simply with an ignorance-acknowledging “ probably a racist .” The monument to the author of the Emancipation Proclamation on the National Mall was likely spared only because of the protection of the National Guard .
As John Daniel Davidson has noted , toppling statues is not a good sign for the future of the republic ; it looks a lot less like a policy conversation about police reform than it does regime change and revolution .
Nor are revolutionary sentiments limited to the youthful protesters . Much as they have in newsrooms and corporate boardrooms , the cultural revolutionaries find only willing kneelers among their elders in the Democratic Party .
After presiding over several nights of free-for-all looting , beatings , and police deaths , New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said “ 400 years of American racism ” excused the violence and social distancing violations . In Fairfax , Virginia , known as a moderate county , the Democratic Party put out a tweet praising rioting as an “ integral part of this country ’ s march towards progress .”
TEACHING AMERICANS TO HATE THEIR COUNTRY At the heart of the unrest is the belief that the United States is a uniquely bad country , instead of an exceptionally free , prosperous , and powerful one . It ’ s the same message that the Pulitzer Committee endorsed when it crowned The New York Times ’ 1619 Project : the United States is , always has been , and likely always will be , a deeply racist society . Ibram Kendi , a leading promoter of what is euphemistically termed “ anti-racism ,” suggests as a solution to America ’ s alleged systematic racism an amendment that would gut the Constitution and its commitment to equality under the law and freedom of speech . “ Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U . S . Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principles : Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals . The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold , as well as racist ideas by public officials .”
It should be clear from Kendi ’ s view , which replaces the equality of individuals based on natural right [ s ] with “ equality ” of collective racial groups , that what the left innocuously now terms “ anti-racism ” requires the total destruction of the American system .
The narrative that systematic racism has been embedded in America ’ s DNA from her founding is a dangerous lie . Escaped slave turned statesman Fredrick Douglass , no stranger to harsh and righteous criticism of his country , called it “ a slander upon [ the framers ’] memory .”
Injustice , unfairness , and bigotry are , indeed , an ineradicable part of life . But America is not a systemically racist society . Far from being fruit of a rotten tree , America ’ s founding principles form the best recipe for racial harmony , and rebuke to inequality , yet devised by man . Where does this poisonous anti-American idea , acceptance of which seems to be toppling institution after institution , come from , especially after the United States has advanced so far in living up to the promises of its birth ?
As many of us warned years ago , the radical ideas born on campus have already metastasized across society . Today , K-12 public schools across the country increasingly teach some version of the lie .
The error-ridden , America-hating 1619 Project , and its associated Pulitzer-endorsed , Common Core-compliant lesson materials , is already being taught in more than 3,500 schools across the country . Anecdotally , ever more superintendents are responding to the current unrest by promising to adopt the 1619 curriculum . The problem will get worse before it gets better .
MOST ‘ EDUCATIONAL ’ INSTITUTIONS INDOCTRINATE
Well before protesters spilled into the streets in 2020 , the largest national teachers ’ union gave its official stamp of approval to Black Lives Matter and to indoctrinating teachers with the concept of “ white fragility ” and its supposed
AMERICA IS NOT SYSTEMICALLY RACIST No one denies America ’ s original sin of slavery , including the Founders . But slavery and racism are not at the heart of the American experiment or its documents and institutions .
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