Senator Tom Cotton is emerging as a leading apologist for slavery which he called, renewing an earlier scandal, “a necessary evil.” He has introduced a bill, “The Saving American History Act of 2020,” to deny federal funding to any school that would adopt a program linked to the 1619 curriculum that examines the role of slavery in the founding of the United States.

Senator Cotton is from Arkansas, an unrepentant Confederate state, so we should not be surprised to see him stand up for “the way things were.” He mis-named, his bill to conceal its real intent, for its title should read: “The Saving the White Supremacist Version of American History Act.”

This country has two grave sins on its soul, sins for which it has yet to repent: Slavery of the Black People and Slaughter of the Indians. Yet we avoid talking about slavery except to repeat the fiction that the Civil War ended slavery. We boast of pioneers, 49ers, and homesteaders, and never think, let alone admit, that our westward expansion involved one crime against humanity after another.

I fear that Senator Cotton’s “American History” would only perpetuate the self-aggrandizement and falsifications.