"It's Horror All the Way Down"

"As for Miller's vision, it's horror all the way down. He's not looking to solve for this state of nature. He simply calls it 'the real world,' one whose anarchic rules America just needs to accept and use to its benefit. If Miller has read Hobbes, he's drawing the wrong lesson. Even if he might like the idea of Trump as the Leviathanlike authoritarian come to bring order to the chaos (and Miller's recent, and disputed, invocation of a president’s absolute 'plenary authority' would suggest that that’s the case), this is not how Trump understands his role; otherwise, he would be bolstering international institutions and multilateral relationships rather than trashing whatever and whoever does not serve his glory."

Gal Beckerman at The Atlantic writes about "the dog-eat-dog worldview of this administration."

And Rex Huppke at USA Today asks, "We're really doing another year of this?"

"A Rare Example of Cooperation"

"By 1620, Wampanoag weakness had provided an opportunity for a rival group to the west, the Narragansett, who had largely escaped the impact of the disease. When the Plymouth settlers arrived, Ousamequin was struggling to prevent the Narragansett from subjugating the remaining Wampanoags and forcing them to pay tribute. While he initially kept his distance from the Mayflower's inhabitants, fearing further aggression—and disease—Ousamequin evidently came to the conclusion that an alliance with the new English arrivals in the region could help protect his people."

Sarah Pruitt at "History Stories" discusses the backstory of the 1621 Thanksgiving.

"America Isn't the Church and the Church Isn't America"

"Winthrop got close to getting the analogy right because he called the Puritans to follow and reflect biblical teachings about charity and mercy as they followed Christ. His shortcoming, as seen by the Puritan breakdown over the next few decades, was thinking that a whole society could possibly do that well over the long term. Reagan's vision of America being a city on a hill wasn't terrible because he was simply building off of biblical imagery to make a point about the goodness and potential example of our country, but it still falls far short of what the saying really means."

At The Bulwark, Alan Cross writes that "America Cannot Be the Biblical City on a Hill."

"Yet Hope Always Remains"

"The city on a hill does not seem very shiny in the year 2020. Pandemic, economic crisis, and an incumbent president attempting to overthrow the democratic election he undoubtedly lost by a large margin: If the eyes of all people are upon America now, they are not witnessing an edifying spectacle." 

David Frum at The Atlantic discusses Abram Van Engen's City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism.

"There's Been Little Fanfare and Even Less Debate"

"But as a country, we've become unrecognizable to that first generation of New Englanders, and no longer as invested in mythologizing their world as were Americans 150 years ago. On the contrary, the rigid society the Pilgrims sought to build, based on exclusivity and sameness, and the narrow definition of citizenship that inspired some Americans to excavate their memory more two centuries later, are out of step with the diverse (and often quarrelsome) capitalist democracy we've come to be."

At Politico, Joshua Zeitz explains why the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's landing in Massachusetts has not drawn great attention.

"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.

"A Warts-and-All Picture of a Man with the Weaknesses of Any Other"

"And, as would be seen within 30 years of the Stuarts returning to the throne, they were just in- capable of behaving themselves. Perhaps the finest legacy of the regicides and the Protectorate was that the Glorious Revolution proceeded without a King being decapitated (even though James II and VII probably asked for it far more than his errant father had), and—the minor irritations of 1715 and 1745 notwithstanding—at last settled the question of the English Reformation that had started in 1534."

Simon Heffer at The Critic reviews Paul Lay's Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell's Protectorate.

"A Politically Motivated Falsification of History"

"There are many scholars, students and workers who know that the 1619 Project makes a travesty of history. It is their responsibility to take a stand and reject the coordinated attempt, spearheaded by the Times, to dredge up and rehabilitate a reactionary race-based falsification of American and world history.
"Above all the working class must reject any such effort to divide it, efforts which will become ever more ferocious and pernicious as the class struggle develops. The great issue of this epoch is the fight for the international unity of the working class against all forms of racism, nationalism and related forms of identity politics."

The World Socialist Web Site launches a multi-article attack on The New York Times 1619 Project.

Tom Mackaman includes an interview with Adolph Reed, Jr.

And Sean Wilentz at The New York Review of Books discusses the history of American anti-slavery, while John Clegg at Jacobin points to a different kind of slavery influence.

"The Unwritten Rules Aren't Cutting It Anymore"

"For the company's founders and the residents of New England, the text of the corporate charter served a dual purpose: as a consensual source of sovereign authority that safeguarded them from English rule and as a constitution of their civil government. The charter gave the corporation 'full and Absolute power and Authoritie to correct, punishe, pardon, governe, and rule' all New England residents, granted the authority to pass 'Lawes and Ordinances,' and bestowed upon British residents in the colonies 'all liberties and immunities of free and naturall Subjects … as if they and everie of them were borne within the Realme of England.' As the colonists faced greater threats of dissolution from the crown, the 'Charter Constitution' gained increasing importance in the social and political culture of New England. And although the Massachusetts Bay Company charter was unique in its independence from the crown, by the 1760s, almost all the colonies were governed by 'charter governments.' Bowie shows that these charters provided the templates for America's first written state constitutions, and the modern U.S. Constitution as it exists today."

Danny Li at Slate argues that Britain needs a written constitution.

"Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem"

"The point, once again, is to 'reframe American history' so that this appalling history stands at the very center of who we are as a country. Achieving that goal has required the Times to treat history in a highly sensationalistic, reductionistic, and tendentious way, with the cumulative result resembling agitprop more than responsible journalism or scholarship. Putting aside any pretense toward nuance or complexity, the paper has surrendered to the sensibility of left-wing political activists. The result is unpersuasive—and a sad comment on the state of our country's public life."

Damon Linker at The Week criticizes The New York Times' "1619 Project."

Zack Beauchamp at Vox criticizes the critics.

Servants into Slaves

"Even in 1700, Africans were hardly the only unfree colonists, for a majority of those laboring in Virginia were people bound to service. They were indentured whites. Population numbers are crucial in understanding the demography of labor in early Virginia. By 1680, only about 7% of Virginians were of African descent; 20% of Virginians were of African descent by 1700, and by 1750, the 100,000 enslaved Virginian men and women accounted for more than half the population. Here lies the demography of enslavement."

Nell Irvin Planter at The Guardian reminds readers that the first Africans in colonial Virginia were not enslaved.

And Olivia B. Waxman at Time discusses August 1619.

"We Should Probably Remember Jamestown at Least Once a Year"

"The story of Jamestown portrays the United States as a runaway business venture fueled by the greed of capitalists, the desperation of the poor, and the misery of slaves. Jamestown shows that the United States, from its very inception, has treated natural and human resources as equally inexhaustible, and equally expendable. It shows the arrogance of distant elites whose knowledge of their own incompetence is rendered painless by their indifference to human consequences. It's obvious from the historical record that many of the ordinary people involved in this enterprise did not like where it was going, but did not know how to stop it."

Brianna Rennix at Current Affairs argues that Americans should focus on 1607 more than 1620.

"20. and odd Negroes"

"'It's rather clear that Virginia did not have a set way of dealing with these folks, and it got worked out over time,' Scott says. 'They had indentured people in Virginia, and some people may have seen Africans just like they saw other indentured people. We know some people became free, so it looks like they were treated like every other indentured person.'
"Other scholars, including Linda Heywood and John Thornton of Boston University, insist that the Africans from the White Lion and the Treasurer were enslaved by the English as they had originally been by the Portuguese slave traders before they were taken by pirates.
"Whether indentured servants or slaves, Newby-Alexander says, 'Either way, they were unfree.'"

E. R. Shipp at USA Today discusses the four-hundredth anniversary of the first Africans arriving in colonial Virginia.

"To Colour Their Faces with Such Sibbersauces"

"During her reign, Elizabeth became an icon to worship—the Protestant object of a 'royal cult' that, Montrose reports, clashed with and contested the Catholic worship of the Virgin Mary. This 'cult of Elizabeth,' which emphasized her virginity and beauty, provoked a range of responses among Britons, who 'sustained, elaborated, and appropriated [the cult] to their own ends' during her time in power. Living inside it all, Elizabeth clearly seemed to realize her presentation of a mask that didn't slip was critical to her survival.

Rebecca Onion at Slate discusses the importance of makeup to Elizabeth I.

The Great Settlement

"For years, people in and around Arkansas City have found artifacts—arrowheads, weapons and cooking utensils. But a translation done in 2013 by the University of California, Berkeley of the Onate expedition provided more details that Blakeslee was able to use to match geographical details with archaeological evidence.
"He began searching the area.
"What he found in Arkansas City, he believes, may rewrite American history."

Beccy Tanner at The Wichita Eagle discusses the newly discovered lost city of Etzanoa in southern Kansas.

"Race and Freedom Are of One Piece, Are Born at That Same Moment"

"The American Revolution is an extraordinarily important event in world history. And combined with the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the revolutions in Latin America, this Age of Revolution transforms not simply our own nation but transforms the world as well.
"After the American Revolution, after the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Declaration of Independence, the presumption is that all men are created equal. Equality is the point. And what then has to be explained for the very first time in world history is inequality. And why inequality exists. In other words, if all men are created equal, why are some men and women still slaves?
"And the explanation for the persistence of slavery can be: 'Well, perhaps there is something wrong with that notion of equality.' In which case the whole notion of the post Revolutionary world, the whole notion of American nationality, is also wrong.
"Or the explanation can be: 'Perhaps these people who are enslaved are not quite men.' And of course that leads us to a whole sea change in terms of racial thought."

PBS, at its website for 2003's Race: The Power of an Illusion, offers an interview with historian Ira Berlin.

"An Extended Rebuttal of Trump, Who Has Appropriated the Story of a Native American Hero to Use as a Slur"

"Warren's move to more publicly address the issue had some similarities to former president Barack Obama's 2008 campaign speeches about race—which followed criticism of his ties to the controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright—and to Mitt Romney's 2007 speech about his Mormon faith. But Warren's speech also appeared to be an attempt to defuse the controversy before it came under the full glare, if she runs, of a national presidential campaign.
"Her speech also doesn't come without significant risks in a toxic political environment and one that could provide Trump with another opportunity to criticize her. It was also a challenge to her many critics, who have pointed to her claims of Native American heritage as a sign that she can't be trusted.
"Warren has often been reluctant to tackle the touchy issue, but she spoke with force and emotion on Wednesday."

Matt Viser and Liz Goodwin at the Boston Globe report on Sen. Elizabeth Warren's speech to the National Congress of American Indians.

"The Story of Capitalism Begins Not in Smog-Laden Factory Cities but on the Farms of the English Countryside"

"To be sure, plenty of pre-capitalist societies have relied on some of what we see as the trappings of capitalism: money, trade, markets, and even wage labor. But capitalism itself, Cook argues (like many historians and theorists of capitalism, going back to at least Marx), is something very novel. 'Markets, commodities, and consumer goods,' he writes, 'while certainly necessary components, do not a capitalist society make.' For Cook, it is instead the rise of dividend-producing investments that defines capitalism. First land, and then people, came to be seen not merely as commodities to be bought and sold, but as capital, the price of which was increasingly tied not to some measure of innate value or even to hours of labor committed, but by the promise of future profits."

Adam Gaffney at the New Republic reviews Eli Cook's The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life.

"In Conversation With Each Other"?

"Squanto and Pocahontas were raised in different regions possessing distinct cultural and historical traditions, languages and politics. The colonists who established the first permanent English settlements in America did not encounter some undifferentiated, unsophisticated, inarticulate Natives, but specific historic actors who must be viewed in the context of their own times, places, and individual life experiences. They were multi-lingual, politically and culturally aware, and they reacted in different ways, alternatively embracing and rejecting distinct elements of European tradition."

E. M. Rose at The Junto wonders if Squanto and Pocahontas met in London in 1616.

"Computation Was Just the Beginning"

"He believed that all kinds of problems could be reduced to the manipulation of symbols and tackled just as though they were mathematical problems. He imagined a kind of alphabet of human thought, whose symbols could be manipulated according to precise, mechanical rules, the work carried out by devices. He called them 'reasoning machines' and envisioned the pursuit we know today as artificial intelligence.

"Once the system was perfected, he believed, humanity would have 'a new kind of tool, a tool that will increase the power of the mind much more than optical lenses helped our eyes, a tool that will be as far superior to microscopes or telescopes as reason is to vision.' We would weigh arguments, he said, 'just as if we had a special kind of balance.'"

Dan Falk in Slate credits Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz as the "man who envisioned the systems and machines that would define the digital revolution."