Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
In 2020, President Donald Trump created the 1776 Commission to counter the leftists’ 1619 Project, a series of New York Times articles that claim America’s true founding was 1619 when the first slaves arrived, and not at the Declaration of Independence’s signing in 1776. They also claim that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery.
The President, consistent with his “America First” policies, sought to challenge the “critical race theory” that permeates the country’s institutions.
Scholars of actual history dispute the 1619 Project’s claims. A group called the 1776 Project was created to challenge what it calls anti-American propaganda. Activist Robert Woodson leads the project.
After President Trump created the 1776 Commission, Dr. William Allen, COO for the Center of Urban Renewal and Education, said it was a “timely intervention to address the pressing need to defend the true meaning of the American founding for faith communities.”
The “1776 Commission” will point the way to an understanding of political and cultural life in the United States through which we can sustain the power and authority to defend rights of conscience, including the conscientious celebration of those dimensions of the founding which alone vouchsafe for all humankind the hope of moral and religious fulfillment. Practically, that means understanding that the United States is not “systemically racist” for as long as it remains “systemically Christian.” More broadly, it means that all human kind, of whatever faith commitment, can thrive nowise more certainly than it can upon the broad framework of natural rights and self-government.
But the 1776 Commission is no more. One of President Joe Biden’s first acts was to get rid of it through Executive Order. One of the commissioners, the Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez wrote on the Daily Signal that he and the other commissioners will continue to meet during their two-year term.
By abolishing the commission, and banishing the report, Biden threw in his lot with critics that from the moment the report was issued covered themselves with ignominy as they raced each other to denigrate our work.
One of the worst examples of the media “coverage” was a CNN report whose headline actually screamed this libel: “Trump administration issues racist school curriculum report on MLK day.” In a breach of journalistic ethics (if those two words can still be written together), the body of the story did not bother to explain where in the report was there a hint of racism.
The left’s attempt to undo America’s founding principles has been underway for a long time. Now they believe they have a mandate to openly push their anti-America policies. Gonzalez said the Commission’s work recommended in its report “is for historians to look at primary sources, analyze what they meant in the context of the time, debate that meaning in good faith, without an agenda, and be ready to correct the record when proven wrong.” The 1619 historians twisted history and seek to make America “an object of contempt.”
It’s time for the shock and anger about President Trump’s loss to wear off so we can focus on defending America’s founding principles, including our personal liberty.
