The official end of the Second World War in Europe was May 8, 1945.  I would think that even “woke” Americans would agree that the Allied victory was a good thing for humanity.  But, who knows?  In this topsy-turvy nation, where racism is the measure of all things, were the western Allies really moral paragons?

According to some, the America of 1945 was morally little better than Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in its treatment of minorities.  Those same people would have us now believe that 2021 America isn’t any better than the America of 1945 with its Jim Crow South and bigoted North.  To get that point across, dates themselves have become revolutionary tools.

Last week, the New York City school system – the largest in the nation – officially vilified 1492 by replacing Columbus Day on the school calendar with Indigenous Peoples Day.  The attack on October 12, 1492 was as sudden and unexpected as the dastardly event of December 7, 1941, that “day of infamy.”  The attacks on Columbus Day have been going on around the country for years now by state legislatures, municipalities, and by school districts and universities.  What makes the Big Apple infamy more galling is that the mayor’s name is de Blasio.  Since 2014, it is the city’s Italian American mayor who rules the school system.  And, Bill de Blasio claims that both he and his Black school chancellor were blindsided by the Board of Education.  Talk about the “Big Lie!”  This pair of know-nothings could give Donald Trump lessons.  To be sure, de Blasio is not pulling rank to save Columbus Day, but has “accepted” a compromise that would hyphenate the holiday as Italian American Heritage Day/Indigenous Peoples Day.  Hello cannoli, good-bye an earth-changing voyage!  New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo is powerless to intervene, but affirms: “Columbus Day will stay a state holiday.”  However, Cuomo’s future in office is in doubt, and both chambers of the state legislature are under Black leadership.

Cuomo has already signed into law a “Juneteenth” state holiday effective this year.  The date celebrates the arrival of news to Texas slaves of the end of bondage on June 19, 1865.  The Democratic Party platform promises a national Juneteenth holiday, soon.

Re-moralizing dates has become a new game of the Left.  The year 1776, no longer represents independence from Great Britain and the birth of our nation, but a revolutionary way for American planters to perpetuate and expand slavery.  That year is now superseded in significance by 1619, the year the first African slaves landed on our shores.  No less than the NYTimes initiated this date game with a special edition magazine in August, 2019 titled The 1619 Project.  The project explained that “America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began.”  In short,the American dream was launched with a crime against humanity.  The settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in 1620 were illegal land grabs in this narrative. The Left has embraced a new order of the ages:  1492 – bad, 1619 –worse, 1776 – worst. 

Forget the Founding premise of aspiring to “a more perfect union.”  Forget the Civil War that freed the slaves and cost 750,000 Euro-American lives; forget the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which codified that freedom; forget Reconstruction which gave ex-slaves twelve years of political power in the South; forget the 1964 Civil Rights Act and affirmative action; forget the 1965 Immigration Act that made our nation brown, and the elections of Barack Obama in 2008 and Kamala Harris in 2020.  The United States is stuck in a 1619 time warp.  Along with academia and corporate media, this perspective is already inculcating Black children with unending victimhood and White children with unredeemable guilt.  Italian American journalist Christopher Rufo has been exposing this educational mayhem around the country.  It now multiplies under the nation’s Democratic leadership.

Meanwhile, our community had only 1492 to offset the traumas of 1891 (the New Orleans mass lynching), 1927 (the executions of Sacco & Vanzetti), and 1942 (our persecution as Fascist dupes and “enemy aliens”).  The date 1492 – the most significant in the annals of human and natural history – has become a footnote in America’s story, and a perverse curse upon us.

But we are a very rational people, and resilient.  No matter what others try to undo, we remember the words of Galileo when forced to deny that the Earth revolves around the sun: “Eppur si muove!” (“It moves, regardless.”)  1492 was a blessing for humanity. We will never forget that. -JLM