klan put down that multiracial democracy. For someone so well read and multi degreed you should read Eric Foner since this is a persistent and lingering gap in your knowledge
. https://www.amazon.com/Reconstruction-Updated-Unfinished-Revolution-1863-1877/dp/0062354515
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898
Robert E Lee opposed Confederate monuments as flying in the face of reunifying the nation. So did scores of union veterans.
https://www.businessinsider.com/robert-e-lee-opposed-confederate-monuments-2017-8
https://www.penncivilwar.com/post/monument-opposition
What upsets me Christopher is I’ve provided these links and context before and you stubbornly refuse to listen.
It’s not a woke cancel culture 21st century thing. It’s a century and a half of black resistance to white supremacy after the civil war concluded and veterans of the actual conflict calling them divisive and unnecessary. DAR and Sons of the Confederate Army are not constituted until after reconstruction ended. It’s very deliberate timing. The statues go up after the troops go home and black southerners are put back on plantations via share dropping and kept out of the polls via taxes and the thousands of lynchings that took place. Where’s their memorial or statue? Who’s history are we honoring or forgetting when we keep the memorials to the bondsmen and prevent memorializing the victims of slavery and Jim Crow?
The bodies from Black Wall Street are only finally getting exhumed now and we are only starting to include that in our curriculum this year. Juneteenth only got federal recognition in 2021 despite being a holiday in black parts of the south since the 1870’s. Confederate Memorial Day is still a holiday in some states along with holidays and state parks honoring Lee and Jackson. Federal tax dollars money ironically maintain Confederate graves while the Tulsa exhumation and the lynching memorial were all privately funded.
I’m glad Juneteenth finally became a federal holiday. What can be more American than a celebration of freedom? I’m fine with memorializing soldiers who precisely because the Union won became Americans again too. After all, they were someone’s fathers, brothers, and husbands too. I lived in VA for a time and realized they simply have a bit of a different history than, say, we do in MA.
Who’s preventing memorials to slavery or those who fought for greater equality? I have said all along that the solution to the statue issue is to add rather than subtract, so that our generation can also tell our story. The Civil War ended the way you and I both favor. The Union was preserved and slavery ended. One side shouldn’t try to overturn the result and the other shouldn’t rub it in. The more I think about this the more of a reconciliationist I’ve become. No statue is going to jump down off its pedestal and hurt anyone. Leave them alone and lets do the real work of advancing justice in the present. Statues strike me as “sticks and stones…”
I am aware of those things and have never claimed you were wrong. They are textbook examples of the point I’m trying to make that monuments say at least as much about the generation that erected them as the people, places, and events they ostensibly commemorate. Each community must have a discussion about what to do with theirs, but I don’t think one-size-fits-all is the appropriate solution.
The appropriate place for monument to a Confederate general is a museum where the context you describe can be accurately presented.
That monument should NOT be on a town common where it continues to shout the same racist message it was erected to convey.
That’s actually my ultimate preference as well with the note that I consider preserved battlefields to be outdoor museums. I was going to mention that the NPS (as I suspect you’re aware since you’ve mentioned visiting their sites) does a good job, but that includes voices from both sides of the conflict I guess for me whatever message has faded and they are just works of public art. Maybe it’s my interpretive history background that makes me automatically understand that whatever message was intended to convey comes from that time and is no longer necessarily valid.
I think a civil war battlefield such as Antietam, Gettysburg, Bull Run, or whatever is a more appropriate setting than the middle of a town common such as in mid-town Raleigh or Durham NC.
On the other hand, a prominent position in front of a courthouse such as in Front Royal, VA (https://goo.gl/maps/bjTRuEmf5iopNtFYA) sends a clear and racist message to every person with business in that courthouse.
A monument like this does NOT belong in front of courthouse or on a town common.
You miss the huge fundamental difference between the 1619 project and the 1776 Commission. Bottomline is one was promoted by a private entity and the other promoted by the govt.
The NYT has every right to develop this “idea” and let those on the right and left (socialist scholars have been brutal in their critique) debate it’s place in the larger debate. 1776 was a govt promoted “curriculum” which puts us on a very dangerous slippery slope. Nothing to see here?! Hardly.
“Nothing to see here” was a reference to what seems to be the 1776 attitude toward slavery, that is, trying to sweep it under the rug. I’m aware of the different origins, but I was commenting on the merits.
It might seem odd to equate a long-standing conservative beef with universities (that they are hot-beds of leftist indoctrination) with Russian propaganda. But this precisely the modus operandi of Russian intelligence agencies: they are masters at exploiting and grinning up already-existing cleavages in democratic societies, in order to promote not only that pre-existing division, but also ‘what-aboutism’, and the belief that ‘all politicians are corrupt, so who cares if there is corruption, as long as it’s my people in power?’.
It might seem odd to equate a long-standing conservative beef with universities (that they are hot-beds of leftist indoctrination) with Russian propaganda. But this is precisely the modus operandi of Russian intelligence agencies: they are masters at exploiting and ginning up already-existing cleavages in democratic societies in order to promote not only those pre-existing divisions, but also ‘what-aboutism’, and the belief that ‘all politicians are corrupt, so who cares if there is corruption, as long as it’s my people in power?’.
I like the phrase “grinning up already-existing cleavages” better.
It’s getting crowded in here between the statues all around us and the grinning Russians under the bed.
I’m with you on grinning-vs-ginning. 🙂
The cyber attacks from the Russians are very real, whether or not you admit it.
I’m not entirely skeptical that the attacks were from Russia. But the attackers were able to completely fool their targets in America for months. No one had any idea of what information was taken, when the defenses were breached, how to repair the damage, what the damage actually was, how long it would take to even inventory what data was corrupted, etc. In other words our cyber people were completely out classed.
So how much confidence can we have that they have figured out who did it? Isn’t it a standard feature of cyber attacks that the attacker tries to disguise the source of attacks?
It’s like the old joke about the compulsive gambler who bets on 8 football games, loses every one. Then bets on 14 basketball games, loses all of them.
“I still feel like betting on something,” he tells his friend, “but there’s nothing left to bet on.”
“There’s a hockey game tonight,” the friend says.
“Are you crazy? I don’t know anything about hockey!’
See Tom, if you send me a smiley emoji, you’ll get more jokes.