World Net Daily ... In world history, a physical evolution took man from crawling to walking upright, accompanied much later by a slower-evolving moral one. The former was one of survival of the fittest; the latter, one eventually recognizing the need to help the weak survive as well. But during these evolutions, the road traveled was not without sin. 

Every nation spilled blood along the way. And, even today, none has yet reached "Shangri-la" – a land where every single human life is fully valued equally, although some nations are closer than others in reaching it.

 

History tells us, compared to other world nations, America has been a quick learner in the moral evolution. And today we are a front-runner in the race to Shangri-la. However, an event occurring this week is a travesty, seeking to sully our leading role to get there. 

The event involves a normally prestigious international award given in various professional fields and, unsurprisingly, this one involves a member of our media that unfairly seeks to libel America by suggesting we have been and "always will be exceptionally and irredeemably racist."

 

Unsurprisingly, that media member is the New York Times (NYT). 

Last year, the NYT Magazine presented "The 1619 Project" – so named for the year the first ship transported enslaved Africans to a British colony in Virginia – as the point in time defining and branding America forever. Seemingly unimportant was the fact America did not even exist then.

 

But The 1619 Project seeks to imprint upon the psyche of students learning history today that America is guilty of a never-ending sin as slavery became a foundation upon which the country was built. 

Last year, the NYT sought to mark the 400th anniversary of that slave ship's arrival by launching this project, which, it determined, was necessary to examine "the many ways the legacy of slavery continues to shape and define life in the United States."

 

The big problem with The 1619 Project, however, is that it is an effort by non-historians to portray themselves as historians while failing to grasp basic history, as criticism heaped upon the project by numerous educators mounts. They feel it important to nip The 1619 Project in the bud as many naive public school administrators are embracing its fiction as fact to be taught as such.

 

America has typically been defined in terms of its exceptionalism. Like a magnet, however, exceptionalism's spectrum has both a positive and negative end. 

The positive end differentiates us qualitatively from other developed nations based on our historical evolution and distinctive political and religious institutions. It recognizes that we take tremendous pride in our long-term commitment of self-government, equality, the rule of law and an extraordinary embrace of liberty. 

However, the spectrum's negative end is often relied upon by anti-American critics wishing to promote a willful nationalistic ignorance of our past sins.

 

It is this negative end of exceptionalism that the Times chooses to promote. 

As 1619 Project critics point out, it focuses on reframing "America's history to define the nation's 'true founding' as one rooted – at its heart – in slavery rather than liberty. It's 1619 pitted against 1776." Slavery is not projected in the light of the historical record as, "an unwilling inheritance of British colonialism, but as the love object of American capitalism from its very origins." 

Effectively, the NYT is the nagging wife, never allowing her husband to forget about a past transgression, originally committed by his father, neglecting the fact the husband seeks to reach Shangri-la.

 

Historians representing the ideological spectrum from liberalism to conservatism see The 1619 Project as "a 'conspiracy theory' based in part on the drive to 'tarnish capitalism.'" 

In the NYT's world, slavery is "the prize the Constitution went out of its way to secure and protect. Not as a regrettable chapter in the distant American past, but the living, breathing pattern upon which all American social life is based. …"

 

But on May 4, historians' efforts to change The 1619 Project's perverted view of history was dealt a blow. That day the NYT received three Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism. 

One of those was, "For a sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America's story, prompting public conversation about the nation's founding and evolution." The award went to staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, praising her series of essays titled, "Our democracy's founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true." 

The essay gets an important date wrong – our Declaration of Independence was signed Aug. 2, 1776 – and goes downhill from there. It "undermines America's Founding Fathers," claiming the "American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery" and that racism is a permanent condition that continues to run "at the very DNA" of the American nation today.

 

This is not the first time a Pulitzer Prize has questionably been awarded to the New York Times. There are two other times as well.

The first was in 1931 when the Times' Walter Duranty – one of the most famous correspondents of his day – was awarded a Pulitzer for a series of 13 articles he wrote about conditions in the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin. 

Duranty's articles consistently covered up the dictator's atrocities. Once the truth emerged about Stalin, it was later argued the newspaper's Pulitzer should be revoked, but it never was.

 

The second questionable Pulitzer awarded the NYT occurred in 2018. It was shared with the Washington Post for their "deeply sourced" national reporting on President Donald Trump's alleged Russia collusion – collusion that, contrary to their reporting, never occurred. 

Much like the 1931 award, which Duranty based on faulty information fed him by Stalin's cronies, we now know the 2018 award was also based on faulty information fed by Deep State coup cronies.

 

American exceptionalism has us on the right road to Shangri-la. Efforts like that of the New York Times, while a distraction, hopefully will only be a stumbling block in our getting there.