Freedom was the overarching idea of America, not slavery (Commentary) – syracuse.com

Richard D. Wilkins lives in DeWitt.

How dark the picture that SUNY Geneseo Distinguished Professor Michael Leroy Oberg paints of American history, while nastily attacking those who would celebrate it (The Republican War on American history, Feb. 12, 2021). Slavery and Jim Crow unquestionably deeply stained Americas story, but were hardly central to it. The New York Times 1619 Project he promotes has been heavily criticized by leading historians. such as Peter Wood, Ph.D., president of the National Association of Scholars. America didnt begin in 1619, with a handful of indentured servants landing in what is now Virginia, but in the 1620 Mayflower Compact, among a group of religious freedom seekers.

Freedom was the overarching idea inspiring colonists to declare independence, and forge an enduring Constitution. Slavery was then deeply embedded in the agrarian Southern economy. Unanimous passage required reluctant compromise, but abolitionists succeeded in ending slave importation by 1808, and inserted the much misunderstood 3/5th rule, limiting Southern political power.

The continuing struggle forced balanced free and slave state admissions into the Union, characterized by the Compromises of 1820 and 1850. A bloody Civil War brought forth Lincolns Emancipation Proclamation, and Amendments 13, 14, and 15, which promised, though soon thwarted, equal rights for all citizens. That awaited Brown v. Board of Education, 1960s Civil Rights acts, and subsequent reparative measures.

That large, but limited, blemished beginning cant begin to account for how a cluster of competing colonies, thinly spread along the Atlantic littoral, soon traversed the continent, becoming the greatest and most prosperous nation in world history. It ignores the multitudes who, throughout, advocated, fought and died for the achievement of equality for all, It ignores the millions who flocked to these shores, fleeing oppression and persecution, in search of freedom, and who have contributed so much to its development.

Southern wealth from enslavement was soon gone with the wind. Contra Obergs reductive analysis, the nations great wealth was generated in the North, with its massive industrialization, employing free native and immigrant labor, and powered by inventiveness and ingenuity. Even the cotton gin, savior of the Southern economy, was developed there.

The Academy has opened a Pandoras Box of societal ills: political correctness, multiculturalism, Critical Race Theory, antiracism and phantom cancel culture. Not so slowly, but surely, though not yet by Congress, First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, worship and peaceable assembly are being seriously eroded. Having ever said, or done, anything now objectionable, regardless of intent or age, can bar one permanently from the public square. One can publish anything they want , as long as Big Tech approves. Religious conscience must now bend before government edict. In the name of public health, more persons have been allowed at a time into casinos than into congregations. Contributing to a disfavored cause, or supporting a disliked public figure, can get one doxxed, physically confronted or fired.

History as civic education is for K-12, history as a discipline for higher education. Schoolchildren are being ideologically indoctrinated, not americanized. They are being prepared not for the work, but the woke world, groomed for political activism, not for the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Instead of encouraging individual talent and initiative, all must be tethered to the least common denominator. Equality of opportunity for all, inevitably resulting in disparate outcomes, is being replaced by equity, an impossible demand for equal collective outcomes, among warring racial, sexual, and ethnic clans.

America remains an exceptional nation. Yet, it seems rapidly devolving into the Disunited States. Such social unraveling desperately needs to be arrested. In strikingly similar times, Lincoln wisely warned that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

That was true then; it remains true today.

Related: The Republican war on American history (Commentary)

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Freedom was the overarching idea of America, not slavery (Commentary) - syracuse.com