As I note at Breitbart, the National Archives has produced a report that declares themselves racist -- including, specifically, the Rotunda in which the nation's founding documents are preserved.
I don't think there could be any serious objections to adding exhibits to the Rotunda that reflect broader participation in the nation's founding. However, the casting of the nation's Founding as racist -- or, at best, incomplete -- is a real problem.
The report declares: "Freedom wasn’t fully chartered by the three documents in the Rotunda." That reflects what one might call a "soft" version of Critical Race Theory: not that the documents are racist as such, but insufficiently anti-racist.
President Trump offered a (p)rebuttal to that argument when he delivered a speech at the Rotunda last September: "America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism, and built the most fair, equal, and prosperous nation in human history." In other words, freedom was inherent to the documents. Other, later documents simply elucidated and elaborate the original idea.
It is true that later documents -- like the post-Civil War amendments, for example -- added to, and subtracted from, the original text. But a nation that wants to survive must believe that its founding is transcendent. You can have an academic debate, or you can have a nation that preserves the right to that free academic debate, but if you only have the former, you won't for long.
https://www.archives.gov/files/news/archivists-task-force-on-racism-report.pdf
The story of Noah is familiar; the details, less so.
Noah is often seen as an ambivalent figure. He was righteous -- but only for his generation. What was his deficiency?
One answer suggests itself: knowing that the world was about to be flooded, he built an Ark for the animals and for his own family -- but did not try to save anyone else or to convince them to repent and change their ways (the prophet Jonah, later, would share that reluctance).
Abraham, later, would set himself apart by arguing with God -- with the Lord Himself! -- against the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that they should be saved if there were enough righteous people to be found (there were not).
Still, Noah was good enough -- and sometimes, that really is sufficient to save the world. We don't need heroes every time -- just ordinary decency.
Hi all -- as I noted last month, I'm going to be closing down my Locals page, at least for tips and subscriptions -- I may keep the page up and the posts as well, but I'm no longer going to be accepting any kind of payment.
Look for cancelation in the very near future. Thank you for your support!
An interesting weekend -- one of the last of Daylight Savings Time -- in which there is much to celebrate, much to contemplate, and a bit to worry about.
The Gaza peace deal is shaky, but holding, after the living hostages returned; the shutdown is still going on, with no end in sight; the China trade war is heating up; and the confrontation with Venezuela continues to escalate.
The "No Kings" protest was a dud, despite the media's attempt to inflate it. What I find fascinating is that the Democrats have basically stolen the rhetoric and the imagery of the Tea Party protests, circa 2009. They claim they are defending the Constitution -- just like the Tea Party did.
On the one hand, this is good. How wonderful to have a political system in which both sides, bitterly opposed though they are, articulate differences through the Constitution -- and not, as in so many other countries, outside it.
On the other, this is sheer hypocrisy for the Democrats. Not only did they malign the Tea Party as ...
