FROM T-PARTY TO TRUMPARTY
Trump ends term with ‘patriotic education’ report which makes excuses for slavery and calls anti-abortion movement ‘great reform’
Gustaf Kilander
The White House has released a report by the 1776 commission that pushes for "patriotic education" that teaches the country's history with "with reverence and love" and says that slavery was not "a uniquely American evil".
The commission, which was created in response to The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 project which “reframes American history around the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans”, released their report on MLK day.
The report attempts to defend slave-owning founding fathers against charges that they were hypocrites who “didn’t believe in their stated principles,” and that “the country they built rests on a lie". The report claims that "this charge is untrue, and has done enormous damage, especially in recent years, with a devastating effect on our civic unity and social fabric".
The commission argues in the document that the institution of slavery should be seen from "a much broader perspective" and that "the unfortunate fact is that the institution of slavery has been more the rule than the exception throughout human history".
The report criticises "identity politics," which is mentioned 39 times in the 45-page document. It says that socialism is "less violent than Communism," but that it "is inspired by the same flawed philosophy and leads down the same dangerous path of allowing the state to seize private property and redistribute wealth as the governing elite see fit".
It goes on to defend the second amendment, saying: "An armed people is a people capable of defending their liberty no less than their lives and is the last, desperate check against the worst tyranny."
The White House website says that the report presents "a definitive chronicle of the American founding," and is "a 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".
The report puts the movement to end abortions in America in the same group as the movement to end slavery, the civil rights movement, and the movement to achieve votes for women, under the banner of "great reforms".
"Great reforms—like abolition, women’s suffrage, anti-Communism, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Pro-Life Movement—have often come forward that improve our dedication to the principles of the Declaration of Independence under the Constitution," the report says.
American Historical Association president Jim Grossman called the report "a hack job. It’s not a work of history," according to The Washington Post.
“It’s a work of contentious politics designed to stoke culture wars," he said. Public historian Alexis Coe said, “This ‘report’ lacks citations or any indication books were consulted, which explains why it’s riddled in errors, distortions, and outright lies.”
Boston University historian Ibram Kendi tweeted that the report makes it seem as if "the demise of slavery in the United States was inevitable".
Eric Rauchway, a history professor at the University of California, Davis told The Washington Post that “It’s very hard to find anything in here that stands as a historical claim, or as the work of a historian. Almost everything in it is wrong, just as a matter of fact... I may sound a little incoherent when trying to speak of this because the report itself is not coherent. It’s like historical whack-a-mole.”
The report claims that affirmative action goes against everything Martin Luther King stood for. Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse said that this "is simply ludicrous".
He told The Washington Post: “King was alive when the Johnson administration launched its affirmative action programs and publicly declared his support, specifically noting that it was a logical extension of the struggle for black equality. The document ignores King’s record of support for affirmative action, lamely pointing to the one line conservatives know from his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and ignoring the rest of his radical record. The fact that this historical distortion of King’s life and work was released on MLK Day makes it even worse.”
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Stuti Mishra
Wed, January 20, 2021
File image: Trump’s 1776 report is now accused of plagiarism after receiving strong criticism from historians(AFP via Getty Images)
A considerable chunk of Donald Trump’s 1776 commission project released by the White House, that pushes for “patriotic education” and attempts to defend slavery, is said to be plagiarised, according to a media report.
The 45-page report titled “1776 Report” that was released on Martin Luther King Jr Day, attacks liberal thought and teaches American history with "with reverence and love," and has been criticised by historians for its weak and one-sided arguments.
According to a report by Politico, a page in the report which talks about classroom discussion topics for teachers “appears to be copied nearly verbatim from an opinion piece” which was published in Inside Higher Ed in 2008 by Thomas Lindsay, one of the members of the 1776 commission.
The 2008 essay from Mr Lindsay contains several discussion prompts for teachers and features in the 1776 report on page 39 and 40 without attribution. The earlier essay was presented as a critique to a published book by former Harvard University president Derek Bok.
“The similarities are pronounced enough to raise questions about how much original work actually went into the construction of the 1776 report,” the Politico report said.
Apart from the discussion points, Politico noted, that the report copies five more paragraphs from Mr Lindsey’s 2008 article as well as adding other paragraphs specifically questioning the ways that the works of progressive politicians “differ from the principles and structure of the Constitution.”
Mr Lindsey, who was one of the 16 conservatives appointed to be part of the commission in December 2020, is an academic and served as president of Shimer college between 2009-2010. He is now a senior fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.
The commission was created in September last year after Mr Trump signed an executive order to set up a “national commission to promote patriotic education” in the country. The move was considered an attempt to please his conservative voter base, as the polls showed Mr Biden leading, in the run-up to the 3 November elections.
Trump defends America’s
founding on slavery with
‘1776 report’
Biba Adams
Tue, January 19, 2021
The 1776 Commission’s report describes affirmative action as ‘more discrimination’ and ‘the opposite of King’s hope.’
In the waning hours of his presidency, Donald Trump continues to make racism its defining feature.
Trump created a 1776 Commission to study the idea that Americans are being indoctrinated with a false, liberal narrative about the country’s founding. The creation of the group came a year after the Pulitzer Prize-winning release of “The 1619 Project” from The New York Times, which detailed America’s creation as a slave-owning society.
Formed in September — during his re-election campaign — and widely seen as a ploy to incite and inflame his base supporters, the 18-member advisory panel was reportedly to produce a pro-American curriculum. However, the president has no authority over what is taught in U.S. schools.
Instead, the 1776 Commission released their “1776 report,” which defends slavery as part of the nation’s founding and declares affirmative action “more discrimination.” It calls affirmative action “the opposite of King’s hope that his children would ‘live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin.’”
It is, as a whole, drawing intense criticism from historians.
The New York Times notes that Trump’s commission “did not include a single professional historian of the United States.”
To add insult to injury, the report was released on the holiday observing the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“This report skillfully weaves together myths, distortions, deliberate silences, and both blatant and subtle misreading of evidence to create a narrative and an argument that few respectable professional historians, even across a wide interpretive spectrum, would consider plausible, never mind convincing,” James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told The Times.
“They’re using something they call history to stoke culture wars,” he said.
In terms of U.S. history and slave ownership, the report insinuates that the American Revolution in 1776 created a “dramatic sea change in moral sensibilities” in the nation, which is patently false. Enslavement in America lasted nearly 100 more years after its founding
The commission was led by Larry Arnn, a Trump ally, and its co-chair is Carol Swain, a Black conservative. Further, the White House called the report “definitive,” yet it includes no scholarly citations or references.
The report concludes by recommending that K-12 schools “reject any curriculum” that demeans “America’s heritage.”
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