Falling Cloud (aka PFC Ira Hamilton Hayes)
“There they battled up Iwo Jima’s hill,
Two hundred and fifty men
But only twenty-seven lived to walk back down again. And when the fight was over,
And when Old Glory raised
Among the men who held it high, Was the Indian, Ira Hayes ~ Johnny Cash, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”
Fear, without a doubt, is everyone’s inner struggle. When confronted and an ordinary human stands up, rises against the odds and faces the challenge, this ordinary man becomes a hero. For “being terrified but going ahead and doing what must be done―that’s courage” (Piers Anthony, Castle Roogna), and heroes are nothing other than ordinary people who by acting in the heat of the moment can make themselves extraordinary. Continue reading
Today’s students see themselves as digital natives, the first generation to grow up surrounded by technology like smartphones, tablets and e-readers.
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We’ve all had it embedded within us since the day we were born: The only way to become smarter, no matter what you study or where you are, is to read. What few people tell us, however, is why 
~ Forewords: November 5, 2001 ~
Just in case some of you young whippersnappers (& some older ones) didn’t know this. It’s easy to check out, if you don’t believe it. Be sure and show it to your family and friends. They need a little history lesson on what’s what and it doesn’t matter whether you are Democrat or Republican. Facts are Facts. 
In their informative book Crimes of the Educators, Sam Blumenfeld and Alex Newman noted, on page 190 that “In John Dewey’s 1898 plan to dumb down America, he wrote, ‘Change must come gradually. To force it unduly would compromise its final success by favoring a violent reaction.’” 
With all the trash-talk oozing up everywhere from the slime, it is time to ask: how is America doing intellectually? At the very top of our nation’s political pyramid we have leaders who don’t read and can’t do basic math. What is needed, of course, is exactly the opposite. We need leaders who can think critically, read comprehensively, know history, speak and write eloquently, decide decisively and whose numbers make sense. 
Few remember the 1968 Broadway play, ‘HAIR‘. A live performance originally performed at the Biltmore Theater, 261-5 West 47th St. in New York City. I did not see it in New York, but while on R&R in Tokyo in ’69 (from ‘nam) I stayed at a hotel that was also hosting the Chicago cast for performances in that city. Only one performance was held, due to the nudity on stage. The cast and play were subsequently banned from further performances due to pornography laws. I was privileged to spend several evenings in the bar and restaurant with that cast and made some interesting friends, many of who I would meet up with again when I was released from the Army after my 21 months “in country.” 
Before the War of Northern Aggression public schools as we have them today did not exist in the South. Mostly, the Southern States had the good sense to leave education where it belonged–in the hands of parents. After the War, public schools were forced upon the defeated South so that the ascendancy of the Radical Republican Deep State of that day could be pushed down the throats of Southern folks so that their children would be taught Yankee/Marxist propaganda passing as education. 
Prohibition-era criminal mastermind George Remus—unlike other 1920s gangland kingpins like Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, or Charles “Lucky” Luciano—has been largely forgotten. The “King of the Bootleggers,” who led a raucous life highlighted by forming a bourbon empire that accumulated billions of dollars in today’s money, later murdered his wife Imogene in cold blood in Cincinnati’s Eden Park, which led to a sensational Jazz Age trial and an overhaul of criminal insanity laws. 
600 Confederate officers that were held prisoner by the Union Army in 1864 to 1865 and were intentionally starved and 46 died as a result. They are known as the “Immortal Six Hundred” because they refused to take an oath of allegiance to the U.S. under duress We must not forget.
A decade after ‘The Dumbest Generation‘ was published, there is still much reason for hand-wringing about the future of our children and nation. We must take responsibility if we want to turn the tide. 
Just before Christmas of 1860, the chain of events that was to soon to lead the nation into four bloody years of undeclared war began with South Carolina exercising its constitutional right to leave the Union and revert to its original status as a sovereign entity. Six of South Carolina’s neighboring States quickly followed her out of the Union and on February 22 the following year, these seven independent States reunited in Montgomery, Alabama, as the Confederate States of America.