On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, joins Political Editor John Daniel Davidson to discuss how the principles established during the founding of America and the Pilgrims’ arrival on the Mayflower in 1620 should be valued today.
“If you think of the unfolding of America, it’s all implicit in that set of arrangements,” Arnn explained. “The doctrine of equality is not in there, except implicitly, but powerfully implicitly, because they all have to sign it.”
The attempted erasure of these principles by movements such as the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” Arrn said, reinforces the value of them as well as Americans’ struggle for a free, equal nation for all.
“Our history has always been a struggle towards [equality] and we have long periods where we give up on this thing and try to do something easier. That’s where the tragedies come,” Arnn said. “And the contemporary tragedy is, now we’re gonna pick them by color, and advance some and, and debase others, to make it up for the wrongs done in the past. And we lose our individuality in that.”
When Qantas began flying the Kangaroo Route in 1947, it used Lockheed Constellations. Onboard were ten crew, including three pilots, one navigator, one radio operator, two flight engineers, and three cabin crew. They looked after just 29 passengers who paid the equivalent of US$26,000 to fly from Sydney to London. Travel time was around 58 hours.
It was called the Kangaroo Route because the flight hopped its way across to London. In those early days, there were seven stops, a rollcall of interesting cities. After departing from Sydney, the Constellation stopped at Darwin, Singapore, Calcutta, Karachi, Cairo, Castel Benito, Rome, and finally, London. //
These days, when not grounded, Qantas offers the choice of a daily A380 service via Singapore or a daily 787-9 service via Perth. British Airways normally whizzes down to Sydney via Singapore using a Boeing 777. All are a long way from the Lockheed Constellation. That contemporary 787-9 carries almost ten times as many passengers as the Lockheed, and a return ticket typically costs around US$1000. Both routes take about 21 or 22 hours, depending on the winds.
American hero Chuck Yeager passed away on Monday night, according to a tweet posted by his wife Victoria. The legendary pilot was 97 years old, and the embodiment of the American spirit.
Yeager was born on February 13, 1923 in Myra, West Virginia, the son of a coal miner and gas driller. The magnitude of his heroics is impossible to summarize succinctly. After enlisting in 1941, Yeager served as a fighter pilot in World War II, during which he was shot down and evaded capture, later persuading Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to allow him to return to combat.
With broken ribs, Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier in 1947, radioing right away to say, “I’m still wearing my ears, and nothing else fell off, neither.” He went on to serve in the Vietnam War. According to Department of Veteran’s Affairs, “Yeager flew 64 missions during World War II and completed 127 missions during the Vietnam War, while also training bomber pilots.” He was promoted to brigadier general in 1969.
Yeager was famously depicted by Sam Shepard in the 1973 film adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff.” Wolfe described Yeager as “the most righteous of all possessors of the right stuff.” Calling him a “hero in war and peace,” Ronald Reagan awarded Yeager with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985, saying he “served his country with dedication and courage beyond ordinary measure.” //
“Despite a youth in the poverty-stricken backwoods of West Virginia, Yeager became a fighter ace, a legendary test pilot, a leader of men, and an icon for generations, all while doing what he loved: flying,” Yeager’s website notes. “His is an American story, one that inspires us and teaches us to always look to the skies.”
@VictoriaYeage11 It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.
— Chuck Yeager (@GenChuckYeager) December 8, 2020
Today in Aviation, 29 years ago, Pan American World Airways ceased all operations, putting to an end 64 years of existence, and leaving behind a legacy of many industry firsts that shaped commercial aviation as we know it today.
On this occasion, Airways features the story of the last Pan Am flight, served by a Boeing 727-200 under the radio callsign Clipper 436 from Barbados to Miami.
As economist Thomas Sowell points out, in 1860, just one year before the Civil War began, the South had only one-sixth as many factories as the North. Almost 90% of the country’s skilled, well-paid laborers and professionals were based in the North. Banking, railroads, manufacturing—all were concentrated in the North. The South was an economic backwater.
And the cost of abolishing slavery was enormous—not merely in terms of dollars (Lincoln borrowed billions to pay for it), but also in terms of human life: 360,000 Union soldiers died in order to free 4 million slaves. That works out to about one soldier in blue for every ten slaves freed. It’s hard to look at that butcher’s bill and conclude that the nation turned a profit from slavery.
Pilots were often served specially made meals just for them, which were freshly cooked onboard as per Pan Am's luxury standards.
All meals onboard Pan Am flights are said to have been cooked to "fancy" "restaurant" standards.
This was not a task taken on by chefs though but by the cabin crew themselves.
However, cabin crew could not serve up both the pilot and first officer with the same meal.
Instead, they had to cook two entirely separate meals for both of them.
According to Dr Evans, though, this was less to do with the pilot's specific demands and instead was a vital safety precaution.
Mostly, it was to stop both pilots from getting food poisoning - a lesson illustrated by a serious outbreak of food poisoning on board a Pan Am flight between Copenhagen and New York in 1970. //
Dr Evans adds: “The plane was met at John F. Kennedy airport by an array of ambulances and fire engines.
"Thankfully, as per protocol, one of the pilots had not eaten the shrimp cocktail that day.”
This is a rule that is still followed today with many airlines.
A new book charts the unexpected historic significance of in-flight meals
Private property rights and personal responsibility saved the Plymouth colony from the edge of extinction and laid the economic foundation for a free and prosperous nation. //
It is widely known that the early Pilgrims came to the New World to escape religious persecution. What is lesser known is that their spiritual adventure was also a commercial enterprise. Today’s self-identified democratic socialists like to claim real socialism has never been tried in America, but they need to brush up on their history. The Pilgrims did try it — and it failed. //
When one group of Puritans from the Separatist Church, led by Rev. John Robinson, decided to migrate to the New World, where they could establish a new place to adhere to God’s teachings, they sent two representatives, Robert Cushman and John Carver, to London to secure a land patent in the existing Virginia colony. A London merchant, Thomas Weston, probably one of the earliest venture capitalists, led a group of investors and offered the Puritans a deal they couldn’t refuse.
The deal stipulated that everything the colonists produced would belong to a “commonwealth,” and at the end of seven years, everything would be equally divided between investors and colonists. To make sure the investors would get their money back, this deal forbade colonists from having any personal time to work on any private business during the seven-year contract term. //
Many settlers resented that whatever they produced went into a common pot and was divided among them equally. In addition, knowing that at the end of the seven-year term they were required to surrender half the wealth they’d accumulated to investors in England offered no incentive to work hard.
Since not everyone was pulling the same weight, the colony was constantly running out of food, a typical problem in all the socialist countries, from China to Venezuela. As French philosopher Jean Bodin wisely pointed out, that communal property was “the mother of contention and discord” because “for nothing could properly be regarded as public if there were nothing at all to distinguish it from what was private. Nothing can be thought of as shared in common, except by contrast with what is privately owned.” //
By 1626, the Plymouth settlers couldn’t return sufficient profits that the investors in England had demanded, and they were forced to restructure the debt they borrowed from investors. Conceding the problem, Bradford wisely recognized that a change had to take place, and he gathered the settlers to a brainstorming session. //
After turning the communal property into private property, letting everyone be responsible for themselves and their own families’ wellbeing, Bradford noted drastic changes in all the colonists’ behaviors: //
These hardworking and motivated colonists turned Plymouth colony into one of the most successful colonies in North America.
Today’s self-identified democratic socialists might need to pick up a copy of Bradford’s book if they think real socialism has never been tried in America. One of the most important legacies of early settlers is that they experimented with socialism in the 1620s, and it didn’t work. Private property rights and personal responsibility, two pillars of a free market economy, saved the Plymouth colony from extinction and laid the economic foundation for he free and prosperous nation that we all enjoy today.
Rather than repeating always failed socialist experiments, Americans ought to remember the powerful lessons early settlers learned in the 1620s: Socialism is incompatible with free people. It always leads to failure and misery. The United States of America must never become a socialist country.
In the National Tribune, 1880, an article appeared giving an account of the "Vision of Washington" at Valley Forge. The account was told by a gentleman named Anthony Sherman, who supposedly was at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-78. The story has been published several times.
The following essays are part of The Federalist’s 1620 Project, a symposium exploring the connections and contributions of the early Pilgrim and Puritan settlers in New England to the uniquely American synthesis of faith, family, freedom, and self-government.
In Douglass’s abiding vision, America was the proper home for black Americans, their only realistic alternative, and also the locus of their highest ideals. //
Mark Twain copied a friend’s remark into his notebook: “I am not an American; I am the American.” To be the American, the exemplary or representative American, is a claim very few Americans could plausibly make. Twain could. Benjamin Franklin could and did. Abraham Lincoln could but didn’t, although admirers made the claim for him. Surely some number of others could, too. But among all Americans past or present, no one could make such a claim more compellingly than Frederick Douglass.
Like his country, Douglass rose from a low beginning to a great height. Like his country again, he won his freedom in a revolutionary struggle, by his own virtue, and against great odds, and he matured into an exemplar of universal liberty, admired the world over. Also like his country, Douglass the individual was divided by race.
Unlike America, Douglass could hardly think of himself as “conceived in liberty.” But even in this respect — especially in this respect — he represents a larger American promise. The son of a white slaveholder and a black slave, Douglass became, along with Lincoln, post-Founding America’s most important exponent of the natural-rights argument summarized in the Declaration of Independence. Pursuant to the same principles, he became America’s most prominent representative of the aspiration toward racial integration, reconciliation, and uplift.
One must emphasize: he became that. It didn’t come naturally to him. To become the great apostle of those aspirations, Douglass had to overcome a sentiment about and among black Americans that is recurrently present in U.S. history, powerful in his day and again in ours — the feeling or conviction that to be black is to bear an identity antagonistic to American identity. //
Douglass was a strong believer in the power of speech. This was a man who almost literally talked his way from the bottom to near the top of American society. But he didn’t think speech was all-powerful, and he didn’t think that the fostering of a healthy sense of American identity was merely a matter of persuading people, white or black, to believe in American principles.
To cultivate a genuine sense of American identity requires more than agreement with its principles. It requires a sense of belonging and affection. It requires a love of America as one’s own. On this point and others, Douglass was a good American disciple of John Locke.
In Locke’s well-known reasoning, we own our own labor, and we own what we make. This can apply, however, not only to material property but also to political and patriotic affiliation. What Douglass wanted to teach his fellow citizens, his black fellow citizens, in particular, was that we can build America, and in building or rebuilding it, we can make it our own.
We can improve it by our labor, he argued, culturally and morally no less than materially. To do this, we need first to improve ourselves. We need to cultivate what he called the “staying qualities,” fostering a faith in ourselves and our country. This is why hopefulness is a moral imperative, for Douglass, and why a spirit of alienation is so dangerous. //
We live in a time when many Americans have forgotten our principles, or never learned them, or learned to revile them; when many young people, young men especially, grow up in the belief that they have no grounds for hope for their future and no reason to identify with their country; when many of our educational institutions have become purveyors of alienation and disintegration, teaching that America is an evil, hateful society and that speech to the contrary must be vilified and suppressed.
At such a time, as we search for models of understanding and inspiration, it is a vital imperative for us to recover the moral and political vision of Douglass. In the long history of African-American political thought, there is no more forceful proponent of the cause of integration, and there is no more insightful analyst of the varieties and dangers of national and racial disintegration.
“No people can prosper,” Douglass reiterated late in life, “unless they have a home, or the hope of a home” — and “to have a home,” one “must have a country.” America, in Douglass’s abiding vision, was black Americans’s proper home, their only realistic alternative, and the locus of their highest ideals.
By its white and black citizens together, America must be cherished and perfected as a genuine home for all, not merely by the accident and force of necessity but as an object of rational and sentimental identification. For Douglass as for Lincoln, their common country was, through it all, the last best hope of earth.
The aviation world has seen a host of very interesting liveries. Some may remember the Southwest Airlines Sports Illustrated plane or EVA’s Hello Kitty Plane as some brand and non-aviation related imaging. However, some special liveries a little more functional. Northwest Airlines and KLM were two airlines that pioneered major international airline partnerships. To commemorate that, a DC-10 was painted in a hybrid KLM-Northwest “Alliance Plane” livery.
The Puritans' love of faith, freedom, and self-government that gave birth to America was the same spirit that gradually helped overcome racial injustice. //
The following essay is part of The Federalist’s 1620 Project, a symposium exploring the connections and contributions of the early Pilgrim and Puritan settlers in New England to the uniquely American synthesis of faith, family, freedom, and self-government.
https://thefederalist.com/category/culture/history/the-1620-project/
Tom Cotton
@SenTomCotton
The same @nytimes that gave us the debunked 1619 Project wants us to believe Thanksgiving is a “myth” and a “caricature.” That’s a lie. The American people can still have pride and confidence in our forebears.
“This year we ought to be especially thankful for our ancestors, the Pilgrims, on their 400th anniversary. Their faith, their bravery, their wisdom places them in the American pantheon, alongside the patriots of 1776, the Pilgrims of 1620 deserve the honor of American Founders.”
Laocoon etbass
15 hours ago edited
Good precis on the EC...but division into political parties was nearly instantaneous with the birth of the Republic.
George Washington hated it but Jefferson and Hamilton didn't. Adams had a personal friendship with Jefferson and he appreciated Jefferson's brilliance as articulated in the declaration. However Adams appreciated most of Hamilton's policy. Adams instinctively preferred a strong national government along with other Federalists.
But while Adams retained a good personal appreciation of the talents of Jefferson...even as they became serious rivals...he simultaneously developed a lasting personal loathing of Hamilton. For all of Adams' support of Hamilton's policy...he also saw Hamilton as the scheming tool of moneyed NY interests. An embodiment of NYC greed which did very well under British occupation for most of the Revolution while the Army starved and other American cities like Charlestown and Philadelphia suffered the ravages of 18th century war. And Washington...seeing things as they WERE instead of how he preferred them...tolerated reality but constantly tempered passions between Hamilton's and Jefferson's factions while he was in office. From nearly the first minute of the Adams Presidency...the division into parties exploded and America has never looked back.
The "prominent men" you speak of quickly divided them into reliable Democratic-Republicans or Federalists. Almost overnite.
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Miss Magpie etbass
19 hours ago edited
thank you , for the history of it , is illuminating,
perhaps you will see more "faithless" ones this time around, if you ever get there
On a bright fall morning at Stanford, Tom Mullaney is telling me what’s wrong with QWERTY keyboards. Mullaney is not a technologist, nor is he one of those Dvorak keyboard enthusiasts. He’s a historian of modern China and we’re perusing his exhibit of Chinese typewriters and keyboards, the curation of which has led Mullaney to the conclusion that China is rising ahead technologically while the West falls behind, clinging to its QWERTY keyboard.
Now this was and still is an unusual view because Chinese—with its 75,000 individual characters rather than an alphabet—had historically been the language considered incompatible with modern technology. //
But, Mullaney argues, the invention of the computer could turn China’s enormous catalog of characters into an advantage. //
Typing English on a QWERTY computer keyboard, he says, “is about the most basic rudimentary way you can use a keyboard.” You press the “a” key and “a” appears on your screen. “It doesn't make use of a computer’s processing power and memory and the cheapening thereof.” Type “a” on a QWERTY keyboard hooked up to a Chinese computer, on the other hand, and the computer is off anticipating the next characters. Typing in Chinese requires mediation from a layer of software that is obvious to the user.
In other words, to type a Chinese character is essentially to punch in a set of instructions—a code if you will, to retrieve a specific character. Mullaney calls Chinese typists “code conscious.” Dozens of ways to input Chinese now exist, but the Western world mostly remains stuck typing letter-by-letter on a computer keyboard, without taking full advantage of software-augmented shortcuts.
In 2013, Bill Gates admitted ctrl+alt+del was a mistake and blamed IBM. Here’s the story of how the key combination became famous in the first place. //
In the spring of 1981, David Bradley was part of a select team working from a nondescript office building in Boca Raton, Fla. His task: to help build IBM’s new personal computer. Because Apple and RadioShack were already selling small stand-alone computers, the project (code name: Acorn) was a rush job. Instead of the typical three- to five-year turnaround, Acorn had to be completed in a single year. //
In 2001, hundreds of people packed into the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the IBM PC. In two decades, the company had moved more than 500 million PCs worldwide. After dinner, industry luminaries, including Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, sat down for a panel discussion. But the first question didn’t go to Gates; it went to David Bradley. The programmer, who has always been surprised by how popular those five minutes spent creating ctrl+alt+del made him, was quick to deflect the glory.
“I have to share the credit,” Bradley joked. “I may have invented it, but I think Bill made it famous.”
1776 Unites is a movement to liberate tens of millions of Americans…
by helping them become agents of their own uplift and transformation, by embracing the true founding values of our country.
Who We Are
1776 Unites represents a nonpartisan and intellectually diverse alliance of writers, thinkers, and activists focused on solutions to our country’s greatest challenges in education, culture, and upward mobility.
Our Declaration
1776 Unites is a project of the Woodson Center, a community transformation and empowerment organization founded by Robert L. Woodson, Sr. in 1981.
1776 Unites is a movement to shape the American future by drawing on the best of its past. Radically pragmatic and unapologetically patriotic, we hope to speak for Americans of all races, creeds, and political convictions who oppose the efforts to demoralize and demonize our country and its foundations from within, and to turn its people against one another with false history and grievance politics.
1776 Unites represents a nonpartisan and intellectually diverse alliance of hundreds of thousands of writers, thinkers, and activists focused on solutions to our country’s greatest challenges in education, culture, and upward mobility.
We acknowledge that racial discrimination exists — and work towards diminishing it. But we dissent from contemporary groupthink and rhetoric about race, class, and American history that defames our national heritage, divides our people, and instills helplessness among those who already hold within themselves the grit and resilience to better their lot in life.
1776 Unites maintains a special focus on voices in the black community who celebrate black excellence, reject victimhood culture, and showcase the millions of black Americans who have prospered by embracing the founding ideals of America.
We are intellectuals and journalists, entrepreneurs and grassroots activists, celebrating the progress America has made, the resilience of its people, and our future together. We seek decisive action in restoring our people’s confidence and advancing the cause of actual justice in the face of hostile messages that degrade the spiritual, moral, and political foundations of our nation.
1776 Unites is a project of the Woodson Center, a community transformation and empowerment organization founded by Robert L. Woodson, Sr. in 1981.
1776 Unites is a movement to shape the American future by drawing on the best of its past. Radically pragmatic and unapologetically patriotic, we hope to speak for Americans of all races, creeds, and political convictions who oppose the efforts to demoralize and demonize our country and its foundations from within, and to turn its people against one another with false history and grievance politics.
Now, Nick’s directed a new documentary film on faith, how the nation was founded, and what we can do to secure our freedoms today, “America, America, God Shed His Grace On Thee.”
“America, America…” weaves its story with the help of a constellation of voices, not just Nick Searcy’s. The film does that with many conservative stars, including Pres. Trump’s Housing and Urban Development secretary and former GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Louis Gohmert, former Breitbart News editor-at-large and Daily Wire founder and editor in chief Ben Shapiro, former New Left activist and author David Horowitz, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show wingman, Bo Snerdley, Salem Media Group radio host Dennis Prager, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, Alveda King, actor and documentary director Dean Cain, and — on a somewhat bittersweet note — contains the final interview given by the late, great Herman Cain.
Michael Beschloss
@BeschlossDC
Harris is correct that when Roger Taney died in October 1864, Abraham Lincoln deferred a Supreme Court appointment until after election so that next President, with a new mandate, could do it.
9:12 PM · Oct 7, 2020
Kevin Daley 🏛
·
Oct 7, 2020
The facts are complicated. Lincoln's reelection was not in doubt after Sherman took Atlanta in Sept. Lincoln ran on a war-time unity ticket, but his preferred choice, Salmon Chase, was the favorite son of radical Republicans. Naming Chase early would have undermined his pitch.
Kevin Daley 🏛
@KevinDaleyDC
And the other side of this precedent isn't helpful for Biden-Harris. Lincoln nominated Chase as soon as the Senate returned for the December lameduck. Chase was confirmed that same day.
9:55 PM · Oct 7, 2020