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Now I know many of you have read Tom Brokaw’s book titled, The Greatest Generation. It is excellent, but it looks at the country as a whole. I thought it would be good today if I shared a view of the greatest generation from a Missouri perspective. Let’s start with the Great Depression.

The Great Depression (1929-1939) was the worst economic downturn in modern history.

Four years after the1929 stock market crash, during the bleakest point of the Great Depression, about a quarter of the U.S. workforce was unemployed. Those that were lucky enough to have steady employment often saw their wages cut or their hours reduced to part-time.

Even upper-middle class professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, saw their incomes drop by as much as 40 percent. Families who had previously enjoyed economic security suddenly faced financial instability or, in some cases, ruin.

The average American family lived by the Depression-era motto: “Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without.”

Households embraced a new level of frugality in daily life. They kept kitchen gardens, patched worn-out clothes and passed on trips to the movies as they privately struggled to retain ownership of a home or automobile.

Women’s magazines and radio shows taught Depression-era homemakers how to stretch their food budget with casseroles and one-pot meals. Favorites included chili, macaroni and cheese, soups, and chipped beef on toast.

Potlucks, often organized by churches, became a popular way to share food and a cheap form of social entertainment.

Many families strived for self-sufficiency by keeping small kitchen gardens with vegetables and herbs. Some towns and cities allowed for the conversion of vacant lots to community “thrift gardens” where residents could grow food.

Between 1931 and 1932, Detroit’s thrift garden program provided food for about 20,000 people. Experienced gardeners could be seen helping former office workers—still dressed in white button-down shirts and slacks—to cultivate their plots.

The average American family didn’t have much extra income to spend on leisure activities during the 1930s. Before the Depression, going to the movie theater was a major pastime. Fewer Americans could afford this luxury after the stock market crashed—so more than one-third of the cinemas in America closed between 1929 and 1934.

Often, people chose to spend time at home. Neighbors got together to play cards, and board games such as Scrabble and Monopoly—both introduced during the 1930s.

The radio also provided a free form of entertainment. By the early 1930s, many middle class families owned a home radio. Comedy programs such as Amos ‘n’ Andy, soap operas, sporting events and swing music distracted listeners from everyday struggles.

Some families maintained a middle-class income by adding an extra wage earner. Despite widespread unemployment during the Depression years, the number of married women in the workforce actually increased.

Some people criticized married women for taking jobs when so many men were out of work, though women often took clerical or service industry positions that weren’t seen as socially acceptable for men at the time.

Women found work as secretaries, teachers, telephone operators and nurses. But in many cases, employers paid women workers less than their male counterparts.

The New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt meant the expansion of government into people’s everyday lives after 1933. Many Americans received some level of financial aid or employment as a result of New Deal programs.

Prior to the Great Depression, most Americans had negative views of government welfare programs and refused to go on welfare. In some towns, local newspapers actually published the names of welfare recipients.

While attitudes toward government assistance began to change during the Great Depression, going on welfare was still viewed as a painful and humiliating experience for many families.

The stress of financial strain took a psychological toll—especially on men who were suddenly unable to provide for their families. The national suicide rate rose to an all-time high in 1933.

Marriages became strained, though many couples could not afford to separate. Divorce rates dropped during the 1930s though abandonments increased. Some men deserted their families out of embarrassment or frustration: This was sometimes called a “poor man’s divorce.”

It’s estimated that more than two million men and women became traveling hobos. Many of these were teens who felt they had become a burden on their families and left home in search of work.

Riding the rails—illegally hopping on freight trains—became a common, yet dangerous way to travel. Those traveling the country in search of work often camped in “Hoovervilles,” shantytowns named after Herbert Hoover, president during the early years of the Great Depression.

Living through the Great Depression and World War II, the greatest generation developed a tremendous resilience in surviving hardship and solving problems.

The great depression created  some of the worst times in our history only to be followed by WWII. Most people would simply give up, but not this generation. Instead, they used these experiences  to  set an example for all of us to follow. They showed us:

• Personal Responsibility: The harsh reality of the Great Depression forced many to a higher standard of personal responsibility, even as children.
• Humility: The Great Depression fostered modesty and humility in many of those who lived through poverty..
• Work Ethic: Hard work enabled survival during both the depression and the war. Many jobs at the time were physically demanding, with long hours.
• Frugality: Saving every penny and every scrap helped families survive through times of shortage. “Use it up, fix it up, make it do, or do without” was a motto of their time.
• Commitment: One job or one marriage often lasted an entire lifetime.
• Integrity: People valued honesty and trustworthiness, values fostered by the need to rely on one another.
• Self-Sacrifice: Millions sacrificed to defend their country or support the war effort from home.

So the Great depression dropped them to their knees. How could things possibly get worse? World War Two.

Two of my former students Evan Adrian and Jessica Cowan did a lot of research for a project and found some fascinating information about Missouri during the war years and I’d like to share some of it with you today.

When thinking of the victory and sacrifice of those that fought in the Second World War, there are no words that can be expressed to describe what so few accomplished for so many.

Our service members were the finest our country had to offer and they never can be thanked enough.

But a little known fact is that there was another group of heroes who made a major contribution to the war.

These are the men and women that are not usually given the praise that they very well deserve.

 Throughout this nation, there were many people who went to work supplying the men fighting the “good fight”.

The industrial base in the United States at the time relied heavily on the small businesses, so much so that ninety-five percent of American business in the 1930’s was done through small businesses.

One hundred seventy thousand of the businesses and small plants produced seventy percent of all United States goods, while another one hundred large corporations produced the other thirty percent of products.

The State of Missouri was very proactive in Missouri’s contribution to the war against  Japan and Germany.

Industry was only a portion of what Missouri had to offer in the war. Missouri’s farms played as much of a part in the supply of American troops as Missouri industry.

Laws were enacted that allowed many skilled farmers and farm-hands to be exempt from selective service due to the dire need for their experience and skills they could provide in producing the much needed food for the country and the troops.

Citizens were also asked to do their part in home front activities during the war.

Cultivating home or “victory” gardens, increasing the cutting of timber that could be used for war, recruiting manpower for farms, collecting scrap metals, setting up councils of defense, and to encouraging recruitment into the armed services were all activities that any American at home could do to contribute to the war effort.

          Many citizens were given the opportunity to learn a new skill that would be useful to industry and contribute to the war. In Missouri more than twenty-two thousand people went to trade schools and most of them were with a war training program.

Vocational training for war production was a law that was enacted by Congress in June of 1940. Congress recognized that if the United States were to enter the war they would have the same problem that the nation had encountered in 1917, the nation was short of the millions of workers that were needed for war time production.

Under Public Law 647 and 135, passed in 1942 and 1943, respectively, one hundred eighty million dollars was appropriated for war time production training. This program was known as VE-ND (Vocational Education for National Defense) and there were twenty-six centers set up in Missouri to teach Missourians the necessary skills for production.

These twenty-six centers were entirely funded by the Federal Government, with no local or state money going to their set up or operation. Nationwide centers, like the ones in Missouri, trained over forty thousand men and women per year in various different jobs for war production.

St. Louis may have been the single most important city in the United States for war production. It held the largest percent of war contracts over any other city in the nation.

The war was very good for the St. Louis economy, bringing around a billion dollars into the area (Flynn, 485).

St. Louis’ Schlueter Manufacturing Company was one of two manufactures in the nation that produced the M1 helmet. Being the only piece of protective gear a soldier had, this was a very important piece for the individual soldier. Schlueter was a peacetime maker of pots and pans who converted with the United States’ entrance into the war (GD 9/12/1943).

Diagraph-Bradley Stencil Machine Corporation was another St. Louis industry that was one of three manufacturers in the world of stencil cutting machines. The machines were important because of the logistical aspect of war and the shipped goods needed to be well marked to avoid confusion (letter from V/P of Diagraph-Bradley to STSOM, 6/14/1946).

St. Louis Ordnance plant may have been one of the most important war plants that Missouri had during the war.

The bullets that St Louis produced were used in every type of fighting. They were used by the infantry soldier all the way up to the machine guns on fighter planes. The plant was built by the government with the sole purpose of producing ammunition for the military.

Ground was broken for the plant on March 28, 1941 on the northern edge of St. Louis’ industrial district. The plant sprawled across three hundred acres and by war’s end had over four million feet of floor space in its three hundred buildings after it was decided an additional plant that was one and a half times bigger than the first would be needed.

The two plants combined would become the St. Louis Ordnance Plant, and the biggest industrial plant in the Midwest (BBTB). Much like the other ammunition plants across the nation, and the one on the other side of the state, St. Louis Ordnance was owned by the United States but was run by a private company. Western Cartridge  was the company that supervised construction, trained the employees, and operated the plant throughout the war (BBTB).

To illustrate the size of the operation there are some interesting facts. The plant used over six million gallons of water per day and also used forty-four hundred gallons of lubricating oil on their machinery per day.

Four hundred twenty-eight trucks were required to bring in materials each day and sixty carloads of brass were used each day.

The plant required nearly five hundred eighty thousand kilowatt hours of electricity, nearly five million cubic feet of gas, and eighty-eight tons of coal per day for energy.

There were twenty-six cafeterias open around the clock. A first aid station and registered nurse were stationed in every manufacturing unit. There was also a fully equipped and staffed hospital inside of the plant’s area to provide care to any sick or injured workers (BBTB).

Ammunition was being produced just seven months after breaking ground for the plant and cartridges were first accepted by the Ordnance Department on December 8^th, one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Try getting that done today!

By the end of the war St. Louis produced nearly thirteen billion rounds of small arms ammunition.

Small arms ammunition produced at the St. Louis Plant were the .30 carbine (made for the M1 carbine), 30.06 (used in the M1 Garand, 1903A3, and light machine guns), and the .50 caliber (used in heavy machine guns). The rounds were also made with three different bullets: ball (standard full metal jacket), tracer (leaves a lighted trail), and armor piercing (St. Louis Post 6/5/1942).

Like most wartime industries, finding enough workers to staff the plant was an ongoing struggle for St. Louis Ordnance. The plant was the single largest employer in the St. Louis area during the war. At its peak numbers, there were over forty-two thousand men and women working three eight hour shifts six days a week at the plant. Of whom, nearly fifty percent were women.

Emerson Electric Manufacturing Company was another important asset in Missouri’s production arsenal. Their production of power turrets was extremely important to the war effort because it allowed bombers and transport planes to protect themselves from enemy fighter planes.

Like many other plants, Emerson’s turret plant was part of the Defense Plant Corporation, with Emerson building and operating the government owned plant. The plant started to be built in July of 1941 and was built for the sole purpose of producing power turrets.

 Machinery was operational and turrets were being built just six months after ground breaking. Again, imagine trying to accomplish that in this day and age! (Turret Plant Open House Pamphlet 4/16/1944).

Emerson made five different types of turrets during the war, all of which contributed to victory. They built the Sperry Ball Turret which was used on the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-24 Liberator, heavy bombers.

They also built the Sperry Upper Deck Turret which was used on the B-17 Flying Fortress and the Grumman Upper Deck Turret which was used on Grumman Avengers, a carrier based dive bomber. They also built the Martin Upper Deck Turret that was used on the B-24 Liberator, and the Emerson Electric Nose Turret which was also used on the B-24 Liberator, heavy bomber (Emerson Electric catalog).

The plant was so important to the war effort that the government classified it as one of seven irreplaceable war plants in operation. This meant that any loss in the plant’s capabilities, by enemy action or accident, could have an immediate impact on victory in the war (GD 2/18/45).

Kansas City also played an important part in Missouri’s war production. One out of every one hundred American war dollars were spent in Jackson, Clay, and Wyandotte counties.

In total there were almost four hundred war plants in the Kansas City area. Although most of the war plants were small operations, two were massive and vital to victory (Flynn 62-63). The Lake City Ordnance Plant was the backbone of government ammunition, becoming the first of its kind.

American Aviation produced huge numbers of bombers for the war and became a significant asset to American war production.

Foodstuffs were also a great industry in Kansas City. The close relation with farming and ranching proved to be important to Kansas City industry during the war because of the many food processing plants (Flynn 62-63).

Lake City Ordnance Plant played a major role in arming the troops with the ammunition they needed for the war.

To start, the Ordnance Department began by building three plants that would be able to meet their production goals of one million .30 caliber ammunition and six hundred thousand rounds of .50 caliber ammunition per day (Remington 3-4).

Lake City was to be the first in operation followed by Denver and St. Louis. Remington Arms was given operational command over Lake City and Denver. It took just ten months transforming a Missouri farm into a plant that was supplying ammunition to the forces.

 The initial plan of one million rounds of caliber .30 was increased in the first contract with Lake City to two million rounds per day. The expected need for .50 caliber remained the same (Remington 6). This meant the plant had the challenge of producing nearly twenty-four .30 caliber rounds per second and seven .50 caliber rounds per second!

One of the most amazing aspects of the Lake City plant was the massive amount of employees that it had during the peak production time.

The plant required at least sixty-five hundred employees to operate at full production. During peak production the number of workers at the plant was over three times that number.

 In 1943 Lake City had an astounding twenty thousand people working at the plant. The sheer size of the employee base was amazing. It became a city in itself, with the only difference in that the employees lived outside of the plant.

           Having such a large workforce presented the plant with the problems of a city.

Lake City had to provide and maintain its own water and sanitation facilities to provide potable water and take care of its sewage. The plant also had twenty-five miles of roads and had its own bus system to transport the workers.

The twenty thousand workers all needed to be fed, so the plant had six cafeterias that were open night and day. There was also a hospital staffed with ten doctors and nearly fifty nurses. The hospital had sections for men and women, a surgical unit, x-ray, laboratory, and an ambulance service. There were also seven first aid stations scattered throughout the plant that were operated 24 hours a day.

Along with personal care, the plant had to provide its own security and protection. This was very important because of the type of production that was occurring at Lake City. At the time, Lake City’s police department was larger than Kansas City’s police department. The compound had twenty-four miles of fences, with police guarding the posts.

American Aviation, Inc. also played a very important role in Kansas City’s war production efforts. American Aviation produced B-25 bombers that would put fear into the Axis forces.

The company started out building  small, two-seater, training planes and a three seat observation plane for the United States Military.    

Ground breaking for the new plant was held on March 8, 1941 and the plant was turning out bombers three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

American Aviation’s plant was built to be used as a war plant and had features to protect itself from possible enemy attacks. It was one of the first “black out” plants that were built in the United States. This meant that the plant could operate twenty-four hours a day, without the risk of a possible enemy plane seeing the glow from the lighting at night.

The entire plant was air-conditioned so the doors could be left closed and not let out light from the fourteen miles of fluorescent bulbs that were required to light the plant (KCS 1/4/1941).

Much like other war plants, the American Aviation plant became its own city.

The number of planes that came out of American Aviation was staggering. In 1943 more bombers were made in Kansas City than any other plant in the world.

 On April 3, 1945 the six thousandth bomber was delivered by American Aviation (KCS 6/24/1945).  By the end of the war the plant had delivered nearly seven thousand bombers to the government.

 Two-thirds of all B-25’s were made at the Kansas City plant and at peak production the plant was turning out an average of thirteen bombers per day. In August of 1945, American Aviation produced three hundred bombers in twenty-three days.

American Aviation was always in need of workers during the peak production phase of the war through early 1945. Many of the workers were women in the plant because a large number of men were overseas fighting the war and women took over their places on the factory floors.

Women would apply for the job that they wished to do and if they were over eighteen, in good health, and seemed mentally alert, they would be hired .

However,  it was a very selective program being hired to work at American Aviation. The women were required to tell about their family history, be finger-printed, and take a physical examination before being employed at the plant. After they were hired, they were sent to a two month long school to learn the job skills that they would be performing at the plant (Gray 8/16/1942).

Speaking of women, let’s talk about their contribution.

Women across the United States gave up their lifestyles and made tremendous sacrifices to contribute to the war effort during World War II.

The need for women in the workforce became necessary if not desperate. Women had never worked outside the home in greater numbers or with greater impact prior to World War II.

The majority of women in the workforce prior to the war were from lower working classes and many were minorities. With men off to fight in the Atlantic and the Pacific, women were called upon to take their place on the production line and fill the vacancies in other professions (National Archives).

The opinions regarding women in the workforce varied. Some felt that women should not occupy jobs that otherwise unemployed men could hold. Others felt that working in a factory at an assembly line was beneath women of a certain economic status (National Archives).

According to the pamphlet titled, “Womanpower”, distributed by Labor Mobilization and Utilization:

“Womanpower is a headache because…it involves a complete dislocation of normal routine. Consequently, most women neither understand it nor like it…men even less. Therefore, it is essential to establish the fact that not only is it necessaryfor women to work, but it is an entirely normalprocedure under a wartime economy, and to convince men as well as women that…the more women at work the sooner we’ll win.”

According to the December poll conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion  regarding women’s opinions on womanpower: 40 percent were willing, 40 percent were unwilling, 17 percent said, “Yes, if…” and 3 percent had no opinion.

When the husbands were polled, they were asked the question, “Would you be willing to have your wife take a full-time job running a machine in a war plant?” Their response was: 30 percent said yes, 11 percent said, “Yes, if…” 54 percent said no, and 5 percent said ‘don’t know’. The summary of the opinion study was this:

“The information campaigns must convince 20 percent of the men that women are needed in war jobs. It must convince 54 percent of the husbands that their wives (if they have no young children) should take war jobs. It must convince 40 percent of the younger women, and 64 percent of the older women, that it is their duty to take a war job.”

Regardless of public opinion, the reality of the times was that our country needed help in the workforce. We needed help winning the war. The War Manpower Commission, a Federal Agency established to increase the production of war materials, recruited women into employment vital to the war effort.

The women of the Greatest Generation stepped up and met the challenge and then some.

Now one final key element to wartime production in Missouri. Farming.

Farming played a major part in Missouri’s contribution to the war effort. Where the plants in St. Louis and Kansas City provided the bullets that the troops needed, farmers fed the nation‘s workers and the troops overseas.

Right out of the gate, Missouri farms started producing for the war effort .

By the end of 1941, farm production numbers were twenty-five percent higher than the previous year despite labor shortages. The wheat crop in the heartland hit an all-time high of 326,267,000 bushels and the number of head of cattle surpassed nineteen million (Hawkins 24).

The USDA War Board recognized that it was paramount for the farmers to produce as much food as possible for the American and Allied troops and the citizens of the country.

Despite the farmers increased goals in production and shortage of labor and machinery, farm production met wartime needs almost religiously. Corn, oats, soybeans, milk cows, and chickens were produced well over their goals in 1943 (8).

Missouri farmers had their share of struggles in their mission to feed the masses. The two biggest problems they faced were shortages of labor and machinery.

Many of the young men that worked on farms as either farm hands or managers were not exempt from Selective Service in the early part of the war.

This took many experienced and knowledgeable workers off of the farm and not producing the goods that the country needed. Congress recognized this error in 1943 and enacted deferment policies for men that were essential and needed on their farms (62^nd H/S.J.A. Vol. II 5).

In the first year of the war, Missouri farms lost nearly one-quarter of the labor force due to Selective Service or men wanting to fight in the war.

The farmer’s only choices to attract labor were to offer higher salaries, implement better equipment that reduced necessary labor, or to use family members and neighbors.

By the end of 1942 full time help’s wages had gone up thirty percent from Missouri’s average of thirty-five dollars a month to forty-five dollars, and seasonal help’s wages had seen a thirty-eight percent increase or from forty-seven to sixty-five dollars per month.

Even though the pay for labor was rising significantly, Missouri farmers still had a decline in farm-hands and seasonal laborers. Many of the rural Missourians moved to the cities to take high paying war jobs, leaving fewer workers in the rural communities.

This meant longer hours for most farmers, employing the use of women, children, and the elderly, or an increase in labor saving equipment and farming practices.

More often than not, farmers would carry the burden on their shoulders when it was possible. Many farmers reported that they would do nineteen months of labor in a year to pick up the slack that was left by labor shortages. Women in the rural areas contributed around five months of labor on top of their other duties and there were many young men that left school early in order to work on the farms.

The equipment shortage that faced the farmers was another area that caused problems. New machinery was something that was for the most part unavailable to farmers during the war.

The rationing of building materials made the purchase of new equipment unlikely, so the farmers had to make do with what they already had in the community.  Many farmers had to revert back to old methods such as using mules because the mules didn’t break down, they were easy to find, and they didn’t use any of the rationed gas.

          Missouri played a very important part in the war. The war goods that it produced in the major cities and the food that was grown in her soil all helped to win the war. WWII was not only won on the battlefield, but was also won in Missouri’s  factories, plants, and fields. All manned by Missouri’s Greatest Generation.

So as we sit here today thinking about how bad things are. Let’s stop for a minute and ask ourselves. Are current times worse than those of the Great Depression or World War II? Better yet, ask yourself, can I, as a part of my generation, even come close to the achievements of my parents and grandparents? If so. How?

The answer is right there in front of you. Study your history.

‘1776’ Is Helping Turn Civics Education Around

Realcleareducation.com

By Mike Sabo
August 26, 2020

Entrepreneur and civil rights movement veteran Robert L. Woodson, Sr. believes that American civics can help save our country—and that’s the mission of “1776,” a major initiative launched earlier this year by the Woodson Center, which Woodson founded to give local leaders the training they need to improve their communities.

Featuring essays by notable scholars and writers such as Clarence Page, John McWhorter, and Carol M. Swain, and eventually a curriculum and multimedia resources, “1776” offers “perspectives that celebrate the progress America has made on delivering its promise of equality and opportunity and highlighting the resilience of its people.”

A recipient of the Bradley Price and the Presidential Citizens Medal, Woodson began “1776” to counter the New York Times’s 1619 Project, a series of essays launched a year ago this month with a very different focus: it teaches that America is defined, now and forever, by slavery. As Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in the 1619 Project’s lead essay: “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.”

In Woodson’s view, the 1619 Project teaches the “diabolical, self-destructive” idea that “all white Americans are oppressors and all black Americans are victims.”

“Though slavery and discrimination undeniably are a tragic part of our nation’s history,” Woodson notes, “we have made strides along its long and tortuous journey to realize its promise and abide by its founding principles.”

Woodson continues: “People are motivated to achieve and overcome the challenges that confront them when they learn about inspiring victories that are possible and are not barraged by constant reminders of injuries they have suffered.”  

He points to the surprising number “of men and women who were born slaves” but “died as millionaires,” the existence of famous black business districts in cities such as Durham, North Carolina and Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the midst of oppression and segregation, and heroes like baseball Hall of Fame slugger Hank Aaron as powerful examples for black uplift.

And it’s a lesson that Woodson knows firsthand.

Born in a low-income Philadelphia neighborhood, he rose up beyond his circumstances through hard work, the support of his family, and a good peer group. He entered the U.S. military, where he flew aircrafts for the space program; attended the University of Pennsylvania; and worked for the American Enterprise Institute, before starting the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in 1981. (It was rebranded as the Woodson Center in 2016.)

The Woodson Center’s mission is to seek out “individuals and organizations” already present in communities and help them “build their capacities,” in part by helping them “in linking to the resources they need.” The Center has helped more than 22,000 adults reach financial literacy and trained over 2,600 grassroots leaders in 39 states, helping them “attain more than 10 times the funding expended by the Center.”

Though the Center works on the “whole range” of issues associated with the “problems of poverty,” Woodson notes a “particular emphasis on those dealing with youth violence,” since “the restoration of civil order is a necessary foundation for civic health.”

In The Triumphs of Joseph: How Today’s Community Healers Are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods, Woodson writes that low-income black communities are “dying from self-inflicted wounds.” He calls it a “moral free-fall,” one that “penetrates beyond all boundaries of race, ethnicity, and income level.”

In light of violent protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Woodson has been active in print and on television, arguing that though Floyd’s killing was unconscionable, the violent protests that have ensued are “devastating the people in whose name they demand justice.”

Another way the Woodson Center combats civic breakdown is through its Violence Free Zone initiative, which aims to reduce youth violence by providing mentors to young students to “encourage their personal, academic, and career success.”

The Center reports that this initiative has led to a 50% reduction in crime, a 23% reduction in truancy, and a nearly 10% improvement in both student GPA and graduation rates.

Woodson views the 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter as major contributors to the growing belief that the foundations of America itself must be torn down. Against what he sees as defeatism and a denial of moral agency, Woodson preaches an ethic of self-reliance and personal resilience. As Woodson sees it, “Nothing is more lethal than a good excuse for failure.”

Now I found another great article about the 1776 Project written  by MAIREAD MCARDLE,  in the National Review.

She states, Two black leaders are launching “1776 Unites,” a new high school curriculum that aims to combat victimhood culture in American society by telling the stories of black Americans who have prospered by embracing America’s founding ideals.

The curriculum’s goal is to “let millions of young people know about these incredible stories, African-Americans past and present, innovative, inventive, who faced adversity, did not view themselves as victims, and chose pathways to be agents of their own uplift,” .

The curriculum says it will present “life lessons from largely unknown, heroic African-American figures from the past and present who triumphed over adverse conditions” and aims to help young people of all races “be architects of their own future by embracing the principles of education, family, free enterprise, faith, hard work and personal responsibility.”

Founders of the 1776 Project  said that the values the curriculum seeks to promote are currently being “threatened” by the New York Times’s 1619 Project, the controversial Pulitzer Prize-winning historical project that says it “aims to reframe the country’s history” by stating that 1619 — the year the first slave was brought to North America — represents the country’s true founding.

The apparent message of the 1619 Project, Robert L. Woodson Sr. said, is “that America should be defined as a racist society where all whites are culpable and guilty of having privilege and therefore should be punished and all blacks are victims that should be compensated,” a conclusion that he called “a very corrosive and dangerous challenge to these traditional values.”

However, Woodson emphasized that “1776 Unites” is not meant to be a “debate” with the 1619 Project, but an “inspirational alternative.”

Top of Form

The first installment of the 1776 Unites curriculum includes lessons for high school students, and K-8 modules are slated to be released soon. New lesson content will be released for free each month as parents and teachers provide feedback on the lessons, which are designed to supplement history and English courses.

Every day, the curriculum’s builders say they hear about new inspirational African-American figures that they think should be included in the lesson plans.

I would like to give you two.

Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois

Let’s start with Booker T. Washington

HISTORY.COM EDITORS

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was born into slavery and rose to become a leading African American intellectual of the 19 century, founding Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (Now Tuskegee University) in 1881 and the National Negro Business League two decades later.

Washington advised Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. His infamous conflicts with black leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois over segregation caused a stir, but today, he is remembered as the most influential African American speaker of his time.

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born on April 5, 1856 in a slave hut in Franklin County, Virginia. His mother was a cook for the plantation’s owner. His father, a white man, was unknown to Washington.

At the close of the Civil War, all the slaves owned by James and Elizabeth Burroughs—including 9-year-old Booker, his siblings, and his mother—were freed. Jane moved her family to Malden, West Virginia. Soon after, she married Washington Ferguson, a free black man.

In Malden, Washington was only allowed to go to school after working from 4-9 AM each morning in a local salt works before class.

 It was at a second job in a local coalmine where he first heard two fellow workers discuss the Hampton Institute, a school for former slaves in southeastern Virginia founded in 1868 by Brigadier General Samuel Chapman.

Chapman had been a leader of black troops for the Union during the Civil War and was dedicated to improving educational opportunities for African Americans.

In 1872, Washington walked the 500 miles to Hampton, where he was an excellent student and received high grades. He went on to study at Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C., but had so impressed Chapman that he was invited to return to Hampton as a teacher in 1879.

It was Chapman who would refer Washington for a role as principal of a new school for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama: The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, today’s Tuskegee University. Washington assumed the role in 1881 at age 25 and would work at The Tuskegee Institute until his death in 1915.

It was Washington who hired George Washington Carver to teach agriculture at Tuskegee in 1896.

Carver would go on to be a celebrated figure in black history in his own right, making huge advances in botany and farming technology.

Life in the post-Reconstruction era South was challenging for blacks. Discrimination was rife in the age of Jim Crow Laws. Exercising the right to vote under the 15 Amendment was dangerous, and access to jobs and education was severely limited.

With the dawn of the Ku Klux Klan, the threat of retaliatory violence for advocating for civil rights was real. In perhaps his most famous speech, given on September 18, 1895, Washington told a majority white audience in Atlanta, Georgia, that the way forward for African Americans was self-improvement through an attempt to “dignify and glorify common labor.”

He stated “Rather than agitate, black people should accumulate property. Rather than intrude where not wanted, black people should look toward their own communities.”

Washington felt that if blacks could prove themselves by living up to white,  middle class standards, their constitutional rights would then be recognized.

The white community supported his idea and backed him financially in building the Tuskegee Institute.

When traveling from Tuskegee, Washington frequented places where he could advise and receive aid from men with power and money, spending many summers among the wealthy in Bar Harbor, Maine and Saratoga Springs, New York.

He counted famous people among his friends and acquaintances, from Mark Twain to William Howard Taft  to Queen Victoria, and successfully solicited personal contributions from tycoons like J.P. Morgan, Collis P. Huntington (railroads) and John D. Rockefeller.

 In 1911 he met Julius Rosenwald, the philanthropy-minded president of Sears, Roebuck & Company. The two shared a passion for the education of poor blacks in the rural South, and put together a scheme to offer matching funds for the construction of rural schools.

Washington died of hypertension in 1915 at age 59, but Rosenwald continued the program, eventually contributing $4 million towards the construction of more than 5,000 schools, shops and teacher’s homes throughout the South.

Now Booker T. Washington’s approach to solving the race problem in America was sharply criticized by another famous black leader of that time.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.

Du Bois repudiated what he called “The Atlanta Comprise” in a chapter of his famous 1903 book, “The Souls of Black Folk.”

Dubois attacked Washington’s  views and accused him of abandoning the fight for black political rights and accepting segregation in exchange for economic gains to support his schools.

His opposition to Washington’s views on race inspired the Niagara Movement (1905-1909).

The Niagara Movement was a civil-rights group founded in 1905 near Niagara Falls where Du Bois gathered with supporters on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls to form an organization dedicated to social and political change for African Americans.

Its list of demands included an end to segregation and discrimination in unions, the courts, and public accommodations, as well as equality of economic and educational opportunity.

Although the Niagara Movement had little impact on legislative action, its ideals led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Dubois became editor for its newsletter titled “The Crisis”.

It is interesting to note that unlike Booker T. Washington, Dubois was born a free man.

He was of French, Dutch, and African heritage.

He was extremely well educated. He graduated from Fisk University and Harvard and did graduate studies in Europe.

As such, he felt blacks should be given a full education, not just trade school, which is what Tuskegee was providing.

He went on to say that full blown protest was the only way blacks would ever gain respect in America.

Dubois’ approach was a major step on the road to black militancy.

Despite their differences, both Dubois and Washington agreed that blacks should cultivate middle class virtues of thrift, sobriety, orderliness, cleanliness, and morality.

The big difference  between the two men was, Dubois advocated agitation, Booker T. Washington pushed for accommodation.

So folks, I hope you can see that the issues we are facing today are not new. The purpose of my show today was twofold.

First, I wanted to show you that there are two sides to every story. That is why I oppose the 1619 project. History is not all one sided. Which brings me to my second point.

Today I introduced you to the history of two famous black men from our past with two entirely different viewpoints on how to deal with the very issues we are struggling with today.

Where did I come up with the idea? You guessed it, from my old, yellowed, notes that I prepared and used in my American History classes.

I did not present just the views of Booker T. Washington, nor did I ignore the thoughts of W.E.B. Dubois.

I provided an in-depth account of who both men were and what they stood for and opened up the classroom for discussion. I did not choose a side.  I just provided the facts and let the students come to their own conclusions.

That, my friends is what should be happening in our education system today.

The 1619 project totally ignores that teaching methodology, a system that has worked for over 2000 years.

According to the 1619 Project, America’s truefounding was when 20 to 30 enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, Va., leading to a “slavocracy” whose legacy of racism and oppression has been encoded in the nation’s DNA.

The 1619 Project is the work of the New York Times’ creative team led by Nikole Hannah-Jones, an award-winning journalist, who in 2017 received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant for her reporting about segregation and racism in America’s educational systems.

Hannah-Jones, who suggested the 1619 Project to her editors, oversaw its execution. She also wrote the lead essay, “The Idea of America,” which now famously asserts the United States’ founding ideals of equality and liberty, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, were a “lie” to the founders who created them, but ultimately realized by African Americans who embraced those ideals and fought for them, largely alone.

Hannah-Jones has spoken extensively about the 1619 Project in recent months. As the project’s chief ambassador, Hannah-Jones, has taken to Twitter to explain and defend it against detractors, as well as to challenge their motives and question their credentials.

On a national speaking tour, she has elaborated on the project’s intent and how it should be understood. Her message consistently aims to connect past to present, tracing a moral complicity that she says white America refuses to recognize.

“If you read the whole project, I don’t think you can come away from it without understanding the project is an argument for reparations,” she told the Chicago Tribune in October.

On the Karen Hunter talk program in December, she expounded on that theme.

“You cannot read the entire magazine and not come away understanding that a great debt is owed and it’s time for this country to pay,” she said. “When my editor asks me, like, what’s your ultimate goal for the project, my ultimate goal is that there’ll be a reparations bill passed.”

Now regardless of your opinion on reparations, here is my greatest concern.

Since its publication in August of 2019, the 1619 Project has been adopted in more than 3,500 classrooms in all 50 states, according to the 2019 annual report of the Pulitzer Center, which has partnered with the Times on the project.

Five school systems, including Chicago and Washington, D.C., have adopted it district-wide.

Now folks, my students will tell you that I am not afraid to tackle controversial subjects. But when it comes to teaching pure propaganda to further a cause, count me out.

We talked about this several weeks ago when I warned you that online learning was taking the power away from our teachers in developing their own lesson plans.

Now I found a great article in the editorial section of The American Revolution Institute titled, The Revolutionary Dishonesty of the “1619 Project”

It states, The New York Times is engaged in a full-scale assault on the memory of the American Revolution, alleging—without foundation and over the objections of some of the country’s leading historians—that the aim of the Revolution was to perpetuate slavery.

It goes on to say the “1619 Project,” is an interpretation of American history as a tale of racial oppression and criminal exploitation, conceived by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a journalist who demonstrates no acquaintance with scholarship and less regard for honesty.

What began as a series of essays in The New York Times Magazine has been reconfigured as a series of lessons to be distributed, free, to teachers anxious to help their students understand the protests and riots we are currently experiencing in major cities throughout the U.S.

The editors of The New York Times, demonstrating no more regard for truth than Ms. Hannah-Jones, are working to make sure their destructive falsehoods about the American Revolution get taught to students in every school in the country.

The American Revolution was not conducted to defend slavery.

The Revolution secured our independence, established our republic, created our national identity and committed our nation to ideals of liberty, equality, natural and civil rights, and responsible citizenship.

It expressed ideals fundamentally at odds with slavery, and set that terrible practice on the path to extinction.

Opposition to slavery was rarely expressed prior to the American Revolution. The Revolution threw slavery on the defensive. Its commitment to universal natural rights inspired the growth of abolitionism across the Atlantic world.

In fact, the British abolitionist movement took off after the American Revolution, drawing inspiration from the principles of the American Revolution and the abolition of slavery in the northern states.

Brilliant scholars—men and women of good will at the forefront of the history profession—have called on the New York Times to correct its errors.

Those scholars want Americans to understand the history of slavery and racism and their influence today, but insist that the cause of social justice is not served by making false claims about the American Revolution or other periods of American history.

The New York Times has ignored them and persists in its grotesque attempt to recast the American Revolution as a sinister movement and the revolutionaries as monsters whose primary aim was to perpetuate slavery.

The editors of the newspaper and their allies are now promoting lesson plans to spread their unfounded assertions, banking on the newspaper’s vast circulation and even wider reach to persuade young Americans to despise the men and women who secured our national independence and created our republic.

Ms. Hannah-Jones, whose previous work includes  praise of Castro’s regime in Cuba, has expressed delight at the looting and vandalism that has swept the country which she is happy to call the “1619 riots.”

She’s made it clear that historical understanding is of no concern to her. Her aim is to persuade Americans to hate the nation’s founders as a step toward dismantling their work.

No American—least of all teachers and their students—should embrace this crude, distorted interpretation of our shared history.

The American Revolution challenged a world that was profoundly unfree.

The principle of natural rights asserted by the Revolution led ultimately to the overthrow of slavery and now challenges every form of oppression, exploitation, bigotry and injustice.

The ideals of the American Revolution empower us to hunt down and destroy human trafficking and every other vestige of slavery in the world today.

The American Revolution was the most important moment in modern history, and its ideals are still the last, best hope of our world, where too many are still denied their natural rights.

The New York Times asks Americans to reject the Revolution and claims that the men and women who sacrificed, struggled and died for American independence are unworthy of our respect.

As teachers get ready for the fall, thousands will be tempted to make use of the 1619 Project curriculum offered online by the Pulitzer Center, which has formed a partnership with the New York Times to distribute lesson plans built around the essays in the 1619 Project.

Teachers and school administrators should resist this temptation, since academic reviewers, including some of the nation’s leading historians, have been unyielding in their criticism of the 1619 Project, pointing to numerous errors of fact and interpretation and rejecting its fundamental claim that the nation is defined by racism and was conceived in oppression.

  There are better ways to teach students about the history and ordeal of slavery—an important subject that deserves our finest efforts.

The radical ideologues promoting Nikole Hannah-Jones’ grotesque view of America aren’t after the mature readers of the Atlantic or the Wall Street Journal.

Despite their recent, rapid gains, they’re sticking to the long game they’ve been playing for decades, going after young, impressionable minds. Their method is not to persuade. It is to propagandize.

Their method has been working for some forty years.

The simplicity of the radical lesson plan—a bipolar world of oppressors and oppressed, without the complexity or confusing contradictions of a more nuanced, realistic, view of the past—appeals to many young people.

It also simplifies the task of overburdened teachers faced with the challenge of equipping students to interpret a complex and confusing world.

But the fact remains that history is complicated and requires patient study, a willingness to weigh and assess confusing, fragmentary, and sometimes contradictory evidence, and the sophistication to understand that historical events and actors are shaped by many factors, of which race, while often important, is only one.

The 1619 Project curriculum is actually worse than the dishonest and deceptive material on which it is based.

 A mature adult reader of the 1619 Project may be equipped to apply critical thinking to its claims—particularly Hannah-Jones’ claim that the purpose of the American Revolution was to perpetuate slavery.

But we cannot reasonably expect middle school and high school students, to whom we ought to be teaching critical thinking skills, to bring the same kind of skepticism to their reading of works we assign them.

The 1619 Project curriculum goes out of its way to avoid a critical reading of Hannah-Jones central claims.

It expects students to accept her conclusions about the nature of American history and culture without critical inquiry and asks them to regard the world around them from Hannah-Jones’ perspective, rather than treat Hannah-Jones as one of many interpreters, much less recognize her as a journalist with no credentials or standing as an historian.

The premise of the 1619 curriculum is that the defining feature of American history and culture is racism.

The exercises that make up this curriculum are all based on this premise. None of those exercises invite students to challenge the premise.

 Every exercise involves asking students a loaded question—a question that presupposes the relevant facts and serves the questioner’s agenda.

“What examples of hypocrisy in the founding of the United States does Hannah-Jones supply?” is the lead—and leading—question. That the founding of the United States was an exercise in hypocrisy is taken for granted—because Hannah-Jones says so.

The follow-up question is contorted to require students to recapitulate Hannah-Jones’ errors about the Revolution as if they were facts: “What evidence can you see for how ‘some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slaveocracy’?”

Indeed in the current cultural climate, a student brave enough to challenge the Hannah-Jones premise is quite likely to be accused of being a racist—the fastest route to such a charge at this time being to challenge the thesis that something called “systemic racism” is the defining characteristic of American history and culture.

A generation of historians from Edmund S. Morgan and Bernard Bailyn, to Gordon S. Wood have made clear, the American Revolution was a pivotal moment in the development of human freedom. Under no circumstances do the creators of the 1619 Project curriculum suggest students entertain this possibility.

Gordon Wood, a leading historian of the American Revolution and emeritus professor at Brown University, in a recent article told RealClearInvestigations the Times material “is full of falsehoods and distortions.”

In its current form, without corrections, which the Times has declined to run, the only way to use it in the classroom, he said, would be “as a way of showing how history can be distorted and perverted.”

So there you have it folks. I encourage you to do your own research on the 1619 Project. I have tried to find out if it is being included in our local schools, but have been unsuccessful.

Bottom line, I am totally opposed to its inclusion.

The Tocqueville Review is a French-American bilingual journal devoted to the comparative study of social change, primarily in Europe and the United States.

Isolation, Loneliness, and Solitude: Hannah Arendt’s Triumvirate

by Jennifer Stitt

After months of collectively weathering crisis after crisis, so many of us have felt unmoored. There’s so much uncertainty surrounding our current moment. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, and scientists don’t yet fully understand the novel coronavirus. America is mired in an ongoing economic crisis.

Mass protests over racial inequality and violence have swept the nation, drawing public attention to our broken political systems and institutions. We’re grappling with the erosion of American democracy itself.

The only certain outcome appears to be mass illness and death from Covid-19. We are indeed living in what the German-Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt called “dark times.”

 Arendt is one of those writers, who simply reminds us to stop and “think what we are doing.” If, as she put it, “even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination,” then her ideas about solitude, loneliness, and the human condition help shed light on our common world. 

Hannah Arendt  knew what it felt like to be lonely.

For eighteen years, Arendt was a stateless person. In 1933, she was arrested by the Gestapo and detained for eight days for conducting illegal research for a Zionist organization.

After her release, she immediately fled Nazi Germany. Unanchored, seeking safe harbor, Arendt drifted around Europe for eight years, spending time in Prague, Geneva, and Paris.

She was held for nearly six weeks in an internment camp in Gurs before narrowly escaping to Montauban, then Lisbon, and ultimately to New York City in 1941.

Arendt finally found refuge in the United States, but it would be another ten years before she received American citizenship. Her itinerant existence was, at times, isolating and lonely.

But she maintained “a little solidarity” with others who had experienced exile from Europe, and in a letter to her mentor and friend, Karl Jaspers, she wrote that without that solidarity, “every last one of us would simply have gone under.”

 Objecting to the term “refugee,” Arendt preferred the language of “statelessness,” “uprootedness,” or “homelessness.”

From her perspective, refugees were people “driven to seek refuge because of some act committed or some political opinion held.” But while Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis were indeed forced to seek refuge, they had “committed no acts,” as she put it, nor “dreamt of having any radical opinion”—they were persecuted, in other words, not for what they said or did but for who they were.

With a great deal of grit and good fortune, she escaped with her life, but she lost nearly everything. “We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life,”.

 We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this world. We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings. We left our relatives in the Polish ghettos and our best friends have been killed in concentration camps, and that means the rupture of our private lives.

 Those experiences fundamentally shaped Arendt’s ideas about isolation (Isolation), loneliness (Verlassenheit), and solitude (Einsamkeit)—the triumvirate that would be at the heart of much of her subsequent thinking.

 

In one of her formative essays, “Ideology and Terror” (1953), Arendt distinguished isolation from loneliness. Isolation was a kind of paralysis that threatened political life by making it impossible for individuals to come together, to act in concert, to pursue a common concern.

Now think about this folks in terms of our current situation under pandemic restrictions. Arendt stated, “Destructive of power and the capacity for action,” isolation was pre-totalitarian, a state of aloneness that prepared the soil for the growth of tyrannical government. “Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it is always its result,” she wrote.

Could this be a reason we continue to see a push to keep us isolated during this pandemic?

Feeling helpless was a distinctive feature of isolation, since “power always comes from men acting together” and “isolated men are powerless by definition.” Once isolation took root, terror alienated the helpless individual from the shared world, from her fellow human beings, by using lies and propaganda to remake reality and rewrite history and by preventing collective action.

Isolation and terror transformed the public sphere into an unrecognizable, unmapped wilderness.

 “Deserted by all human companionship,” deserted even by herself, the lonely individual was left  feeling that she “had no place in the world.” If isolation concerned only the political sphere, loneliness concerned “human life as a whole,” and was the hallmark of totalitarian government.

The peculiar thing about totalitarianism, as Arendt understood it, was that it destroyed both public and private life, leaving the lonely individual politically and existentially homeless.  As a stateless person, Arendt learned that lonely people are abandoned people who don’t belong “to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.”

Arendt was immune to a blind faith in the democratic promise. She had lived through the Weimar period, she had witnessed the rot and ruination of Western institutions, and because of that experience, she understood that even democracies like America were not inoculated against totalitarian temptations.

Today, in the midst of a global pandemic, we have found ourselves physically cut off from one another, forced into varying degrees of social distancing and isolation.

Many of us have felt helpless, unable to act to alter our circumstances. Many of us have felt uprooted from our regular routines and alienated from our shared world. Many of us are lonely. And what Arendt illuminates for us in this moment ought to serve as a warning: in non-totalitarian societies, it is loneliness that prepares people for totalitarian domination.

What perpetuates such tyrannical regimes, Arendt argues, is manipulation by isolation — something most effectively accomplished by the divisiveness of “us vs. them” narratives. She writes:

Terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other… Therefore, one of the primary concerns of all tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about.

Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certainly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result.

This isolation is, as it were, pretotalitarian; its hallmark is impotence insofar as power always comes from men acting together…; isolated men are powerless by definition.

Although isolation is not necessarily the same as loneliness, Arendt notes that loneliness can become both the seedbed and the perilous consequence of the isolation effected by tyrannical regimes.

In isolation when the most elementary form of human creativity, which is the capacity to add something of one’s own to the common world, is destroyed, isolation becomes altogether unbearable… Isolation then becomes loneliness.

While isolation concerns only the political realm of life, loneliness concerns human life as a whole. Totalitarian government, like all tyrannies, certainly could not exist without destroying the public realm of life, that is, without destroying, by isolating men, their political capacities.

But totalitarian domination as a form of government is new in that it is not content with this isolation and destroys private life as well. It bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man.

I found an article by Rod Dreher  a senior editor at The American Conservative that explores this concept further.

In 1951, Hannah Arendt published The Origins Of Totalitarianism, a detailed study of why, in the twentieth century, nations had succumbed to Fascism and Communism.

Though the two totalitarian systems were at opposite ideological poles, both emerged from similar social and political conditions, Arendt found – conditions that are strikingly present in America today. Among them:

Loneliness and social atomization. Totalitarian movements, said Arendt, are “mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals.”

“What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world,” she continued. “is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.”

She wrote those words in the early 1950s.

This past January, before the long Covid-19 emergency, health insurer Cigna released results of a survey finding that 61 percent of Americans consider themselves to be lonely. Young Americans are far lonelier than the old: seven in ten Millennials call themselves lonely, with nearly eight in 10 (79 percent) of Gen Zers self-diagnosing as such.

Loss of faith in hierarchies and institutions. Loneliness is politically significant because it leaves the masses hungry for a sense of community. In a healthy society, an individual could find fellowship and common purpose through the institutions of civil society – political parties, churches, civic clubs, sports leagues, and the like.

But Americans have been dropping out of mediating institutions steadily since the 1960s. Meanwhile trust in basic institutions – political, media, religious, legal, medical, and so forth – is at dramatic lows.

Young adults under 40 are the most religiously unaffiliated generation in American history, and though strongly liberal and Democratic in their political preferences, are also the least likely to embrace a political party.

In Europe of the 1920s, said Arendt, the first indication of the coming totalitarianism was the failure of established parties to attract younger members, and the willingness of the passive masses to consider radical alternatives to discredited establishment parties.

Socialism is still fairly opposed among Generation X and older Americans, but those who came of age after the Cold War feel much more warmly towards the radical left.

Embracing transgressiveness. In both pre-Bolshevik Russia and pre-Nazi Germany, elites reveled in acts of rebellion that made fun of traditions and standards, moral and otherwise (Tearing down statues?). They also took pleasure in overturning institutions and established practices.

“The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of civilization, for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way into it,” wrote Arendt.

Her words apply with eerie similarity to the upheaval on today’s university campuses, within the media, and elite culture in general.

Susceptibility to propaganda and ideology. Whether out of cynicism or misplaced idealism, the willingness to surrender one’s moral responsibility to be honest for the sake of a politically useful narrative opened the door to tyranny.

In pre-totalitarian nations, wrote Arendt, hating “respectable society” was so narcotic that elites were willing to accept “monstrous forgeries in historiography” for the sake of striking back at those who, in their view, had “excluded the underprivileged and oppressed from the memory of mankind.” Does this sound familiar?

One considers the New York Times’s Pulitzer-winning “1619 Project,” which declares that the United States was founded for the purpose of defending slavery. Despite heavy criticism, even from historians of the left, the 1619 Project has been adapted for thousands of classrooms, and optioned by Oprah Winfrey and Lionsgate studios for television and film projects.

Valuing loyalty over competence.  “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first- rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intellect and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty,” wrote Arendt.

All politicians prize loyalty, but few would regard it as the most important quality in government, and even fewer would admit it. But President Donald Trump is a rule- breaker in many ways. He once said, “I value loyalty above everything else— more than brains, more than drive, and more than energy.”

This statement by Trump pushed liberals over the edge. But how can liberals complain? Loyalty to the group or the tribe is at the core of leftist identity politics. This is at the root of “cancel culture,” in which those who oppose it, however minor their infractions, find themselves cast into outer darkness.

Hannah Arendt said “Totalitarianism is what happens when the elite gets together with the mob”. It’s happening worldwide.

Arendt believed that a society in which individuals are disconnected from each other is most vulnerable to totalitarian leaders.

“When people are atomized, a movement or a strongman arises and he offers a story or an ideology which claims to explain everything, why people are unhappy,” stated  Robert Eaglestone in a recent article in “Our Times”. “This story becomes more and more powerful. You can’t argue with people who become Nazis or Stalinists because there’s only one way to think.”

So, based on what I have shared with you today, I think you can begin to see how the current isolationism we have experienced as a result of the pandemic has contributed to the chaos we are seeing in our cities.

Was Hannah Arendt right. Does loneliness lead to authoritarianism.

What comes next? Let me leave you with a quote by French philosopher Gustav Lebon, author of “The Crowd”.

What motivates individuals to join a crowd?

When an individual lives his life as an individual – that is, when he forced to take responsibility for his life – he is apt to feel a crushing burden and sense of impotence he can’t seem to shake.

In joining a crowd or a mass movement, the individual is temporarily relieved of this responsibility and sense of impotence, and comes to feel that he is capable of shaking the foundations of the earth:

“In crowds the foolish, ignorant, and envious persons are freed from the sense of their insignificance and powerlessness, and are possessed instead by the notion of brutal and temporary but immense strength.”

OK folks, let’s take our eyes off of all the troubles at home with the riots, political mudslinging, and Covid 19.

I know what you are thinking. Why would professor Pasley not do his show on one of those items. They are all over the news.

The answer is simple my friends. History.

What if I told you that throughout history, the times that countries are most vulnerable are those times of internal strife?

You see, while a country finds itself dealing with internal strife, its enemies look upon them as being at their weakest.

Don’t believe me? Here is a short list.

The Czar of Russia, Nichols Romanov found himself dealing with student protests and riots in the streets throughout Russia in 1917. What happened? Vladimir Illyich Ulanov, Lenin stepped in and helped organize the protestors which eventually led to the communist takeover of Russia.

How about Germany? After WWI, the people of Germany felt they had been sold out by the government and blamed their leaders for the defeat of their country in the war. In addition, their economy was suffering from massive inflation. What happened? People took to the streets and rioted. Adolph Hitler stepped in, just like Lenin and organized his National Socialist Party, the Nazis, and led the rioters in the overthrow of the Weimar Republic of Germany. You know what happened from there.

Meanwhile in Italy, people organized riots in an attempt to overthrow the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel. The rioters were socialists wanting to create a socialist government in Italy. What happened? An opposing political party led by Benito Mussolini, went to the King and said if he gave Mussolini’s party access to the military, he would put down the socialist rebellion. The King agreed and Mussolini now took to the streets with his fascist party, bombed socialist headquarters, and gunned down socialist protestors. Once the socialists were defeated, Mussolini went to the king and told him that he would be allowed to remain as king, but Mussolini would now run the country.

Now let’s look at Spain. Prior to the outbreak of WWII Spain found itself with riots in the streets. The people wanted a socialist government instead of a king and took to the streets. However, just like Italy, a new party emerged led by fascist dictator Francisco Franco, who had the backing of the military of Spain. Seeing the chaos in Spain, Hitler and Mussolini sent troops and air support to Franco who won the Spanish Civil War and created a dictatorship that he ran until 1975.

Let me give you one more example. China. At the onset of WWII China was experiencing extreme internal strife. On one side you had the ruling class of warlords descended from the old Samurai class who were ruling with an iron fist. The people revolted and took to the streets led by a fellow named Sun Yat Sen who wanted a representative form of government  not unlike that of England. As the civil war in China escalated, Japan, seeing its opportunity, invaded Manchuria, Northern China, and from there, launched an all out war on the Chinese people. We know what happened from that point.

So have I made my point? See now why I keep trying to inform you all of what is happening in the rest of the world.

Folks, every day we continue with our internal strife, the rest of the world is watching and feeling more empowered.

Think about it. Over the past three years we have heard Russia, Russia, Russia when it came to the impeachment hearings. Yet Russia really was for the most part out of the news cycle.

Now all of a sudden we sit here and self destruct. Look at recent events involving Russia.

Let’s start with Belarus.

Belarus was the hardest hit country proportionately during World War Two.

It’s thought that the country lost about 25% of its population during World War Two, when Nazi Germany invaded the USSR.

More than 1.6 million civilians and 600,000 Soviet soldiers died in Belarus during the war, including almost the entire Jewish population.

About 85% of the capital Minsk was destroyed in bombing raids and was rebuilt in the 1950s and 60s.

After seven decades as a soviet state in the USSR, Belarus attained its independence in 1991.

It was one of the original 15 soviet states making up the former USSR

(Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine etc. with Russia being the largest of the 15 states).

It has retained closer political and economic ties to Russia than have any of the other former Soviet states.

Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for a two-state union on December 8,  1999 envisioning greater political and economic integration.

Since his election in July 1994 as the country’s first and only directly elected president, Aleksandr LUKASHENKO has steadily consolidated his power through authoritarian means and a centralized economic system.

Government restrictions on political and civil freedoms, freedom of speech and the press, peaceful assembly, and religion have remained in place.

Needless to say, the people of Belarus are not happy about this.

Official results say President  Lukashenko won his election with more than 80% of the vote.

However, no observers were present, leading to fears of vote-rigging. The main challenger Svetlana Tikhanovskaya (tea-con-off -sky-ya) has refused to accept the outcome.

Mr Lukashenko once warned that anyone joining an opposition protest would be treated as a “terrorist”, adding: “We will wring their necks, as one might a duck.”

Human rights groups have accused him of widespread abuses.

According to a recent article in the BBC, Europe’s longest-serving ruler, President Lukashenko has been in charge of Belarus for 26 years, coming to power in 1994 amid the chaos caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Often described as Europe’s “last dictator”, he has tried to preserve elements of Soviet communism.

Much of manufacturing has remained under state control, and main media channels have been loyal to the government. The powerful secret police is even still called the KGB.

At the same time Mr Lukashenko has tried to style himself as a tough nationalist with a direct manner, defending his country from harmful foreign influences, and a guarantor of stability.

The opposition protests have been fuelled by complaints about widespread corruption and poverty, a lack of opportunities and low pay. Dissatisfaction was compounded by the coronavirus crisis.

Tens of thousands have again taken to the streets in Belarus, facing off against riot police to protest against President Lukashenko.

A huge police presence cordoned off areas such as Independence Square in the capital, Minsk, and the interior ministry reported at least 140 arrests.

Protesters chanted “disgrace” and “leave” in standoffs with police.

Mr Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years, has said he has no intention of stepping down and denies electoral fraud.

Reporting at the height of the protests, the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg in Minsk said there were far more police than on the past two Sundays when similar rallies were held. Some protesters lay down on the road to try to prevent riot police from moving, with others chanting “disgrace” and “go away”.

Some mocked Mr Lukashenko on his 66th birthday, carrying a cockroach puppet and chanting “happy birthday, you rat”.

Many streets were blocked off by police to try to prevent people reaching the main protest areas.

Journalists continue to face issues reporting the unrest. On Saturday, the authorities withdrew the accreditation of 17 reporters, most of them Belarusian citizens who have been reporting for foreign media outlets.

Two journalists with the BBC’s Russian service were among those affected. In a statement, the BBC said it condemned “in the strongest possible terms this stifling of independent journalism”.

What happens next in Belarus depends on many things: on the determination of protesters to keep taking to the streets; on whether Mr Lukashenko’s security forces stay loyal to him; and on decisions taken to the East – in the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin has already made it clear he’s keeping a close eye on events in Belarus.

Russian President Vladimir Putin telephoned Mr Lukashenko on his birthday and reportedly invited him to visit Moscow.

It appeared to be the latest sign of Kremlin support for a president who has not always been seen positively by Russia.

But Mr Putin has said he has formed a police reserve force to intervene in Belarus if necessary, although “it won’t be used until the situation gets out of control”.

To me, this sounds pretty familiar to events we have seen throughout history.

Could Putin be sitting on the sidelines waiting for things to get out of control like Japan did with China?

Let’s turn to one more recent Associated Press story.

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (Na val knee) is in a coma and on a ventilator in a hospital intensive care unit after a suspected poisoning his supporters believe is tied to his anti-Kremlin activism.

An outspoken critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Navalny was returning to Moscow by plane from Siberia when he fell ill, prompting the captain to make an emergency landing in Omsk, where he was taken to a hospital. A mobile video shot on the plane showed medical personnel rushing onboard as Navalny screamed in agony.

The 44-year-old’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh told the Echo of Moscow radio station that Navalny had begun sweating and then lost consciousness shortly after take-off.

“I am sure this was deliberate poisoning,” she said, added that she suspected a cup of black tea he drank at an airport cafe was the source. She tied the alleged poisoning to upcoming elections in the Siberian regions they had visited.

If confirmed as a poison attack, it would be the latest in a series of high-profile assaults, often with poison, against opposition figures and Russian dissidents.

So who is Alexei Navalny?

“There was always a worry [about an attack] because Navalny has been the main opponent of Putin and the main opponent of the Kremlin,” said Lyubov Sobol, an ally and lawyer at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Even as he lay in a coma in hospital, there were signs of pressure on the opposition leader’s family members and political allies. Hospital officials had initially barred Navalny’s wife and a personal doctor from visiting him.

Hospital staff had also refused to show them the results of tests that would indicate a poisoning, she said. Investigators who said they wanted to check for medicines or other potential toxins had also seized his belongings, she said.

The German organization Cinema for Peace Foundation said it was sending an air ambulance to pick up Navalny on Thursday evening and take him to Germany, where it said Berlin’s Charité hospital was ready to treat him. Supporters had earlier in the day indicated that they wanted to move Navalny abroad for treatment but it was not clear whether Russian authorities would allow it.

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that there would have to be test results before an investigation into poisoning could be opened. Peskov told journalists that he would provide help to have Navalny transferred abroad, if asked. “Just like any citizen of our country, we wish him a speedy recovery,” he said.

Navalny, who has campaigned against Putin’s rule for years, was travelling through several cities in Siberia to back candidates he supports in local elections involving 40 million voters next month. He posed with supporters for a photograph from Tomsk posted on Wednesday, calling for more volunteers. “These crooks won’t kick themselves out of office,” he wrote.

He may also have been gathering information for an investigation into local United Russia politicians, the local news site Tayga.Info reported. Revelations of corruption in his investigations into senior members of the Russian government have fuelled street protests and provoked angry threats from powerful officials.

“There is no doubt that Navalny was poisoned for his political position and activity,” said Vyacheslav (Vash es slav) Gimadi, the head of the legal department of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Interestingly, Navalny has noted with enthusiasm the protests in Belarus against its president, Alexander Lukashenko.

In a recent appearance on his YouTube channel, Navalny spoke of how successful strikes by key workers in Belarus had forced authorities to start engaging with protesters.

Now folks, you may think I am way off base here. But here we have people fighting for freedom in both Belarus and Russia. Meanwhile, the US is dealing with one of the nastiest political campaigns in our history, a worldwide pandemic, and rioting in our streets.

Do you really think that Putin and Lukashenko believe America will put all our problems on hold to come to the aid of the the people of Belrus and Russia?

All you have to do is look at the history.

OK folks, here we go. I am going to tackle a very controversial subject today. Online learning.

With all the Covid 19 controversy taking place in our nation today, the schools from K thru 12 as well as colleges and universities have turned to online learning.

At first glance it looks like a great idea. But let me in on a little secret. Academia has been pushing for online learning for years. I experienced it first hand during my teaching career.

I have a real problem with it and I spoke up and said so at the time.

The response was, “You need to get with the times”, “Your teaching methods are old and outdated”, “Kids today prefer online learning”, “If you cannot accept the change in the way courses are taught, maybe it is time for you to retire”.

Well, let me tell you what is really happening.

In the old days, teachers were hired for their knowledge and expertise. They chose the textbooks they used and developed the lesson plans for their students. Not anymore.

The first step in the academic takeover was by the big publishing companies and the powers that be in our education system.

These publishing companies hold huge influence over the education system and vice versa. Billions of dollars change hands based on books sales.

Check it out. The majority of textbooks being used in our schools and colleges are published by just a handful of major publishers.

So what happens when a teacher is told it is mandatory that they must use a history textbook that starts with the opening sentence, “Our country was founded by white, slave holding, imperialists.”

That teacher has a choice to make. Teach using the book provided, or find another job. With online courses, teachers will lose complete control of the content of their lesson plans.

It is not just history courses. It is, and has been happening across the curriculum for years. I don’t blame the teachers at all. They are victims of big money influence by national publishers and far left academic administrations.

Publishers are in it for the money. They don’t care what the book says. They just want the exclusive contract for the sale of millions of textbooks.

Now it is this secret that has forced many good teachers out of the profession and allowed the far left to indoctrinate our kids.

There I said it. I can. Current teachers cannot for fear of losing their livelihood.

I know what you are thinking. Wow, Professor Pasley is just a bitter old man with an axe to grind.

Think  about this. If everything goes online, how much control will the teachers have as far as textbooks used and lesson plan development. Not to mention personal interaction with the students?

Don’t take my word for it folks, let’s look at some recent articles I pulled from the past week’s research.

Let’s start with an article by Walter E. Williams, a professor of economics at George Mason University in The Daily Wire.

He states, parents, legislators, taxpayers and others footing the bill for college education might be interested in just what is in store for the upcoming academic year.

Since many college classes will be online, there is a chance to witness professors indoctrinating their students in real-time.

To see recent examples of campus nonsense and indoctrination, visit the Campus Reform and College Fix websites.

George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley warned congressional lawmakers that antifa is “winning” and that much of academia, whether wittingly or unwittingly, is complicit in its success.

In his testimony before Congress Turley said: “To Antifa, people like me are the personification of the classical liberal view of free speech that perpetuates a system of oppression and abuse. I wish I could say that my view remains strongly implanted in our higher educational institutions. However, you are more likely to find public supporters for restricting free speech than you are to find defenders of free speech principles on many campuses.”

The leftist bias at our schools has many harmful effects. A University of California, Davis, mathematics professor faced considerable backlash over her opposition to the requirement for “diversity statements” from potential faculty.

Those seeking employment at the University of California, San Diego, are required to admit that “barriers” prevent women and minorities from full participation in campus life.

At American University, a history professor wrote a book calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. A Rutgers University professor said, “Watching the Iowa Caucus is a sickening display of the over-representation of whiteness.”

A Williams College professor has advocated for the inclusion of social justice in math textbooks. Students at Wayne State University are no longer required to take a single math course to graduate; however, they may soon be required to take a diversity course.

Maybe some students will be forced into sharing the vision of Professor Laurie Rubel, a math education professor at Brooklyn College. She says the idea of cultural neutrality in math is a “myth,” and that asking whether 2 plus 2 equals 4 “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.

Math professors and academics at other universities, including Harvard and the University of Illinois, discussed the “Eurocentric” roots of American mathematics.

 

Rutgers University’s English department chairwoman, Rebecca Walkowitz, announced changes to the Department’s graduate writing program emphasizing “social justice” and “critical grammar.”

Remember what I told you. As a teacher, you either accept this, or you are gone.

Then there is the nonsense taught on college campuses about white privilege. The idea of white privilege doesn’t explain why several historically marginalized groups outperform whites today.

For example, Japanese Americans suffered under the Alien Land Law of 1913 and other racist, exclusionary laws legally preventing them from owning land and property in more than a dozen American states until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

During World War II, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned. However, by 1959, the income disparity between Japanese Americans and white Americans had almost disappeared.

Today, Japanese Americans outperform white Americans by large margins in income statistics, education outcomes and test scores, and have much lower incarceration rates.

According to Rav Arora, writing for the New York Post, several black immigrant groups such as Nigerians, Trinidadians and Tobagonians, Barbadians and Ghanaians all “have a median household income well above the American average.”

The bottom line is that more Americans need to pay attention to the miseducation of our youth and that miseducation is not limited to higher education.

A Tennessee school district is under fire for asking parents to sign a form agreeing not to eavesdrop on kids’ virtual classes over concerns they could overhear confidential information. What?!!!

After significant pushback, Rutherford County Schools is allowing parents to tune in with permission from the teacher but they can’t record the classes.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s so hypocritical because they’ve been data mining our children for years, compliments of common core,” Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, said on “Fox & Friends Weekend” Saturday.

“What are they trying to hide? What is the problem? Why won’t they let us sit in?” the home school mom of five asked.

“Obviously, because they are teaching our children propaganda that they should not be teaching,” she said. “They are trying to socialize our children.”

She added: “We have had a major problem in education, not just here in Tennessee, but across the country where they are indoctrinating our children with propaganda.”

Again folks, don’t get me wrong, I love teachers. However, they have been dealt a dirty hand. Teach this stuff or give up your calling in life.

Cardoza-Moore questioned why the school would encourage parents to snitch on one another and what would happen if a parent violates the waiver.

“Does that mean somebody from the school district is going to knock on my door and pull my kid out of my home, his virtual classroom?” she asked. “Or is it going to be my child won’t get to participate in education because I won’t sign the waiver even though it is my tax dollars that fund the school?”

The school district responded in a statement to Fox News.

“We are aware of the concern that has been raised about this distance-learning letter that was sent to parents,” James Evans, communications director for Rutherford County Schools, said.

Evans added: “We have issued new guidance to principles that parents can assist their children during virtual group lessons with permission of the instructor but should refrain from sharing or recordings any information about other students in the classroom.”

Cardoza-Moore said this is because teachers are pushing “social justice” instead of reading, writing and math, and they don’t want to be held accountable to the parents.

So, if everything goes online, what will our kids be taught?

Again, many people out there will say that this is just the ranting of a crazy old professor who is opposed to change.

Maybe so, but I struggle with throwing out a method of teaching that has worked for over 2000 years.

In the past, individual teachers were held accountable by their society, their government, and yes, their students.

The teachers of ancient Greece held classes and practiced the Socratic method of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions.

This type of education is silenced in our schools and colleges today for fear of offending someone with your questions or worse yet forcing you into silence for fear of being branded a radical conservative, racist, misogynist or any number of other labels, all of which can get you suspended or kicked out of school.

So the students and the teachers really have no choice. If you want to graduate, sit there and take it. Don’t ask questions. If you want to continue to teach, teach the info you are provided.

In my opinion, the Covid quarantine and forced online learning has given our education system exactly what they have always wanted. Complete control of the classroom at both the K thru 12 and college levels.

Last Thursday, Donald Trump announced the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Israel is also committing to not annexing the West Bank.

Now this is key folks, Saudi Arabia is not officially party to the agreement, but its relationship with the UAE is so close that we should assume that it  approved of the deal, and that the UAE will represent its interests in Israel.

So, I have a theory. I think everything we are seeing on the news is tied together and leading to major changes in the Middle East.

The explosion in Beirut, crippling Hezbollah, the Israeli/UAE agreement, and even the recent seizing of 4 Iranian tankers headed to Venezuela by the US .

But before we can get into the details, we first need to know who the players are.

The first thing my wife asked when the news broke about the agreement was, Who are the United Arab Emirates, are they the same as Saudi Arabia? The short answer is no. Saudi Arabia is a separate country from the UAE.

So exactly who are the United Arab Emirates?

How about a little history?

The United Arab Emirates is one of the Persian Gulf States, a desert country in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula with a coastline on the Persian Gulf (Arab Gulf) and the Gulf of Oman.

The UAE borders Oman and Saudi Arabia and is across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

The coastal region of UAE was known for a long time as the Pirate Coast. The seafaring inhabitants made a living by pirating trade vessels in the area. The loose federation of sheikdoms came under British administration in the mid 19th century, then known as the Trucial States until 1971, when they gained independence from the United Kingdom.

The UAE came into existence in December 1971 when six emirates formed a federation: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al-Quwain, and Fujairah; Ras Al Khaimah joined the alliance in 1972.

The United Arab Emirates is about the size of Austria, or slightly smaller than the US State of Maine.

The country consists mostly of barren landscape with the largest sand desert in the world. Along the coast stretches a strip of marshes, low-lying salt flats, lagoons, intertidal mudflats, and mangrove swamps.

What they do have is oil. Lots of it.

The emirate has a population of 9.3 million people. The capital city of the United Arab Emirates is Abu Dhabi and the largest city is Dubai.

The UAE did not experience the “Arab Spring” unrest seen elsewhere in the Middle East in 2010-11, partly because of the government’s multi-year, $1.6-billion infrastructure investment plan for the poorer northern emirates, and its aggressive pursuit of advocates of political reform.

The UAE in recent years has played a growing role in regional affairs. In addition to donating billions of dollars in economic aid to help stabilize Egypt.  The UAE was one of the first countries to join the Defeat-ISIS coalition, and to participate as a key partner in a Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen.

So let’s turn to the other party in the recent agreement, Israel.

The State of Israel was declared in 1948, after Britain withdrew from its mandate of Palestine which was established as a result of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI.

The UN proposed partitioning the area into Arab and Jewish states, and Arab armies that rejected the UN plan were defeated.

 

Israel was admitted as a member of the UN in 1949 and saw rapid population growth, primarily due to migration from Europe and the Middle East, over the following years.

Israel fought wars against its Arab neighbors in 1967 and 1973, followed by peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.

Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, and subsequently administered those territories through military authorities.

 Israel and Palestinian officials signed a number of interim agreements in the 1990s that created an interim period of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Prime Minister Benjamin NETANYAHU has led the Israeli Government since 2009.

Now to those opposed to the agreement. Number one on the opposition list is Palestine.

Palestine is a small region of land—roughly 2,400 square miles—that has played a prominent role in the ancient and modern history of the Middle East.

Violent attempts to control the land have defined much of the history of Palestine, making it the site of constant political conflict. Arab people who call this territory home are known as Palestinians, and the people of Palestine have a strong desire to create a free and independent state in a contested region of the world that’s considered sacred by many groups.

Until 1948, Palestine was typically referred to the geographic region located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Much of this land is now considered present-day Israel.

Today, Palestine theoretically includes the West Bank (a territory that divides modern-day Israel and Jordan) and the Gaza Strip (land bordering modern-day Israel and Egypt). However the borders aren’t formally set, and many areas claimed by Palestinians have been occupied by Israelis for years.

More than 135 United Nations member countries recognize Palestine as an independent state, but Israel and some other countries, including the United States, don’t agree..

Throughout history, Palestine has been ruled by numerous groups, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs,  Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians, Mamelukes and Islamists.

From about 1517 to 1917, the Ottoman Empire (Turks) ruled much of the region.

When World War I ended in 1918, the British took control of Palestine. The League of Nations issued a British mandate for Palestine—a document that gave Britain the responsibility of establishing a Jewish national homeland in Palestine—which went into effect in 1923.

In 1947, the United Nations proposed a plan to partition Palestine into two sections: an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state, with Jerusalem as internationalized territory.

Jewish leaders accepted the plan, but many Palestinian Arabs vehemently opposed it.

Arab groups argued that they represented the majority of the population in certain regions and should be granted more territory. They began to form volunteer armies throughout Palestine.

In May 1948, less than a year after the Partition of Palestine was introduced, Britain withdrew from Palestine and Israel became an independent state.

Estimates suggest between 700,000 and 900,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to leave their homes.

Almost immediately, war broke out between Jews and Arabs in the region. This is the conflict you still see today.

In 2006, Hamas, a Sunni Islamist militant group, won the Palestinian legislative elections.

Many countries consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization. The group has carried out suicide bombings and repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel.

So Palestinians say they are still fighting for an official state that’s formally recognized by all countries.

Although Palestinians occupy key areas of land, including the West Bank and the Gaza strip, large populations of Israelis continue to settle in these locations.

Many international rights groups consider these settlements illegal, the borders aren’t clearly defined, and persistent conflict continues to be the norm.

So let’s go back to the recent agreement.

It appears the United Arab Emirates are willing to cut a deal to bring an end to the Arab Israeli conflict and they have some confidence that Trump will give them the support necessary to withstand the opposition —foreign and domestic—that will arrive after their having apparently sold out the cause of Palestinian liberation.

What’s more, these monarchs’ eagerness to work with Israel is sincere. The UAE has not hated Israel the way other Arab states have.

The final consideration is that the majority of Middle East nations are Sunni Muslim.

It’s not known precisely how many of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are Shiites. The Shiites are a minority, making up between 10 percent and 15 percent of the Muslim population — certainly fewer than 250 million, all told.

The Shiites are concentrated in Iran, southern Iraq and southern Lebanon.

So the majority of Arab states hate Iran on religious grounds. They fear an Iran with nuclear weapons  would destroy not only Israel, but many of the Sunni Arab states if it had the chance.

The Trump administration’s hostility toward Iran (or more precisely, Barack Obama’s deal with Iran, which froze Iran’s nuclear program but guaranteed the survival of its regime) is a reassuring and fully supported by the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Some say that Trump announced the deal as a political move. You are right, but those who have the most to gain by this deal are the UAE and the Israelis. This deal is an insurance policy.

If Trump is defeated in November and Biden and Harris revert back to the policies under the Obama Administration concerning Iran, the UAE and Israel will be the biggest losers.

So let’s go back to my theory.

I think everything we are seeing on the news is tied together and leading to major changes in the Middle East.

The explosion in Beirut, crippling Hezbollah, the Israeli/UAE agreement, and even the recent seizing of 4 Iranian tankers headed to Venezuela by the US .

With the history I just provided, let’s ask some questions.

Who would benefit from a bomb blowing up in Beirut, Lebanon, leaving 250,000 homeless and bringing an end to a government led by Hezbollah, a group hell bent on destroying Israel.

Israel immediately said they had nothing to do with it.

However, President Trump stated he wasn’t sure it was an accident and that U.S. military leaders “seemed to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.”

Remember, Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon and became a vital asset to Iran.

 

Again, Hezbollah is a Shiite resistance movement (most Arab nations are Sunni), and stated its ideology in a 1985 manifesto that vowed to expel Western powers from Lebanon, called for the destruction of the Israeli state, and pledged allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader.

Hamas is a Sunni resistance movement based in Palestine but it shares the common goal with Hezbollah to destroy Israel.

So, the two groups share common tactics and common goals as well as the fact that both are backed by Iran. According to an Israeli military source, Hezbollah assists Hamas with bomb production. Can anyone say ammonium nitrate?

So back again to my theory. Without boots on the ground, Hezbollah has been dealt a devastating blow by the explosion in Beirut.

 As a result Hamas has lost a key ally, Syria has lost the support of a huge militant extremist group, and Iran has lost the effectiveness of  two branches of their terrorist networks, Hezbollah and Hamas.

While all this is taking place, the US seizes 4 Iranian tankers, further putting the squeeze on Iran by enforcing sanctions.

Then the final straw. The United Arab Emirates signs a deal with Israel signaling the movement by Sunni Arab nations to bring an end to the Arab Israeli conflict.

I don’t know, but it sure looks like Iran is having a bad day.

So what do you think folks. Is my theory just the crazy thoughts of a crazy old history professor?

Or is there something to the events we have recently witnessed in the middle east?

A pair of explosions rocked the Lebanese capital of Beirut  last Tuesday, leaving at least 200 people dead and more than 4,000 injured, according to figures supplied by the country’s health minister.

The damage to buildings was so widespread that an estimated 200,000 and 250,000 people have lost their homes, according to Beirut Governor Marwan Abboud.

The cause of the blasts is still undetermined, but Lebanese officials say it was accidental.

Abbas Ibrahim, Lebanon’s internal security chief, said the ferocity of the blasts was caused by the nearby presence of ammonium nitrate—a substance that is a common fertilizer but is also often used in bomb-making—which he said the government had confiscated from a ship in the city’s port several years ago.

According to Al Jazeera’s analysis of public records, “senior Lebanese officials knew for more than six years that the ammonium nitrate was stored in Hangar 12 of Beirut’s port,” and did not act to secure or remove it.

Despite the assessments given by Lebanese officials, some right-wing media outlets indirectly put the blame on the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, repeating reports that it housed some of its explosive material in the city.

Twitter was also initially abuzz with talk of the group’s indirect involvement. In a statement, Hezbollah did not confirm or deny accusations that it was involved. “We extend our condolences to the Lebanese people over this national tragedy,” the statement said.

Israel, which has sparred with Hezbollah in recent weeks and has carried out attacks in Beirut before, deflected blame. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an Israeli official said Israel “had nothing to do” with the explosion.

Not so sure. U.S. President Donald Trump departed from the line being followed by Lebanese officials, giving credence to rumors that the explosion was an intentional attack. He told reporters that U.S. military leaders “[seemed] to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.”

The explosion adds to a list of crises Lebanon has faced in the last several months. A wave of anti-government protests rocked the country late last year, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri and threatening to bring down the country’s entire government.

Despite restrictions imposed by the national lockdown, demonstrations have continued, creating an almost untenable situation for the government.

Lebanon is also in the throes of an economic disaster. The Lebanese lira has plunged, losing between 85 to 90 percent of its value since September, which helped to fuel the widespread feelings of discontent that led to the anti-government protests.

The resulting financial collapse has crippled the country’s economy, leading to soaring inflation, unemployment, and poverty. On Monday, Lebanese Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti resigned amid the deepening financial crisis. So how about a little history to better understand what is going on here.

Following World War I, France acquired a mandate over the northern portion of the former Ottoman Empire province of Syria. The French split off the region of Lebanon in 1920 and granted this area independence in 1943.

Since independence, the country has been marked by periods of political turmoil interspersed with prosperity built on its position as a regional center for finance and trade.

The country’s 1975-90 civil war, which resulted in an estimated 120,000 fatalities, was followed by years of social and political instability.

Neighboring Syria has historically influenced Lebanon’s foreign policy and internal policies, and its military occupied Lebanon from 1976 until 2005(remember, it was once a part of Syria).

The Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia and Israel continued attacks and counterattacks against each other after Syria’s withdrawal, and fought a brief war in 2006. Lebanon’s common borders with Syria and Israel remain unresolved.

Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon, where its extensive security apparatus, political organization, and social services network fostered its reputation as “a state within a state.”

Founded in the chaos of the fifteen-year Lebanese Civil War, the Iran-backed group is driven by its opposition to Israel and its resistance to Western influence in the Middle East.

With its history of carrying out global terrorist attacks, it has been designated as a terrorist group by the United States and many other countries.

In recent years, long-standing alliances with Iran and Syria have embroiled the group in the civil war in Syria, where its support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime has transformed Hezbollah into an increasingly effective military force.

As I said, Hezbollah emerged during Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war, which broke out in 1975 when long-simmering discontent over the large, armed Palestinian presence in the country reached a boiling point.

Under a 1943 political agreement, political power was divided among Lebanon’s predominant religious groups—a Sunni Muslim serves as prime minister, a Maronite Christian as president, and a Shiite Muslim as the speaker of parliament.

Tensions between these groups evolved into civil war as several factors upset the delicate balance. The Sunni Muslim population had grown with the arrival of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, while Shiite Muslims felt increasingly weakened by the ruling Christian minority.

Amid the infighting, Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982 to expel Palestinian guerrilla fighters that had been using the region as their base to attack Israel.

A group of Shiites influenced by the theocratic government in Iran took up arms against the Israeli occupation.

Seeing an opportunity to expand its influence in Arab states, Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) provided funds and training to the growing militia, which adopted the name Hezbollah, meaning “The Party of God.”

It earned a reputation for extremist militancy due to its frequent clashes with rival Shiite militias and attacks on foreign targets, including the 1983 suicide bombing of barracks housing U.S. and French troops in Beirut, in which more than three hundred people died.

Hezbollah now became a vital asset to Iran. Hezbollah bills itself as a Shiite resistance movement, and stated its ideology in a 1985 manifesto that vowed to expel Western powers from Lebanon, called for the destruction of the Israeli state, and pledged allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader.

Hezbollah has developed strong political and social arms in addition to its military operations. It has been a fixture of the Lebanese government since 1992, when eight of its members were elected to Parliament, and the party has held cabinet positions since 2005.

The most recent national elections, in 2018, granted Hezbollah thirteen seats in Lebanon’s 128-member Parliament.

Additionally, Hezbollah manages a vast network of social services that includes infrastructure, health-care facilities, schools, and youth programs, all of which have been instrumental in gaining support for Hezbollah from Shiite and non-Shiite Lebanese alike.

A 2014 report from the Pew Research Center found that 31 percent of Christians and 9 percent of Sunni Muslims held positive views of the group.

At the same time, Hezbollah maintains its military arm. Under the 1989 Taif Agreement, which was brokered by Saudi Arabia and Syria and ended Lebanon’s civil war, Hezbollah was the only militia allowed to keep its arms.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated in 2017 that the militia had up to ten thousand active fighters and some twenty thousand reserves, with an arsenal of small arms, tanks, drones, and various long-range rockets. A 2018 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies called it “the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor.”

Critics say Hezbollah’s existence violates UN Security Council Resolution 1559—adopted in 2004—which called for all Lebanese militias to disband and disarm.

The United Nations Force in Lebanon (UNFIL), first deployed in 1978 to restore the central government’s authority, remains in the country and part of its mandate is to encourage Hezbollah to disarm.

In October 2019, Hezbollah saw itself become a target of mass protests. Government mismanagement and years of slow growth have saddled Lebanon with one of the world’s highest public debt burdens, at 150 percent of its gross domestic product, and hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens disillusioned by the economic slump demanded the removal of what they see as a corrupt ruling elite.

Demonstrators called for the government, including Hezbollah, to cede power to a new, technocratic leadership. The months long protest movement has spanned religious backgrounds, and even Lebanese Shiites have openly criticized Hezbollah. These are the people you now see rioting in Lebanon following the explosion.

Israel is Hezbollah’s main enemy, dating back to Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 1978. Hezbollah has been blamed for attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets abroad, including the 1994 car bombings of a Jewish community center in Argentina, which killed eighty-five people, and the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in London.

Even after Israel officially withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, it continued to clash with Hezbollah.Periodic conflict between Hezbollah and Israeli forces escalated into a month long war in 2006, during which Hezbollah launched thousands of rockets into Israeli territory.

Hezbollah and Israel have yet to relapse into full-blown war, but the group reiterated its commitment to the destruction of the Israeli state in its 2009 manifesto.

In December 2018, Israel announced the discovery of miles of tunnels running from Lebanon into northern Israel that it claims were created by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has attacked Israel with sophisticated anti-ship and anti-armor weapons, which Western officials suspect are supplied by Iran.

Add to all this the fact that Hezbollah is a loyal ally of Syria, whose army occupied most of Lebanon during Lebanon’s civil war.

The Syrian government remained as a peacekeeping force in Lebanon until it was driven out in the 2005 Cedar Revolution, a popular protest movement against the foreign occupation.

Hezbollah had unsuccessfully pushed for Syrian forces to remain in Lebanon, and has since remained a stalwart ally of the Assad regime.

In return for Tehran’s and Hezbollah’s support, experts say, the Syrian government facilitates the transfer of weapons from Iran to the militia.

Hezbollah publicly confirmed its involvement in the Syrian Civil War in 2013, joining Iran and Russia in supporting the Syrian government against largely Sunni rebel groups.

More than seven thousand Hezbollah militants are estimated to have fought in the pro-Assad alliance.

U.S. policymakers see Hezbollah as a global terrorist threat. The United States designated Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.

In 2015, the U.S. Congress passed the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act, which sanctions foreign institutions that use U.S. bank accounts to finance Hezbollah.

 

So let’s go back to the explosion.The port in Lebanon was reduced to a deep crater surrounded by a smouldering wasteland, while buildings close to the point of origin of the explosion are severely damaged.

Windows are broken and walls caved in up to 5miles away, and the blast is heard across Lebanon and more than 200miles away in Cyprus.

Beirut’s governor, Marwan Abboud, estimates that up to $15 billion in damage has been done to the city and that 300,000 homes are damaged, many left uninhabitable.

The rebuilding needs of Lebanon are huge, but so is the question of how to ensure the millions of dollars promised in international aid is not diverted in a country notorious for missing money, invisible infrastructure projects and its refusal to open the books.

The port, site of the explosion that shattered Beirut, the center of Lebanon’s import-based economy, now sits in ruin.

Last Sunday’s international donor teleconference raised a total of $298 million in emergency aid, organizers said.

The conference was hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, who was mobbed last week by tearful victims of the Beirut ammonium nitrate explosion. The people begged him to ensure the corrupt government they blame for the blast that devastated the capital, does not profit from its destruction.

The French presidency said France contributed 35 million.

The head of the International Monetary Fund, which wants an audit of the national bank before handing over any money, was clear: No money without changes to ensure ordinary Lebanese people aren’t crushed by debt whose benefits they never see.

“Current and future generations of Lebanese must not be saddled with more debts than they can ever repay,” IMF head Kristalina Georgieva said during the conference. “Commitment to these reforms will unlock billions of dollars for the benefit of the Lebanese people.”

International leaders, government officials and international organizations participated Sunday in the teleconference co-organized by France and the United Nations to bring emergency aid to Lebanon, including President Donald Trump.

But Macron’s response to the crowd in Beirut and in a later speech there was unusually blunt: The aid “will not fall into corrupt hands” and Lebanon’s discredited government must change.

In the short-term, the aid streaming into Lebanon is purely for humanitarian emergencies and relatively easy to monitor.

The U.S., France, Britain, Canada and Australia, among others, have been clear that it is going directly to trusted local aid groups like the Lebanese Red Cross or U.N. agencies.

“Our aid is absolutely not going to the government. Our aid is going to the people of Lebanon,” said John Barsa of USAID.

But actual rebuilding requires massive imports of supplies and equipment. The contracts and subcontracts have given Lebanon’s ruling elite its wealth and power, while leaving the country with crumbling roads, regular electricity cuts, trash that piles on the streets and intermittent water supplies.

“The level of infrastructure in Lebanon is directly linked today to the level of corruption,” said Neemat Frem, a prominent Lebanese businessman and independent member of parliament. “We badly need more dollars but I understand that the Lebanese state and its agencies are not competent.”

Lebanon has an accumulated debt of about $100 billion, for a population of just under 7 million people — 5 million Lebanese and 2 million Syrians and Palestinians, most of them refugees.

Its electricity company, controlled like the port by multiple factions, posts losses of $1.5 billion a year, although Frem said most factories pay for their own generators because power is off more than it’s on.

“There’s grand theft Lebanon and there’s petty theft Lebanon. Petty theft Lebanon exists but that’s not what got the country in the hole we’re in,” said Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative.

Prior aid, Houry said, ended up as a tool in the hands of the political leaders, who kept their slice and doled out jobs and money to supporters.

“The public is going to be incredibly distrustful of the way this is done, and I think rightly so,” said Frank Vogl, a co-founder of Transparency International and chairman for the Partnership for transparency Fund.

On Saturday, they seized offices of the Economy Ministry, hauling away files they said would show corruption around the sale and distribution of wheat. Lebanon’s wheat stockpile, stored next to the warehouse filled with ammonium nitrate, was destroyed in the explosion.

“We restored the economy ministry to the Lebanese people,” one man called out as they rifled through the desks.

Julien Courson, head of the Lebanon Transparency Association, said the country’s non-profits are forming a coalition to monitor how relief and aid money is spent. He estimated Lebanon loses $2 billion to corruption each year.

“The decision-makers and the public servants who are in charge of these files are still in their positions. Until now, we didn’t see any solution to the problem,” he said.

Speaking at a news conference in which he conspicuously did not appear alongside Lebanese President Michel Aoun, French President Macron said he was approaching Lebanon with “the requirements of a friend who rushes to help, when times are hard, but not to give a blank check to systems that no longer have the trust of their people.”

Now remember what I told you earlier? Lebanon has a governmental  system where people of each religious group have a share of power depending on their numbers.

The population is made up of Muslims (54 per cent), Christians (40.4 per cent) and Druze nomads (5.6 per cent) — a nomadic tribe which follows a religion with elements of Islam, Christianity and even Hinduism.

In Lebanon, the president is always a Christian, the prime minister is always a Sunni Muslim, the speaker is a Shia, and the deputy speaker and deputy PM are Eastern Orthodox Christians.

However, even though the Prime Minister is a Sunni Muslim, he is in power with the backing of Hezbollah, which is Shia, and thereby tied directly to Iran and the Iranians use Hezbollah to run their proxy war with Israel and also control Syria.

Thus, the Prime Minister doesn’t really have the power to act on his own, which causes further problems.

So there you have it folks. Are the Lebanese people suffering as a result of the explosion. Absolutely.

Should we provide them aid knowing that Hezbollah, a key part of the Lebanese government,  is backing Syria and Iran and could use that money to continue attacks against Israel and our allied forces in Syria?

Callers, what do you think?

With the upcoming elections, I thought it might be fun to provide some interesting facts about previous elections here in the U.S.

So here goes.

The worst campaign slogan in history belongs to Al Smith, who was against prohibition. To show his support for the creation, distribution, and sale of alcohol, he advertised: “Vote for Al Smith and he’ll make your wet dreams come true.”

It wasn’t until 1856 that Congress removed property ownership as a requirement to vote in elections.

The first U.S. presidential election was in 1789.  Back then, only white men who owned property could vote, a stipulation that prohibited 94% of the population from casting a ballot.

During the 1872 election, presidential incumbent Ulysses S. Grant ran against a corpse. His opponent, Horace Greeley, died before the election was finalized. Grant won the election.

In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested for attempting to vote in the presidential election. At the same time, Sojourner Truth, a former slave and advocate for justice demanded a ballot in Michigan, but she was turned away. American women of all races finally won the right to vote in 1920.

Congress gave Native Americans the right to vote in presidential elections in 1924; however, some states banned them from voting until the 1940s._[3]

George Washington is the only U.S. president in history to win 100% of the Electoral College vote. This is mainly because organized parties weren’t yet formed, and he ran unopposed. He was reluctant to become president and noted to his future secretary of war, Henry Knox, that becoming president felt like he was going to “the place of his execution”.

George Washington blew his entire campaign budget against John Adams on 160 gallons of liquor to serve to potential voters.

Before the 1804, the presidential candidate who received the second highest electoral votes became vice-president.

John Adams complained that the only reason George Washing was “chosen for everything,” including president, was because “he was taller than anyone else in the room.”

During the 1776 presidential campaign, Thomas Jefferson secretly hired a writer named James Callender to attack his opponent, John Adams, in print. Callender called Adams a “hermaphroditical character” who neither had the “force of a man” or the “gentleness of a woman.” Callender was later jailed for insurrection.

In 1845, Congress decided that voting day would be the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which was after the fall harvest and before winter conditions made travel too difficult.

Andrew Jackson’s inauguration party was so wild that Jackson snuck out of the White House and spent the night at a hotel. Finally, servants dragged tubs of punch out on the lawn to lure out the crowds.

The party was so big that even the brave, battle-tested President Jackson fled the scene.

Democrats use a donkey as their mascot thanks to Andrew Jackson. When his critics called him a “jackass” because of his populist views, he embraced the image, even using it alongside his slogan, “Let the people rule.”

When Democrat Stephen A. Douglas called Abraham Lincoln “two-faced” during an election year, Lincoln replied, “If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?”

Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.

– Abraham Lincoln

 

During the 1920 presidential election, a candidate from a third party, Eugene V. Debs, a socialist, ran his presidential campaign from prison. He was in jail for opposing WW I. He ultimately won 3% of the popular vote.

George Washington gave the shortest inauguration speech at 135 words. William Henry Harrison’s was the longest, at 8,445 words. He spoke for over two hours in a heavy snowstorm, which made him catch a cold and ultimately die from pneumonia one month later.

Grover Cleveland is the only candidate ever to be elected to one term, defeated for a second term, and then elected again four years later. Thus, he became both the 22nd in president (1885) and the 24th president (1893). McKinley was pres in between his 2 terms.

The word “election” is from the Latin eligere, which means, “to pick out, select” and is related to the world “lecture.”

To this day, it is illegal to drink alcohol in Kentucky and South Carolina on election day.

During the John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson election year, American politics sounded much like we hear today.  For example, Jackson called John Quincy a pimp, and Quincy called Jackson’s wife a slut and his mother a prostitute.

A lot different than George Washington who argued that a presidential candidate should not appear too eager to win the presidency or actively seek it. Rather, he said “The office should seek the man.” He considered active campaigning undignified, even vulgar.

. The first woman to run for U.S. President was Victoria Woodhull in 1872, nearly 50 years before the 19th Amendment allowed women to vote in presidential elections. Woodhull also believed that women should have the freedom to marry, divorce, and bear children without government interference.

Her running mate, Frederick Douglass, was the first African-American ever nominated for Vice President.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president an astonishing four terms before the 22nd Amendment set term limits.

One final bit of election history for you.

Before sophisticated computer models were used to get out the vote, violent gangs would kidnap voters, feed them alcohol or drugs and force them to vote multiple times dressed in various disguises. Known as “cooping,” this was a common strategy to ensure a win on election day.

In the 1800s, United States elections were rife with fraud, and political parties were more like private clubs than the bureaucratic representatives we have today, so cooping fit right into politics of the time.

“The practice of “cooping” voters on election day was quite common,” and campaign gangs who corralled voters were, according to one definition, “wining and dining [victims] till they “vote” according to wishes of the “Coop-manager,” disrupting the American voting process. This was common in Missouri elections in the early 1800’s.

On election day, you would show up at the courthouse and there, the candidates had all set up booths with all the liquor you could drink.

Once you chose your candidate, you were required to step before the election official and publicly declare your choice of candidate.

While the public was aware of and disgusted by cooping, it was so ingrained in American politics that it continued through the end of the 19th century. In 1842, Washington’s Weekly Globe wrote that the “Federalist Party in the United States, during the last presidential election, introduced all these contrivances” which included “bribing, bullying, and the abduction of voters, steeped in drunkenness.”

So there you have it folks. Based on what you’ve heard today, your thoughts on the upcoming elections?

Article :Peter Stone is the elected honorary Vice President of Blue Shield International, an advisory body to UNESCO on the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict.

There was a horrified reaction around the world when US president Donald Trump tweeted, at the height of America’s ongoing dispute with Iran, threatening Iran’s cultural heritage.

He wrote that the US had identified 52 sites, including important historical buildings and artifacts, that would be targeted if Iran retaliated against the killing of its top military commander Qassem Soleimani on January 3.

After Trump’s advisors – including the Pentagon – told him this would be illegal he pulled back from that position.

We now see in our own country, rioters tearing down statues and backing movements to destroy our  cultural heritage.

How is it against the law to destroy Iran’s historic sites, but ok to do so here?

Throughout history, historic buildings and places are damaged and destroyed during conflict through collateral (or accidental) impact, and historic artifacts get looted. That’s war.

For hundreds, if not thousands, of years, armies were paid by being allowed to loot and run riot after winning a battle. The military mind cared little about anything other than winning the war and going home richer.

There are many cultural and academic reasons for trying to protect heritage during armed conflict, most of them irrelevant to those doing the fighting.

We need to realize that cultural property protection will only be effective if militaries and politicians take it seriously.

Perhaps surprisingly, cultural property protection has a long history in military law.

The earliest surviving code of discipline for an English army, the 1385 Durham Ordinances, was drawn up for Richard II’s invasion of Scotland.

It included an article not to damage religious or other cultural buildings.

Interestingly, the USA is accepted as the first country to make cultural property protection part of its military policy through the 1863 “Lieber Code” written for Federal forces during the American Civil War.

Today, the intentional targeting of cultural and religious sites that are not military objectives, have no military function, and make no contribution to military action, is prohibited specifically in international humanitarian law, most notably in the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict .

Cultural property protection is also an integral part of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, the 1998 Rome Statute and UN Security Council Resolution 2347.

Bottom line, cultural property protection is increasingly regarded as “customary international law” and applies to all sides in any conflict.

And it works. Military commanders were found guilty and imprisoned for deliberately attacking cultural heritage under the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Since Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War in China in the sixth century BC, military writers have argued that to destroy the cultural heritage of your enemy is bad military practice.

It gives the first reason for the next war and often makes a defeated population harder to govern.

On the other hand, protecting the cultural heritage of a population you have conquered shows them respect and they are easier to govern. This is what modern soldiers often refer to as a “force multiplier”, something that makes their main job of winning a conflict that much easier.

Think about that. With the tearing down of statues of everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant, the cancel culture folks are creating enemies of people who previously were will to sit on the sidelines during all of this current chaos.

Folks, cultural heritage is what makes us human. It gives us a sense of place, and identity.

It can and should be used to explain and explore a common human past – what makes us the same, both good and bad.

We can’t do that if cultural heritage is destroyed by war, or worse deliberately targeted by our own people as we are seeing today.

What happens if we allow our culture to be cancelled?

I found a great article in the American Thinker by Dr. Brian C Joondeph.

As he clearly points out cancel culture has morphed to cancelling America because of who it might offend.

What happens when everything gets cancelled and we become a society described by letters and numbers, eliminating our rich history and traditions?

The cancel culture is leading us to an Orwellian society, from America the Beautiful to The Hunger Games.

The self-appointed censors have found their voices after George Floyd’s death and COVID-19 threats, with protests and riots not only now condoned but actually encouraged.

What are some of the casualties?

Gone with the Wind, a multi-Academy Award winning classic movie was cancelled from HBO due to “racial insensitivity.”

Several Netflix shows  were cancelled due to an Australian comedian’s use of blackface.

Police shows have also been cancelled, at least the ones not portraying a multigendered police force concerned more about their carbon footprints than catching the bad guys.

 

Newspaper editors have been cancelled for the high crime of publishing op-ed pieces, written by a conservative senator, as was the case for NY Times editor James Bennet. So much for the Times motto, “All the news that’s fit to print.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to cancel statues in the U.S. Capitol. It seems statues depicting Confederate leaders are suddenly offensive to her.

Yet these same statues didn’t bother her or any other House Democrats a week ago, a year ago, or a decade ago.

Democrat officials walked past these offensive statues gathering dust and never said a word, but now all of a sudden they must go because as Pelosi said, “Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals.”

Will statues or buildings dedicated to former Senator, and KKK Exalted Leader, Robert Byrd also be canceled?

Will those who eulogized the former KKK bigwig at his funeral also be cancelled? These include Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Pelosi may want to cancel U.S. Capitol statues but is she willing to cancel her own father?

While mayor of Baltimore, Nancy’s father dedicated monuments to Confederate generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee.

Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro had it right at the time, saying the memorials, “Stand like a stone wall against aggression in any form that would seek to destroy the liberty of the world.”

In other words, a reminder to remember history, lest it repeat itself.

There is also a push to rename military bases named after Confederate commanders, including Forts Bragg, Hood, and Benning.

Will they be renamed or will they just be given numbers? How proud will the West Point grad’s parents be to say their son or daughter is being deployed to Fort 267. Or was that 257?

Colleges and universities are next. Most of the Ivy League schools have ties to American slavery, even if centuries ago.

Now the only slaves are those students taking out six-figure loans for worthless degrees in gender studies or intersectionality, leaving college as slaves to loan companies.

Elihu Yale, founder of Yale University, was a slave trader. Will Yale change its name?

Sports teams need a bit of cancellation too. There is a long list of offensive team names and mascots, from the Washington Redskins to the Cleveland Indians. Should they be cancelled or renamed?

Good luck with renaming. They tried that with hurricanes and the progressives still weren’t happy since it turned out that female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes, according to CNN. What about the other 70 or so genders who aren’t properly represented in hurricane naming?

And of course, support for law enforcement is also being cancelled as cities want to defund or eliminate their police departments.

Ironically, we are told all cops are bad because of the actions of a few. And all gun owners are bad because of the evil intentions of a handful.

Yet it’s considered racist and Islamophobic to even hint at generalizing the actions of a few jihadis to the entire religion.

Cancel the police and it will be the Hunger Games in American cities.

Truckers have already promised to not deliver to cities that defund police. Minneapolis can grow its own food in winter when the temperatures are below zero. Good luck with that.

When the left wants to cancel everything that is part of the American culture and way of life, there will be nothing left. Perhaps that’s the goal.

They can remake history as they choose, like writing a novel. But history is important, even the bad parts. As philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

So, what are the effects of cultural destruction?

It is a difficult thing to describe, so here are a couple of very different examples to try and provide a short answer.

Hollywood movies that seek to terrify their audiences with apocalyptic scenarios tend to use the destruction of iconic buildings and structures as their climactic image.

In one example, the audience knows that New York has turned into a wasteland, not because it sees a wasteland, but because only the torch held aloft by the statue of liberty is visibly poking through the sands that now submerge the city.

The Golden Gate Bridge is torn apart by a tidal wave; the statue of Admiral Nelson lies in pieces at the foot of a crumbling column, and so on.

Why can those images be so much more effective and horrifying than images of human beings dying? It is because they speak of the destruction of an entire city, a society, a nation, a civilisation, and a way of life.

The destruction represents not just the destruction of those immediately living alongside these monuments, but of entire generations.

There is a form of extremism that sees the very existence of sites that are celebrating other people’s faiths or cultures as a challenge.

In 1942, Nazi Germany had ordered the Baedeker Blitz, air raids on cultural sites in the UK in response to the destruction of the German town of Lübeck in the same year.

In spring 1942, the air war over Europe became a tit-for-tat game of retaliation, aimed more at destroying civilian morale than wartime industry.

On 28 March 1942, the Royal Air Force bombed the German city of Lübeck in what was the first large-scale RAF raid to do considerable damage to a German city.

The town was hardly defended due to its lack of industrial infrastructure, so why use valuable resources on a militarily unimportant city?

British Air Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris was a staunch believer in the war-winning power of breaking the enemy’s morale. (Is that what we are seeing today?)

With his actions justified by the Area Bombing Directive of February 14th,1942 which allowed for the targeting of civilian targets, Harris and his bombers sought to wreak havoc on the German population, starting with Lübeck.

The majority of the city’s buildings and homes were affected by the bombing to some degree. Hundreds were killed and wounded, with thousands more left without roofs over their heads.

Though considered a success for the RAF, the Lübeck raid would bring about the wrath of the Luftwaffe at the expense of the British population and the fabric of its cultural history.

On April 14th, Hitler instituted the Baedeker Directive, calling for a shift in focus from military to non-military targets.

The German Luftwaffe hit the British town of Exeter on April 23rd, 1942 in the first of what would become known as the Baedeker Raids or Blitz.

The series takes it name from the well known Baedeker travel guides, as the targets became less militarily significant and more culturally relevant.

One German statesman was quoted as saying, “We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide.”

Over the next few days, subsequent attacks struck Bath, Norwich, and York.

Canterbury would be hit a month later, likely a direct retaliation for a massive RAF raid on Cologne the night before that killed hundreds, wounded thousands, and destroyed more than 10,000 homes.

There is probably a number of similarities between the attitudes of the Third Reich and what we see today when it comes to cultural diversity and the cancel culture.

The biggest similarity I see is that they inspire horror and fear, and I guess that is part of the point.

Followers of the current movement want to destroy anything valued by those who care about our cultural history.

This becomes quite obvious when you see them tearing down statues of General Grant, and Abraham Lincoln.

They don’t care who they were, or what they stood for. They only know that their destruction will strike a blow against those who cherish our history and culture.

Is it effective, you bet. Can anything be done to stop it?

Probably not until we can get our politicians to step forward, call out clearly what is really happening, and take action.

Callers?