1776 vs. 1619?

The 1776 commission is back in the news. Erased by the Biden administration, the 1776 commission report seemed to be dead. Not so fast. The leadership team will be launching a new website and has refocused its energy at the State and local level.

Just like the 1619 project. Both of these groups realize that thinking locally and acting locally is the way to change America.

Both also distort history. They have a lot in common.

Both rely on the “proposition nation” myth of American history to tell the story. For the 1776 people, this led to a happy land of non-racist and anti-slavery founders who nevertheless failed to live up to their own standards. They were also thwarted by evil Southerners who thought the “proposition nation” was a myth.

The 1619 project agrees, except they think the founding was racist from the beginning and only “people of color” have truly been the patriotic people in America because they are the only Americans who have steadfastly defended the idea that “all men and women, created by–you know, you know the thing.”

The proposition nation hoax is one of the greatest lies in American history, but “conservatives” at the 1776 project want to force it down our throats. So does the 1619 Project.

Consider that in Florida, it will be illegal to teach American history that isn’t based on proposition nation myth. That is Ron DeSantis’s “conservative” school agenda.

The 1619 people would be fine with that, but Florida also makes it illegal to give your opinion on the history you are teaching. Logically, this would mean that the “proposition nation” theory would also be illegal, but they don’t see it that way.

That part of the law is intended to crush the critical race theory result of teaching the 1619 Project.

But you see, if we are going to be honest, then we have to say that the founding generation was racist. Many were also in favor of slavery. A fair number weren’t, but they didn’t hold a universal belief that slavery needed to be eliminated.

We may not like this, but it’s the truth, and at the end of the day we have to respond with, “So what?”

This doesn’t lessen their accomplishments. We don’t place such moral restrictions on any other group in history. No one says, “Well, the Greeks were pro-slavery so we can’t admire their contributions to Western Civilization,” or “Most Romans owned slaves so we should ignore them.”

Certainly woke social justice warriors would suggest that we must deny the importance of Western Civilization because it would contribute to “systemic racism,” but most rational people would tell these losers to shove off.

The founding generation was great because of they literally founded the United States. Nothing else needs to be said. We can quibble over the true impact of the Constitution, for example, but we cannot deny that these men won two wars against the British, drafted a host of State constitution and two governing documents for the United States.

Name another American generation that pulled that off.

And that’s only scratching the surface. We don’t need to lie about them to recognize their greatness. That just opens the door to an attack. We also don’t need to blindly follow Lincoln’s (non-conservative) “proposition nation” nonsense.

When we debate who was the least racist among the founders, or if they were in fact racist, we are letting the left win.

That shouldn’t even be a topic of discussion.

Ron DeSantis has good intentions, and I agree that local school board races are the key to future success, but don’t bog that down by doubling down on the idiotic anti-conservative 1776 Commission Report.

We can’t win that game.

I discuss this problem in Episode 457 of The Brion McClanahan Show.