I don’t want to be fair to Tom Cotton, because if America ever generates its own Franco, it is far more likely to be him than the shambolic Trump. Nevertheless, it’s my duty, and I’ll do it.
The uproar about Cotton’s latest interview has two parts. The part that has received the most attention is the quote about the Founding Fathers viewing slavery as a “necessary evil.” This statement was probably a little bit too glib; many of the FFs didn’t own slaves or approve of slavery, and those who did viewed it with plenty of doubts and a measure of guilt. However, it is fair to say that the FFs who did own slaves believed (with some reason) that they could not survive economically without them, and that a united America could not exist, as a practical matter, without the slave states in 1787. That is probably what Cotton meant to say. The broader context of his statement makes it clear that he was not defending slavery just because some of the FFs owned slaves, which is what he is being made out to say.
The bigger picture is his attack on the 1619 Project, which he views as being “divisive” and “fake news.” Well, slavery, the Civil War, and the South’s subsequent version of apartheid were pretty divisive, too; on this point I am more sympathetic with the 1619 people than Cotton in spite of my frequent criticism of their work. What we have here, unfortunately, is a battle between people who think that the entire American story revolves around slavery and racism, and people like Cotton who prefer to gloss over those chapters and talk only about how great we are. The truth is in the middle; slavery and racism are a major theme in the American project, but they are not the only theme.