The 1876 electoral showdown was different from those of 1800 and 1824, when no candidate had a majority of votes in the Electoral College.

This is nuts... //

Lachlan Markay
@lachlan
Uhhhhh this committee wants to "remove, relocate, or contextualize" the WASHINGTON MONUMENT

Post Local
@postlocal
D.C. committee recommends stripping the names of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Francis Scott Key and others from city government buildings https://wapo.st/31KyUEe

JERRY DUNLEAVY
@JerryDunleavy
The DC Faces Group tasked by DC’s mayor (@MayorBowser) said she should use her position on the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission to push for the federal govt to “remove, relocate, or contextualize” the Washington Monument & Jefferson Memorial.

https://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/

Bad actors and bad ideas haven’t disappeared from the face of the earth. We didn't arrive at the “end of history” with the fall of the Soviet Union.

A naturalist cuts through the myths surrounding the invasive plant //

I believed, as many still do, that kudzu had eaten much of the South and would soon sink its teeth into the rest of the nation. //

The photographs of kudzu-smothered cars and houses that show up repeatedly in documentaries of Southern life evoke intractable poverty and defeat.

Confronted by these bleak images, some Southerners began to wear their kudzu proudly, evidence of their invincible spirit. Some discovered a kind of perverse pleasure in its rank growth, as it promised to engulf the abandoned farms, houses and junkyards people couldn’t bear to look at anymore. //

In the end, kudzu may prove to be among the least appropriate symbols of the Southern landscape and the planet’s future. But its mythic rise and fall should alert us to the careless secondhand way we sometimes view the living world, and how much more we might see if we just looked a little deeper.

The Times’ supposition that America was racist at its core follows radical abolitionists rather than thinkers like Frederick Douglass who claimed the Constitution is an anti-slavery document. //

Since The New York Times published The 1619 Project a year ago, an army of scholars, historians, economists, and concerned citizens have criticized its bad history, bad journalism, and bad-faith effort to re-found the country on its original sin of slavery instead of its virtues. Unable to respond with intellectual honesty, the creators of the project have avoided discussion. //

The project’s flagship essay, written by project architect Nikole Hannah-Jones, argues that America’s true founding should be 1619, the year slaves were first brought to Virginia, instead of 1776, the year the 13 colonies declared independence from Great Britain. The reason 1776 is no longer worthy of being our founding date, Hannah-Jones says, is that the writer of the words “all men are created equal” did not mean them for black men and women. She thus claims the words were a lie until black Americans made them true. //

The below responses are strong rebuttals to all of these contentions.

Historical events removed from the timeline of history where they occurred creates propaganda -- whether well-intentioned or not. //

By adopting the storyline in the manner they have, the Yellowstone creative team has corrupted the actual historical timeline of this shameful period of US history, dragging it from 50 years in the past to only 20 years in the past. How many viewers took note of this and simply accepted the representation of such overtly racist government policy as recently at the end of the Clinton Administration?

History is a unique thing. Events happen when they happen. Transplanting a set of events from the era in which they took place to an era in which they did not take place for creative storytelling purposes — rewriting history — is propaganda.

Attempts to smear the college are not just dishonest but betray a misunderstanding of why critical race theory has no place in the classical liberal arts. //

By the inflexible logic of critical race theory, Hillsdale’s abolitionist past does not matter, its efforts to improve private and public schools do not matter, its financial aid to underprivileged students does not matter. All that matters is that the school does not go out of its way to categorize students by race, does not practice affirmative action, does not accept the terms of debate about race set forth by the progressive left, and refuses to repent of all these sins. //

Indeed, the only remotely substantive criticism of Hillsdale Whyte levels is that it refuses to categorize students by race or practice race-based affirmative action in admissions. What Whyte may not realize—or simply refuses to acknowledge—is that Hillsdale eschews racial categorization on purpose as a matter of principle.

Hillsdale’s refusal to comply with federal affirmative action requirements resulted in a series of court cases in the late 1970s and early ‘80s that ended with the college withdrawing from all federal financial assistance programs. Today it is one of the few colleges in America that accepts no federal funds—and no federal mandates.

Indeed, Hillsdale has always considered such mandates tantamount to racial discrimination. In contrast to the race-obsessed thinking of the Black Lives Matter movement, Hillsdale has always hewn to the thinking of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., who understood that race was not the most important thing about a person, and that the promises of the American Founding transcend race and national origin.

If the college’s leaders have “pooh-pooed diversity,” as Whyte says, it is because the diversity she has in mind is utterly hollow. Unlike progressives, classical liberals believe race itself is an incidental feature of the human condition, neither essential nor determinative, and in many ways merely a construct. At a college especially, the only kind of diversity that should matter is intellectual diversity, which is sorely missing from most colleges and universities today but alive and well at Hillsdale.

William Herndon, who would become Lincoln's law partner in 1844, describes the event this way: "we had a society in Springfield, which contained and commanded all the culture and talent of the place. Unlike the other one its meetings were public, and reflected great credit on the community ... The speech was brought out by the burning in St. Louis a few weeks before, by a mob, of a negro. Lincoln took this incident as a sort of text for his remarks ... The address was published in the Sangamon Journal and created for the young orator a reputation which soon extended beyond the limits of the locality in which he lived."

The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions:
Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois
January 27, 1838

Donald Trump did not mention Lincoln’s First Inaugural address in his speech commemorating the spirit of American Independence at Mount Rushmore on Friday night. But the president’s speech—perhaps his most forceful and eloquent to date—vibrated with the same energy and existential commitment that fired Lincoln in March 1861.

Lincoln came to office at a time of crisis. His election had precipitated the secession of seven Southern states. His inaugural address was both a plea for conciliation and unity as well as a warning that violence would be stopped with force. “We are not enemies, but friends,” Lincoln said.

Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Donald Trump issued a kindred invitation to unity in the midst of conflict. The signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in July 1776 was a world-historical event. It represented, the president rightly said, “the culmination of thousands of years of Western Civilization—and the triumph not only of spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason.” At the center of the triumph was the animating possession of liberty, made possible by the unanimous affirmation of the principles Thomas Jefferson articulated in the Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . .”

The president’s speech was a passionate celebration of American freedom and American greatness—a greatness, he noted, that was embodied by the sublime majesty of the heads of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt sculpted into the granite pinnacle of Mt. Rushmore. //

the president has promised to cancel cancel culture. Is that a contradiction, a violation of the spirit of tolerance he has promised to uphold? No.

The enemies of civilization routinely use and abuse its freedoms in order to destroy it. Candid men understand this and act to prevent it. As G. K. Chesterton put it, “There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.” //

The president accurately diagnosed the extent of the malady and its true goal:

In our schools, our newsrooms—even our corporate boardrooms—there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished. Make no mistake: this left-wing Cultural Revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.

Remember this the next time you see a mob come for a statue of Christopher Columbus or George Washington or Teddy Roosevelt, or, indeed, of Robert E. Lee. What they are coming for is our history—who we are.

We’re surrounded today by evidence that too few of us know our history, and too many have been mis-educated to see only its flaws. //

When we obsess over our faults, we lose perspective and forget that aspect of our past. Never before had a country been built upon the idea that it was not the rule of kings but the dignity of each person that formed the basis of political and social order. We did that.

Our liberty is founded not upon the gift of a favored few, but on the idea that each of us has certain inherent rights, bestowed by God and woven into the fabric of nature itself. The magnificent fireworks we set off on this day every year symbolize one of the most explosive ideas in all human history.

Yet we take it far too much for granted. We assume that these commitments represent the default position of the human race. We’re surrounded today by evidence that too few of us know our history, and too many have been mis-educated to see only its flaws and appreciate none of its grandeur.

After years of teaching American history, I’ve come to the conclusion that to appreciate America properly, we need to know much more than we do about the rest of the world, and about how the American story compares with its real-world alternatives. That’s why I’ve often wished that every course in American history could begin with a reading of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago,” or Robert Conquest’s “The Great Famine,” or Jung Chang’s “Mao,” books that offer a horrifying glimpse into an alternative reality of tyranny, murder, and degradation that even the worst moments in our history cannot rival.

These are large books, so let me suggest a shortcut for this Fourth of July. Before you go out to take in the fireworks and festivities, set aside a couple of hours to watch the recently released movie “Mr. Jones,” directed by Agnieszka Holland, an eminent Polish screenwriter and director.

Perhaps we have put too much weight on ideas and political philosophy //

Christopher Caldwell’s essay on the roots of America’s partisan divide the other day. He makes a fascinating argument: the two seminal dates in American history are not 1619 and 1787, but rather 1787 and 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act passed.

That year, for all intents and purposes, a second constitution was created. American constitutional law pivoted from the ethos of ‘one law for all’ to ‘different laws for different races, sexes, sexual orientations, etc.’–seemingly a move to boost the historically disadvantaged but actually a regression to tiered inequality which America had slowly but surely been moving away from since the founding with votes for women, desegregation, and decriminalization of homosexuality.

The civil rights constitution turned old injustices around and granted poorly defined identity groups permanent privileges not available to Americans as a whole (‘privilege’ = ‘private law’). Caldwell writes:

Now we can apply this insight to parties. So overpowering is the hegemony of the civil rights constitution of 1964 over the Constitution of 1787, that the country naturally sorts itself into a party of those who have benefitted by it and a party of those who have been harmed by it.

Thomas Jefferson's original "rough draft" of the Declaration of Independence, written in June 1776, includes dozens of edits from historical figures including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. 

Transcription of Thomas Jefferson's 'original Rough draught' of the Declaration of Independence. //

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

We have every right to fight to preserve our nation, heritage and culture. When vandals like Tammy Duckworth and Ilhan Omar tell us that we’re not allowed to question their patriotism, as they scream about how horrible this country is, we have every right to laugh in their faces.

Talk about going over the slide, check out what they said today of all days... //

Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
.@realDonaldTrump give a majestic speech before Mt. Rushmore, celebrating America & recounting the magnificent champions for Liberty Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln & Teddy Roosevelt. He vows to defend America.

NYT & WaPo: “dark & divisive.”

We are living in parallel universes.

America is...

When the NFL decided to play "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" during the first week of games, conservatives became outraged. But is their furor misplaced? //

An understanding of the history of the song reveals that it has nothing to do with segregation or bigotry. In fact, it is a piece of music that illustrates the struggle that black Americans were facing shortly after the Reconstruction era. The song also highlights the struggle of a nation to live up to the values upon which it was founded. It is an integral part of black history, which means it is a part of American history.

In 1899, James Weldon Johnson, a member of the NAACP, wrote the lyrics to “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” as a poem. He gave the poem to his brother John Rosamond Johnson, who was a classically-trained musician, to put the words to music. The song was first performed in public by a group of 500 children at a segregated school in Jacksonville, FL, to honor the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln. //

When you read the lyrics to the song, which I have included at the end of this article, you will see that there is nothing divisive about “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” It is a call for liberty. It is a heartfelt plea to God to lead people out of dire circumstances and into freedom. Put simply, this is a conservative song.

The song’s moniker, “The Black National Anthem,” has nothing to do with segregation, rather, it is an acknowledgment of the song’s role as a call to unity against bigotry. It is not a call for black people to have two separate Americas, as some have suggested.

Philip Wegmann
@PhilipWegmann
What changed? Sanders said Mt. Rushmore made him proud to be an American in 2016, and CNN seemed to agree. Now people want to blast the presidents off the mountain.

With some amazing visuals... //

Mark Knoller
@markknoller
Beneath the illuminated faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln, Pres Trump invoked the words of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., whom he says called on his fellow citizens not to tear down the American heritage but to live up to it.

Benny
@bennyjohnson
This is President Trump’s ‘A Time For Choosing’ speech.

It is excellently written and executed .

This message will win 40 states in November.

“Those who seek to erase our heritage want Americans to forget our pride and our great dignity, so that we can no longer understand ourselves or America’s destiny,” he said Friday. “In toppling the heroes of 1776, they seek to dissolve the bonds of love and loyalty that we feel for our country, and that we feel for each other.”

“Their goal is not a better America, their goal is to end America,” he said. //

There is a time for choosing, as Ronald Reagan and Trump have both said, standing against the chaos or going down into oblivion by being silent in the face of it, or worse, helping the chaos. The Democrats have been the latter, we all must stand against it.