When Morons Attack

       In the category of just how venal, racist and partisan can a person be, Senator Tom Cotton (R AR) is attempting to ban the 1619 project materials from all school curricula. If Cotton’s legislation passes, school districts that embrace the curriculum would no longer qualify for federal professional development funds, money that is intended to improve teacher quality.

         He’d have had to haul my ass to jail then. We railed at Soviet era rewriting of history which was rife with actual falsehoods. The 1619 project is none of that, being based largely, but not exclusively on primary source information. Cotton says the “founding fathers,” however he classes them, believed slavery to be a “necessary evil” to the nation’s development. That may have been true for some, but not by all by a long shot.  The first Congress had to deal with an attempt by Pennsylvania Quakers to abolish slavery by law. By the time of the Civil War the rest of Europe had already outlawed slavery.

       Much earlier,  1777, Vermont, not yet a state, had not only abolished slavery, but granted voting rights  to former slaves. PA. followed in 1780, Mass. in 1783. The remaining New England states–New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island–adopted emancipation schemes modeled on Pennsylvania’s statute in the mid-1780s, and the United States Congress abolished slavery in any future states north of the Ohio River in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

        Knowing Cotton as the dunce he is, he would probably be surprised that all this took place before the Constitution was ratified in 1789! It is certainly true that all the Virginians of property who could be classified as “founders” were born into a slave holding culture but even before the Northwest Territories Act (“Northwest Ordinance”) passed by the Congress under the Articles of Confederation in 1787 banned slavery north of the Ohio river, Thomas Jefferson had tried in vain to impose such a ban. In truth, of the 39 “framers” of the Constitution, more than half had voted “yea” on the question of banning slavery in the new territories. Jefferson, a Virginian and slave owner had also argued FOR Virginia to emancipate slaves.

For details on how slavery in America shaped and affected almost all political debate prior to 1862,  go here: 

https://bubblehead1026.blogspot.com/2020/06/what-you-dont-know.html

       It is true that the 1619 project, as a whole, draws conclusions which are interpretations of complex circumstances, some of which have been questioned by legitimate scholars, and, are themselves a starting point for further learning. I’d like to think anyone bright enough to graduate Harvard Law (Cotton) would understand that comparing, contrasting, questioning, and drawing conclusions are the crux of historiography, but then, our Governor, Bozo DeSantis, Covid denier #1, is also a Harvard Law Grad. Both men suffer from acute Trump recto-cranial inversions (their heads, his ass) and might benefit from reading Dr. Mary Trump’s book.

          In short, we show grave disrespect to anyone of any age when we attempt when to tell them or legislate what they may read or hear, that they are only allowed some information,  and must limit what conclusions they have to draw from what they are shown. 

       Unlike Tom Cotton, who deals principally with members of Congress, I have dealt with hundreds of inquisitive, literate individuals who were quite capable of evaluating, comparing, and contrasting multiple sources and deciding for themselves how they feel about it. These remarkable people, 11^th graders when I had the privilege of their presence, would sneer at Cotton’s attempt to tell them what to believe. Keep the morons out of the education business, starting with Betsy DeVos and working down the list.