1619: My post of January 17 asked you to be terribly, terribly alert to what is being taught to our kids. I mentioned the “1619 Project.” Recent criticism of the Project, and the author’s reaction to that criticism, was discussed in The Federalist. I recommend you follow the link and read the article by Tristan Justice. Many people do not know how devastatingly dangerous the 1619 Project is to our society. Is it being taught in your schools? Its revisionist history “is infecting some 4,500 K-12 classrooms.”
1776: I learned this week that one of the executive orders Joe Biden signed Wednesday, on the day of his inauguration as President of the United States, was the cancellation of the 1776 Commission. The 1776 Commission was designed “to promote ‘patriotic education’”—what our kids are taught about how our country came to be, and the history of slavery and racism. The Commission’s Report, forty-five pages long, came out on January 18, 2021. A link to the Report has taken me to a 404/Page Not Found. Did the new administration and its cancel culture delete the report along with canceling the Commission? It could have been a mistake. We’ll have to see if it reappears.
The New York Post reported that the 1776 Commission’s Report stated, “States and school districts should reject any curriculum that promotes one-sided partisan opinions, activist propaganda, or factional ideologies that demean America’s heritage, dishonor our heroes, or deny our principles.” Partially responsible for establishing this Commission was the defacing and tearing down statues of historical significance this past year.
The report is also said to assert, “Deliberately destructive scholarship shatters the civic bonds that unite all Americans. It silences the discourse essential to a free society by breeding division, distrust, and hatred among citizens.”
1994: So, we have looked at 1619 and 1776. What do those years have in common with 1984? George Orwell’s book, 1984, of course.
My copy of Imprimis arrived this week with an adaptation of Larry Arnn’s speech “Orwell’s 1984 and Today” at Hillsdale College. I don’t believe you could find a better comparison and analysis of what is happening in America today than this. Larry Arnn was the chairman of the 1776 Commission.
Have you read 1984? Many people are reading or re-reading it now. It was Amazon’s Number One Book on January 13, 2021. Winston Smith is the protagonist of 1984, and the state decides he needs a thorough “re-education.” Here is a portion of Arnn’s address:
As the first essential step of his education, Winston has to learn doublethink—a way of thinking that defies the law of contradiction. In Aristotle, the law of contradiction is the basis of all reasoning, the means of making sense of the world. It is the law that says that X and Y cannot be true at the same time if they’re mutually exclusive. For instance, if A is taller than B and B is taller than C, C cannot be taller than A. The law of contradiction means things like that.
In our time, the law of contradiction would mean that a governor, say, could not simultaneously hold that the COVID pandemic renders church services too dangerous to allow, and also that massive protest marches are fine. It would preclude a man from declaring himself a woman, or a woman declaring herself a man, as if one’s sex is simply a matter of what one wills it to be—and it would preclude others from viewing such claims as anything other than preposterous.
. . . as we have seen, the regime in 1984 exists precisely to repeal the past.
2021: I urge you to use the link above and read all of Larry Arnn’s analysis of how the book compares to what is—not fictionally, actually—happening in our country today. It will bring you a chilling realization that the path being pursued in America is serious, planned, determined to succeed and to effect all-reaching power to those in charge.
There they are: 1619, 1776, 1984 and now . . . 2021. There is a connection.