As fewer of the veterans of The Second World War still remain with us, we must work even harder to remember their sacrifices. //

In celebration of his 100th birthday, former Secretary of State George Shultz wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post about trust. The second of the ten lessons he cited came from his time in the United States Marine Corps during World War II:

During World War II, I served in the Pacific theater in a Marine outfit that included a sergeant named Palat. I have forgotten his first name, but I have never forgotten the respect and admiration — the deep-seated trust — that he inspired. When Palat was killed in action, it brought home to me more than ever how pitiless war can be.

The inspiring words of Puritan John Winthrop are still remembered by Americans awed by his courage, faith, and leadership under punishing conditions.
By Evita Duffy

In embracing the notion of a majority-minority nation, Democrats who advocate identity politics are not placing as good a bet as some of them think. //

the census projections reflect a “one-drop” rule akin to that used in the Jim Crow South. The white category consists only of people who are 100 percent “non-Hispanic white.” If one adopts a more expansive definition of white, the projection of a majority-minority nation disappears. Dowell Myer and Morris Levy, for example, calculate what future American populations would look like if anyone who checks the white box on question 9 is classified as white. With this extremely liberal classification, the nation is three-quarters white in 2060.

On first hearing about the projected nonwhite majority, many people probably form a mental image that looks roughly like this: 4 whites, 2 Hispanics, 2 blacks, 1 Asian, and perhaps one “other.” As the preceding discussion explains, however, the picture is much more complex. The majority of minorities will not consist of people who are 100 percent Latino, 100 percent Asian, 100 percent black, 100 percent Native American, or 100 percent Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (the official census categories). Rather, the majority of minorities will include people of numerous shadings of color. //

Alba reports numerous analyses using census data, birth certificates, and surveys to describe the increasing occurrence of mixed marriages and the children who are products of such interracial and interethnic unions. Mixed marriage rates have steadily increased, and the ongoing census will likely report that nearly one in five new marriages now are mixed. Fully 80 percent of these marriages are between a white American and a minority. About 40 percent of these involve a white and a Hispanic, with Asian-white unions at 15 percent. //

A majority of foreign-born residents are not citizens, a discrepancy likely to grow because the foreign-born population will increase, to about 17 percent in 2050.

If this proportion does not change markedly, half or more of the foreign-born — the vast majority non-white or Hispanic — will not be eligible to vote in 2050. All in all, at mid-century and beyond, whites are virtually certain to remain the effective electoral majority at the national level.

Throughout his book, Alba shows great sensitivity in the presentation and discussion of the findings. Ethnic activists and some scholars in the academy are heavily invested in the majority-minority narrative and will not welcome the evidence that the narrative is largely an artifact of questionable data classifications.

The Pilgrims and emerging New Englanders made an additional contribution to the formation of the American ethos that is worth expanding upon, however: the daring, intrepid, and risk-taking qualities of those who settled in the northeast coast of what would become the United States. The resolve to pull up stakes and strike out into the perilous unknown — and the faith and fortitude to follow through on it — is an inspirational cultural debt we owe to the first early Pilgrims and New England settlers.

If instead of religious, freedom-seeking, young family units, arrivals on the northern shores of the future American coast had been the unwed, flighty, gold-seeking ruffians of the Jamestown variety, the America that followed would have been remarkably different.

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.”

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

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.

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 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.”

So, in order to earn our trust, Joe Biden would have to call his own side out for raising the temperature. And he has steadfastly refused to do so. He hasn't called out Black Lives Matter for the suggestion that America is systemically racist; he has cheered it on. He hasn't condemned antifa; he has deemed it a philosophy rather than a dangerous movement. And he certainly hasn't said a word about the continuing attacks on Trump supporters. //

No, "unity" in the Biden formulation isn't a recognition of what we have in common; it's a demand that we silence ourselves in order to mirror Biden's priorities. Unity, you see, can be achieved one of two ways: through recognition of the other, through a determination to understand those who think differently than we do; or through ideological domination. It's rather obvious which pathway Democrats will choose. After all, social ostracization is one of their most powerful tools. Why disarm now?

Americans can only come together when we share a common philosophy, history and culture. Democrats have spent years attempting to tear away those commonalities in favor of coalitional interest-group politics. They've declared American philosophy racist from inception; they've declared American history a litany of brutalities; they've declared American culture bigotry embodied. Now they want unity -- the unity of absolute victory.

Ironically, it's that very desire -- the desire for monolithic control -- that will be their undoing. Unless Biden is serious about unity -- unless he's willing to cross the aisle and recognize the humanity of those with whom he disagrees, and to call out those on his own side who won't -- Biden's term is likely to be contentious, polarizing and ultimately unsuccessful.

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

One hundred years ago, the United States faced an ugly reality that anticipated ours in 2020. The aftermath of World War I included economic depression and turmoil. A flu epidemic added to the chaos and struck down hundreds of thousands of Americans in the space of a few months.

Wages for working men had remained stagnant during wartime, but the removal of wartime controls meant prices of regular goods and services were skyrocketing. The popularity of communism and anarchism appeared to be growing. Riots and strikes in major American cities — from Boston to Seattle — were described with horror in the daily newspapers. //

In such a moment, Calvin Coolidge’s firm opposition to lawlessness as governor of Massachusetts made him famous. Voters rewarded his resiliency during the Boston Police Strike of 1919, along with his combination of courage and integrity. In two years, he was vice president. Two years later, he was president.

The parallels between his time and our own are instructive. If ever there were a need to recover his constitutional and political vision and apply it to our own day, that time is now. Constitution Day is an appropriate time to start. By recovering Coolidge’s understanding of the Constitution, we can begin to move in the right direction. //

Coolidge responded to such critics indirectly. Rather than quibble about economic data or dispute the endlessly disputable details of the Constitution, he underscored its religious foundation. It was important to remember these facts, he explained, because “No people can look forward who do not look backward. The strongest guarantee of the future is the past.”

According to Coolidge, America’s political principles were logical developments from its history, and at the center of American history is the story of religion. The earliest colonies were carved out of the wilderness so the colonists might worship God according to conscience. They were born in a desire for freedom, and this desire matured with time. //

Coolidge asserted that the Great Awakening was influential in expanding the American view of individual liberty and rights. The Awakening and its truths were essential in the success of the American Revolution and the formation of the Constitution. He explained: “The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.”

For Coolidge, it was the Constitution that brought the principles of the Revolution to full maturity and practical significance. The adoption of the Constitution of 1787 opened the doors to American progress such as the world had never seen. //

“That which America exemplifies in her Constitution and system of government is the most modern, and of any yet devised gives promise of being the most substantial and enduring.”

Coolidge, however, was careful to caution against trusting the Constitution to do more than it promised. It was not “a machine that would go of itself”—quite the contrary. Coolidge was well-aware of the fact that the Constitution imposed the duties of self-government upon every generation of Americans.

While “the men who founded our government” had built carefully and well, “we should be deluded if we supposed [our institutions] can be maintained without more of the same stern sacrifice offered in perpetuity,” he said. Free self-government requires sacrifice, requires recurrence to first principles, requires Americans to know, understand, and defend their way of life and form of government.

The Congress passed the Act of April 22, 1864. This legislation changed the composition of the one-cent coin and authorized the minting of the two-cent coin. The Mint Director was directed to develop the designs for these coins for final approval of the Secretary. IN GOD WE TRUST first appeared on the 1864 two-cent coin.

Another Act of Congress passed on March 3, 1865. It allowed the Mint Director, with the Secretary's approval, to place the motto on all gold and silver coins that "shall admit the inscription thereon." //

Later, Congress passed the Coinage Act of February 12, 1873. It also said that the Secretary "may cause the motto IN GOD WE TRUST to be inscribed on such coins as shall admit of such motto." //

The motto has been in continuous use on the one-cent coin since 1909, and on the ten-cent coin since 1916. It also has appeared on all gold coins and silver dollar coins, half-dollar coins, and quarter-dollar coins struck since July 1, 1908. //

A law passed by the 84th Congress (P.L. 84-140) and approved by the President on July 30, 1956, the President approved a Joint Resolution of the 84th Congress, declaring IN GOD WE TRUST the national motto of the United States. IN GOD WE TRUST was first used on paper money in 1957, when it appeared on the one-dollar silver certificate. The first paper currency bearing the motto entered circulation on October 1, 1957.

The 1619 Project should not be read by anyone, really. //

Facts can be inconvenient to narratives, as any politician will tell you. The problem is that journalists aren’t supposed to be politicians. They are supposed to focus on the facts and let those facts speak for themselves. Wemple is joining in the narrative by further trying to portray Trump as some sort of unread buffoon.

But you don’t have to read the 1619 Project to know that it does a bad job of being a historical analysis and journalism project. If you have dozens of historians coming forward and saying the central premise of a project is wrong, then its credibility is gone. There is no need to read it.

You could argue that Trump should better articulate what is wrong with it (there are plenty of arguments to choose from), but Wemple (and others on social media) decided instead to attack the man r