Rubin Reports » What I Have Learned In My Long Visit to America
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand….
–Yeats, “The Second Coming”
What’s most scary in America today may be the deficit and it may be government policies, but for me the scariest thing is the way that traditional American pragmatism, an open-minded search for truth, the reliability of the media and of academia, has virtually disappeared in many cases.
I’m talking here about the media, academia, and the highly publicized public debate, not what all of the people are thinking. Clearly, a lot of people aren’t buying the conventional wisdom. But the important point is that it is the conventional wisdom, the main ideas held by the elite and government, what young people are being taught, and probably pretty much everything half of the population is hearing. I was in California, Iowa, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, Florida, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, and other places.
While this certainly doesn’t apply to all schools, the indoctrination that I’ve seen in one elementary school shocked me. If you really hear what eleven-year-olds are saying to each other you’d be amazed: accusing each other of being racists at the drop of a hat; thinking man-made global warming is a threat to their personal survival into adulthood; viewing America as evil.
via Rubin Reports » What I Have Learned In My Long Visit to America.
Thomas Jefferson – Top 10 American Political Prodigies – TIME
In 1781, Thomas Jefferson, having served as governor of Virginia, declared he’d had enough of politics. And he wasn’t even 40.
In the next two decades, Jefferson would take on many public roles — U.S. minister to France, the nation’s first Secretary of State, vice-president under John Adams, and, of course, the third President of the United States of America — but by 1781 he’d already earned a place in the history books. A delegate to the Second Continental Congress, he was just 33 in 1776, when he drafted the remarkable Declaration of Independence. Two years before holding those truths to be self-evident, he penned A Summary View of the Rights of British America while serving in Virginia’s House of Burgesses.
Read “The Philosopher-President: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Thomas Jefferson.”
View the full list for “Top 10 American Political Prodigies”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2025265_2025267,00.html#ixzz14t1Alwlr
Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck
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Two worn Civil War flags set to be saved Sunday, October 3, 2010 03:00 AM BY ALAN JOHNSON For The Columbus Dispatch
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http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/10/03/ Two-worn-civil-war-flags-set-to-be-saved.html?sid=101Two more flags that flew as Ohioans fought and died during the Civil War are being repaired and restored to their former glory thanks to private donations.
Although flags from the 5th U.S. Colored Infantry and the 4th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry will be saved, hundreds of others are falling to pieces at the Ohio Historical Society because of lack of funds to preserve them. Nearly 150 years later, the smell of gunpowder still clings to some.
The small “flank” flag from the 5th U.S. Colored Infantry, the first black troops to be organized in Ohio, and the regimental colors of the 4th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, a unit from Cincinnati that participated in many major battles, were carefully packed away Monday at a Historical Society warehouse.
They will make a short trip to Textile Preservation Associates of Ransom, W.Va. There they will undergo a delicate restoration process: They will be bathed in distilled water, dried and encapsulated between layers of a see-through fabric. The edges will be carefully sewn closed, and the flags then will be ready for mounting and display.
Cliff Eckle, a curator at the Ohio Historical Society, prepares two Civil War flags to be restored as a result of donated funds. The top flag is an 1863 flank marker for the 5th U.S. Colored Infantry; the other is the regimental colors of the 4th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry.
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The remarkable story of how Ed Milibands aunt and grandmother survived the war – Telegraph
The remarkable story of how Ed Milibands aunt and grandmother survived the war – Telegraph.
Americas True History of Religious Tolerance | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine
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Americas True History of Religious Tolerance | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine.From the earliest arrival of Europeans on America’s shores, religion has often been a cudgel, used to discriminate, suppress and even kill the foreign, the “heretic” and the “unbeliever”—including the “heathen” natives already here. Moreover, while it is true that the vast majority of early-generation Americans were Christian, the pitched battles between various Protestant sects and, more explosively, between Protestants and Catholics, present an unavoidable contradiction to the widely held notion that America is a “Christian nation.”
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- America’s True History of Religious Tolerance (neatorama.com)
- Secularism and religious tolerance (in the 16th – 18th centuries) (secularnewsdaily.com)
About
Hi, I’m Denise a happily married mother of two daughters away at college. I am fortunate not to have to work away from my home, so I keep busy with various hobbies during my day. One of those is reading and watching several news sources. I love history and the news. Many items you will see here are articles or photos worthy of a second look. Thanks.
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