5333 private links
Christopher Columbus’s perseverance and courage in his four transatlantic crossings inspired later explorers and seekers of freedom. //
Columbus Day is worth keeping and honoring because it remains foundational to the establishment of a new nation by people who largely shared the core beliefs and the qualities of character Columbus exhibited. Columbus Day commemorates character, embodies freedom, and celebrates the uniqueness that is America.
Michael Girdley @girdley
I considered moving out of the USA.
After some research, I realized leaving is stupid.
There is no chance the USA will stop being the global superpower.
And the best country for opportunity.
The reason surprised me:
Can you pass the U.S. citizenship exam?
Every year, the United States welcomes nearly 1 million new citizens through naturalization ceremonies, all of whom must pass the American citizenship exam by answering 6 out of 10 questions correctly.
While 90% of legal immigrant applicants pass the exam, only 30% of U.S. adults and just 3% of public high school students in America can pass it!
PragerU is determined to educate millions of young people about American history, civics, and the values that have made this country great. If you've watched enough PragerU videos, passing the exam should be a breeze.
There have been many depictions of the debate in Philadelphia at Independence Hall of both the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the meetings to hammer out and pass a federal framework for the colonies, which eventually became the United States Constitution. Most, I imagine, have been by American citizens who felt a connection to our founding document and were able to project a passion for this nation's beginning.
Yet none of them stand a chance or hold a candle to the portrayal of William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise and his explanation of the piece of paper that starts off with WE THE PEOPLE.
Shatner, who is Canadian by birth, became a legend for his portrayal of the fictional Captain in Star Trek: The Orginal Series, and in the clip below he tipped the Shatner Ham O' Meter at full blast.
The Enterprise crew discovers a parallel world where the United States lost a nuclear war to Communist China. Centuries later, the descendants of the Americans cherish the documents of their ancient heritage but have forgotten their meaning. Kirk explains it to them.
The US Department of Agriculture is changing the name of Wayne National Forest in Ohio to something less offensive, like the "Buckeye National Forest," after a coalition of leftist Karens; I'm sorry, I meant "American Indian Tribes and local community members" objected to a national forest named after a legitimate American hero.
The national forest is currently named after General Anthony Wayne, whose complicated legacy includes leading a violent campaign against the Indigenous peoples of Ohio that resulted in their removal from their homelands. The current forest name is offensive because of this history of violence. Buckeye National Forest is one of the names suggested to the Forest Service by American Indian Tribes. Other proposed names considered included “Ohio National Forest” and “Koteewa National Forest.” //
Before I go too far, I’d like to start this essay with a land acknowledgment statement.
My home sets on land first explored by English and Scots-Irish freemen who had migrated from their homeland in search of freedom and opportunity or sometimes on the run from the law. The land was settled primarily by Germans from the Palatinate, who, through their industry, created farms, pastures, and orchards where only unproductive, fallow wilderness had existed. These men and women held savage tribes at bay and together created a nation that has been the beacon of hope to the world for over two hundred years. This land was conquered, not stolen, and any acknowledgment we make is owed to those who, with axe and musket, created the most powerful nation in the history of the world and we don’t owe a damn thing to anybody for being proud of their accomplishment. //
For those unacquainted with "Mad" Anthony Wayne, he was one of George Washington's most effective regimental and divisional commanders. He didn't take shortcuts. He trained his men hard. When he was embarrassed by the enemy, such as at the Battle of Paoli, where his regiment was mauled by British light infantry in a bold night attack, he learned the lessons and paid his adversaries back severalfold using their own tactics; see the Battle of Stony Point.
He was called back to active duty after two stunning defeats were inflicted upon the US Army (Hamar's Defeat and the Battle of Wabash) by the Miaimi Confederacy, led by Little Turtle of the Miami and Blue Jacket of the Shawnee, contested American ownership of what is now Ohio.
As we head to Independence Day and a celebration of this nation’s founding, the angry chorus of haters with idle hands and minds gets loud. They prefer we dwell on the nation’s sins and ignore our great progress toward an always more perfect union. No longer just angry academics and activists, the press too has joined the act. It is a reminder the secular religion that dominates cultural institutions is a religion without grace or forgiveness, perpetually anchored in the grievances of the past.
The New York Times produced its 1619 Project to, in the words of its creator, re-tell the story of our founding. She claimed it was not to be taken as true fact, but narration. She recast the United States and its revolution as about the preservation of slavery. Widely criticized by historians across the political perspective, the damage was done and proudly so. Many people who had grievance and needed a story around which to weave their grievance latched on to the false claims.
The fabulists ignored the Northern colonies moving against slavery long before Great Britain did. They ignored the writings of our founders, including Thomas Jefferson, who knew the institution of slavery undermined the words “all men are created equal” and would have to end. They ignored the reparations paid in blood on battlefields across America as white men from the North killed their kin from the South to set slaves free. //
Reuters has gotten in on the act. A week before Independence Day, it ran a story tying most living Presidents, two Supreme Court Justices, several Governors, and over 100 legislators to ancestors who owned slaves. Ironically, the only President who did not descend from slave owners is Donald Trump, not Barack Obama.
A papermaker in Massachusetts named Zenas Marshall Crane is traditionally credited with being the first to include tiny fibers in the paper pulp used to print currency in 1844. But scientists at the University of Notre Dame have found evidence that Benjamin Franklin was incorporating colored fibers into his own printed currency much earlier, among other findings, according to a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). //
The first paper money appeared in 1690 when the Massachusetts Bay Colony printed paper currency to pay soldiers to fight campaigns against the French in Canada. The other colonies soon followed suit, although there was no uniform system of value for any of the currency. To combat the inevitable counterfeiters, government printers sometimes made indentations in the cut of the bill, which would be matched to government records to redeem the bills for coins. But this method wasn't ideal since paper currency was prone to damage.
By the time he was 23, Franklin was a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, publishing The Pennsylvania Gazette and eventually becoming rich as the pseudonymous author of Poor Richard's Almanack. Franklin was a strong advocate of paper currency from the start. For instance, in 1736, he printed a new currency for New Jersey, a service he also provided for Pennsylvania and Delaware. And he designed the first currency of the Continental Congress in 1775, depicting 13 colonies as linked rings forming a circle, within which "We are one" was inscribed. (The reverse inscription read, "Mind your business," because Franklin had a bit of cheek.) //
The most recent discovery: very thin (between 100–300 microns) indigo-colored blue fibers and threads, found in Franklin's printed currency as early as 1739. Later bills that Franklin printed in the 1770s incorporated much larger threads and microfibers, measuring up to a few centimeters in length. Those blue fibers were not found in either the non-Franklin currency or the known counterfeits. “These [colored fiber] techniques have been used later on in printing federal dollars, and then other currencies all over the world,” Manukyan told New Scientist.
DOI: PNAS, 2023. 10.1073/pnas.2301856120 (About DOIs).
etba_ss JSobieski
3 months ago
That is the key. Be prepared, but do not let anxiety and worry rule your life. Do what you are supposed to do and let God handle the rest.
It is a bit off topic, but as Americans, we are so conditioned to avoid hardship and persecution that we think when our society turns against Christians (which is happening now) that the world is over. It might be. I don't dig too far into to trying to figure out when the world will end, as we are told that no one knows. We should be prepared for it at any time and prepared also for it to not happen in our lifetimes. The Apostles thought it would happen in their lifetimes. If they were that wrong about that and about how little of Jesus' teachings they got until after his death and resurrection, I hate to think of how much I miss and how much I have wrong.
At the very least, we are headed to a society where there is a real cost of being a Christian. For 250 years, we've had a country that accepted Christianity as the norm and at least pretended to have Christian morals as its underpinning. We are entering a time when that is not just no longer the case, but where society is in open and vocal rebellion against Christianity and against God. Short of a national revival, the question is not if, but when, this happens. We will see the wheat separated from the chaff when it is no longer easy or convenient to be a cultural christian.
On Twitter, Bonnie Glaser, Asia Director of the George Marshall Fund of the United States, wrote: “This message will not land well with Japan and South Korea. Does Wang Yi really think that national interests are less important than appearance?”
“The irony of … Wang Yi telling Japanese and Koreans ‘you can never become an American,’ is that Japanese and Koreans become Americans every day,” wrote Jeff M. Smith, director of the Asian Studies Center at U.S. think tank The Heritage Foundation.
“They’re part of the fabric of America. What they can’t become is Chinese. Tone deaf. Again,” Smith wrote.
Avik Roy
@Avik
·
Follow
“A man wrote me and said: ‘You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.’”—Ronald Reagan, 1989 https://reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-presentation-ceremony-presidential-medal-freedom-5
4:40 PM · Jul 4, 2023
Whether appealing to racial stereotypes or economic or security interests, it’s likely we’ve not seen the last of China’s efforts to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its Indo-Pacific allies.
Communist in FDR's Administration
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 3, 2019
The Venona Secrets
I had read the book by Herbert Hoover, “Freedom Betrayed” the book, “Witness.” by Whittaker Chambers, the book by Diana West, “American Betrayal,” the book by M. Stanton Evans, “Blacklisted By History,” the book by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Raomerstein, “Stalin’s Secret Agents,” and the book by John Koster, “Operation Snow” so I had a good idea how the Communist had infiltrated the Roosevelt administration. More than one of these books that I had read referred to the Venona cables.
Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel stated in the preface of this book that of particular interest to both of them was the Soviet attitude toward Jews. They wrote that they were not surprised that the NKVD, the Soviet foreign intelligence service, showed disdain for and made cynical use of the Jews willing to work for them. What surprised them was the Venona code name for Jews- “Rats.” They devote chapter 10 to this subject of Jews serving the Communist.
The authors made it clear that Moscow’s agents in the United States helped prevent an earlier Nazi surrender to the Anglo-Americans; the prospect of which haunted the USSR throughout the war. How Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White played an important role in the Soviet endeavor. White was what intelligence professionals call an “agent of influence.”
He not only spied for the Soviet Union throughout the war but also sought to shape critical U.S. economic policies in obedience to the orders of his Moscow masters. As a spy, he was a rival in perfidy to Alger Hiss and to the trio of British traitors, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean. The authors of this book go on to explain how “Operation Snow,” was executed by White and Soviet agents.
One of White’s greatest contributions to the Soviet effort was his role in the Morgenthau Plan for postwar Germany. The Morgenthau Plan was to convert Germany into a pasture. This book explains how it was conceived and what effect it had on Germany, Jews and our military forces.
White’s political star within the Roosevelt administration was never higher than in 1944. White was the chief American delegate at the historic conference in Britton Woods, New Hampshire, that plotted the postwar financial rules by which the Allies intended to restore their battered economies. Read this book to see how that turned out!
On March 31, 1945 Secretary of State Edward Stettinius wrote to White, “
On behalf of President Roosevelt and the members of the American delegation, it is my privilege to extend to you an invitation to become an official advisor to the delegation of the United states to the United Nations Conference on International Organization….” Less than a week later, a Moscow Venona message ordered Alhmerov to make arrangements with Silvermaster (Robert) about maintaining contact with White, then called (Richard), and another member of the Silvermaster ring, William Ludwig Ullman (Pilot) in San Francisco (Babylon).
During White’s attendance at the San Francisco conference, he was handled by NKVD officer Vladimir Pravdin (Sergej), who served in New York but attended the conference as a Soviet news agency TASS, reporter. White gave the Soviets information of the American delegation’s internal discussions. White also reported that “Truman and Stettinius want to achieve the success of the conference at any price.”
Alger Hiss, as agent of the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence), was the acting secretary general at the founding conference of the UN. This provided the Soviets with the advanced notice on how the Americans would handle questions during the deliberations.
President Harry Truman had appointed the Treasury official as executive director of the International Monetary Fund. J. Edgar Hoover wrote to Brigadier General Harry Vaughan, President Truman’s military aid, asking him to give the enclosed background on White to the president. Hoover described White as a valuable adjunct to an underground Soviet espionage organization operating in Washington D.C., also the Canadian government sources had expressed their concern to the FBI about the appointment of White. The Canadians knew of White through the Soviet military intelligence defector Igor Gouzenko. Harry Truman did nothing with these reports and White was appointed.
Herbert and Eric go into great details of how the Soviet agents made an Apparat (was a full-time, professional functionary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Soviet government apparat (аппарат, apparatus), someone who held any position of ...)
Chapter 4 is a chapter that explains Whittaker Chamber’s Spy Ring, I think Chambers does a much better job if this in his book “Witness.”
Chapter 5 details the Elizabeth Bentley Spy Ring, also the Silvermaster Ring, The Perlo Ring, and talks some about how Eleanor Roosevelt was targeted by the Soviets agents. The authors seem, to me, to be letting the Roosevelts off the hook, to their way of thinking, it is only because the Roosevelts are so naïve, that these spies were all over the White House. Why would Eleanor give the order to shut down the act of deciphering the Venona cables??? I’m glad her orders were not carried out.
Chapter 6 and 7 lays out the details of the Atomic Espionage. Here I found what I was looking for when I ordered this book. I had read much about Harry Hopkins in Diana West’s book American Betrayal and wanted more sources concerning him as a spy. Since he, to me, was so important because of how close he was to the Roosevelts. Harry had lived in the White House, slept in the Lincoln bedroom for three years and six months. Harry had dined with the Roosevelt every night. In this chapter on page 212 I read, In the 1960s, Oleg Gordievssky, a KGB officer, attended a lecture by the veteran Chekist Iskhak Akhmerov, who, had been the” illegal” Rezident in the United States during the war. Akhmerov mentioned his contact with Alger Hiss, but “the man he described as the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States” was Harry Hopkins. Direct evidence in Venona confirms Akhmerov’s statement of his connection with Hopkins. This explains why Hopkins was adamant about shipping uranium to the Soviet Union despite the objections of the military authorities. Another example was Hopkins promotion of his friends including Colonel Philip R. Faymonville, who had been military attaché in Moscow from 1933 to 1938. Faymonville’s colleagues considered him to be extremely pro-soviet, calling him the “Red-Colonel.” When Hopkins in 1941 suggested sending him back to Moscow to expedite Lend-Lease, army intelligence objected. Hopkins said only, “You might as well get his papers ready, because he’s going.” Hopkins arranged for Faymonville to be promoted to brigadier general and later to general. Long story short, Faymonville was set-up, he met a young man that became his lover but was also a Soviet NKVD agent.
Later we learn about “Kvant” a mercenary spy, and Arthur Adams a Veteran Spy, Klaus Fuchs, a spy from Germany, The Rosenberg Case, other members of the Rosenberg Ring, Sarant and Barr Flee.
Chapter 8 Atomic Espionage in California at the University of Berkeley, how the Soviets used Trade Unions, The J. Robert Oppenheimer Case,
Chapter 9 How the Soviets targeted the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), VENONA reveals how easy the NKVD penetrated OSS, The French Connection.
Chapter 10- see above
Chapter 11 The Jack Soble/Robert Soblen Ring, Zarubin’s Stern Gang
Chapter 12- Polecats (Trotskyites) and Rats, (Jews), Stalin: Jews and Negroes Are Not Americans, Targeting Jewish Organizations, Duping Albert Einstein, The Murder of Erlich and Alter, Target: Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The International Workers Order and Espionage,
Chapter 13 Target: Journalists, The recruitment of I.F. Stone, Target: Lippmann, Mission in Moscow,
Chapter 14
The new documentation available since 1991 has been broadly, in two categories-(1) the archives of the Communist International, which were kept in Moscow, and the files of other Communist parties in Eastern and Central Europe; and (2) the Venona papers, which were kept in Forte Meade, Maryland. But finally made public, the material from east and west combined shows that the U.S. Communist Party was extensively and fruitfully in Moscow’s espionage infrastructure in America. The Party’s personalities, including General Secretary Earl Browder, were active participants in recruiting and vetting Party members on behalf of Soviet intelligence. Indeed, most of the wartime Soviet agents in the United States were members of the communist Party. Through the Party, the USSR was able to draw prospective agents from a pool of ideologues loyal to Moscow, a circumstance unique in history. This reality, which was clear to U.S. government investigators and many others for decades but which was- and is- disputed by liberal historians, is now a known fact.
Fact: There existed in important agencies of the U.S. government networks of American spies under the control of Soviet military intelligence and NKVD officers. These included individuals whose disloyalty has been acknowledged for years by almost all serious students of the subject, Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and the Rosenbergs through the years have had a shrinking pool of defenders. Others, until the Venona documents were aired, were considered heroes of American liberalism.
Fact: Venona has shown conclusively that the highest-level American government officials working for Soviet intelligence was Harry Hopkins, the close friend and advisor of President Roosevelt. His clandestine contact with “illegal” Soviet intelligence officer Iskhak Akhmerov,
To whom he provided secret government information, alone makes the case against Hopkins. Only a Soviet agent would be permitted to know that an “illegal” intelligence officer such as Akhmerov was connected with the Soviet Union.
Fact: Atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer performed work on behalf of the Soviet Union. Although it has long been known that several of the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project believed the world would be safer if the secrets of the atomic energy were shared with the Soviet Union, it had been considered bad manners even to suggest that the sensitive Oppenheimer could possibly be so crude as to be a conscious collaborator with the Soviet secret police. But he was.
Fact: The Left (Liberals) liked to use one of the right wing’s favorite complaints as evidence of its inanity-its belief that American journalists, including some of the best known, had been deliberately enlisted in the Soviet cause. The Venona documents leave no room for doubts that this was exactly the case, in particular regarding the loyalty of I.F. Stone to the Soviet Union and, in his case, to his book account.
Fact: The Communist movement displayed systematic and consistent anti-Semitism.
https://www.amazon.com/Venona-Secrets-Exposing-Espionage-Americas/dp/0895262754/
USS Vincennes in Disappointment Bay, Antarctica, during the Wilkes Expedition, circa 1845-1878, attributed to Capt. Charles Wilkes. (Public Domain) //
On Aug. 18, 1838, the United States Exploring Expedition (also known as the Ex. Ex. or the Wilkes Expedition) departed Hampton Roads, Virginia to embark on a four-year surveying and exploring mission that would also be the last circumnavigation of the globe powered fully by sail. //
The Wilkes Expedition produced 241 charts, mapping out 280 Pacific islands, including for the first time the full group of Fiji Islands. The expedition also mapped out 800 miles of the Oregon coast, 100 miles of the Columbia River, a land route from Oregon to San Francisco, and arguably the most consequential, 1,500 miles of the Antarctic coastline, which confirmed it as the world’s seventh continent.
From their adventures, the group collected more than 4,000 ethnographic pieces, which was a third more than those collected from Cook’s three voyages. The naturalist, Titian Peale, collected 2,150 birds, 134 mammals, and 588 species of fish. The geologist, James Dana, collected 300 fossil species, 400 coral species, and 1,000 crustacea species. There were more than 200 entomological and zoological species collected in jars, and more than 5,000 larger specimens placed in large envelopes. Among the horticultural and botanical collections, William Rich, William Brackenridge, and Charles Pickering assembled an astounding 50,000 specimens of 10,000 different species, with an additional 1,000 living plants and approximately 650 seeds belonging to other species of plants.
As the tens of thousands of items were ushered into the country, the United States government struggled to place them. Poinsett and Paulding decided to place the collections in the 265-foot-long Great Hall of the Patent Office Building in Washington, D.C. The following decade, more than 100,000 people annually visited the “Collection of the Exploring Expedition” in the Patent Office.
In 1858, the Collection found a new and permanent home inside the Smithsonian Institution, now the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex. “Today,” according to the Smithsonian Institution, “the specimens constitute the core of nearly every collection in every scientific department in the National Museum of Natural History.”
No one truly knows exactly when Daniel Morgan (died July 6, 1802) was born. He may have been born in 1736, or possibly 1735. What is indisputable is that Morgan was born just in time for one of the great revolutions of the world.
But for three of Biden’s most illustrious predecessors — Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe — obsequious deference to the chief executive was positively un-American. To make one man the center of the nation’s political life was antithetical to the Constitution and republicanism in the eyes of the three Jeffersonians.
In his newest book, “The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe,” historian Kevin R.C. Gutzman gives us an expansive yet highly detailed account of exactly how this trio of Virginians governed the nation and the legacy of republicanism they left behind. We might better understand how to tackle our own political ills by examining the example they set. //
Jefferson also decided to scrap his predecessors’ tradition of delivering the State of the Union address orally. Never comfortable with giving speeches anyway, Jefferson chose to submit his report in writing because he thought the annual address seemed like a “speech from the throne.” In his unpretentious style, Jefferson informed the people’s representatives that out of “principal regard to … the economy of their time,” he would not ask them to gather to listen to him.
Madison and Monroe followed suit, as did every president until Woodrow Wilson. For the Jeffersonians, the president’s job was to efficiently administer the government, not waste time with pompous speeches. ...
But the Jeffersonians weren’t only concerned with outward appearances. They also believed government policies needed to closely adhere to the country’s founding principles. Protecting freedom of speech, reducing the size of the military, and slashing federal spending were all on the Jeffersonians’ agenda. //
Contrast Monroe’s attitude to modern presidents who have never met a foreign crisis that couldn’t be solved by military intervention, or at least by the threat of it.
Needless to say, the political philosophy of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe was wildly different from that of today’s Republicans and Democrats. As the Jeffersonian dynasty came to an end in 1825, America was at peace, the federal government was small and its power modest, and the national debt was quickly being extinguished (it would be completely paid off in 1835, right on Monroe’s schedule).
America’s leaders have pushed the country further into dangerous confrontations with foreign powers, racked up trillions in debt, and ignored the constitutional limits on their own authority. We desperately need to learn from the Jeffersonians — both from their triumphs and their failures.
One of the great virtues of Gutzman’s “The Jeffersonians” is that he generously quotes his subjects, allowing them to speak for themselves. We would do well to listen to them.
The 29-year-old defected from North Korea as a young teen, only to be human-trafficked in China. In 2014, she became one of just 200 North Koreans to live in the United States — and, as of last year, is an American citizen.
Now, three years after she graduated from Columbia with a degree in human rights, Park is raising alarm bells about America’s cancel culture and woke ideology.
In her book “While Time Remains,” out February 14, Park writes how she made it all the way to the United States only to find some of the same encroachments on freedom that she thought she left behind in North Korea — from identity politics and victim mentality to elite hypocrisy.
“I escaped hell on earth and walked across the desert in search of freedom, and found it,” she writes. “I don’t want anything bad ever to happen to my new home … I want us — need us — to keep the darkness at bay.”
She implores readers: “I need your help to save our country, while time remains.” //
In the first five years of her life, an estimated 3.5 million North Koreans died of starvation. Park recalls hunting for cockroaches on the way to school to quell her hunger — even as the Kim’s regime banned the words “famine” and “hunger.”
Sawhorse
3 months ago
Sorry, but the Civil War DID NOT START OVER SLAVERY. Lincoln used Gettysburg to appeal to the abolitionists to motivate the North. This is a fact. States rights was the issue as the North and West cut the South out of the Transcontinental Railroad and it got worse from there.
Blue State Deplorable Sawhorse
3 months ago
You beat me to the punch. In point of fact, states’ rights was the root cause. Slavery was a tangential if irreconcilable issue that fueled it - each new slave-holding state meant a new state without slavery was needed to offset it - but more fundamentally it was about opposing views of how the states would be governed. The Southern states had voluntarily entered the union, and felt they also had a right to secede. They opposed a strong federal government and contended that rights not explicitly granted to the federal government belonged to the individual states.
I see this notion that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves all the time, but that’s simply not so. It’s revisionism. Lincoln personally despised slavery, but was more than willing to retain it to preserve the union. When the states began to secede, they forced his hand leading to the Civil War.
Pepsi_Freak Blue State Deplorable
3 months ago
" Lincoln personally despised slavery, but was more than willing to retain it to preserve the union."
Correct. In fact, he so stated in public. He felt preservation of the Union was more imperative than abolishing slavery (i.e., abolition could wait, restoring the Union couldn't). //
AFVet262
3 months ago
Sounds like DeSantis used a very balanced approach in teaching. When I was working on my masters in military history, I had a professor who used a very similar approach, and who also made the statement that the Civil War was not about slavery.
And the fact is, to many of the players at the time, it wasn't. Of the 11 states that eventually seceded, only 5 explicitly mentioned slavery in their declarations. The majority focused on the concept of states' rights - which included import and export controls, foreign policy, and several other components.
Lincoln stated that his sole goal was to preserve the Union - and if he could do that by freeing all the slaves, he would; if he could do it without freeing any slaves, he'd do that.
The causes of the Civil War were much more complicated than the issue of slavery. It was clearly a part of it, but not the sole reason. DeSantis, by taking the "devil's advocate" approach, opened his students' eyes to the wider historical picture. Good on him. //
CarolineL
3 months ago
To distill the many, many reasons for the Civil War down to “just slavery” is ridiculous.
It’s like saying WWI happened just because Arch Duke Ferdinand was shot. Yes, it was a flash point but it’s laughable to discount the decades of built up of hostility, previous European history, the treaties among allies and countless other integral people, facts and events. //
davenj1
3 months ago
- Sharyl Attkisson is a hero among investigative reporters in my book. She's been vilified for her story on Queen Hillary and Bosnia, Fast and Furious, and the TSA. She was targeted by the Obama DOJ. She stood strong!
- There is some strong evidence that the Civil War was fought because of competing economic systems- the industrial North versus the agrarian South. There is nothing for DeSantis to apologize here. I was taught the War of 1812 was not about the impressment of US naval sailors, but because the US had it eyes on Canada, or that it was about products protectionism and tariffs. It's what a real teacher does. Kudos to DeSantis for being that type of teacher. He gets my vote.
medieval davenj1
3 months ago
Item 2 is quite correct -- the Civil War was about re-uniting the US which was split over economic issues. Slavery was a side-issue which was brought forward for purely military reasons. The actual causes of the Civil War are quite complex and covered extensively (and quite read-ably) in first volume of Bruce Catton's "Centennial History of the Civil War."
Raise a toast to an incredible 19th-century Missouri scientist when you pop that bottle of fine French bubbly on New Year’s Eve.
His name is Charles Valentine Riley.
He was an entomologist. He studied bugs. And he saved the Champagne industry.
Riley raced to the aid of shattered European winemakers during an agricultural tragedy that’s gone down in history as the Great French Wine Blight.
Winemaking in France is rooted deep in the soil — and deep in the soul.
The soul of France was torn apart in the 1860s when its vineyards were invaded by a voracious pest called grape phylloxera.
The microscopic aphid feasted on the roots of French grapevines for decades to follow. //
The insect reduced “vast areas of vineyard to what one winegrower described as rows of bare wooden stumps — resembling huge graveyards,” write authors Don and Petie Kladstrup in their 2001 book, “Wine and War.”
Phylloxera caused billions in economic damage, with an immeasurable impact on French culture and national identity. Almost every vineyard in France was invaded by phylloxera by the end of the 19th century. //
He had discovered that grapevines in his state were immune to the ravages of phylloxera. With his leadership, millions of rootstock from the United States — including 10 million from Missouri alone — were shipped to France in the late 1800s.
The native European vines were grafted to the robust, bug-resistant American roots.
The French wine industry slowly rebounded, then battled through two world wars to a full recovery on the strength of American rootstock. //
Americans consume more French wine than any people on the planet but the French. //
Missouri at the time had a robust and internationally renowned wine industry. Its gorgeous wine grapes sprouted from vines that were first planted just a few decades earlier by German immigrants.
Missouri’s celebrated Stone Hill Winery was the third-largest winemaker in the world in the 1870s. It produced about 1.3 million gallons of wine annually at its peak — the equivalent of 6.6 million standard 750-milliliter bottles. //
The desperate French government offered a 300,000-franc award to anyone who could solve the crisis.
The answer lay in Missouri.
Phylloxera was native to the United States — which is why American vines were resistant to their ravages. The pests were unintentionally shipped to Europe in trans-Atlantic trade.
Riley traveled to Europe three times over the next several years to convince scientists and officials of the hope found for the French wine industry in American vines. //
Riley never got the 300,000-franc prize.
But he went on to a distinguished career in international entomology.
He was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor by France, its highest honor in service to the nation.
As a Christian holiday, Christmas is foundational to America’s original character. It’s affected our founders’ understanding of human nature. //
Across cultures, people have sought to flee oppression and escape persecution from the beginning of recorded history. A recurring theme in Western classical literature and in modern classics such as Superman and Disney originals, which revolve around the struggle between good and evil, is the need and critical role for a rescuer or savior.
The ultimate rescuer and savior for mankind would be a “messiah,” who would vanquish evil, oppression and falsehood once and for all. It is no accident that only Christianity has its roots and its entire reason for being in the messiah Jesus Christ. No other religion makes the claim that it was founded by a messiah. //
As a Christian holiday, Christmas is foundational to America’s original character. If Christ had never been born and died the way He did, all of history would have been different. For one thing, neither Columbus nor the Pilgrims would have received or have been motivated by the good news of salvation through Christ to explore or establish a new community with a higher purpose in the New World.
There would never have been a constitutional government created in the way and time that it was in America, without two necessary conditions: First, the foundation of recognizing man’s unalienable rights of freedom and equality that came out of the teachings of Christ, more fully recognized in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.
Second, the unprecedented collection of Christian human genius that came together—rather amazingly at the same time—people we call the Founding Fathers, who were deeply influenced by Christianity. The founders knew the potential depravity that exists in everyone can lead to abuse of power and tyranny. For this reason, they structured the government with checks and balances between the three branches of government, but also through the federalist system of division of power between the states and the federal government.
The constitutional republic formed by the Founders provided for and protected individual rights of freedom and independence such that America achieved material prosperity more rapidly than any other prior civilization. Additionally, the American constitutional framework enabled people to move closer to the divine image in which all people are created free and equal more than they would have achieved under any prior system. //
Rediscovering America: How the National Holidays Tell an Amazing Story about Who We Are – by Scott S. Powell
Thomas Jefferson is the most enigmatic of the American Founding Fathers. The author of the Declaration of Independence, he is sometimes called the “Author of America.” As a son of the Enlightenment and the American founding, he is claimed by many sides.
And as Thomas Kidd reminds us in his splendid new biography, we still haven’t quite got Thomas Jefferson right, especially in his religious and philosophic views. What Kidd reveals is that Jefferson was, and remains, America’s chief political theologian articulating a theology of liberty. //
Jefferson the thinker, and “sect unto himself,” was a man who combined elements of “Christianity, Epicureanism, the Enlightenment emphasis on rationalism and universal rights, and the republican values of virtue, limited government, and political liberty.” The problem with discerning Jefferson’s moral universe and commitments from our standpoint comes from the fact that we live in an age of dogmatic ideology.
We impose a dogmatic reading of Jefferson, whereas Jefferson lived in age of intellectual experimentation that usually left contradictory and incompatible philosophies contesting, without seeking to resolve them. Jefferson’s mishmash of views was only possible to weave together because of the intellectual excitement and relative openness the Enlightenment afforded.
Dogmatists of the secularist post-Enlightenment want an only secular and rationalist Jefferson and misleadingly (ignorantly or otherwise) present the third president in that light. Dogmatists of the new Christian right present a misleading portrait of what Kidd describes as a “brilliant but troubled person,” as they selectively cobble together some of Jefferson’s positive comments about the relationship of Christianity and public virtue with contemporary anti-statist politics. //
Jefferson’s moral universe, a universe undergirded by a God of justice, a moral order knowable through rational inquiry, and an individual soul seeking the felicity of tranquility in all relations, becomes the spirit and flesh that comes to govern — however imperfectly, and imperfect it was — Jefferson’s life.
Jefferson’s life seeking union with the moral universe that he conceived in his mind became, in soft cultural form, the moral universe of the United States and its people, even if we don’t always realize it. We too want a God of justice, a moral order to conform to by the dictates of reason, and a tranquil soul and community where liberty abounds within that harmony under God’s justice and moral rationalism. In sum, we are still Jefferson’s children. Jefferson’s political theology has become our own. //
Because Jefferson’s moral imagination and universe drew upon many worlds, Jefferson remains an enigma for narrow-minded dogmatists who want an equally narrow Jefferson contrary to who Jefferson actually was. But, as Kidd shows in this splendid biography, we benefit by entering Jefferson’s worlds on his terms, not ours. We do ourselves, and Jefferson, a gross abuse by trying to impose our ideological presuppositions on him rather than becoming better humans by learning from the life and intellect of the Sage of Monticello. And Jefferson’s moral universe was one in which God, liberty, and man were meant to be united
What moved the brave men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc was the firm resolve and spirit that liberty and virtue, freedom and duty, God and justice, were bound together and it is only in this unity that true freedom and progress be enjoyed. The relativism preached today is contrary to the American Founding and the American resolve and spirit that confronted the great darkness of Nazism and totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century.
Looking back at the great American tradition of freedom, we find the necessity of virtue and belief in the justice of God as the common pillars upon which freedom stands. Today’s license of choice exiles virtue and God from freedom. This is intentional. The enemies of freedom and progress who seek to enact centralizing decrees over all need the elimination of virtue and God from the hearts of the people in order for their totalitarian impulses to be realized.
To borrow a quote from James Michener’s Bridges at Toko Ri, “where do we get such men?”
When June 6 passes this year, the memories of that day will be little noted, save for a diminishing number of men in their 90’s who were there, and their surviving families who lived through that day. There may be some grainy films on the History and Military channels, and there will be reruns of Saving Private Ryan, but for the most part, it will not be on the minds of the Woke generation or their proponents in the media, academia, or entertainment circles. If noted at all, it will be to condemn Eisenhower’s (who’s he?) use of the words “Great Crusade” as highly offensive and religiously divisive.
It is common now to call these true heroes “the Greatest Generation”, but I think that deserved appellation may be unfair to those who answered the call to colors in other wars -- the simple farmers and tradesmen who rallied to the Union cause to save the Union and free the enslaved, the Doughboys who went Over There, the first Cold War defenders in Korea fighting the spread of the new communist tyrannies, the draftees who went to Vietnam and returned to an ungrateful nation – these, too, were Great Generations.
But my, and your, concern should not be for the current apathy in remembering D-Day and other great accomplishments by those in uniform over our history, but of who will replace them in our future. Is there a next Great Generation? The augurs are not good.
We have a woke generation who manifestly hates America. We have organizations (BLM, Antifa) whose purpose is to destroy America. We have media that preaches only the much-exaggerated sins of America. We tolerate policies and lawlessness designed to “fundamentally change” the culture and majesty that is America. We have educators who vilify the founders and history of America. We have political leaders who want to mimic the governments and practices of the enemies of America.
Who would want to defend that America?
There are still those who reflect the qualities, goodness, and patriotism of their forebearers, that one-half of one percent who today serve to keep the rest of us free to go to the mall, or look at our Twitter tweets, or burn Portland. To them, we are grateful, though not so much to their leaders, military and civilian, who are increasingly political creatures focused on advancing their careers and echoing the politically correct words and policies that their sponsors demand of them – like diversity, pronouns, anti-religion, white supremacy, inclusion.
But that mere 0.5% will not prevail in the coming dangers from a China, Russia, or nuclear Iran and North Korea. They will not be reinforced by new divisions from the woke generation, the America haters, the on-the-dole illegal aliens, the pride flag-wavers, the 70% physically or criminally unqualified pool of draftable males, the possibly brave yet 110 lb. females, the easily-triggered college students.
No, for the first time in our history, it seems there is not the raw material available for our next Great Generation. D-Day will mean the arrival of the new iPhone, not the invasion on some enemy shore to save Liberty and guarantee Freedom.
Fifty some years ago, when it was still a respectable news and entertainment network, CBS produced some great documentaries. One of them from 1964 was CBS Reports: D-Day Plus Twenty – Eisenhower Returns to Normandy.
This Sunday, June 6, 2021, it might be worth your while to spend 82 minutes watching it, especially Eisenhower’s closing comments.
Again, where do we get such men?
More importantly, in our current state of self-hating America, where will we ever get such men, and now women, again?