The Times says that slaves arriving in 1619 is the date of our “true founding,” not 1776.
These days it’s hard to find any mention of Donald Trump and Russia in The New York Times. Of course, after the train wreck of Robert Mueller’s testimony, it’s no wonder they dropped that hot potato. But don’t underestimate the leftist zealots at the Times, nor their creativity in trying to ensure that a “racist” Trump doesn’t win a second term. Continue reading
“The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.” ~ Adolf Hitler
People keep asking, especially those over 70, what the Hell happened to my country? How is it that America spawned the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and some gay mayor from Indiana named “Boodugig,” or whatever, running for president? How did the idiot Bill de Blasio, ever become mayor of New York? Continue reading
What is a Book? It is a special kind of body made to be inhabited by a curious kind of frozen but fusible soul, a body fit to mediate its own peculiar life…
It is our tradition that the first lecture of the year should be dedicated to our freshmen.* They have newly joined a community whose program of learning centers on the scheduled reading of a preset list of books and on the twice-weekly discussion that takes place in the seminar. They have come to us chiefly because that is what we do here. I have read each of their applications, and I can vouch for the fact. Continue reading
In a heartbreaking case of complete disregard for parental rights, four-year-old Drake Pardo was illegally taken from his parents by Child Protective Services (CPS) and uniformed police officers on June 20, 2019 in East Texas.
After almost two months, multiple court appearances, and the admission of CPS in court that they had not met all of the necessary requirements for removing Drake, the Pardos are tragically still separated from their young son over a claim of “medical negligence.”
Texas Sen. Bob Hall of the state’s second district called the case an “egregious miscarriage of justice.” (Continue to full story…)
The world is changing at a dramatic pace. It’s shifting so fast, in fact, that the childhood you remember is vastly different than the one your own kids will experience. This is largely due to the development and saturation of technology in modern society.
While there are perks to being hyper-connected, allowing children access to their own smartphone could produce detrimental effects long-term. Continue reading
What is the governing dynamic causing both student loans and healthcare burdens to run away from us?
As a health economist, I spend my days working with incredibly innovative medical device and biotechnology companies who are commercializing into the healthcare space. By consequence, I’m obligated and prone to think about the financial and economic troubles facing the field of medicine. For seven years I worked for an integrated delivery network and had a seat on both the payer and hospital side of the table and was thereby privy to how all the sausage was made. During those same years, I was laden with a student loan burden that I’d heaped on myself during college and two master’s programs. The consequence of which was 1) a fantastic education in neuroscience, bioimaging, and business and 2) a four-figure monthly payment to student loan servicers that, but for the grace of God, almost torpedoed my wife and me monthly. Continue reading
…let’s celebrate Milton Friedman’s vision of enabling parents, not government, to be in control of a child’s education.
Libertarians and others are often torn about school choice. They may wish to see the government schooling monopoly weakened, but they may resist supporting choice mechanisms, like vouchers and education savings accounts, because they don’t go far enough. Indeed, most current choice programs continue to rely on taxpayer funding of education and don’t address the underlying compulsory nature of elementary and secondary schooling. Continue reading
Back-to-school time is upon us. My Instagram feed is starting to fill with first-day photos as a new school year begins this week in some parts of the country. For those of us who homeschool, we often get asked, “So, why did you decide to homeschool?” We respond with various personal and educational reasons, including the top motivator for homeschoolers on national surveys: “concern about the school environment.” What always strikes me, though, is that parents who send their kids to school never get asked this question. When was the last time someone asked a parent, “So, why did you decide to send your child to school?” Continue reading
In his Age of Reason pamphlet (1807), Thomas Paine declared that “Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.“ Thomas Jefferson’s famed letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut mentions how the First Amendment effectively establishes a “wall of separation between church and state.” These men, plus the many others that influenced or participated in the founding of the United States, were very familiar with the dangers of state religions and wished to prevent establishing such a religion in America.
Underlying the First Amendment is the concept of freedom of conscience. It can be defined as: ”The right to follow one’s own beliefs in matters of religion and morality.“ Freedom of conscience is normally considered a human right, which is “any basic right or freedom to which all human beings are entitled and in whose exercise a government may not interfere (including rights to life and liberty as well as freedom of thought and expression and equality before the law).” Continue reading
Imagining an entirely different educational system reveals some strengths—and flaws—of the current one.
On a crisp fall morning, parents lined the school’s circular driveway in Audis, BMWs and Land Rovers, among other luxury SUVs, to drop their high-schoolers off at Detroit Country Day School. Dressed in uniforms—boys in button-down shirts, blazers with the school crest, khaki or navy dress pants, and ties; girls in largely the same garb, though without the ties and the option of wearing a skirt—the students entered a lobby adorned with green tiles from the nearby Pewabic Pottery, a legendary Detroit ceramic studio. Continue reading
Compatriots, how do y’all seek to maintain alive the Confederate heritage within your family & relatives? This would be a great discussion point for any Sons of Confederate Camp or United Daughters of the Confederacy Chapter. Continue reading
Thaddeus Stevens
Many have, over the years, no doubt to their government school “educations” looked at the 14th Amendment, and been under the misguided delusion that it was a milestone in the cause of “racial equality.”
It might not hurt for those prone to such flights of fancy to take a look at the prime mover behind that amendment, the radical Thaddeus Stevens from Pennsylvania (and no credit to that state). I have recently done articles dealing with him so this will only add info to what’s already out there. Stevens has been characterized by some who’ve written about him as an “apostle of hate.” I guess you’d have to say that’s an apt description of him. His vindictive attitude toward the South before, during, and after the War of Northern Aggression might well be described as pathological. Continue reading
Whoever weds himself to the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next. ~ William Inge
Few realize that Florida was so committed to The War Between the States that she gave more soldiers to repel Northern invaders than she had registered voters. Gainesville was among the towns that responded. As a result, the local United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) chapter erected a statue of an ordinary infantryman in honor of the hometown boys who had fallen, including many buried anonymously far from home. When erected in 1904 most of the living veterans were in their sixties and seventies
In May 2017 the county commissioners voted to remove the monument, which had become known to most residents during the previous 113 years as Old Joe.
After the vote one audience member raised her hand to ask a question. The Chair recognized Nansea Markham who is President of the local UDC chapter. She asked, “What will you do with the memorial?” Continue reading
In the post-War between the States mythology supported by the victors, the Antebellum South was Satanic and subject to “slave power,” the alleged immense power of the plantation owners and their demonic desire to perpetuate slavery at all costs. This mythology goes further and claims that the War between the States was caused by slavery, with the North desiring to end slavery and the South desiring to increase its range by moving it into the territories. The North, it is alleged, accepted the Founding Fathers’s real vision for America while the South, with its outdated notion of “States’s Rights,” was poisoned by treason against the ideals of the American Founders.
It is now trite to say that “The victors write the history books,” but the saying rings true in the case of the War between the States. Such myths are difficult to dispel since they are thoroughly engrained in the general culture. Continue reading
“There are influences that never sleep.”
BOSTON, Mass., November 26, 1850 – Rufus Choate, former Senator now returned to private life in the practice of the law that has made him a national figure, spoke tonight with all the eloquence for which he is noted in favor of the Compromise efforts being led in the Congress by the southern Senator Henry Clay, of Kentucky.
Before an audience that packed Faneuil Hall, Mr. Choate argued that however meritorious the effort to force the South to free its slaves may be, the cause is not sufficient to invite a civil war.
He warned that the public should beware of attempts to mold public opinion to such an extreme action that “this Union may melt as frostwork in the sun.” Continue reading