Its entirely consistent with what "modern Republican leadership" believes. From Trump's executive order inaugurating the 1776 project: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...
> The American founding envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” seeing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as embodied in and sanctioned by natural law and its traditions. The formation of a republic around these principles marked a clear departure from previous forms of government, securing rights through a form of government that derives its legitimate power from the consent of the governed. Throughout its national life, our Republic’s exploration of the full meaning of these principles has led it through the ratification of a Constitution, civil war, the abolition of slavery, Reconstruction, and a series of domestic crises and world conflicts. Those events establish a clear historical record of an exceptional Nation dedicated to the ideas and ideals of its founding.
The founding principles weren't fulfilled in 1776, but the history of the country has been one of progress in that direction. That was conventional wisdom among Democratic political leadership when I was growing up (and I'm only 37) and almost certainly still is the conventional wisdom among most rank-and-file Democrats.
> It's also a response to work by a variety of groups to erase the impact and negative stigma around Slavery. To re-romanticize it as heritage and something to be proud of.
The claim isn't directed to one group's heritage and its contribution. On its face, it is directed at "nearly everything that has truly made American exceptional." It literally ties the entirety of the American story (or nearly all of it) to slavery.
> I'm also not sure that you're correctly quoting the article (or perhaps it changed, but it currently reads)
I copied directly from the post I linked. Its an August 13, 2019 article promoting a kick-off event for the 1619 project.
> I'd be curious to know which of those things you believe didn't grow, in some part or another, out of slavery. And whether the moon landing, silicon valley, or our many nobel laureates weren't in turn influenced/attracted/created by our economic might and industrial power.
Almost none of those things grew out of slavery. Our "legal system" for example was imported wholesale from England--based on principles of the Magna Carta dating back to 1215. Any slave trade into England itself was banned in 1102. Are there imprints on our legal system from slavery? Sure. But its factually incorrect to say our legal system "grew out of slavery."
The notion that our "economic might and industrial power" grew out of slavery is the central economic misconception in the 1619 Project, and I think it's responsible for a lot of the bombastic rhetoric. America is not rich today because of slavery. Jacobin corrected that assertion: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-american-c... ("Desmond begins his article by drawing on the Harvard historian Sven Beckert who argues that 'it was on the back of cotton, and thus on the backs of slaves, that the U.S. economy ascended in the world.' Yet Desmond neglects to mention that this claim has been widely rejected by specialists in the economic history of slavery."). As Jacobin points out, cotton production, the industry where most enslaved people were employed, accounted for 5-10% of the economy.
This is not some right-wing view. Jacobin Magazine is actual socialists/communists. Slavery can make plantation owners rich at the expense of enslaved people. But it can't make an entire country richer than it would have been without the labor of enslaved people. That's contrary to basic economic theory, as well as the economic data we have from the time: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html; http://bradleyahansen.blogspot.com/2018/06/was-slavery-centr....
> But are you really going to claim that the immense wealth among white Americans didn't grow out of the subjugation of slaves
Absolutely. You can't make a country richer by enslaving part of the population, and you don't need slavery to make a country rich. This is obviously true: in the 20th century countries like Japan, Singapore, and South Korea experienced industrialization and economic development just as rapid as what the United States experienced in the 19th century, without slavery. The United States economy, in fact, continued to grew just as fast after the civil war as before it: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7LfU4Qu52oo/UUolq1OZROI/AAAAAAAAD.... If slavery had been critical to the U.S. economy, you would've expected a massive economic collapse right after the civil war. But there wasn't even a blip.