And in honor of King…
This [is] a quick heads-up on the “1776 report”, which was released today by the White House, of all days, on MLK Day. It’s another attempt to re-write and white-wash history and prop up the modern white supremacist movement.
The report was written by the “1776 Commission”, a rag-tag group of mostly white and conservative “historians”; it states that criticism of the Founding Fathers’ slave ownership ‘has done enormous damage’ and has had a ‘devastating effect on our civic unity and social fabric’. The report claims that the nation’s founders detested slavery even though many of them owned enslaved people.
So what’s the idea here? That praise of the “founding fathers'” slave ownership would do tremendous gooditude and have an empowering effect on our civic unity and social fabric? Because I’m not seeing it. I think insisting that slavery was virtuous and the men who made the rules were awesome for entrenching it would be much worse for our civic unity and social fabric than that other thing.
The press statement announcing the report:
1776 Commission Takes Historic and Scholarly Step to Restore Understanding of the Greatness of the American Founding
Wossa historic and scholarly step?
Anyway – back in the real world – yes, in some ways, the white men who wrote the Constitution did a revolutionary and progressive thing, but, that doesn’t mean they did an infinitely perfect and not to be questioned thing. They left a lot out, and the lot they left out was actually quite important. The rights of the people they were displacing, the rights of the people they held as slaves, the rights of the people they didn’t allow to vote or get an education or do much of anything except bear children and be wives – all that and more was left out. We get to talk about that and think about it and write about it and make tv documentaries about it.
[The] 1776 Commission—comprised of some of America’s most distinguished scholars and historians—has released a report presenting a definitive chronicle of the American founding, a powerful description of the effect the principles of the Declaration of Independence have had on this Nation’s history, and a dispositive rebuttal of reckless “re-education” attempts that seek to reframe American history around the idea that the United States is not an exceptional country but an evil one.
Scholars and historians don’t present “definitive chronicles.” That’s not what they do; that’s not what history is. It’s a work in continuous progress, and even the best work isn’t called “definitive”; that’s just amateurish. And history isn’t a matter of “chronicles,” either; it’s not story-telling and it doesn’t claim to be telling the whole and only truth (because that’s not possible). I was taught that first thing as a history major. These hacks on the trump job are exactly that: hacks. Also nice touch doing this on Martin Luther King day. Racist assholes.
“felt somewhat uncomfortable about in some cases” wasn’t “detested”…
Some of them did detest slavery, but they compromised with the slave owners. Is that less bad than owning slaves? That’s a topic for an ethics class. It seems like it is to me, but I am open to the possibility I could be wrong. But being wrong about that doesn’t mean the founders were great and good and wonderful…and none of them were in every way. It’s possible (maybe probable) some of them beat their wives. Cheated on their wives, on their business partners. Abused their kids. Beat their dogs, their horses. But the fact that some of them held slaves is not a probable; they admitted it, and it is a matter of historic record. They had the chance to strike a huge blow for freedom by freeing the humans they held in bondage, but it took nearly a hundred years and a bloody war to do that, and then they found ways to enslave them again, make them work for nothing.
And other things they left out…women. Well, actually, we’re not things, we’re people. And Abigail Adams told her husband not to forget about the women. Naturally he did…they did. Most women were virtually enslaved in their homes, and if they worked outside the home, their husband got the money. They couldn’t own property, and their children were considered the property of the father; the mother didn’t have rights.
So, yeah, I think we can celebrate good that is done, but that has to be tempered with the things that were not good. The founders, like most of us, were a mixture of good and bad, and in some instances the bad was so bad it made even the good stink.
“back in the real world ”
The Founding Father John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, an abolitionist, declared “Those who own the country ought to govern it.” And, through many struggles (continuing) with Labor and Unions, so it has come to pass with wealth concentrated with the few who can afford to finance the political campaigns for those elected leading to polarization of the working class, dismissed by the Democratic party, who looked to a Leader who claimed to support them. Not quite a straight line, but the precarity and fear of the working and middle class translates into an existential sense of threat that has to be fought against heroically: Jan. 6. Trump stitches these groups together as a charismatic leader. Evangelical supporters see Trump as a modern King Cyrus. [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/opinion/trump-evangelicals-cyrus-king.html]
interview of Cynthia Miller-Idriss by Fareed Zakaria on Jan. 17
The freedoms they afforded were a landmark in that they abolished the notion of royal birthright, but were very restrictive in who they were applied to. They basically broadened the notion of superior birthright… to western European descended men of primarily Protestant faith. Progress, but also, baby steps.
‘a dispositive rebuttal of reckless “re-education” attempts that seek to reframe American history around the idea that the United States is not an exceptional country but an evil one.’
This is the same line taken by various Tories in the UK. To examine the truth, to seek to understand things are they are and were, is not to claim that one’s nation is an ‘evil’ country, but to seek to understand both the good and ill that have made and now make it up. By ‘exceptional’, of course, what those so-called historians mean is the national myth that the USA is unlike any other country in being exceptionally good, exceptionally free, etc., and everybody should be made to subscribe to this myth without questioning it. One can perfectly well love one’s country while recognising that it was and is far from being perfect.
In Australia, those who research and write about the interactions with, and effects of, the Indigenous population, and how those effects still manifest today, are derided as “Black Arm Band historians.”
Perhaps someone could send 1776 Commission some Howard Zinn works.
Is anybody else reminded of Borat? To Make Benefit Glorious Nation of America, perhaps? This sounds so risible, so juvenile. If any historian with a good reputation was involved with this, surely his reputation has now suffered from his involvement.
If America was glorious from the beginning, then was the Civil War a waste of time? Was the women’s suffrage movement just a bit of silly whining? How about the free speech movement? Civil rights movement? One can’t improve upon perfection, yet somehow America was improved.
It’s almost like they’re trying to drop down a portcullis and say stop there! No more improvement!
Why are some old white men so desperate?
I myself have long since discounted anything “released by the (Trump) White House” as being pure propaganda. Of course, not everyone sees it that way. I’m sure the 3WE goons and Proud Boys don’t. I’m sick of the hero worship of the “founding fathers” and the detestable whitewashing of US history. Is the USA “evil”? I don’t think so, but I think that people have done a lot of evil things in the name of the USA for almost 300 years, and still do. The only way we make progress against that is to bring it to light, and to push back against these hacks who think that history is some simple Mel Gibson movie where the hero bravely waves a flag and overcomes the bad guys.
Roj @ 6 – they specifically repudiated and dissed Zinn in the idiotic press statement (and so in the report). Because of course they did.
This reads to me like nothing more than a desire to have adults retain the fairy tale version of American history that many of them were given in around the third grade (or whenever they start teaching it). “The British were mean, American colonists were brave and good, led by the bravest and goodest amongst them, who were perfect men the likes of whom we shall never see again.”
And I think in many ways that last part may be the most pernicious. When we elevate the Washingtons and Jeffersons and Adamses and Franklins to the status of secular saints, it just feeds in to the notion that today’s politicians are pale imitations of those “greats.” I think it’s much healthier to acknowledge that flawed people were able to accomplish great things, because it means that maybe some of our flawed leaders today can accomplish at least kind of good things? A certain amount of cynicism about leaders is healthy and necessary, but when it goes too far you end up with this faux-sophisticated jaded mentality that “they’re all corrupt, so who cares if the guy I like is corrupt?”
So true. I do love the US for the busy diversity, the breadth of our experiences if we are willing to embrace them, and other good things. But I can see the bad, and wish to excise it. Removing a cancer is not the same as saying your entire body is bad.
I imagine most of the people involved with the 1776 project would say yes to this. The other ones, they might hesitate and waffle and come out with a “no, but…” type of answer because it is not socially acceptable in at least some circles to criticize the impact of the Civil War or Civil Rights (though perfectly acceptable in way too many circles), and they will try to find a way to walk between both groups. But women? Naw, it’s okay to dismiss them as hysterical whiners (and silly, too, as the post suggested).
The January 6 insurrection made me wonder a bit more about what exactly happened in 1776. Was there a pamphleteering equivalent of Q Anon churning out conspiracy theories? Were there gun-toting, lunatic fringe nutbars happy to be given licence to plonk the British (and Native Americans) to their hearts’ content? Autocrats ready and willing to crown a local boy as strong man? How much of any of this sort of thing might have been white-washed out of recoverability?
I mean, I don’t think so… the Declaration wasn’t exactly storming Parliament or anything and Thomas Paine was as far removed from QAnon as you can be.
Keep in mind what was going on at this time period: it was a time of challenging monarchy and nobility. Autocrats were already in power (sort of, it’s clear that the power of monarchs was far from absolute)