{"blocks":[{"id":"rzwmkkrh-8yl5m0ak","type":"linkTool","data":{"link":"https://nypost.com/2026/07/03/us-news/ulysses-s-grants-kin-says-ex-prez-would-be-proud-of-us-at-250-years/","meta":{"title":"Ulysses S. Grant’s kin says ex-prez would be ‘proud’ of America at 250 years: ‘Pluralistic and ethnically diverse’","description":""},"variant":"compact"}},{"id":"pudlf679-x2xspfsd","type":"linkTool","data":{"link":"https://nypost.com/2026/07/03/opinion/what-young-people-dont-understand-about-america-and-its-wars/","meta":{"title":"What young people don’t understand about America and its wars","description":""},"variant":"compact"}},{"id":"r7h8usll-c2omou38","type":"linkTool","data":{"link":"https://nypost.com/2026/07/03/lifestyle/meet-the-living-historians-who-bring-the-american-revolution-to-life/","meta":{"title":"Meet the patriotic ‘living historians’ who bring the American Revolution to life — one reenactment at a time","description":""},"variant":"compact"}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"America is burning. Rioters set fire to police stations and restaurants. Looters have ravaged shops from coast to coast. And now they’re coming for the statues — not just of Confederate generals, but the republic’s Founders, including George Washington, whose statue was torn down in Portland, Ore."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"Call them the 1619 riots."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"The justified indignation over George Floyd’s killing has led to calls for policing reform and for the country to do better at fulfilling its principles. But the reaction hasn’t stopped with those worthy and noble objectives. It has surged well beyond to an attack on the principles themselves, which allegedly give rise to “systemic racism.”"}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"But what is “the system” that generates and supports systemic racism? A considered answer is rarely given. Black Lives Matter (the organization, not the slogan) and its academic and media supporters do have some answers, however."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"One is that “whiteness” itself is to blame, or at least “white privilege” and “white supremacy.” That is the explanation offered by the Black Power movement of the 1960s and by the likes of Louis Farrakhan and campus identity hucksters today. But the cruel thesis that the white race is “the cancer of human history,” as Susan Sontag once put it, is belied by history and reason."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"So who else can they get at? Well, an easier target is one particular set of privileged, white males: the American Founders. The system at the root of systemic racism, the radicals argue, is the American one, beginning with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. America, they claim, was born a racist nation and remains one today."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"This slander is the dominant opinion among woke millennials and is on its way, alas, to becoming mainstream. Former President Barack Obama wrestled with it, not very successfully, in his 2008 speech trying to disentangle himself from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had preached “God damn America!” to the future president and his family for 20 years."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"The most prominent proponent of the argument is The New York Times’s 1619 Project, named after the year the first black slaves arrived in America. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Times reporter who leads the project, has argued that “the year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776.”"}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"Her editor, Jake Silverstein, has backed her to the hilt. Black slavery “is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin,” he asserted, “but it is more than that: It is the country’s very origin. Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional,” especially “its astonishing penchant for violence” and “its endemic racial fears and hatreds.”"}},{"id":"m8tb6ing-whc8aisa","type":"linkTool","data":{"link":"https://nypost.com/2020/05/08/how-the-1619-project-slandered-america/","meta":{"title":"How the 1619 Project slandered America","description":"","image":{"url":"https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/05/bfa_nyt_1619-project-1.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=171&h=114&crop=1"}},"variant":"compact"}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"In other words, 1619 is not “as important” as 1776; it is far more important and more revealing. American slavery is the deeper truth of American freedom. It doesn’t get more systemic than racism being in “the very DNA of this country,” as Hannah-Jones claims."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"A Who’s Who of American historians, led by impeccable liberals like Sean Wilentz, Gordon Wood and James McPherson, quickly objected to Project 1619’s untruths. Their criticisms forced a muted, microscopic correction from the Times, but couldn’t slow the spread of the project’s libels into classrooms across the country."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"Even Republicans have begun to smear America as racist — members of the very political party formed to redeem the promise of the Declaration and put slavery on the course of ultimate extinction. There was such a thing as white supremacy in our politics, and Abraham Lincoln confronted it when he argued against Stephen Douglas. But for politicians of all stripes it is becoming easier to blame America first than to defend her honor, as Lincoln did."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"There is a kind of despair, both angry and frightened, haunting the public mind today. After all, if the problem’s in our DNA, there’s precious little we can do about it. Let’s not kid ourselves. The rioters who commit the violence drew one conclusion from that premise: If justice is out of the question, the next best thing is payback, snatching from the oppressor’s hand whatever loot they can."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"The radicals aren’t far behind with their politics of “anti-racism” — a more or less permanent system of racial spoils, protected by speech codes banning criticism as racist “hate speech.”"}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"The alternative is to reconsider the premise: America is not systemically racist, but is a republic devoted, however imperfectly, to the truth that all men are created equal."}},{"type":"paragraph","data":{"text":"Charles Kesler is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and editor of The Claremont Review of Books. "}}]}

Charles Kesler

NypCharlesKesler@RoundtableIO

Call them the 1619 riots