“White nationalism didn’t drown 250,000 Vietnamese in the South China Sea,” Nguyen exclaimed. “The Communists did. White Nationalism didn’t execute 86,000 South Vietnamese at the fall of Saigon. The Communists did. White Nationalists didn’t put me here. Communism did.

“So don’t take it lightly,” Nguyen said to Hernandez and the other representatives. “Don’t mock me. Don’t mock what I go through in life. It’s rough. I lost most of my cousins and family members due to Communism. If we don’t stand up to teaching Communism to our children, we’ll lose this country.” “So sir,” he said to Hernandez again. “Don’t mock me.” //

There’s far more to fear in this country from Communism than there is from white nationalism for a few very simple reasons.

First, there are few white nationalists and everyone in power condemns them.

Meanwhile, socialist and Communist ideas are being taught and embraced in colleges and in many other schools across the country. Unfortunately because of the failure of education that Nguyen referenced our young people no longer understand the bad things about Communism. They don’t know the millions of killings, some of which he referenced. They don’t understand how the ideology has oppressed people across the world, how so many fled it to come here, and what a horror it is for those folks, like Nguyen, who see it making inroads in his adopted country.

jelgator The Original John Doe
15 hours ago
"if this country remains a democracy or not."

Not to be mean or anything but we're a republic, not a democracy. But I know what you meant. :) //

The Original John Doe jelgator
14 hours ago edited
Yes I read the article on RedState a few days or weeks back pointing out that difference and making the same point you did. The thing is I believe that while the USA was formed as a republic but when FDR was elected in 1932 the DNC began slowly changing this country from a republic to a democracy and although we can stand and scream this country was founded as a republic and we want it to be a republic the facts on the ground state otherwise. I will use a chart I found on keydifferences dot com to illustrate.

In a republic a minorities rights are inalienable (ignoring slavery for a minute which blows up everything and is the exception) and in a democracy they can be overridden by a majority. The DNC has time and time again taken away minority rights by claiming they are passing the law protecting minority rights.

In a republic revenue is generated through legitimate taxes and fees. A democracy is funded through illegitimate taxes, fees, fines and licenses. Since 1933 we have our share of fines and licenses and most of the additional taxes I would argue are illegitimate and in place only to fund the large government that was created since 1933 and has not been stopped by anyone. (The large gov't that is)

In a republic mobocracy (rule by a mob) does not prevail. In a democracy it prevails. Only only needs to look at Twitter, cancel culture and riots of BLM and Antifa to realize that in democrat states mobocracy prevails.

And the last one is the clincher. In a republic we are ruled by laws. In a democracy we are ruled by the "majority". Since 1933, blue states, liberal judges and even the supreme court have decided that because the "majority" feels a certain way certain laws should be given brand new definiens out of thin air or ignored.

The USA is no longer the country that our founding fathers had envisioned. Democrats controlled both chambers of congress nearly uninterrupted since 1933 until Regan was elected. Then Clinton, Obama and now Biden are continuing. This country has been perverted beyond our founding fathers dreams. The only saving grace was that each state was established as its own entity within the larger country which has allowed 23 states currently to remain free while the remaining 27 are not due to democrat control of all or part of the government.

The first step towards recovery is conservatives need to realize this is the case in order to take it back. We are sliding to the point where we will not even be able to fairly elect who we want and we will be right back where the colonies started with rulers who don't care what we think, are not accountable to us and can do what they want. We need governors of red states to realize this and organize. But our governors are not going to do that unless the people rise up and demand the red states use the second amendment to protect what original shreds are left of this country.

Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry were wealthy landowners in South Carolina’s Colleton District in the 1830s, in what is now Charleston County. The couple owned 84 slaves each for a total of 168, at a time when most of their peers owned a handful. Their slaves worked their plantation and made them rich. Angel and Horry also traded slaves for profit, showing no regard for dissolving slave families. They were no kinder or crueler to their slaves than anyone else. They were considered “slave magnates” because of the number of slaves they owned. They were referred to as the “economic elite.” They were also black.

Black people owned black people in all 13 original colonies and in every state that allowed slavery. Frequently, freed black people would go on to own more slaves than their white neighbors. In 1830, nearly a fourth of the free black slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves, and several owned more than 30, far surpassing their white slave-owning neighbors.

Yes, black people, frequently former slaves themselves, owned slaves. While it can be said that many black people owned family members to protect them and keep them close, black slave owners also bought and sold slaves for profit. Renowned African-American historian and Duke University Professor, John Hope Franklin, wrote “The majority of Negro owners of slaves had some personal interest in their property. There were instances, however, in which free Negroes had a real economic interest in the institution of slavery and held slaves in order to improve their economic status.” Franklin also wrote that roughly 3,000 free black people in New Orleans alone owned slaves. //

Why don’t history teachers include this in their curriculum? You know why! How can they demonize white people and divide us racially and if they taught the truth? What reason would they have for teaching the commie Critical Race Theory? How can black people demand reparations if you know thousands of black people owned slaves as well? How can they propagate the myth of “systemic racism” if we were all just allowed to get along?

Remember, it’s no longer about equality in our country, it’s now about equity. YOU need to pay for what other white, and black, people stopped doing over 155 years ago.

Americans are a country of people that should be proud of who they are and what they’ve accomplished and despite what the left may say about you or this country, it’s one that not only needs defending, it deserves defending.

That was the message from North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson during the North Carolina Republican Party State Convention. //

“The greatest example that I saw, and witnessed it firsthand on television, was during 9/11. People running away from those burning buildings, running away in horror. We saw a policeman and fireman running to those buildings, basically running to their deaths to go help others because they saw trouble and they knew that they would need it.,” said Robinson.

“That’s got to be us this day right here,” he continued. “And what is the trouble? The trouble is the Biden administration that is seeking the turn this country into a socialist hellhole. The trouble is Antifa, who wants to roam the streets and beat you into submission. The trouble is Black Lives Matter that claims to care about the lives of black people but it’s turned a blind eye
while violence in black communities are taking lives at a genocidalal of rate. They turn a blind eye!”

“That’s where the trouble is and that’s where we’ve got to run to,” he added.

“We’ve got all the right in the world on our side, and there ain’t no reason to be afraid,” said Robinson. “It ain’t no reason to not take the challenge dead on.”

Robinson reminded the crowd who it is we come from, saying that we don’t descend from “weak, jelly backed, spineless people.” He also made it clear that it doesn’t matter your skin color or what nation your ancestors came from, nor how much money you have. In the end, we’re all Americans.

When have Democrats EVER given up something truly important to them in order to seal a compromise with their Republican political opponents? It simply never happens!

Compromise and fair dealings are possible between willing parties who share moral values and deal honestly with one another – at least in the non-political realm. For example, compromise on price in commercial transactions is legitimate. //

Whether through barter or monetary exchange, transactions are possible between all kinds of people regardless of “race, color, creed,” etc. The system works well for tangible commodities; compromise is the underlying concept that makes such transactions possible (at some point, both parties have to agree to the exchange). However, in matters of morality and truth, there can be no compromise.

The Left have hijacked the basic concept of compromise in the political realm by inserting the “free radical” (and malarkey) of “moral equivalence” into the equation. Moral equivalence is the Marxist claim that two radically different people/nations/political-ideological systems are taking the same actions and should be judged and treated the same way. The problem is that the concepts of good and evil are purposely not considered. Moral equivalence (also referred to as moral relativity) is a cancer on the body politic. //

Where do you compromise with the pro-abortion crowd in the Democrat Party? At the number of weeks at which a pregnancy can be legally terminated? On what the definition of “health of the mother” means in allowing an abortion? On whether parents have any say in their minor daughter’s decision? No moral equivalence exists in this situation, and those supporting abortion never discuss the moral dilemma involved in ending the life of a human being – mainly because they suppress what their consciences scream at them about the barbarism of abortion.

The bottom line is this: to suggest compromise with such people is to sanction abortion. There is no other way to put it. At what price do conservatives compromise their souls to agree with this evil and immoral practice? //

What’s the bipartisan compromise that enhances conservative principles and morals on any of those topics? We are not going to see anything from the Left other than a demand that we ignore our principles and concerns, and when we “compromise,” we inch American culture leftward just as the Left have planned and executed since the days of Woodrow Wilson and his “progressive amendments”.

Conservatives must remember that, at times, it is easy to believe that the item we think we desire (compromise and the elusive comity that we expect from the Left when we do compromise with them) is worth more than it actually is and underestimate the value of our own positions. //

“Compromise” has been a losing strategy for us for decades. Compromise with the Left has gotten us into the deep hole in which we find the nation today. It’s the reason we’ve been losing the culture war and why the Left have taken over most of our political and cultural institutions. We need to fight back and DEFEAT the Left politically at every turn – on every subject while defending our core moral principles – and forget about the fool’s gold that is “compromise.” It’s our only hope if we wish to preserve the Republic.

In an interview in 2018, the economist Thomas Sowell had a concise answer when podcaster and commentator Dave Rubin asked what awakened him to the failures of Marxism, an ideology he had espoused in his youth.

“Facts!” Sowell replied.

In his decadeslong career, Sowell’s commitment to the facts at the expense of popular approval and, sometimes, career advancement has captured audiences young and old, black and white, rich and poor.

But Sowell isn’t much concerned with his fame, even if it is an encouraging indicator of how well his ideas have been received. //

To be a conservative who is black is to expose oneself to undue amounts of absurd criticism, and Sowell’s experience was no exception.

Riley writes that Sowell and the late economist Walter Williams, a protegee and friend of Sowell’s, used to joke that “they never flew together, because if the plane went down there would be no black conservatives left.”

But Sowell had “felt the pain and humiliation of racism firsthand throughout his life,” and “needed no lectures from anyone on the evils of Jim Crow,” Riley writes.

For instance, many claimed that Sowell’s book “Ethnic America: A History” argued that discrimination against blacks did not exist. But Sowell actually was arguing that “discrimination alone was an insufficient explanation of social inequality.”

Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution since 1980, certainly was not a pawn of white economists, even the ones he admired and learned from.

Milton Friedman, a friend and mentor, said that Sowell “has a mind of his own, insists on making it up for himself, and on getting the evidence necessary to form a valid judgment.” In fact, Sowell saw his views on racial matters as entirely in line with that of black civil rights leaders of the past.

“If anything,” Riley writes, “Sowell’s analyses are in the tradition of his fellow black forebearers, not his white contemporaries.” Black leaders of the past such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, he writes, “shared Sowell’s deep skepticism of government benevolence and the lowering of standards to facilitate black advancement.”

So, yet again, America, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. has once again saved us from ourselves. I mean, one look at the declared purpose of the 1776 undertaking by commissioners tells you all you need to know about these very dangerous people:

“The declared purpose of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission is to ‘enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.

“This requires a restoration of American education, which can only be grounded on a history of those principles that is ‘accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling.

“And a rediscovery of our shared identity rooted in our founding principles is the path to a renewed American unity and a confident American future.” //

As reported by The Washington Examiner on Friday, the education advisory commission will resume operations, despite being disbanded by Biden — with the added objective of undermining the insanity of critical race theory now metastasizing in schools across America.

The 1776 Commission is scheduled to convene on Monday in Washington on the annex campus of Hillsdale College to plot its next steps. An agenda for the private meeting, which is closed to the media, was not available.

But in an interview with the Washington Examiner, Matthew Spalding, the 1776 Commission’s executive director, said the group sees a major role for itself in the explosive debate over the teaching of the history of the United States in public and private schools.

The battle lines are clearly drawn.

On one side, “traditionalists,” as described by the Examiner, who believe in de-emphasizing race and ethnicity. Spalding told the Examiner the commission doesn’t intend to “whitewash” America’s history slavery and racism, but wants to promote a curriculum that defines “racial equality” as an American “tenet”: — “the founding creed of the Declaration of Independence: all men are created equal” — and Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a colorblind nation.

On the other side, critical race theory — the “decades-old academic study of U.S. history, more prevalent recently,” argues that racism remains deeply embedded in all aspects of American life. According to CRT, the only way to “unravel this systemic racism and bring about a just society” is for institutions, public and private, to place race and ethnicity at the center of policymaking, hiring, and how people are treated generally. //

Spalding then pointed to the obvious, unintentionally — meaning he precisely described the objective as an intended part of his comment.

“Current arguments about identity politics and critical race theory that … present themselves as merely responding to perceptions of their current assessment of American society, but do so by introducing as their principle that we should look at people based on the color of their skin, strikes us as a fundamental denial of the idea that all men are created equal.

“And that’s a problem for politics. That’s a problem intellectually and historically.”

CRT “teaches” — indoctrinates — that all “men” are not created equal. On the contrary, CRT contends that “white people” are born “racist,” and there is nothing “white people” can do about it, other than spend the entirety of their lives atoning for their “whiteness” and apologizing to “black people” for being “racist.” //

Martin • 3 hours ago • edited

Critical Race Theory is evil. The people who came up with it, are evil. The people who teach it, are evil. The people who believe in it or practice it, are evil. The people who enable it or defend it in any way, shape or form, are evil.

There should be no compromise with these people. You should call them evil to their faces with zero hesitation.

Again, they're not wrong; they are evil.

Yuval Levin's 'A Time to Build' offers a sobering and incisive explanation for why America no longer trusts its institutions, and what to do about it.
By John Thomas

In his 1975 book, Twilight of Authority, renowned sociologist Robert Nisbet warned of “twilight ages,” periods in western history marked by the “decline and erosion of institutions” and an “[i]ndividualism reveal[ed]…less as achievement and enterprise than as egoism and mere performance.” Nisbet also noted of these twilight ages that “[t]he sense of estrangement from community is strong.”

Former Bush administration staffer and founding editor of National Affairs Yuval Levin borrows Nisbet’s imagery in his new book A Time to Build: From Family to Community, to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream. According to Levin, although at the beginning of the millennium America seemed poised for a vibrant renewal, the past two decades have been more akin to one of Nisbet’s “twilight ages.” This is especially true regarding America’s many floundering institutions.

Beginning in July 2018, the Intelligence Community will begin its release of declassified documents related to the Tet offensive. These documents will be released in three installments over a period of 15 months. Below is a list of each document added. As documents are released we will include additional features and information to improve functionality and discovery. Please check back regularly for ongoing updates.

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive—which took place on January 30, 1968—Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats directed intelligence agencies to review their holdings to reveal previously classified details to the public.

This page displays selected documents from the declassified volume as well as other contextual images, videos, and quotes which will be updated on a periodic basis. To view all declassified documents that have been released to date please click on the 'view documents' link. Additional items of interest can be found in the menu to provide greater context and insight into the Tet Offensive declassification effort.

Intel.gov will serve as the hub for the release of Tet offensive declassified documents. However, some agencies have dedicated locations for their corresponding documents:

Before the likes of the cancel culture rewrite the history of the Vietnam War, it is important to remember that US and South Vietnamese forces won virtually every major battle during the war, including the 1968 Tet Offensive, which wiped out the Viet Cong as an effective fighting force, but which the pro-Communist Walter Cronkite (and others) spun as a “strategic American defeat” to American television audiences. An excellent discussion of how Tet was falsely spun by the North Vietnamese Communists and their sycophants in the American media and anti-war movement (which was possibly the most successful information operation in history) can be found here entitled “Tet Declassified.” That Communist info op convinced Americans that the war was lost, which led to the “Vietnamization” of the war effort, to the Paris Peace Accords, to the American withdrawal from Vietnam, and ultimately to Operation Frequent Wind.

Why was the war lost? A tragedy of bad decisions and strategic errors. That the US evolved ridiculous Rules of Engagement but no mission success criteria doomed the American effort to failure. Body counts, aircraft sorties and bombs dropped, artillery rounds fired, etc. The US “counterinsurgency strategy” was completely wrong, given the overwhelming military superiority of the US versus the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. And LBJ’s management of the war effort from the Oval Office severely constrained commanders in the field. Allowing unfettered access by the American news media to unit-level operations was a strategic mistake, which led to the likes of Cronkite falsely spinning the reality on the ground to Americans watching the “television war.”

By 1971 or 1972, the war was essentially won in South Vietnam, and after the Christmas bombing of Hanoi in December of 1972, North Vietnam’s will to continue had been broken. However, it was the Democrat majority in the US Congress who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and who deliberately forfeited the war after all US forces were withdrawn for US political reasons, as well as suspended military aid to the South Vietnamese. That latter perfidious act was the coup de grâce. Funny how nobody mentions that these days as the DC Democrats push their Communist agenda down our throats. Some things never change. //

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tet-offensive-halted

https://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-terrible-truth-about-walter-cronkite/

https://www.intelligence.gov/tet-declassified

Get vaccinated if you want
@jtLOL
WHAT TIM SCOTT SAID: "America is not a racist country"
WHAT LIBS HEARD: "Racism doesn't exist in America"

They're not the same thing. All you have to do is think about it for two seconds, which is clearly too much work. Don't blame Tim Scott for being smarter than you.

We now know that on April 1 last year, the U.S. had 331.5 million residents, an increase from 2010 of only 7.4 percent, second smallest in the Census’ 230-year history to the 7.3 percent of the 1930 Great Depression decade.

This time, think aging population, delays in marrying and having children, and slower immigration.

What we also know now is more good news for Republicans. Six states will gain a total of seven additional House seats and electoral votes, most in Republican areas. Seven states, mostly Democratic and in the Rust Belt, will lose House seats and, thus, electoral votes.

Gainers are Florida, Montana, which regains the seat it lost three decades ago, North Carolina, Oregon, and two new seats go to Texas. That’s the result of about four million new residents, many of them financial refugees from California. Such historical internal migration to the Sun Belt continues but has slowed.

Ben begins by pointing out that a nation is far more than just a random selection of people sharing a geographical space. Rather, our shared values and a respect for the rule of law have bound us since our founding. What followed was a brief mention of that founding, including the incredible bravery and spirit of those who crossed the Delaware River, beaten and nearing defeat at the time, and ended up changing the world in the process.

Contrast that with what we have today in what Ben describes as self-proclaimed “happy-warriors.” These are the Republicans who are more than happy to fight any number of foreign conflicts or for Amazon to pay less in taxes, but when the true cultural battles present themselves, they run away, hiding behind supposed principles that only serve as an excuse for their weakness.

Ben goes on to note that someone is going to rule, whether it be race radicals, big tech, Hollywood, or something else. The other side isn’t looking to lay down their arms. The only question is whether Republicans and lovers of freedom, in general, are willing to actually fight.

Dean Alfange, a “progressive” of his era and a labor activist, wrote 163 words, in the form of a letter, 70 years ago that was first published in Reader’s Digest in 1952.

“My Creed”

“I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon.

“I seek to develop whatever talents God gave me—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me.

“I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia.

“I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any earthly master nor bend to any threat.

“It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say – ‘This, with God’s help, I have done.’

“All this is what it means to be an American.”

A plaque of Alfange’s words, unattributed, and confusingly misnamed — as I explain below — in Hagerstown, Indiana.

Alfange’s “My Creed” should not be confused with “The American’s Creed,” written by “American public servant” William Tyler Page, (1868 1942) — who worked in the U.S. Capitol for 61 years — in 1917 and accepted by the U.S. House of Representatives on April 3, 1918, which also stands as a reverend testament to American patriotism — and against the clear and present danger posed by the radical left, who is determined to steal from us our country as we know it.

“I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, a democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

“I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.”

Approaching history with condescending arrogance, as the woke movement does, merely highlights the smallness of the examiners. //

Clearly, the political left has a significant problem with our national story. They don’t understand history, either the actual developments that made the United States or the field of study that seeks to make sense of that process.

Historians try to understand how and why human beings acted the way they did in the context of their circumstances and possibilities. But social justice warriors know better. For them, the past is a convenient arena in which to practice the latest exercise in cancel culture.

The shocking ignorance of the past many social justice warriors display is all too evident. The 1619 Project overflows with untruthful assertions and gross distortions, beginning with its ludicrous claim that the American Revolution was launched to protect slavery. A clueless woke mob in Madison, Wisconsin dismembered a statue of an outspoken abolitionist and pulled down another symbolizing the advance of women’s rights.

One of the most egregious errors committed in San Francisco concerned poor Paul Revere, who was unhorsed from his midnight ride because he participated in the Penobscot Expedition of 1779. The school board decried this as a campaign to capture American Indian land when, in fact, it was a failed assault on a British fort during the American Revolution.

While this disdain for historical facts is distressing, even more troubling, however is the woke movement’s profoundly wrongheaded approach to history itself. Sometimes, they simply seek to abolish it.

Leftist disciples shrewdly sense (and fear) that history tends to create a sense of attachment and perspective, qualities that blunt efforts to remake the world anew. Revolutionary zealots have always targeted historical symbols as a key enemy in their crusades for purification. In the French Revolution, Jacobins sought to erase the centuries-old influence of Christianity by installing the Cult of the Supreme Being to harness religious feeling without the danger of religious content. //

The awakened believe that the past is just like the present and its inhabitants should be judged by contemporary standards. This is mistaken. Early on, the student of history learns to beware of “presentism,” or judging the past by the standards of the present. If not, you end up condemning Charlemagne for not endorsing women’s rights or Susan B. Anthony for insensitivity to transgenderism. The awakened believe that the past is a pantheon of heroes and villains to be lionized or condemned. //

The awakened believe that the past is a morality tale to be ransacked for lessons illustrating good and evil. Yet even a cursory look at past events discloses a whirl of motivations, often conflicting or ambiguous, at work in shaping outcomes. Henry Ford’s adoption of the assembly line in 1911, for instance, a move that reshaped the modern world, combined idealism (lowering costs to make the automobile available to average people), interest (boosting profits from an increased volume of sales), and unforeseen developments (such as overly repetitious labor workers often resented or rejected).

The awakened, however, believe that an overarching theory — class conflict or modernization not long ago; whiteness, the patriarchy, heteronormativity, intersectionality currently — offers a tidy explanation for everything. This is mistaken. The incredible complexity of human history demands multicausal explanations and vigorous debate among competing interpretations, not a conga line of liberationist theorists sent snaking through the past shimmying and shaking to the rhythm of revolution.

‘Interrogate the Past, But Don’t Bully It’

Judicious students of the American experience steer clear of these mistakes and approach it cautiously, seeking wisdom, not weaponization. They understand that history does not repeat, but instead unfolds as a process that produces the present. They understand that historical facts matter to provide credible evidence in support of reasonable judgments along with all the facts, not just those cherry-picked for ideological reasons. //

Edmund Burke observed that human society is a contract between “those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born,” and urged citizens to beware those who “should act as if they were the entire master.” In that spirit we should ponder American history as a pursuit of political participation, individual equality, constitutional order, social opportunity, and economic freedom, however imperfectly realized and full of ambiguities it has been.

We should celebrate what is worthy in our past and chastise what is reprehensible. We should submit our history to rigorous, fair-minded analysis and see what it can tell us about the human condition and how we got where we are.

This important task demands thoughtful examination and nuanced judgments, not a frenzied kangaroo court convened by wokesters jacked up on ideological amphetamines and spouting slogans. Confronting the imperfections of the past — as well as the human beings who inhabited it — should heighten an awareness not of our superiority but our shortcomings. In the end, such a careful investigation of history can provide the key inspiration for us to overcome them.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae’s immortal words of remembrance of all who fell in the Great War carried through a beautiful ceremony honoring the oft-forgotten war and America’s pivotal role. On Friday morning, politicians, historians, activists, military leaders, artists, and descendants virtually gathered to raise the American flag over the newly-erected World War I memorial in Washington DC.

As the last of the major 20th century US war veterans to receive a national memorial, those who served in WWI now have a powerful tribute to their sacrifice, bravery, and heroism. Hopefully, the monument will help return the Great War to public consciousness. //

The flag had quite a journey to reach Pershing Park, making a physical trip symbolic of that experienced by soldiers. It first was raised inside the US Capitol, before being flown to France to fly over a cemetery of American war dead, then spending time above the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City and finally arriving at its permanent home in DC.

Just before it was raised, the final words of the event were shared by Terry Hamby, the chairman of the World War I Centennial Commission. He dedicated the monument to the men and women of WWI, who answered the call to “serve in places they’ve never visited, for a war they didn’t start, to protect the freedom of people they’d never met.”

Americans privately fear these rules, while publicly appearing to accept them.

They still could be transitory and invite a reaction. Or they are already near-permanent and institutionalized.

The answer determines whether a constitutional republic continues as once envisioned, or warps into something never imagined by those who created it.

There are 10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently.”

Americans privately fear these rules, while publicly appearing to accept them. They still could be transitory and invite a reaction. Or they are already near-permanent and institutionalized.

“The answer determines whether a constitutional republic continues as once envisioned, or warps into something never imagined by those who created it.”

The New York Times has finally admitted a key error in the 1619 Project. It disqualifies it from use in our schools. //

A central essay in the project, written by Nikole Hannah-Jones, underwent a major correction this week. Only two words were changed, but they were big words. And given how much they change the underlying argument, the correction shows this project should not be used as a teaching tool in our schools. //

In the original she said that maintaining slavery was a primary motivation of colonists in revolting against England. That was one of the most bashed claims in the whole project. Now it reads, that it was a primary motivation for “some of” the colonists. //

It is hard to overstate just how massively this correction undermines the entire project. The purpose of this historian-free history of America was to refocus the American story by centering it on slavery. The idea was that 1619, the year the first chattel slaves arrived is the date of America’s founding, not the traditional 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

This re-dating of the founding of the United States only makes sense if we accept an ahistorical claim that slavery was a major reason colonists split with England. That is exactly why Hannah-Jones made the claim. It is also why the Times has dragged its feet while a deluge of virtual failed peer reviews poured in from actual historians. //

The New York Times shot for the moon on the 1619 Project. Its goal was nothing short of fundamentally changing the way Americans view the history of their country from a slow painful pursuit of freedom, to a deadly attempt to continue slavery and the oppression of minorities.