Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., introduced a bill last week that would pull federal funding from schools that include the New York Times’s “1619 Project.”
The “project” is a series of historically inaccurate essays that argue America was founded to preserve slavery, in their teaching curricula.
The Saving American History Act of 2020 argues that America was founded on the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, not on the institution of slavery.
Any claim otherwise should not be taught in America’s public school system, Cotton argued.
He said schools that do try to include the “1619 Project” in their mandated curricula should not be eligible for federal professional-development grants.
“The New York Times’s 1619 Project is a racially divisive, revisionist account of history that denies the noble principles of freedom and equality on which our nation was founded,” Cotton said in a statement.
“Not a single cent of federal funding should go to indoctrinate young Americans with this left-wing garbage,” he added.
Cotton was advocating for the bill this weekend when the mainstream media falsely accused him of defending slavery.
It’s important for Americans to “study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country, because otherwise we can’t understand our country,” Cotton said in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
“As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction,” Cotton continued.
Media outlets immediately claimed that Cotton had defended slavery as a “necessary evil,” but he clarified on Sunday night that that was not at all what he had said.
This is the definition of fake news.
I said that *the Founders viewed slavery as a necessary evil* and described how they put the evil institution on the path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln. https://t.co/SaWTTlMO7w
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) July 26, 2020
