"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." George Orwell

RealClearPublicAffairs 1776 Series-- Mary Grabar

Howard Zinn’s  Assault on Historians and American Principles.     

Recently, Michael Barone heralded a bipartisan refutation of the New York Times’s 1619 Project. As part of “an ongoing battle for control of the central narrative of American history,” Barone noted, the August 2019 Times magazine supplement had made the case for redefining the founding of the United States from 1776 to 1619, when, presumably, the first slave ship came to Virginia, beginning a chain of exploitation by which the country supposedly built her wealth.

Barone notes how Sean Wilentz, writing in the liberal Atlantic, made “mincemeat” of lead writer Nikole Hannah-Jones’ contention that “protecting slavery was the main motive of the American Revolution.” With distinguished historians James McPherson, James Oakes, Victoria Bynum, and Gordon Wood, Wilentz also co-signed a letter to the Times “lamenting” the Project’s “factual errors.” The National Association of Scholars, Law & Liberty, and World Socialist also published effective rebuttals.

The Moral Foundations of United States Constitutional Democracy
An Analytical and Historical Inquiry into the Primary Moral Concept of Equality -- James H. Rutherford at www.moralfoundations.com

The Moral Foundations of United States Constitutional Democracy was written for students of Western civilization and teachers of ethics, law, history, and government. It develops a framework for understanding moral and political philosophy. The framework takes into account several different aspects of human nature and the world in which we live. This provides a basis for understanding several different aspects of universal equality, the unifying “central idea” or primary moral concept of our form of government. The several aspects of universal equality are also traced historically as they developed in different ethical and legal systems of Western civilization. Constitutional democracy in the United States attempts to integrate and balance the several aspects of universal equality as they apply to the coercive powers of government.

In 1795, Fisher Ames, a congressman from Massachusetts, perhaps recognized the indeterminate but dynamic aspects of our system of government when he compared it to monarchy in the following way. “A monarchy,” he said, “is a merchant- man which sails well, but will sometimes strike a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water”

Xi and China Plan to Replace the Western Liberal Tradition with a New World Order Which is Safe for Autocracies

New York Times

Why China’s Move to Rein In Hong Kong Is Just the Start

   While Mr. Xi is using legislation rather than military force in a territory already under Chinese rule, it is nonetheless a brash move by an autocratic leader willing to risk international condemnation to resist what he views as foreign encroachment on his country’s security.

   “The Communist Party doesn’t care anymore about the reactions, because it’s about survival, the stability of the one-party system, avoiding the fate of the Soviet Union,” 

The Far Center

China -- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

   This post WWII world order is now being challenged by the autocracies of China, Russia, and Iran and their proxies in North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela.  What is telling is that China, Russia, and Iran have significant historical and Ideological conflicts, but these are superseded by their common bond of autocratic control of power.  Their common desire is to replace the Western liberal tradition with a new type of world order and to remake the global balance of power.