[FRIAM] Revising the American Revolution

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Hi, everybody,

 

I know.  Who has time to listen to podcasts.  Most of them are redundant and
so can be listened to while making chicken pot pie.  But every once in a
while there is one I have to listen to twice because it acquaints me with a
bunch of stuff I never will dive into but which I really want to know.  

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-story-of-americas-founding-you-wer
ent-taught-in-school/id1548604447?i=1000539039484

 

The interviewee here Woody Houlton, a promoter of the 1619 Project, whose
goal is to recast the American revolution and particularly the constitution
as counter revolutionary moves.  It puts me in mind of Charles Beard, an
American historian who wrote in the 30's a materialist history of the US
which was largely buried during the McCarthy era.  (I hope I have this
right, John)  The REAL revolution, on this account occurs after the Civil
War with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.   What I love about this is
that illuminates for me what is going on in our current debates over
textualism.  The Textualists are trying to get us back to the pre-Civil War
constitution which was dedicated to preserving the prerogatives of the
privileged classes.  That's the world they hanker for.   Another bell it
rings for me concerns "cancel culture".  Washington and Jefferson were in
many ways, vile men:  Both were voracious land speculators in stolen Indian
land and Jefferson, in his Idyllic Monticello, literally lived on top of the
underground habitations of his slaves. 

 


What do we do when we discover that people who have achieved great things
have also done great harms.  Basically it comes down to, Am I allowed to
watch a Woody Allen Movie?  Perhaps, if I were to watch a Woody Allen movie,
it would mean that I was NOT watching an equally good movie by an unknown
film guy, that our worship of Lee and Washington and Jefferson crowds out
the accomplishments of lesser known figures.   Shall we instead worship MLK,
who I guess was an infamous philanderer?  

 

I think the problem here is with WORSHIP, full stop.  But, then, if we don't
stand together in admiration of other people, how do we stand together.  How
do we achieve coalition without charisma?  

 

Nick 

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

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