American History - Kodachrome - The last Kodachrome facility ends processing

CBS News Sunday Morning spot about the demise of the last Kodachrome processing plant. Kodak stopped manufacturing Kodachrome last year but now the chemicals have finally run out

aired December 2010

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American History - Bill Whittle - American Exceptionalism

Bill looks at how America is indeed exceptional -- a once-in-history success militarily, economically, scientifically and culturally.

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Overview Of America and Types of Economic Systems 2

This video clip from the documentary video Overview of America explains differences between the major economic systems of free market Capitalism, Fascism, Naziism, Socialism, and Communism. It is explained that all types of economic systems include elements of capital and property, with differences between the systems being varying combinations of types of ownership and control of those two elements.

Fascist:

In a Fascist system, the government does not own businesses on paper, but it does control them. In Mussolini’s Italy, even though he didn’t hold title to businesses, he told the owners what to produce, how much to produce, when to produce, where to buy raw materials, who to hire, who to fire, and what prices to charge. The rest “was up to them.” The fascist system is more efficient than other state controlled systems due to those living under it thinking they still own their businesses. Such a government controls the owners through an array of taxations and regulations.

Nazism:

Under Nazism, which means “national socialism,” it’s proponents went one step further and acquired ownership of some corporations such as Volkswagen, but Hitler did not seize ownership of other industrial giants but rather just controlled them in the same way that Mussolini had controlled businesses in Italy.

Socialism:

Socialism is where government officials aquire possession of major industries, such as transportation, communications, and utilities, which allows for government to leverage control over the entire economy. Through ownership of these vital segments of the industry, and by creating government regulatory agencies, socialists gain control over virtually everything else.

Communism:

Communism is the “granddaddy of all” in the economic sense. Under this system all of the capital is owned and controlled by the State.

Free Market Economy:

The founding fathers knew that the system of a free market economy in a Republic which they designed would not last without a certain degree of shared morality in the citizenry.

James Madison cautioned, “limited government alone is inadequate for our nation.”

John Adams said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people, it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

George Washington said “.. reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Benjamin Franklin said “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

The alternative to Americanism is what has condemned most of the human race to live as slaves throughout the past millennium— with the ideas that rights are privileges dispensed by an Oligarchy, the nation’s capital and all economic activity being directed from a central power, morality being inconsequential, and security needing to be preferred over freedom and opportunity.

It is explained that the United States continues to be steered off-course through the principals that led to it’s greatness being cast aside, and what is needed is a sufficient number of Americans getting involved to return the nation to having less government and more personal responsibility of citizens.

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Overview Of America and Types of Government 1

This video clip from the documentary video Overview of America describes the major types of governmental systems which exist in the world today, such as Monarchy meaning rule by one, Oligarchy meaning rule by a few, Democracy meaning rule by a majority, Republic meaning rule by law, and Anarchy meaning rule by none.

It is explained that the governmental system of the United States was designed to be a Republic by the Framers of the Constitution, and it is explained why it is preferential to the other types of political systems.

Monarchy:

Monarchy or dictatorship means “rule by one,” which does not exist in the practical sense, but rather it is always a group that puts one of it’s members up front. A King has a council of Nobles or Earls, and dictators have their bureaucrats or commissars— therefore monarchy actually means “rule by a group.” So actually, monarchies or dictatorships are always actually “Oligarchies,” which are covered in the next point.

Oligarchy:

Oligarchy means “rule by a group,” which is how most of the nations of the world are governed today and throughout history. Most of the nations of the world are ruled only by a powerful few.

Anarchy:

Anarchy means “without government.” At times in the past, some people have concluded that many of man’s worse crimes were committed by governments, so they decided that having no government might be a good idea, but this is a mistaken view— as the ancient Greeks stated: “Without law, there can be no freedom,” and the Founding Fathers agreed, knowing that some laws would be necessary to protect a civilized society. In a state of Anarchy, everyone needs to constantly guard life, liberty, and property, and the lives of family members. Also everyone needs to be armed and movement is restricted due to property needing to be protected at all times, therefore a proper amount of government makes everyone freer. People living in such chaos often go to those best able to put an end to it and beg them to take control to restore order, but usually the people who are best able to put an end to the chaos are the very people who started it, therefore those anarchists will eventually form an oligarchy— this is exactly what happened in Russia leading to Lenin taking total power, and in Germany were Hitler’s brownshirts created the chaos needed to put him into power. Anarchy exists only as a temporary transition from something that exists to something desired by the power hungry.

Democracy:

The word “Democracy” comes from two words: Demos meaning “people,” and Kratin meaning “to rule,” therefore democracy means “Majority Rule.” Majority rule may sound like a good idea, but essentially it actually translates to mean “mob rule.” The flaw of Democracy is that the majority is not “restrained”— meaning if more than half of the people can be persuaded to want something in a democracy, that whim will rule.

NOTE: The word “democracy” does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or in the U.S. Constitution, nor does it appear in any of the Constitutions of the 50 States, and in fact the founders did everything they could to keep the United States from having a “democracy.”

Republic:

The word “Republic” comes from two words: Res meaning “thing,” and Publica meaning “public,” therefore Republic means “the public thing,” or “the law.” A true republic is one where the government is limited by law, leaving the people alone. America’s founders had a clean slate to write on, so rather than setting up an oligarchy, they set up the rule of law in a republic. An example is shown of a setting in the "old west" where a lynch mob captures a suspected criminal, and instead of hanging him even though the majority votes for it, he is given a trial due to “the rule of law” in a republic instead of in a democracy.

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CBS Sunday Morning - Almanac - Mount Rushmore

The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota, in the United States.

Sunday Morning Almanac: March 3rd, 1925, 88 years ago today, the day Congress decided four heads were better than none.

Air Date March 3, 2013

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Matt Barber - The Most Important Election in History

Who says Republicans and Democrats can’t agree? Every four years, politicos and pundits, both left and right, come together in a harmonious hymn of hyperbole: “This is the most important election in history!” they sing.

I think hyperbole is responsible for all of the world’s problems. Still, this time nobody’s exaggerating. What happens on Nov. 6 really is of critical importance. America’s future really does hang in the balance.

We’re in uncharted territories. We’re lost. We stand dazed at cliff’s edge – legs wobbling – with big government winds at our back. Under President Obama, the reasons for this election’s unparalleled significance are piling up like pink slips in the private sector, like credit rating downgrades, like zeros on the national debt.

Yet, as I see it, there are nine black-robed reasons in particular that reign supreme.

And those reasons never get a pink slip.

In Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote: “The judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution. … [T]he judiciary is, beyond comparison, the weakest of the three departments of power … [and] the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter.”

I know. Settle down.

Alas, Alexander Hamilton was obviously no better with a crystal ball than he was with a dueling pistol. For better or for worse (hint: for worse), today’s judiciary – through the constitutionally erosive drip-drop of judicial attrition and congressional submission – has, instead, become the most powerful branch of government.

Today, rather than the properly balanced, decentralized constitutional republic our founders envisaged, we live, to a large degree, under a very much centralized judiciocracy. (That is, when President Obama’s not circumventing the Constitution via executive fiat.)

William Howard Taft, who served as both our 27th president and our 10th Supreme Court chief justice, had unique insight into the dichotomy between the framers’ intent, and today’s reality. He summed it up well: “Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.”

Indeed, due to the creeping misalignment of separation of powers, the function of appointing Supreme Court justices is almost certainly the most significant thing any president can do. Though it defies the High Court’s original construct, these nine unelected, well-meaning, yet very human, individuals profoundly steer law, public policy and our larger culture in perpetuity.

So much for the balance of powers.

Therein lies the problem. Conservative columnist Andrew McCarthy noted in March that four of the nine sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices are in their late 70s and early 80s.

“We wish them all well,” he wrote, “but the brute fact is that whoever we elect as president in November is almost certainly going to choose at least one and maybe more new members of the Supreme Court – in addition to hundreds of other life-tenured federal judges, all of whom will be making momentous decisions about our lives for decades to come.

“If you don’t think it matters whether the guy making those calls is Mitt Romney or Barack Obama,” concluded McCarthy, “I think you’re smokin’ something funky.”

Speaking of “smokin’ something funky,” during Thursday night’s vice presidential debate, Joe Biden touched on the Supreme Court. He agreed with McCarthy: “The next president will get one or two Supreme Court nominees. … For Mr. Romney, who do you think he’s likely to appoint? Do you think he’s likely to appoint someone like Scalia … ? We picked two people. We pick people who are open-minded.”

And, of course, by “open-minded,” Biden means “not bound by those pesky constitutional limitations intended to avert government tyranny.” He means liberal “living constitutionalists.”

To be sure, the next president may well appoint one, two, three or even four new justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. As voters, this should be our most critical point of focus: ensuring an originalist, strict constructionist majority. If Mr. Obama is re-elected and appoints just one more Ruth Bader Ginsburg, forget it. America, as our founders envisioned her, is gone.

This is why, after the primary, I went from an outspoken Romney critic, to a cautiously optimistic Romney supporter. He has pledged: “I will appoint conservative, strict constructionists to the judiciary.”

Still not sold?

President Obama has already shown who he’ll appoint. In Justices Elena Kagan and Sonja Sotomayor – nice though they may be – he has stacked the Court with two radical counter-constitutionalists who share his belief that the Constitution “is not a static, but living document and must be read in the context of an ever changing world.”

Naturally, if the Constitution is “ever changing,” the Constitution is meaningless.

But it gets worse. Obama has also called this – the very founding document upon which our laws, public policy, indeed our very freedoms rest – an “imperfect document,” a “living document … that reflects some deep flaws in American culture.”

Yikes.

Moreover, during the 2008 campaign, Obama lamented that the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, failed to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.”

Let that sink in a moment. In his own words, this man – a man solemnly sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution – has betrayed utter disdain for it. He has, in essence, admitted that he views our most sacred founding document as a “constraint” against his thinly veiled efforts to “fundamentally transform” America into Greece.

Thank God our Founding Fathers predicted that men like Barack Obama would come and go. And thank God they had the wisdom to plan accordingly.

Patrick Henry once said, “[L]iberty ought to be the direct end of your government.” Today, we have it exactly backward. Four more years of Barack Obama, and government will be the direct end of your liberty.

Still thinking of sitting this one out?

Matt Barber

Matt Barber served as Policy Director for Cultural Issues with Concerned Women for America before joining Liberty University School of Law in 2008. In addition to his Juris Doctorate degree, Dean Barber holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from Regent University and a Bachelor of Science in Organizational Management from Colorado Christian University.

Matt Barber is a published freelance writer, many newspapers and online publications run his columns, including the Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Insight magazine, WorldNetDaily.com, TownHall.com and many others.

Matt Barber was a law enforcement officer for three years and a corporate fraud investigator for five years.

Matt Barber served twelve years in the Army National Guard, and was an undefeated professional boxer, retiring in 2004. Several times prior to turning pro, he was a state and regional Golden Gloves champion, competing in the 1992 Western Olympic Trials and winning a Gold Medal in the 1993 Police and Fire World Games.

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Lurita Doan - Who Is Barack Obama?

Barack Obama’s handlers continually seem to look for opportunities to create analogous comparisons between Obama and other iconic American figures, in the hopes that some patina of their greatness will burnish Obama’s flawed image.

During a recent trip to Mount Rushmore, First Lady Michelle Obama must have looked longingly, and hopefully at the images of America’s greatest presidents, and hoped to inspire some sort of connectivity in the mind of voters linking Obama to the great men who’s images are carved in stone at Mount Rushmore.

In order for any comparison to work, voters must answer the question—who is Barack Obama? What does he stand for? What are his core values? These are, typically, the questions that most presidential candidates answer when they run for re-election. Or they run on their record. But, after three and a half years of failed policies, with an almost $16 Trillion deficit, with unemployment at 8.3% and gas prices at over $4 per gallon, Obama certainly can’t run on his record.

But who is Barack Obama?

One thing’s for certain: Barack Obama is no George Washington. George Washington was an incredible leader for our nation, a man who was capable of facing his mistakes and learning from them. During the French Indian War, Colonel Washington suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela and, at one point, had more colonial soldiers running away from the conflict than staying and fighting. But, George Washington demonstrated superhuman endurance, perseverance, courage and grit. He sent no spin-meisters out to Sunday news shows, to whitewash the record and stretch the English language, twisting words into pretzel-like distortions, in an attempt to mask responsibility and focus blame on others. Instead, Washington made sure that when the opportunity came again—and it did—he led brilliantly, both strategically and tactically, during the Revolutionary War. Forget any comparison between George Washington and Barack Obama, none exist.

Obama is no Thomas Jefferson, either. Apparently, words do not come easily to Barack Obama unless he has an ever-ready teleprompter, replete with the language and ideas of his handlers. Of Barack Obama’s writings, we have almost nothing—no signature legislation (save that crafted by Sen. Coburn to which Obama appended his name as a joint sponsor), nor are there any signature writings from his time in college, law school or, oddly, as the editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama’s public relations machines try to promote Obama’s brilliance, but his transcripts have never been released to the public—so who knows? Jefferson, on the other hand, repeatedly exhibited his brilliance in writing our nation’s founding documents, in Jefferson’s statesmanship in acquiring the Louisiana Purchase, or Jefferson’s prescience when he said: “To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” Clearly Obama is no Jefferson.

Obama is no James Madison. The “Father of the Constitution”, James Madison helped draft the constitution, was the author of the Bill of Rights, in particular, the first ten amendments. In comparison, Barack Obama has spent the past three and a half years attacking those amendments. Whether it’s Obama’s decision to compel birth control insurance payments from Catholic-run institution, or other areas of governmental overreach, Obama has shown a marked disregard for the rights of Americans. Clearly Obama is no Madison.

Obama is not Andrew Jackson, either. At no time has it been more apparent than in the recent Trayvon Martin debacle. During the Battle of New Orleans, during the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson showed daring, innovation and courageous leadership when he rallied all the inhabitants of the city to fight together to defeat the British—White, Black, Indian, slave and freed man, soldiers and pirates—urging them to put aside their differences and to work together, side-by-side, to defeat a common foe. “Old Hickory”, tough as nails, understood that divisiveness destroys and incendiary language that inflames hostilities is not the way to create a unified nation. Obama could learn a lot from Andrew Jackson.

Obama is no John F. Kennedy. Whereas Kennedy said: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,” Obama is all about selfish indulgence. Team Obama’s policies have at their core a belief that the government needs to do more for individuals, and always, that there is some other “millionaire or billionaire” who can be taxed to pay for it. Mr Obama appeals to his supporters by promising something for nothing.

Any costs for the promised largess (healthcare, housing, food, education, etc) are to be the responsibility of someone else. Kennedy by contrast, wanted Americans to remain an aspirational people. Kennedy believed passionately in American exceptionalism—and championed some of the most dramatic plans to put a man on the moon. Obama, after shutting down space travel, with no belief in American exceptionalism, praises a NASA leader who has diverged dramatically from NASA’s core mission to claim that NASA’s new mission priority is Muslim outreach. Many are still alive who knew Jack Kennedy, and it goes without saying that Barack Obama is no Jack Kennedy.

Of course, Obama’s no Lyndon Baines Johnson either. LBJ was, arguably, one of the most skilled legislators our nation has known. His ability to craft a compromise between Republicans and Democrats and to waltz even the most controversial legislation (such as the Civil Right Act) through congress is legendary. The recent Supreme Court case on Obamacare illustrated that Obama’s ham-fisted, cobbled-together effort to forge consensus was little more than congressional bribery, and that the legislation had little hope of passing without the many ear-marks and riders promising goodies.

The lack of a “severability clause” proves that the pay-for-play agreements, euphemistically known as the Corn Huskers’ Kickback and the New Louisiana Purchase, were the only way Obama was able to garner sufficient votes to get the “monstrosity” passed. And, considering Obama’s recent Budget failed to pass congress with even one vote shows neither political party has any confidence in Obama’s stewardship of the economy. Consider: a budget vote that fails 416-0. LBJ, surely, would have been ashamed of Obama’s colossally ineffective powers of persuasion.

It goes without saying that Obama is not, and never will be, Ronald Reagan. Obama’s recent “open mike” comments, to Russian President Medvedev, reveal Obama’s nefarious intentions to further weaken America’s missile defense and pander to Putin’s thuggish regime. Reagan’s poignant, persuasive and tough speech at the Brandenburg Gate, exhorting “Mr. Gorbachev: “Open this gate. Mr. Gorbvachev, TEAR DOWN THAT WALL!” boldly reverberated across continents and changed forever the history of this world. Obama’s obsequious groveling to Medvedev is behavior unimaginable and would never be tolerated by Reagan.

After three and a half years, Americans still know little about Barack Obama. What they have seen of Obama, so far, has been bad--a litany of gaffes, policy missteps, race-baiting, class warfare mongering, blame-gaming, tin-cupping, whining and betrayal of American values. One thing is certain: Barack Obama has little in common with any president our country has ever had. Hopefully, this Obama hiccup in history will be of short duration, nothing more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.”

Lurita Doan

Lurita Alexis Doan is an African American conservative commentator who writes about issues affecting the federal government.

Lurita has been involved in the business community through participation in many trade associations, membership in business organizations including the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization (now Entrepreneurs' Organization) and Young Presidents' Organization, and involvement on charitable community activities.

United States Motto: E Pluribus Unum describes an action: Many uniting into one. An accurate translation of the motto is "Out of many, one".

Judgement Day, November 6, 2012

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Mary Grabar - Editors Collude With "Distinguished" Professors to Silence Education Reform Debate

What happens when an education editor wants to advance her own liberal agenda, even as her newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, brags about “Bringing Balance to Opinions”?

She publishes an op-ed by a “Distinguished Professor” demolishing a bill she dislikes. She denies the same opportunity to a supporter of such legislation, who does not have tenure because of her conservative views. The education editor acts like she has done her duty by bringing on the scene an “expert,” before whom too many legislators bow down in obeisance. So the public is kept in the dark, and the bill, Georgia SB 426, the “Teach Freedom” act, never gets out of subcommittee.

This is what happened after this writer proposed a column to Maureen Downey at the AJC, on Tuesday, March 6. The email was not answered. Two days later, a column by James C. Cobb, the Spalding Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia, appeared in Downey’s “Get Schooled” blog. The column was then published the following Monday on the Opinion pages with the title “Taking an Ideological Ax to U.S. History.” The following Friday it was featured as #1 among the “top 10” on the History News Network and then on the following Monday with the title, “Georgia Senate Tries to Whitewash the Founding Fathers.”

To my second email inquiry, Downey replied, “I might be interested for online if your piece speaks to this bill specifically.” In other words, the Distinguished Professor will have a prominent place on the printed pages that Georgia legislators read, but I “might” get a shot at a post on her blog—if I stay within the lines.

Professor Cobb begins his op-ed by presenting himself as taking the high moral ground: “In the 43 years that I have taught United States history in both state universities and the public schools, I have done my best to resist the temptation to turn my lectern into a ‘bully pulpit’ for proselytizing my personal political gospel” (but his university web page reveals a focus on race, class, and gender.)

He continues, “Not surprisingly, I also get my back up when others, with no particular preparation in the field but a truckload of ideological axes to grind, attempt to prescribe both the content of historical curricula and the lessons that are to be drawn from them.”

In other words, citizens and their representatives (“with no particular preparation in the field”) should just shut up.

Professor Cobb, however, does not address the kind of “field preparation” our teachers do receive.

Back in 2010, in the wake of a test-cheating scandal in Georgia, I discussed at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education the pathetic preparation teachers do receive. I noted that a Clayton State University Assistant Professor of Education, Mari Ann Roberts, in her AJC op-ed on the scandal wondered why students should even have to know the dates of the Civil War.

I also noted Clayton State’s weak requirements in subject areas for education majors, especially those teaching middle school social studies; they spend only 12 credit hours out of a total of 122 in upper-division classes in their primary subject area, with another 12 in the secondary subject area. Only three of the four required upper-division social science classes are from the history department, and they include the watered-versions geared toward education majors.

Indeed, a scan of web pages of education professors across the state shows an emphasis on far-left ideological concerns rather than on the subject matter, like history or math. For example, Jennifer Esposito, Associate Professor of Research, Measurement, and Statistics in the College of Education at Georgia State University, lists her areas of interest as, “Urban education, popular culture, race, gender, class.” At Georgia Southern University, Michelle Reidel’s teaching and research areas include not only social studies, but “Teaching for Social Justice.” William Reynolds’ interests are “Post-structural analysis of curriculum issues, curriculum theory, film studies, cultural curriculum studies, critical teaching, critical thinking, Freirian approaches to pedagogy”--the last a reference to the Marxist theorist Paulo Freire.

But Professor Cobb accuses reformers of ideological bias: “A textbook example of such an effort to control the textbooks is Georgia Senate Bill 426...‘The Teach Freedom Act’ seeks to ‘modify requirements for instruction’ in U.S. history and other related social studies disciplines. In keeping with the spirit of a similar initiative launched with Tea Party backing in Tennessee, this legislation is premised on the belief that ‘a positive understanding of American history and government is essential to good citizenship.’”

The mention of the “Tea Party backing” invites sophisticates onto the bandwagon. (To learn how professors talk about the Tea Party at their conferences, see my article here.) Professor Cobb continues, “The problem from the get-go here is that the bill seeks a positive understanding rather than an informed one.”

But is it all right that students have an entirely negative understanding of this country’s history? Future teachers are being taught by America-hating ideologues. In 2009, I wrote about social studies teachers sharing subversive teaching strategies. Last month, education professors and activists helped themselves to the facilities and education funds of Georgia State University to hold a teach-in, where in addition to strategizing on making their students lobbyists against bills restricting illegal immigration, they strategized on incorporating curricula banned in Arizona that advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government and inspire hatred toward certain ethnic groups. How to use Rethinking Columbus (one of the banned books) was the topic of a workshop I attended with professors, education students, and teachers there. (Read my account on my site, Dissident Prof.)

Professor Cobb, referring to an old version of the bill, then calls the sponsors “poorly informed on the history of their own state.”

He focuses on a single, tangential issue about slavery in Georgia, a point about which historians might debate. But the point serves as diversion. He disregards the legislation’s intent: to address the problem of inadequate attention to teaching about America’s founding era and the founding principles of our government in public K-12 education. Instead, Professor Cobb seeks to safeguard the type of revisionist history that infuses our classrooms.

Dismayed by the bill’s provision that history be taught “chronologically,” he continues, “History is more than a mere succession of events. . . . Students may like the idea of simply memorizing the main events of each year from 1776 to 1787, but such an approach promises little in the way of a comprehensive understanding of developments such as ‘growing dissatisfaction with the Articles of Confederation,’ a mandated point of emphasis in SB 426.”

In this, he misrepresents the bill, which addresses the inadequacies of the current standards, now with thematic units based on minor figures, arranged haphazardly. The bill does not call for “simply memorizing the main events.” Knowing key dates in context will prevent ignorance, like that of our current generation of graduates who often cannot even place key events--like the Civil War--within the correct half century. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed that only 24% of high school seniors achieved a level of proficiency or above on the 2010 test on civics, a decline from 2006.

Nevertheless, Professor Cobb concludes, “Regardless of whether it best serves the agenda of Glenn Beck or Jesse Jackson, to institutionalize such a narrowly constructed narrative of the past based on such a heavily ideologized [sic] assessment of the needs of the present is to encumber future generations with a version of history that they may hardly recognize, much less find instructive.”

Unfortunately, too few of our professors object to the Jesse Jackson version of history, which is “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civilization’s got to go,” to quote the chant he led on the campus of Stanford University in the 1980s.

“Distinguished professors,” whose credentials are usually conferred by a mutual admiration society of radicals, shouldn’t have the final word on legislation proposed by the people’s representatives.

Mary Grabar

Mary Grabar is a writer and college English teacher, whose parents escaped from Slovenia in 1959 and spent a year in a refugee camp in Austria. They immigrated to Rochester, New York, when she was two.

Her views have been formed by experiences as an immigrant during the racial violence in Rochester in the 1960s and then at her alma mater, Benjamin Franklin Junior-Senior High School.

She tried to be a liberal, but then quickly realized that it was an exclusive club. Her conversion to conservatism was cinched when she returned to school in the master's program in English in the 1990's.

In spite of the hostility of most of the faculty and the torture of having to wade through postmodern nonsense, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2002.

Mary Grabar is a frequent Columnist at Town Hall.com and writes articles for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Newspaper.

Visit Mary's Website and her other Website: The Literate Citizen

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American History Condensed - The Preamble To The Constitution

My people perish from a lack of knowledge.
Hosea 4: 6 (KJV)

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Preamble To The United States Constitution 1787 (The Constitution was ratified in 1788)

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In the novel "1984", George Orwell introduced us to the words 'doublethink' and 'newspeak'. A word Orwell DIDN'T use - but which combines the two - is 'doublespeak'. Doublespeak is saying one thing and meaning another, usually its opposite.

In "1984" when BIG BROTHER (Big Brother represented Joseph Stalin) and the Party said PEACE they meant WAR, when they said LOVE they meant HATE, and when they said FREEDOM they meant SLAVERY.

The Preamble phrase "...promote the general Welfare..." is commonly quoted by Liberal Progressives to validate their 'Wealth Re-distribution' schemes for their 'Utopian Welfare State'. The meaning of the word 'welfare' in 1787 when the Preamble was written (according to the American Heritage Dictionary): welfare n. 1. health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being. [wel faren, to fare well].

The phrase 'Social Welfare' more aptly describes modern Day Liberal Progressive redistributive taxation. This 'Doublespeak' used by Liberal Progressives has caused confusion within the American Citizenry.
RG

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John Adams - Declaration of Independence

Congress approves the Declaration of Independence, brilliant scene from John Adams mini-series.

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Colonists Protest British Policies

From the 1760's onward, colonial anger grows as the British pass a series of taxes and laws. With each one, the two groups move closer to war.

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Washington's Surprise Attack on Trenton

By Christmas, 1777, in desperate need of a victory, Washington defies military convention with a nighttime assault in the dead of winter.

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Washington Escapes Brooklyn

After British forces invade Long Island in 1776, Gen. Washington manages to evacuate over 9,000 troops under cover of darkness, when surrender would have meant the end of the quest for independence.

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British Victory at Bunker Hill

A fatal lack of ammunition dooms the colonists chances in an early American Revolutionary battle near Boston.

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Yorktown

The British were forced to surrender 2 days after patriot soldiers captured the fort at Yorktown in 1781

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Boston Massacre

Shots fired by British soldiers in the streets of Boston in 1770 would spark the American Revolution.

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George Washington

How did George Washington turn a rag-tag group of men into a disciplined fighting machine?

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Declaration of Independence

To many in the Continental Congress, war was unthinkable. So why did they finally create this revolutionary document?

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