"These Deletions Are Not Mere Wording Changes"

"Ms. Hannah-Jones, caught in one lie, doubles down with new and even bigger lies. The Times journalist-celebrity not only denies her project's central argument. In self-contradictory fashion, she also says that the 'true founding' claim was just a bit of a rhetorical flourish. She told CNN that the 1619 Project was merely an effort to move the study of slavery to the forefront of American history."

Tom Mackaman and David North at the World Socialist Web Site declare victory over the The New York Times 1619 Project.

And they provide an update in October.

David Waldstreicher at Boston Review connects the controversy to disputes among historians.

"That One Sentence About the Role of Slavery in the Founding of the United States Has Ended Up at the Center of a Debate Over the Whole Project"

"Both sets of inaccuracies worried me, but the Revolutionary War statement made me especially anxious. Overall, the 1619 Project is a much-needed corrective to the blindly celebratory histories that once dominated our understanding of the past—histories that wrongly suggested racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history. I was concerned that critics would use the overstated claim to discredit the entire undertaking. So far, that's exactly what has happened."

Leslie M. Harris at Politico discusses her interaction with The New York Times and its 1619 Project.

"All That Gordon Wood Business!"

"His work has made a difference in one more way. It reinforced the center when it was under heavy attack from both extremes. In a gentle reproof to scholars on the left, Wood has offered evidence that 'what is extraordinary about the American Revolution is not . . . the continual deprivation and repression of the mass of ordinary people, but rather their release and liberation.' To conservatives on the right he makes very clear that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were conceived by their framers in dynamic terms, and were intended to grow."

David Hackett Fischer in The New York Times reviews Gordon S. Wood's The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States.

Why Is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?

"We should not be surprised that so many Americans are angry. Almost four decades of growing inequality have left most of them no better off than they were in 1970, and many worse off. The recklessness and greed of much of the financial world—the principal causes of the crisis—have done far more damage than taxes or the deficit. The corruption and dysfunction of Congress and much of the rest of the government have disillusioned many. Everyone should be angry about these injustices, even if no one has proposed a workable solution to them. The Tea Partiers are right to be angry. But the objects of their outcries—taxes, deficits, immigration and supposed violations of the Constitution—are of far less consequence than the great failures that plague the nation."

Alan Brinkley in The New York Times reviews Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe's Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, Kate Zernike's Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America, and Jill Lepore's The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History.

And Gordon Wood reviews Lepore in The New York Review of Books.

"Newly Discovered Documents Shed Light On Nation's Creepy Founding Uncles"

"Depsite their pasty complexions, disconcerting lack of personal hygiene, and debauched exploits, many historians have begun to view the Founding Uncles as true revolutionaries.
"'These individuals felt oppressed by the prevailing British mores of hard work, chivalry, and social propriety,' said noted historian and author Gordon S. Wood. 'Thus, they rose up in defiance, placed the weight of their libertine dreams upon their slightly hunched backs, and successfully broke free from the yoke of moral authoritarianism.'
"'Thanks to these visionaries, such moral decay is an integral part of American culture,' Wood added, 'a tradition that will endure for generations to come.'"

From The Onion.

Finding the Founders

In The Weekly Standard, Brown University's Gordon S. Wood reviews two new biographies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, by Paul Johnson and Christopher Hitchens respectively.