The Apostle Paul

The title of this essay, “Education as if Truth Mattered,” is taken from the subtitle of Christopher Derrick’s book, Escape from Scepticism: Liberal Education as if Truth Mattered, published in 1977. Derrick’s subtitle was itself borrowed and adapted from the subtitle of E. F. Schumacher’s international bestseller, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, published four years earlier. Derrick and Schumacher were friends, the former being instrumental in introducing the latter to the Church’s social teaching, and the two books have much more in common than their ostensibly different subjects would suggest. In both cases, the authors illustrate how modernity’s philosophical materialism has undermined the very foundations of civilized life and how the solution to the problem is a return to traditional concepts of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Continue reading →

James Monroe (c. 1819) by Samuel Morse (1791-1872)

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 2, 1823 – In the greatest step to date by the United States, acting as a world power to assure the peace and security of those other nations in the Western Hemisphere which are our friendly neighbors, President Monroe today declared all of the Americas as “out of bounds” to would-be European conquerors.

A few paragraphs in a message to the newly assembled Congress, read on behalf of the President to a joint assembly of the Senate and the House of Representatives laid down a policy from which no avenue of retreat was left. In an eloquent silence after the reading, a formal motion to receive and to print the Message was adopted without debate.

One must reach back for precedent to the Pax Romana for as drastic a step taken to enclose a great portion of the world within a wall of freedom. Continue reading →

“..that the Lord may behold us as a people, offering praise and thereby glorifying Him…”

CHARLESTOWN, Massachusetts, June 20, 1676 – The American tradition of Thanksgiving, first celebrated by our Pilgrim Fathers more than half a century ago, was proclaimed today in formal statement for the first time from the steps of the Council House.

It was on December 20, 1620, that Governor John Carver gathered around him the small band at Plymouth, to thank God in the midst of overwhelming adversities for the great gift of life itself, in the wilderness of the first colony. Continue reading →

The following is a letter-to-the-editor of the Charleston, SC Post and Courier September 15, 2018 defending the crew of the Confederate submarine CSS Hunley against a letter-writer’s accusation that they were traitors. It applies to all Confederates. This letter was not published by the Post and Courier but has been published in the Abbeville Institute Blog (“Confederate Soldiers Were Not Traitors”, October 3, 2018) and other places.

Dear Editor of The Post and Courier,

A letter writer on September 12, 2018 is adamant that the proposed museum for the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley should not be incorporated into Patriot’s Point because Patriot’s Point honors the U.S. Navy and those “who defended the U.S. and its Constitution” whereas the CSS Hunley crew were traitors.

He is correct that the Hunley’s sinking of the USS Housatonic to become the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship in combat was an historic event, but he errs grievously when he says the Hunley should also be remembered “for their pardons for treason.” That is fake history.

The Hunley crew gave their lives for their country. They were not charged with treason and nobody associated with the Hunley sought a pardon. Continue reading →

I wrote this article a couple of years ago. The Progressives continue fanning the flames of racism to further divide us. So, in response, I wanted to reissue this article to help expose their lies – the true source of the growing division. ~ Tom DeWeese

Webster’s Dictionary defines Racism as “The assumption that the characteristics and abilities of an individual are determined by race and that one race is biologically superior to another.” Another more direct way of saying it is “Blind hatred of another simply because of his/her race.”

On an historic summer day in 1963, standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King inspired a nation as he said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

That description of true freedom is the exact opposite of the definition of Racism. It describes various races living together in harmony through shared values, goals, and dreams. Continue reading →

MONTGOMERY, April 29, 1861

Gentlemen of the Congress: It is my pleasing duty to announce to you that the Constitution framed for the establishment of a permanent Government for the Confederate States has been ratified by conventions in each of those States to which it was re-ferred. To inaugurate the Government in its full proportions and upon its own substantial basis of the popular will, it only remains that elections should be held for the designation of the officers to administer it. There is every reason to believe that at no distant day other States, identified in political principles and community of interests with those which you represent, will join this Confederacy, giving to its typical constellation increased splendor, to its Government of free, equal, and sovereign States a wider sphere of usefulness, and to the friends of constitutional liberty a greater security for its harmonious and perpetual existence. It was not, however, for the purpose of making this announcement that I have deemed it my duty to convoke you at an earlier day than that fixed by yourselves for your meeting. The declaration of war made against this Confederacy by Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, in his proclamation issued on the 15th day of the present month, rendered it necessary, in my judgment, that you should convene at the earliest practicable moment to devise the measures necessary for the defense of the country. Continue reading →