Author: James Pasley

A little history so you can understand the talking heads on the evening news.

First, let’s identify where this is all happening. The Gaza Strip

A small strip of land in the Middle East, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, between Egypt and Israel.

It is slightly more than twice the size of Washington, DC and 64% of its population is under the age of 24.

There are 2 million people living on the Gaza strip and they are 98% Sunni Muslims. (CIA World Factbook)

Israel removed settlers and military personnel from Gaza Strip in September 2005 So there are no Jewish people living there.

Now for the history:

Inhabited since at least the 15th century B.C., Gaza has been dominated by many different peoples and empires throughout its history; it was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire (The Turks) in the early 16th century. (Crescent moon story/French crescent rolls)

Gaza fell to British forces during World War I, becoming a part of the British control of Palestine set out by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI.

(Balfour Declaration/Lawrence of Arabia)

Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt administered the newly formed Gaza Strip; it was captured by Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.

Under a series of agreements signed between 1994 and 1999, Israel transferred to the Palestinian Authority (PA) security and civilian responsibility for many Palestinian-populated areas of the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank.

In early 2003, the  US, EU, UN, and Russia, presented a roadmap to a final peace settlement by 2005, calling for two states – Israel and a democratic Palestine.

Following Palestinian leader Yasir ARAFAT’s death in late 2004 and the subsequent election of Mahmud ABBAS (head of the Fatah political party) as the PA president, Israel and the PA agreed to move the peace process forward.

Israel in late 2005 unilaterally withdrew all of its settlers and soldiers and dismantled its military facilities in the Gaza Strip, but continues to control maritime, airspace, and other access.

Now to the Players:

HAMAS

Hamas goal is to create a single, Sunni, Islamic state in historic Palestine, which is now largely divided between Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hamas, means “zeal” in Arabic and is an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement.

Hamas’s charter calls for Israel’s destruction, and Hamas has engaged in terrorist activities.

Hamas’s leadership grew up in the late 1940s, mostly as impoverished offspring of Palestinian refugees.

Many of Hamas’s leaders were educated in Cairo during the rule of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Present members include religious leaders, sheikhs (Arab chiefs), intellectuals, technocrats, businessmen, young activists, and paramilitary fighters.

To cultivate support, Hamas has provided social services to the needy in the 11 refugee camps in Gaza.

Providing social welfare and education through clinics, kindergartens, summer camps, medical services, sports programs, and job programs has tied the Hamas leadership to its supporters.

Mosques and Islamic religious organizations have been Hamas’s most important vehicles for spreading its message and providing its services. Partly funded by its members, most funds come from sympathizers abroad.

The group was founded in 1988 as a militant segment of the Palestinian Arab national movement and was connected ideologically to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt 60 years earlier.

Hamas is calling for the destruction of Israel and the return to Islamic values.

Hamas firmly opposed the 1993 Oslo Accords, in which the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel engaged in mutual recognition for the purpose of Israel’s gradual transfer of power, land, and limited self-rule to the PLO.

After denouncing the September 1993 Oslo Accords, Hamas increased its strikes against Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as in Israel proper.

It boycotted the January 1996 Palestinian presidential and legislative council elections. The elections were won by the opposing political party, headed by PLO leader Yasir Arafat.

The boycott was in part because Hamas knew it would lose the election, but also Hamas wanted to avoid giving legitimacy to the PLO’s recognition of Israel.

Under the accord, Israel, the United States, and Western European nations asked the newly created Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to suppress Hamas’s attacks.

Arafat periodically restrained Hamas terrorist actions against Israel but he did not suppress them altogether.

In March 2004 Israel Defense Forces assassinated the Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin in a helicopter gunship attack as Yassin left a mosque in the Gaza Strip.

The next month Israel assassinated his successor Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a cofounder of Hamas.

In both cases Israel claimed that these two men were responsible for killing Israeli civilians. Israel announced it would continue such targeted assassinations as part of its war on terrorism.

The assassinations occurred as Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon said he was ready to unilaterally evacuate some 9,500 Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

In early 2006, the Islamic Resistance Movement, HAMAS, won the Palestinian Legislative Council election and took control of the PA government.

Attempts to form a unity government between the PLO and HAMAS failed, and violent clashes between PLO and HAMAS supporters ensued, culminating in HAMAS’s violent seizure of all military and governmental institutions in the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Israel

Following World War II, the British withdrew from their control of Palestine, and the UN partitioned the area into Arab and Jewish states, an arrangement rejected by the Arabs. (A I said earlier, both sides were promised Palestine by the Brits)

Subsequently, the Israelis defeated the Arabs in a series of wars without ending the deep tensions between the two sides.

In keeping with the framework established at the Madrid Conference in October 1991, bilateral negotiations were conducted between Israel and Palestinian representatives and Syria to achieve a permanent settlement to the dispute.

Israel and Palestinian officials signed on 13 September 1993 a Declaration of Principles (also known as the “Oslo Accords”) guiding an interim period of Palestinian self-rule.

Progress toward a permanent status agreement was undermined by Israeli-Palestinian violence between September 2003 and February 2005.

As I stated earlier, Israel in 2005 unilaterally disengaged from the Gaza Strip, evacuating settlers and its military while retaining control over most points of entry into the Gaza Strip.

The election of HAMAS to head the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006 froze relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Israel engaged in a 23-day conflict with HAMAS in the Gaza Strip during December 2008 and January 2009.

Prime Minister Binyamin NETANYAHU formed a coalition in March 2009 following a February 2009 general election. Direct talks with the PA launched in September 2010 collapsed.

So in summary, why are Israel and Hamas current enemies?

Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006 and reinforced its power in the Gaza Strip after ousting West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, in clashes the following year.

While Mr Abbas’ Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had signed peace accords with Israel, Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and advocates the use of violence against it.

Israel, along with Egypt, has maintained a blockade of Gaza since about 2006, in order, they say, to stop attacks by militants.

Israel and Hamas have gone to war three times, and rocket-fire from Gaza and Israel air strikes against militant targets are a regular occurrence. That is what we are seeing on the news today.

Now here is something you need to keep in mind.

The recent cease fire that President Biden has been bragging about was agreed to between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PLO), not HAMAS.

What is a shame is that people on both sides are being killed simply because Hamas is not willing to join the PLO and Israel in finding a solution.

For its part, I think Israel has shown tremendous restraint. Why? Because their fight is not with the people of the Gaza strip, it is with Hamas who is using the Palestinian people as a shield, setting up their rocket launchers on top of schools, hospitals, and residential buildings.

So, there you have it folks. Think this can be solved by signing treaties, or is this a conflict that can only be settled through force?

It is not going to solve itself. It will probably only get worse in the coming months.

Do you think the US should play a role in any of this?

A native of Ohio and a graduate of Ohio State, ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER was appointed to his professorship at Harvard in 1924. As a teacher and author he is internationally respected for his knowledge of American history.

Paper on U.S. Contributions to Civilization, MARCH 1959 

Since the United States has now become the leader of the free world, our allies are asking, and we ourselves should be asking, what this means for the future of civilization. The key to the answer, he suggested, lies in what America’s contributions of the past.

THE RIGHT OF REVOLUTION

First and foremost stands the concept of the inherent and universal right of revolution proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence: the doctrine that “all men are created equal” possessing “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness,” with the addition that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” and that therefore the people have the right to supplant a government “destructive of these ends” with one which they believe “most likely to affect their safety and happiness.

True, the history of England provided precedents for the men of 1776, and the Age of Enlightenment supplied intellectual support; but the declaration, followed by its vindication on the battlefield, made the doctrine ever afterward an irrepressible part in “the course of human events.”

Europe was the first to respond. In 1789 the great French Revolution began, the forerunner of two later ones of the French people during the nineteenth century; and neighboring countries were not slow to follow.

A series of revolts, centering in 1830 and 1848, drove the Turks from Greece, overturned corrupt governments through most of the rest of the Continent of Europe, and hurried political reforms in other lands to head off popular upheavals.

In every instance the leaders derived inspiration from America’s achievement of popular rule as well as from its freely expressed interest in their similar goals.

Presidents, Congresses, and civic gatherings applauded the uprisings.

The doctrine of revolution, however, had still broader implications.

The American Revolution was the first of the great colonial insurrections, an example, all the more powerful because Washington’s rag tag army defeated the mightiest nation in the world.

The Spanish dependencies to the south watched this happen, and early in the nineteenth century won their freedom.

Then, oddly enough, came a setback to the trend as a large part of Asia and Africa and many islands of the Pacific fell under the control of Old World powers. And after a time even the United States, forgetful of its own once colonial status, followed suit. (Boxer Rebellion 1899)

But in the twentieth century the two world wars radically changed the situation, recalling the United States to its historic heritage, crippling the military strength of the European imperialist countries, and awakening subject peoples everywhere to their right of self-determination.

THE PRINCIPLE OF FEDERALISM

Because of the difficulties experienced under the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution of 1787 established a partnership of self-governing commonwealths with an overall elective government powerful enough to protect and promote their joint concerns and — what was no less important — with a provision for admitting later states on a plane of full equality.

This was something new in history; Alexander DeTocqueville called it “a great discovery in modern political science,” for no other people had ever devised a federal structure over so large an area or with a central government chosen by popular vote or on such generous terms for future members. It offered mankind a key to the age–old problem of reconciling legitimate local interests with the general good.

Mexico, Argentina, and other Latin American countries adopted variants of the plan, and so did Germany and Austria-Hungary. Britain applied it to two of its largest colonies, Canada and Australia, and in the twentieth century recast most of its empire into a Commonwealth of Nations on the same basis. More dramatically, the principle caused men to conceive of some sort of federation of the world, first in the League of Nations and then in the United Nations, both sponsored by American Presidents.

THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED

Neither the doctrine of revolution nor the principle of federalism necessarily ensured that the government so established would rest on the consent of the governed.

But, as we have seen, it was a basic tenet of the founders of the United States.

The framers of the Constitution spurned European tradition by rejecting a monarchy, a nobility, or a hereditary legislative chamber, placing their trust in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, one which should rule by counting heads instead of breaking them.

Starting with a somewhat limited number of voters but in better proportion than in any other country, the suffrage was broadened generation by generation until it came to include all adults of both sexes; and at every point America set the pace for the Old World.

The underlying philosophy was not that the common man is all-wise, but only that he can govern himself better than anyone else can do it for him.

EQUALITY

Feeling this is an important part of our current situation, I added this section with information from the editors of History.com

In 1787, the word people “People” really only meant “Free Persons,” and “Free Persons” meant white men. And, at the time, white women were considered the property of their husbands and certainly unfit for public duty.

Fortunately, our Constitution created a system of government that was bigger than the privileged white men who wrote it, allowing our nation to correct its limited view of humanity through Constitutional amendments and other means.

President Lincoln’s  Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, applied only to the slaves in Confederate states,  but Lincoln made it clear in his historic Gettysburg Address that the Union now fought to provide a “new birth of freedom”.

Passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865 abolished the institution of slavery, and granted liberty to more than 4 million black men, women and children formerly held in bondage.

In 1963, as civil rights activists protested segregation and voting restriction across the South, and hundreds of thousands of people marched on Washington to demand “Jobs and Freedom,” President John F. Kennedy introduced the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.

After JFK’s assassination that November, his successor Lyndon B. Johnson took up the cause, doggedly pushing the bill through stiff Democratic, yes, I said Democratic, opposition in Congress.

On June 2, 1964, Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act, which ended the segregation of public and many private facilities, and outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

Now back to Arthur Schlesinger’s paper.

THE STATUS OF WOMEN

Women played a man’s part as well as a woman’s in taming the wilderness and creating our country.

From early times foreign observers marveled at the unusual educational opportunities open to them, their immunity from molestation when traveling alone, their freedom to go out of the home to agitate for temperance, antislavery, and other reforms.

“From the captain of a western steamboat to the roughest miner in California,” wrote one visitor, “from north, south, east, and west, we hear but one voice. Women are to be protected, respected, and supported”.

The organized feminist movement arose earlier in the United States than in any other nation not because American women enjoyed so few privileges but because they had so many that they demanded more — in short, all those exercised by their husbands and brothers, including that of the right to vote.

It took the women many years to achieve that goal, but in time they succeeded, and every victory spurred their sisters in other lands to similar endeavors.

THE MELTING POT

Another contribution of the United States has been the fusing of many different nationalities in a single society. America has been in the best sense the term a melting pot, every ingredient adding its particular element of strength.

The constant infusion of new blood has enriched our cultural life, speeded our material growth, and produced some of our ablest statesmen. Over 17 million immigrants arrived in the single period from -the Civil War to World War I — more than America’s total population in 1840.

This American achievement stands alone in the scale, thoroughness, and rapidity of the process and, above all, in the fact that it has been the outcome not of forcible incorporation but of peaceful absorption.

Significantly, the very nationalities which had habitually warred with one another in the Old World have lived together in harmony in the New. America has demonstrated for everyone with eyes to see that those things which unite peoples are greater than those which divide them, that war is not the inevitable fate of mankind.

FREEDOM OF WORSHIP

The recognition that the relations between man and his Creator are a private affair into which government must not intrude broke the age-long European practice of uniting church and state and imposing harsh restrictions on dissenters.

Rhode Island, Maryland, and Pennsylvania in the persons of Roger Williams, Lord Baltimore, and William Penn set the pattern to which the Bill of Rights of the federal Constitution gave nationwide approval.

Religion by choice was the natural counterpart of government by consent, and, contrary to Old World belief, the separation of church and state did not in fact weaken either but strengthened both.

PUBLIC EDUCATION

The principle of government by consent made it imperative that the people be literate and well informed if they were to vote intelligently. To ensure this essential condition, our forefathers agreed that society must at its own initiative and expense supply the means of schooling.

This, too, broke drastically with the Old World concept that education should be a privately financed undertaking for the upper classes, the rank and file supposedly having little need for any in what was deemed to be their permanently inferior station.

New England inaugurated the practice in colonial days; then, it was adopted throughout the North and later in the South. Free public education thus became the article of American faith it has continued to be ever since.

From the United States the plan spread in modified form around the world.

VOLUNTARY GIVING

Foreigners have always criticized the American for its pursuit of the almighty dollar but have seldom gone on to note that we have, in unparalleled degree, returned the fruits of our labors to society.

This constitutes the American version of the Old World concept of noble obligation, carried to a point the Old World had never approached.

Even long before Carnegie and Rockefeller amassed their colossal fortunes, men and women of modest means gave freely to schools, churches, foreign missions, colleges, hospitals, charities, and other projects for social betterment.

In the twentieth century this same concern has led men of wealth to set up some four thousand philanthropic foundations staffed with experts to administer the funds with maximum usefulness and for nearly every conceivable object of human benefit.

And, increasingly, Americans have extended their beneficence to foreign peoples.

Over a century ago American donations helped relieve Irish suffering during the terrible potato famines of the 1840s and later aided with equal generosity the victims of natural catastrophes in other lands.

And, besides the work of the Red Cross in peace and war, the great foundations have in our own day improved health, educational, and agricultural conditions in many countries.

In the same tradition the private organization known as CARE has, since World War II, channeled gifts of food, clothing, medicine, and the like to the needy of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Thanks to this ingrained trait of the national character, the government found it easy to mobilize our people behind the Marshall Plan, a costly tax-supported program for repairing the war-sticken economies of Western Europe.

Though these official undertakings were in part designed to halt the spread of Communism, they arose from deeper thoughts of human compassion and have no parallel in history.

TECHNOLOGY

Mechanical ingenuity, or what today is called technological know-how, contrary to common belief is by no means a new development in America.

From the mid-eighteenth century on, the people, confronted with a chronic shortage of labor and the problems arising from huge distances and poor communications, devised means to overcome these handicaps as well as to improve other conditions of life. The record is truly remarkable.

Before the end of the nineteenth century Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, and their successors produced such remarkable inventions as the lightning rod, the cotton gin, the steamboat, the metal plow, the harvester, vulcanized rubber, the sewing machine, the telegraph, the telephone, and the electric light, among others.

The upshot was not only to transform American life but that of peoples everywhere. President Truman therefore was not occupying wholly new ground when in 1949 he proposed his Point Four Program to make “the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas” and thus “help them realize their aspirations for a better life.”

The Truman administration came up with the idea for the program as a means to win the “hearts and minds” of the developing world after countries from the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Africa had complained about the emphasis on European aid by the U.S. after WWII.

Under this program the United States sent experts in industry, engineering, and agriculture to many lands; built roads and bridges in Iran, irrigation works in India, and fertilizer plants in Korea; and endeavored in countless other ways to remove the obstacles that barred less enterprising countries from the advantages of modern civilization.

Viewed as a whole, the contributions of America to civilization will be seen to have been to release men from political and religious disabilities, from ignorance and poverty, from backbreaking toil.

They have opened the doors of opportunity for the many while still assuring them to the few, in the belief that everyone should have an equal chance to be as unequal as he can without denying the same right to others.

The consequence has been a general leveling of society upward instead of downward.

So, what does the future hold? For an American historian, the answer is clear.

The true measure of our past contributions lies in the very fact that they have become so woven into the life of mankind that people worldwide are unaware of them. That was the purpose of today’s show.

So, there you have it folks. I am proud of our heritage. And I am proud to be an American. I could care less what the “Woke “people say. If they don’t like it here, I challenge them to move to any other country on earth and tell me they are better off. To them, all I can say is, safe travels!

What about you? Are you proud to be an American?

Folks, with all the recent attacks on our history, traditions, and heritage, I am jealous of our allies in Great Britain.

They hold fast to their British pride and heritage despite the present-day challenges of political correctness and the “woke” movement destroying American society.

So I have to ask the question,

Why does the UK love the monarchy?

Mark Easton
Home editor BBC News
@BBCMarkEastonon Twitter

29 May 2012

Whydoes Great Britain remain so loyal to the monarchy?

According to recent polls, less than a fifth of the Queen’s subjects in the UK say they want to get rid of the Royal Family – a proportion that has barely changed across decades.

Support for those who want to do away with the monarchy and switch to a constitutional republic, like ours, was 18% in 1969, 18% in 1993, 19% in 2002 and 18% last year. Three-quarters of the population want Britain to remain a monarchy – a finding that has been described by pollsters as “probably the most stable trend we have ever measured”.

Given the enormous social change there has been since the current Queen assumed the throne 60 years ago, it might seem surprising that a system of inherited privilege and power should have retained its popularity.

But reading some of the comments on Twitter, it seems that even to raise a quizzical eyebrow at the approval ratings of the Windsors is regarded by some monarchists as tantamount to treason.

Those in favor of a republic, on the other hand, believe that to highlight the conspicuous lack of progress they have had in winning the nation to their cause is evidence of submissive knee-bending.

Looking to history, two major figures in the long-running debate between republican and monarchist thinkers in Britain come to mind. Thomas Paine and Walter Bagehot.

Thomas Paine was an England-born political philosopher and writer who supported revolutionary causes in America and Europe.

Paine’s most famous pamphlet, “Common Sense,” was first published on January 10, 1776, selling out its thousand printed copies immediately.      By the end of that year, 150,000 copies–an enormous amount for its time–had been printed and sold. (It remains in print today.)

“Common Sense” is credited as playing a crucial role in convincing colonists to take up arms against England. In it, Paine argues that representational government is superior to a monarchy or other forms of government based on aristocracy and heredity.

The pamphlet proved so influential that John Adams reportedly declared, “Without the pen of the author of ‘Common Sense,’ the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”

“There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of Monarchy,” Paine declared. “One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of the hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.”

He contrasted the common sense of his pamphlet’s title with the absurdity and superstition that inspired the “prejudice of Englishmen” for monarchy, arising “as much or more from national pride than reason”.

To this day, British republicans refer to Paine’s Common Sense almost as the sacred text. But monarchists have their own sacred text, written almost exactly a century later. Walter Bagehot’s (pronounced “badget”) English Constitution was a belated response to the revolutionary arguments of the New World republicans.

Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), was a British journalist who became editor of the British newspaper, The Economist  in 1859.

“We catch the Americans smiling at our Queen with her secret mystery,” he wrote, with a suggestion that Paine and his kind were prisoners of their own “literalness”.

Bagehot didn’t try to justify monarchy as rational (indeed he accepted many of Paine’s criticisms), but his point was that an “old and complicated society” like England required more than mundane, dreary logic.

“The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people,” he wrote. “You might as well adopt a father as make a monarchy.”

Bagehot had identified a developing national characteristic.

As colonial power and the riches of empire declined, there was an increasing desire to define greatness as something other than wealth and territory.

Britain wanted to believe it was, intrinsically, special. “People yield a deference to what we may call the theatrical show of society,” he wrote. “The climax of the play is the Queen.”

Isn’t that what Biden said last week? “We are special”.

Wind the clock forward to 1952 and plans were being made for the Coronation of the new Queen, Elizabeth II. Despite post-war hardship, it was decided the event should be a fabulous, flamboyant, extravagant affair with all the pomp and pageantry they could muster. There would be feathers and fur, gold and jewels, anthems and trumpets.

It was a giant gamble. Britain was re-evaluating many of the traditional power structures that had shaped society in the 1930s.

How would a population still subject to food rationing react to a ceremony that almost rubbed its nose in the wealth and privilege of the hereditary monarch?

Two sociologists, Michael Young and Ed Shils, had joined the crowds in the East End of London, dropping in on street parties to find out.                 

Their thesis, entitled The Meaning of the Coronation, accepted that there were some who had dismissed the whole affair as a ridiculous waste of money.

But overall, they concluded: “The Coronation provided at one time and for practically the entire society such an intense contact with the sacred that the people saw it as a great act of national communion.”

Britain – battered, bruised and broke – appeared determined to embrace its monarchy regardless of the cost. The paradox is that poverty was positively comfortable with flamboyance; in other words, challenge spawned a passion for hereditary and tradition.

It wasn’t just that Britain wanted a distraction from hardship and uncertainty. Enthusiastic support for monarchy seemed to run counter to the new liberalism which was guiding the politics of post-war Britain.

The 1950s were also a period in which Great Britain was worried about how global, institutional, and social change might threaten its identity.

Just like we are facing today.

Do you see where I am going with this. When Great Britain faced similar attacks on their traditions and heritage, they rallied behind their country and flag.

Are we capable of doing the same? Do we even want to?

The impact of Americanisation as well as colonial and European immigration upon British life were a source of great concern.

Sound familiar?

Despite winning the war, it appeared that national power and influence were being lost. Institutional authority was being questioned.

There were fears, too, that the values and traditions which underpinned family and community life were also changing rapidly.

Again, sound familiar?

War and financial hardship had combined to shake up and challenge ancient orthodoxies.

Monarchy represented a safeguard against rapid and scary change.

Sixty years after the Queen assumed the throne, many of those same anxieties remain. Concerns about how globalization and immigration are changing Britain continue to trouble the country.

Respect for institutions has declined as the global financial crisis has ushered in a new era of hardship.

Times are tough, the challenges are great and Great Britain still responds by cheering an aspect of their culture that, for all its irrationality, is uniquely theirs.

That is the way it used to be here in America. We called it patriotism.

The British have always chosen the quirks of their history against foreign ideas.

The Romans brought them straight roads and decimal system. As soon as they left, they reverted to impossibly complicated Imperial measures and winding country lanes.

The British don’t like straight lines. When they look at those maps of the United States with ruler-straight state boundaries, they feel pity.

Walter Bagehot understood that their identity was found in the twists and turns of a rural road, not in the practicality of a highway.

It is the same with their system of governance. Logic is not the most important factor. They are happy to accept eccentricity and quirkiness because they reflect an important part of their national character.

So in trying to explain the unlikely success of the monarchy, we shouldn’t expect the answer to be based on reason.

It is not a question of prevailing political attitudes – how can a liberal democracy justify power and privilege based on an accident of birth?

The British monarchy is valued because it is the British monarchy. They are an old and complicated society that holds on to sacred traditions and heritage.

Perhaps we should step back and look at the example being set by the people of Great Britain.

So, let’s look at America today.

Bobby Jindal, former Governor of Louisiana, 2008-2016., in The National Review.

What has truly set America apart, has been something very similar to what the British have embraced — our culture. Our Founding Fathers created a limited government dedicated to protecting, not creating, our God-given rights, and thus enshrined freedom into our foundational documents and culture.

In America, civic values like individualism, frugality, delayed gratification, striving, private charity, and temperance have served us well through many generations.

Combined with healthy, though not absolute, tendencies towards libertarianism and isolationism, these values have not been identified with a particular political party or religious denomination.

Despite their roots in the beliefs of the first Protestant immigrants to the colonial settlements, they have been embraced by Americans from all backgrounds.

I worry because these values are under assault. Indeed, the middle class — the traditional repository of these values and the backbone of America — is under increasing assault, economically and otherwise. We now have a Democratic party more concerned with making individuals dependent on government and a Republican party more concerned with protecting the wealthy.

America is strong enough to confront any external threat, but we need to worry more about our weakening from within. Even as we resist enemies determined to take away our freedoms, we need to realize that we are at risk of simply giving away our incredible heritage.

Liberals have been remarkably successful in transforming America’s culture from within, dominating the media, universities, and the entertainment industry, where so many ideas originate.

Elites have adopted new values of government dependency, the universalization of victimhood, instant gratification, political correctness, and group identity.

The problem is, we are not merely passive recipients; but families, busy paying bills and raising kids, who are affected by these attacks on our culture and traditions.

Just as previous eras’ kids had their parents’ values reinforced from television shows, movies, and celebrities, today’s children are similarly influenced by today’s popular culture.

Diversity and tolerance (for all except those who disagree with the liberal elites) are becoming the most sacred values in today’s more secular society.

Nobody is arguing for their opposite, but values originally designed to protect the minority view have instead become tools with which to bludgeon into conformity all who hold dissenting views.

Conservatives are no longer to be tolerated, much less debated with — all in the name of tolerance. The quickest way to silence those who have non-liberal views on gay marriage, transgender bathrooms, or quotas is to simply label them bigots. Case closed.

There is much self-satisfaction and heroism in being countercultural against great odds.

Folks, as I stated at the beginning of this show, I am envious of the British people who have held onto their culture and traditions.

It is time for we the people, as Americans, regardless of party affiliation, to fight not just to win elections, but for a greater and more enduring victory — to reclaim our culture.

No fight is more important right now than reasserting America’s traditional values.

I hope it is not too late.

Defund the police. We hear it every day. Have you ever thought what would happen if we let these people have their way and just do away with police?

What would you say if I told you that has already been tried with disastrous results? What would you say if I told you it happened right here in Missouri?

Well folks it is true. All you have to do is look at our history.

I found a great article based on the research paper, “What It Means to Be American”, a project of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and Arizona State University, produced by Zócalo Public Square.

After the Civil War, Southwest Missouri was a devastated area characterized by a failing economy, high taxes, lawlessness, disorder, and a general breakdown of society, especially in the small towns and rural regions of the area.

When Nathaniel N. Kinney settled in Taney County, Missouri in 1883, he found a deplorable state of affairs. Outlaws and renegades ruled, most of them holdovers from the bushwhackers and guerillas that rampaged through Missouri during the Civil War.  In fact, Missouri had a nickname “The Outlaw State”.

After the war, the lack of even minimal law enforcement gave outlaws a free reign. Clans elected and controlled the local sheriff, whose authority it was to subpoena jury panels.

If outlaws or their relatives didn’t sit on the juries, they bribed those who did. As a result, although as many as forty murders occurred in Taney County between 1865 and 1885, not a single suspect was convicted.

Taney County includes the towns of Branson, Forsyth, Hollister, Merriam Woods, Rockaway Beach, Table Rock, and Taneyville.

Nat Kinney feared no man, standing six feet six and weighing in at more than 300 pounds.

After yet another murder on September 22, 1883, Kinney began to consider forming a law and order league patterned after other vigilante groups that were popular during the time.

When a biased jury acquitted the murderer, Kinney called together 12 of the county leaders who met in secret, forming a committee to fight the lawlessness, and elect officials who would enforce the law. The group became known as the Bald Knobbers.

Though the Bald Knobbers began with “good intentions,” the violence displayed by the vigilante group eventually gained national attention.

The organization grew rapidly and by the time they met on April 5, 1885, two hundred people showed up at a meeting on Snapp’s Bald, a hilltop south of Forsyth, Missouri.

Kinney, an excellent speaker, was unanimously elected as their leader. Extracting a vow of secrecy from his followers, Kinney instructed them to recruit new members to carry out the goals of the group.

So, let’s looks at this.

Were the Baldknobbers law and order folk heroes or murderous thugs?

In the lawless post-Civil War Ozarks, the vigilante Bald Knobbers took the government’s place.

For the real story of the Bald Knobbers, we turn to Dr. Matthew J. Hernando, a professor at Ozark Technical College and author of Faces Like Devils: The Bald Knobber Vigilantes in the Ozarks.

He stated in his work, you must look at southwest Missouri’s peculiar history. In a region where the Civil War had laid waste to the rule of law, ne’er do wells like the notorious James-Younger gang and vigilante groups like the Bald Knobbers emerged to fill the void of authority.

Admirers saw them as righteous folk heroes; adversaries regarded them as murderous thugs.

Under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Missouri was admitted to the United States as a slave state at the same time Maine was admitted as a free one. But Missouri never voted to secede from the Union.

While few official battles between the Union and Confederate armies occurred in the Ozarks, the region was rife with Confederate guerrillas, Union militias and “irregular” troops of mixed, sometimes shifting loyalties.

In his book, Hernando describes how the local people were beset by these groups, suffering rapes, beatings, pillaging of their farms, and even gruesome murders with heads displayed on sticks.

By the end of the war, violence became accepted as a way to solve problems, or at least extract revenge, in the Ozarks.

In the Taney County section of the Ozarks, early white settlers wanted to maintain their pre-war way of life, based on agriculture, hunting, and fishing. They were mostly Democrats who had sided with the Confederates.

New homesteaders, largely Republicans who had sided with the Union and were drawn by the Homestead Act of 1862, had ambitious plans to develop the region so that it would thrive in the rising American industrial economy.

Outlaws tormented homesteaders, but the Democrats in charge of local government let them off the hook. Period newspapers claimed that 30 to 40 murders were committed in Taney County between 1865 and 1882, but none resulted in a conviction.

One gang, led by brothers Frank and Tubal Taylor, ran rampant in Taney County, flaunting the cash they’d stolen. After a local businessman criticized the brothers, he found three of his prized cattle starved to death because outlaws had cut out their tongues.

In response to this and two murders that went unpunished by judges who were related to the Taylors, 13 upstanding citizens including merchants, wealthy business owners, and lawmen met to form the Committee for Law and Order. They signed pledges to “respond to the call of the officers to enforce obedience to the law.”

On April 5, 1885, the Committee called an organizational meeting on a treeless ridge (a “bald knob”) known as Snapp’s Bald near Kirbyville, just north of the Arkansas border.

Roughly a hundred men listened as Nathaniel “Nat” A. Kinney, a Union Army veteran, delivered a moving speech over the bloody shirt of one of the murdered men.

Kinney had settled on a livestock ranch with his family in 1883 and started his own Sunday School. After his rousing speech on Snapp’s Bald, the group voted to elect him “chieftain” of the Committee, which became known as the Bald Knobbers.

Shortly thereafter, one of the Bald Knobbers, a storekeeper whose shop was frequented by Frank Taylor (outlaw), refused to advance him any more credit. According to Faces Like Devils, Frank smashed up the store.

The next day, the storekeeper filed charges against Frank, who quickly posted bond before returning to the store with Tubal and a friend, shooting and wounding the storekeeper and his wife.

The Taylor brothers surrendered to the local sheriff, confident they would be released after a brief jail stay. But that night, a Bald Knobber posse rode their horses into Forsyth, broke into the jail, and took the Taylors.

The next day, the brothers were found dead, hanged from an oak tree outside of town, with a sign affixed to Tubal’s shirt that said, “Beware! These are the first victims of the wrath of outraged citizens. More will follow. The Bald Knobbers.”

Let’s stop right here for a moment. Is this what we want today? Do away with the police and just let a local group deal with criminals as they see fit?

Now back to our story.

After the hanging of the Taylors, the Bald Knobbers didn’t have to kill anyone else; they could rely on their reputation to intimidate whomever they considered undesirable.

At first, they targeted criminals for intimidation. Once they drove the outlaws away, they zeroed in on anyone who might obstruct an economic boom. Some locals, usually Democrats who had supported the Confederacy, were outraged, asserting that the Bald Knobbers were biased, oppressive bullies.

In the summer of 1885, citizens in nearby Christian and Douglas Counties invited Nat Kinney to help them establish their own Bald Knobber chapters. He assisted. But these new branches of the Bald Knobbers ultimately developed goals completely opposite to those of their Taney County counterparts.

Unlike the merchants and politicians going on “night rides” in Forsyth, Hernando explains, the newer Bald Knobbers in the northern counties were mostly poor and politically powerless subsistence farmers, often Democrats and strict Baptists.

The northern Bald Knobbers resented incoming homesteaders and the railroad tie company shipping from Chadwick, particularly because it attracted “blind tigers”—saloons where men would waste their wages on high-proof liquor, gambling, and prostitutes.

In Christian and Douglas counties, Bald Knobbers enforced religious morals, not just laws, wrecking the bars and whipping men believed to have neglected their families, kept “lewd women,” or lived as polygamists.

These vigilantes met in caves, and Faces Like Devils details how they distinguished themselves by wearing elaborate, nightmarish masks of black fabric with cut out eye and mouth holes sewn buttonhole-style with red thread.

The eyes and mouth might be circled with white. Then two horns made of the black fabric and stuffed with cork would be attached to the masks, and sometimes red tassels would be added to the tips of the horns. Even though these Bald Knobbers saw themselves as righteous men of God, they wanted to startle their enemies by appearing like devilish “horrid, hideous creatures,” according to Robert Harper’s 1888 New York Sun exposé on the group.

Meanwhile, back in Taney County, the original Bald Knobbers disbanded in 1886; with surprising swiftness, their vigilantism had transformed into the leadership of the Republican-run local government, enabling them to punish their enemies the “lawful” way, by jailing them for tax evasion, embezzlement, and minor hunting and fishing violations.

In less than a year they had become the crony government they originally fought: When Nat Kinney shot and killed a 19-year-old antagonist, he was cleared of all charges by the Bald Knobber sheriff for reasons of self-defense.

But then Kinney and the sheriff were killed by Anti-Bald Knobbers, a group of the vigilantes’ enemies who had unsuccessfully petitioned the state government to let them form a militia and retaliate.

Back in the northern counties, the Bald Knobbers were disbanding too; but as a last act, in 1887, they sought revenge on a young Christian County man who said the Bald Knobbers were “no better than a sheep-killing dog.”

A mob of about 25 men found him sleeping at his father’s house, along with eight other members of his family, including women and children. The Bald Knobbers broke into the home and started shooting, killing two and wounding two. One Bald Knobber also died.

Sensational news articles about the atrocity spread across the United States, and public opinion of the Bald Knobbers went sour. To an extent, neighbors had tolerated the group’s lashing of wayward fathers and sexual deviants.

But the ambush of the family was too much—four Bald Knobbers were charged with first-degree murder, and more than a dozen others faced second-degree murder charges. Eventually three men were hanged while a fourth escaped from jail.

Although from our perspective the Bald Knobbers may seem like renegade outliers, in Faces Like Devils  Dr.Hernando asserts that vigilantism has been a part of America’s culture since its rebellious founding, and our country’s obsession with conquering lawless frontiers has only fed that impulse.

It’s a legacy of violent uprising we may not be entirely free from today.

“All U.S. vigilante groups are in some way a representation of the American value of self-government,” Hernando said.

“We are a society that is founded, at least in part, on the firm belief that the people have the right to create their own institutions of government, what is referred to as the ‘right of revolution,’ expressed right there in the Declaration of Independence.

If the government is not doing what it’s supposed to, if it’s not protecting the people’s liberties, if it’s not serving the people’s interest, they have the right to rise up and replace that government. The problem is, you cannot do that on a continuous basis and have a stable society.”

Today, the Bald Knobber name lives on in Branson—in distorted depictions that cast them as an outlaw gang, like in the outdoor drama, “The Shepherd of the Hills,” or as goofy hillbillies, like in the Baldknobber Jamboree variety show. Then of course, there’s the entirely fictional ride about pyromaniac Bald Knobbers in Silver Dollar City.

So folks, there you have it. History proves once again that we are on the wrong path. Defunding the police does not work.

Replacing our law enforcement with vigilantes leaves us at the mercy of their court of justice.

Are there bad cops? Sure. Just like there are bad doctors or bad politicians. But to eliminate the rule of law that governs our law enforcement and turn our safety over to mob rule is suicide.

Think about it.

Callers? What do you think? Would you rather live under our current law enforcement system, our would you prefer the local citizens deal with the criminal element with no restrictions?

“I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

― Winston S. Churchill

The Ten Cannots

An outspoken political conservative, Rev. William Henry Boetcker is perhaps best remembered for his authorship of a pamphlet entitled The Ten Cannots, originally published in 1916, that emphasized freedom and responsibility of the individual on himself. It is often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln.

The error apparently stems from a leaflet printed in 1942 by a conservative political organization called the Committee for Constitutional Government. The leaflet bore the title “Lincoln on Limitations” and contained some genuine Lincoln quotations on one side and the “Ten Cannots” on the other, with the credits switched.

There are several minor variants of the pamphlet in circulation, but the most commonly accepted version states:

• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
• You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
• You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
• You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
• You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
• You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
• You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.
• And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

Now folks, I have to ask, are we not, as a nation, implementing every one of the cannots?

If we are? What in the world are we doing?

Let’s look at some of them again.

• You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
• You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
• You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

Defund the police, tax the rich, close the Keystone pipeline, and shut down fossil fuels, just to name a few.

• You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

Congress is talking about a 90 % tax rate on the wealthy. Do you honestly think that big business is going to eat that cost, or do you think they will simply pass it on to the consumer?

• You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.

We currently owe China $1.3 trillion and Japan $1.1 trillion.

• You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

Take a look at the national news. BLM and Antifa are constantly leading the charge that we are a divided nation. Systemic racism is the current catch phrase and the media runs with stories fueling this fire on a nightly basis.

• You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

As usual, the government seems to think that throwing money at every problem is the answer. Let’s send money to Central America to fix the immigration problem. More money for social problems in our inner cities. Funding on a huge scale to address climate change. These are just a few examples.

• You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.

Increased welfare and housing payments along with universal income proposals.

• And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

How many times have you heard people say, “Why work if you can stay home and make more money?”

Again folks, what are we trying to do here?

The current administration would tell you that they are trying to level the playing field. To make things fair. To create a perfect society. I hate to tell you this, but these ideas have been around for a long time and so far, none of these ideas have worked.

Don’t believe me? How about a little history?

Let’s start with Jeremy Bentham 1748 -1832, an English philosopher who came up with all kinds of ideas to improve the plight of the common man.

He taught based on the idea of utility which stated that the goal of any action should be to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

His followers became known as Utilitarian’s.

He said that government should govern as little as possible but that it should step in when “the pains suffered by many exceed the pleasures enjoyed by the few”.

Now along comes John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, another English philosopher who took the teachings of Bentham and organized his own utilitarian society.

He said laborers should be allowed to organize unions, form coops, and receive a share of the profits.

He said all men should be able to vote and should be prepared to do so by receiving a free education at state expense.

Finally, he said women should have all these same rights! (crazy talk for the 1850’s)

In his later years, Mills referred to himself as a socialist.

This now led to a group known as Utopian Socialists.

Two of the chief Utopian Socialists were Claude St. Simon and Charles Fourier who came up their own ideas of the perfect society.

Claude St. Simon developed a plan for the perfect French government.

He wanted supreme power given to a parliament made up of 10 industrialists, 5 artists, 5 philosophers, 5 chemists, 5 physiologists, 5 physicists, 5 astronomers, and 5 mathematicians.

Thewhole group would be presided over by one of the math dudes.

Now if you think that is bizarre, let’s talk about Charles Fourier who was way out there.

Another Frenchman, he was shocked by the difference in living conditions between the rich and the poor in Lyon, France.

He said that just as Isaac Newton came up with the force holding planets together, he had found the force holding people together.

He believed that it was possible to make all work into play, to make it pleasurable and desirable and deeply satisfying, both physically and mentally.

This was perhaps the one vision of Fourier’s thought that most captivated other socialist thinkers of the 19th century, including Marx and Engels.

The device which Fourier proposed was what he called a phalanstere.

He said it would be like the ancient Greek phalanx, where men were tightly linked together, forming a highly interdependent and impenetrable fighting unit.

Fourier’s phalanx was to become a self-contained community, on about 400 acres, housing 1,620 members designed to encourage a dynamic interplay of various human passions.

Why 1,620 people? Well, Fourier had determined that there are 810 different psychological types, he called them passions, — if you multiply this by two (male and female), you arrive at a figure of 1,620. Here the Law of Passional Attractions would be allowed to operate unfettered for the first time in history.

Each phalanx would be self-sufficient and all the people would live in one large building.

He said this arrangement would provide for the “social passions” and would make the routine of daily living more efficient with one large kitchen and all the housekeeping would be done by little boys who loved to get dirty anyway.

The workplace would be made as pleasant as possible with bright lighting , frequent redecoration, and workers would change jobs 8 times a day so they wouldn’t get bored.

You worked from 4 am to 9 pm with 5 meals a day. You would sleep only 5 hours since the variety of work wouldn’t make you tired.

He said you wouldn’t need doctors because everyone would live to be 140 years old.

He also advocated complete sexual freedom (on 5 hours sleep?) and said marriage was just for old folks since they were too old to fool around anymore!

According to Fourier, there are twelve fundamental passions: five of the senses (touch, taste, hearing, sight and smell); four of the soul (friendship, love, ambition and parenthood); and three that he called distributive. The first eight passions are self-explanatory. It is the distributive passions that deserve closer attention.

The first of these distributive passions refers to the love of variety. A worker quickly tires of one kind of task, just as lovers, in spite of their initial attraction, soon find themselves looking elsewhere.

 Fourier held Christianity in deep contempt because it made people feel guilty when they pursued their natural desire for variety in work or in sex.

 For the same reasons, he also hated Adam Smith’s vision of a society of specialists, doing the same thing over and over all in the name of the division of labor.

Whatever the productive advantages of Smith’s economic system, the fact remained, according to Fourier, that it created only stunted and repressed human beings.

 Society should strive to eliminate all tedious or unpleasant jobs, learning, if possible, to do without the products created from such labor.

The second of the distributive passions, had to do with rivalry and conspiracy. While in previous societies this passion caused many problems, in the phalanx it would be put to good use.

 Productive teams would compete with one another to produce the most delicious peaches or the best pair of shoes.

 The need to compete would satisfy a natural passion because all men, by nature, are competitive. And the harmful aspects of competitive commerce in civilization would not be reproduced because production would keep the overall good of society in mind, rather than encouraging individual profit in the market.

Finally, was the distributive passion which Fourier considered the most beautiful of all. Fourier seems to have meant a combination of two or more different varieties of passions — the sharing of a good meal (senses) in good company (soul) while conspiring to arrange a sexual orgy with the couple at the next table.

This is why some of the liberal scholars of the 1960’s studied Fourier.

He was a huge advocate of sexual liberation and a staunch defender of sexual preferences that were clearly not accepted by religion or society.

Sound familiar?

He believed that the only sexual activity that could be forbidden involved pain or force.

He was willing to accept any sexual activity, including homosexuality, that satisfied man’s natural needs.

 Fourier was also a radical feminist. He considered the position of women in his surrounding society as a form of slavery.

In one famous passage, he set it down that the level of any civilization could be determined by the extent to which its women had been liberated.

He believed that the existing family structure was partly responsible for the subjugation of women. The family turned people exclusively inward to spouse and children, rather than outward to society.

Fourier’s vision, together with his criticism of the existing system, makes  him one of the leading prophets of 19th century socialism.

Let’s face it folks, this guy was a hippie born 100 years too early. Communes, free sex, women’s lib?

Now comes Karl Marx who had read the ideas of people like St. Simon and Fourier.

He took Socialism to a whole new level. Revolutionary Communism.

The socialists pushed for gradual change over a number of years.

Marx said that would never happen. Governments and big business would not voluntarily switch to a socialist society and the only way to make it happen was through revolution brining about immediate change.

Bottom line, communism is socialism at the end of the barrel of a gun.

Communism puts the reins of power into the hands of just a few strongmen who end up calling all the shots.

It’s a system in which suspicion and treason tend to hang in the air.

So, whatever you want to call it, socialism, communism, utopianism, collectivism, even “democratic” socialism or “progressivism”, they all have a common heritage.

Lenin and his gang all started out calling themselves socialists. Social democrats, to be exact. So, the fact remains: the path of socialism is ultimately paved with coercion, censorship, and, yes, terror.

So, there you have it folks. William Boetcker tried to warn us with his pamphlet, “The Ten Cannots” back in 1916. Did we listen? Apparently not.

Presidential Executive Power and the 1933 German Enabling Act

“I have this strange notion, we are a democracy … if you can’t get the votes … you can’t [legislate] by executive order unless you’re a dictator. We’re a democracy. We need consensus.” 

Those are the words of Joe Biden. And, no, this isn’t a matter of unearthing a clip from the 1980s or ’90s in an attempt to play a game of gotcha on some antiquated flip-flop. That’s Democratic nominee Biden, less than three weeks before the 2020 presidential election, talking to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos about the dangers of governing like a dictator.

So far, since his inauguration, Joe Biden has signed 39 Executive Orders.

Let me share another quote.

The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures.The position and rights of the President remain unaltered… The separate existence of the federal states will not be done away with. The rights of the churches will not be diminished and their relationship to the State will not be modified. The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one.

– Adolf Hitler to the Reichstag, urging passage of the Enabling Act, March 23, 1933

Germany in the early 1900s was a Republic just like us. The Weimar Republic was a democracy, with elected representatives to the Reichstag (parliament), an elected President, and a constitution.

In the elections of July 31, 1932, the Nazi Party surged and became the largest Party in the Reichstag just like what we have seen happen this year in our Congress with the Democratic Party.

However, no Party had a sufficient majority to govern. The government was fractured between multiple and competing political groups. Just like our Democrats and Republicans.

The chancellor, (Prime Minister who ran day to day affairs of the government) of Germany at that time, Franz Von Papen, was removed by President Paul Von Hindenburg and replaced with Kurt Von Schleiker in an attempt to settle the political divisions in the Reichstag.

Von Papen, furious, made an alliance with Hitler that he would support Hitler for the position of Chancellor (Prime Minister) if Hitler made Von Papen  his Vice Chancellor.

Hindenburg, weary of unrest in the Reichstag, at Von Papen’s urging, made Hitler Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Von Papen had convinced Hindenburg he could control Hitler, and Hindenburg believed the Nazi Party was on the decline.

Hitler was now Chancellor but he still had no majority in the Reichstag.

On February 27, 1933, there was a fire at the Reichstag building. The Nazis (who are believed to have set the fire) blamed the Communists and claimed it was the beginning of a Marxist takeover of Germany. They appealed to Hindenburg to invoke Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which gave government the right to suspend the constitutional rights of German People. Hindenburg invoked Article 48 on February 28, 1933.

Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searchers, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are now permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

– President Paul Von Hindenburg, February 28, 1933

Now folks, does any of this sound familiar to what we have been going through with the Covid restrictions, censoring of the press, and fact checking on social media?

On March 15, 1933, a cabinet meeting was held during which Hitler and  Herman Göring, Hitler’s right hand man, discussed how to obstruct what was left of the democratic process to get an Enabling Act passed by the Reichstag.

This law would hand over the constitutional functions of the Reichstag to Hitler, including the power to make laws, control the budget and approve treaties with foreign governments.

The emergency decree signed by President Hindenburg on February 28, made it easy for them to interfere with non-Nazi elected representatives of the people by simply arresting them.

Soon after, Hitler had his cabinet draw up a document that would give him power, for four years, to make law without Parliament’s approval. It was known as The Enabling Act of 1933 – The Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich. The Reichstag passed it on March 23, 1933.

Here is what it said:

The Reichstag has enacted the following law, which is hereby proclaimed with the assent of the Reichstag, it having been established that the requirements for a constitutional amendment have been fulfilled:

Article 1

In addition to the procedure prescribed by the constitution, laws of the Reich may also be enacted by the government of the Reich.

Article 2

Laws enacted by the government of the Reich may deviate from the constitution as long as they do not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat. The rights of the President remain undisturbed.

Article 3

Laws enacted by the Reich government shall be issued by the Chancellor (Hitler) and announced in the Reich Gazette. They shall take effect on the day following the announcement, unless they prescribe a different date.

Article 4

Treaties of the Reich with foreign states, which relate to matters of Reich legislation shall for the duration of the validity of these laws not require the consent of the Reichstag.

Hitler was now dictator. The Weimar Constitution had ceased to exist. And it was done, in a matter of minutes, in the name of “necessity”, “the common good”, and “vitally necessary measures” – to remedy the distress of the people.

Again, does any of this sound familiar folks?

Our Constitution defines the limitations of government. It defines the way laws are made, and who is allowed to make them. They are specifically designed to not allow one man to make law, as Hitler did and Biden is suggesting he can.

There is nothing in our Constitution that allows these defined limits of authority and lawmaking to be ignored out of “necessity”, “great need”, “the common good”, expanded “opportunity for American families”, or a need to “move the ball forward”.

In 1933, Germans gave extra-Constitutional power to one man. The world suffered the horror of the Third Reich directly due to that action. 

Hitler and his Party Leaders, indisputably, believed they were doing what was best for the German People. They were sincere. They believed they had a moral imperative.

[I] want to work with Congress this year on proven ways to create jobs, like building infrastructure and fixing our broken immigration system. Where Congress isn’t acting, I’ll act on my own to put opportunity within reach for anyone who’s willing to work for it.

Joe Biden quote? Nope. That was Barack Obama on January 18, 2014. Do you want to tell me Biden isn’t reading from Obama’s playbook?

The type of extra-Constitutional power Biden is now claiming on the basis of his moral imperative is more than dangerous. It defies the very foundation of our Constitutional Republic.

On Thursday, April 8^th, Joe Biden stated,

“No amendment, no amendment to the Constitution is absolute,” he said.

He added: “So the idea is just bizarre, to suggest that some of the things we’re recommending are contrary to the Constitution.”

Biden must not be further Enabled.

The Man who promised to fundamentally change this nation has started doing so with executive orders.

Change is not always a good thing.

Hitler promised change to the people of Germany. He promised them free health care, the envy of the world; he promised to destroy the rich and raise the poor out of poverty; and he promised to build schools and roads that would change Germany into  the greatest nation on earth.

He did so by being given the legislative power to do whatever was necessary to implement what he promised to do for Germany.

Changing the voting laws, defunding police, eliminating the Senate filibuster, stacking the Supreme Court, and open borders are just a few of the major changes the current administration is pushing forward.

Where will it stop?

Have we lost control?

Are we seeing history repeat itself? If so, what can be done?

Callers?  What do you think?

OK folks here we go again. Last week, there was just a short blurb in the news that there was a coup attempt in the country of Jordan. Nothing more after that.

I had to ask, with Jordan being a key player in maintaining peace in the Middle East, what really happened and why is it not being covered?

Article by Nabih Bulos posted on Military.com

Authorities in Jordan on Saturday arrested a number of top officials and a royal family member, state news reported, in what appears to have been a thwarted attempted coup.

There were also unconfirmed reports the former crown prince was under house arrest.

The arrests were announced by the state-run Petra News agency, quoting an unnamed official who said Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a member of the royal family, and Bassem Awadallah (ah way dalla), a prominent official who once ran the royal court, were arrested “for security reasons” along with “others” after “close monitoring.”

“An investigation into the matter is ongoing,” said the source.

The news comes as a shock in the desert kingdom, a close regional ally of the U.S. often lauded for its stability in a crisis-ridden neighborhood.

Also swept up in the dragnet — according to observers and activists on social media — was Prince Hamzah bin Hussein (hahmza bin Husan) , one-time crown prince and stepbrother to Jordan’s King Abdullah II. The monarch replaced him with his eldest son, Hussein, four years into his rule.

State news later quoted an unnamed security official who denied reports that a 20-vehicle force had raided Hamzah’s home in a suburb of West Amman, placing him under house arrest and detaining members of his security detail and members of his staff.

His head of office, Yasser Majali (ma ha lee), was picked up after a heavily armed force burst into his relative’s home, according to Basma Al Majali, a family member who wrote of the incident on Twitter.

“Communication was lost with them more than three hours ago,” she tweeted.

Late Saturday night, Jordan’s Chief of Staff Lt. General Mahmoud Yousef Huneit issued a statement saying Prince Hamzah had not been detained but instead was “asked to stop movements and activities that were being employed to target Jordan’s security and stability,” adding that this was done within “the framework of comprehensive joint investigations undertaken by the security services.”

“All the procedures were conducted within the framework of the law and after being required as a result of vigorous investigations,” he said.

“No one is above the law, and Jordan’s security and stability is above any consideration.”

The Saudi royal court issued a statement in solidarity with King Abdullah, asserting it stood with the Jordanian monarch and supported whatever decisions he makes to “preserve the security and stability and frustrate any attempt to tamper with them.” Both Bahrain and the Palestinian Authority followed suit.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said, “We are closely following the reports and in touch with Jordanian officials. King Abdullah is a key partner of the United States, and he has our full support.”

Jordan’s 59-year-old king came to power in 1999, when King Hussein before his death elevated the British-educated, eldest son from his first marriage from his relatively obscure position as head of Jordan’s special forces to become the new monarch.

Since then, King Abdullah has been a top U.S. ally, often allowing U.S. troops to stage operations from Jordanian territory and participating in the anti-Islamic State campaign.

The kingdom, which has scant resources, received $1.5 billion in assistance from the U.S. in 2020 — a result of Abdullah’s popularity among congressional leaders.

Yet he is decidedly less popular at home, where Jordanians often compare him negatively to his father, a deeply popular, charismatic figure who steered the country through many convulsions, including several regional wars, a military coup, and many assassination attempts.

As the eldest son of Queen Nour (nee Lisa Halaby), his father’s fourth and final queen, the now-41-year-old prince Hamzah was thought to be King Hussein’s top choice as successor; he was passed over because he was still in school. Nevertheless, King Hussein insisted on putting Hamzah next in line to the throne after Abdullah.

Note: Queen Noor of Jordan was born Lisa Najeeb Halaby on August 23, 1951, in Washington, D.C. Her father, Najeeb Elias Halaby, was born in Dallas, Texas of Syrian descent, and distinguished himself as a U.S. Navy test pilot and lawyer who became head of the Federal Aviation Administration under President John F. Kennedy. He was also the CEO of Pan American World Airways. Her mother, Doris Carlquist, was born in Leavenworth, Washington, of Swedish descent, and studied political science at the University of Washington

Back to our story. The news comes at a precarious time for the monarch. The country is experiencing a brutal coronavirus wave, with fatalities only recently dipping below 100 a day. Discontent has risen, with Jordanians increasingly angry over the government’s handling of the pandemic and its inability to contain the economic devastation wreaked by strong lockdowns and weekend quarantines.

Former Crown Prince Hamzah’s lawyer released a video to the BBC following the arrests, in which the prince states that he was instructed to remain at home and that his other forms of communication had been shut down.

On Monday, he released an audio recording stating that although he did not wish to “escalate,” the restrictions on himself and his family were “unacceptable.”

The high-level arrests come in the midst of government repression of protests against increasingly authoritarian restrictions in Jordan. In his video, Prince Hamzah stated that “Jordanians have lost hope” as a result of corruption and misrule.

Although Hamzah did not mention his half-brother the king, he recorded the video in front of an image of their father, the late and revered King Hussein, whom Hamzah resembles.

Prince Hamzah is popular in Jordan, especially for his close ties to East bank Jordanian tribes as well as his command of Arabic, in contrast to King Abdullah, who is seen by some as too close to Palestinian interests due in part to the Palestinian heritage of his wife, Queen Rania, as well as his initially less-than-fluent command of Arabic.

The narrative put forward by the Jordanian government is that Prince Hamzah was involved with “foreign agents” in an attempted coup.

In particular, Roy Shaposhnik, an Israeli friend of the prince who offered to host his wife and children, has been described by Jordanian security as a “former Mossad agent,” which Shaposhnik denies.

Other rumors about foreign connections remain unsubstantiated: possible ties to the UAE appear unlikely, as none of the Gulf monarchs are interested in undermining the authority of one of their own.

The King may have hoped to keep his half-brother quiet as the palace sought to placate Jordanians by shifting blame for the country’s problems on to a handful of elites.

Bassem Awadallah, a former confidant of King Abdullah II and later an advisor to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is often a fall man for the king: unpopular decisions can be blamed on him rather than on Abdullah himself.

During the Arab Spring uprising of 2011, protestors chanted for his removal from government. The Jordanian regime may have hoped that by arresting him, along with Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a member of the royal family who also served as envoy to Saudi Arabia, frustrated Jordanians would feel temporarily appeased.

In addition to their arrest, key figures of the Majali tribe were arrested, a powerful family that has historically expressed dissatisfaction with Abdullah’s rule.

Given the close ties between Prince Hamzah and those arrested, security services may have tried to contain the former crown prince by placing him under house arrest as a precaution.

Yet rather than quietly accept, Prince Hamzah released the video while he still could, thereby escalating the situation, and forcing the Jordanian government to allege a coup attempt.

At present, no clear evidence of an actual coup attempt has emerged. The incident therefore resembles the alleged coup attempt against President Erdogan in Turkey in the summer of 2016.

It remains unclear what precisely occurred, yet Erdogan used the alleged coup attempt to crack down on dissent and consolidate his power.

King Abdullah, feeling threatened by ongoing protests, high unemployment, high COVID cases, and dismal economic prospects, may decide that the alleged coup attempt offers a useful excuse to clamp down on any criticism of his rule.

Annelle Sheline on Responsible Statecraft Website

Prince Hamzah’s threat to King Abdullah’s authority is tied not only to his popularity, but to the fact that their father King Hussein, intended for Prince Hamzah to serve as Abdullah’s successor.

Hamzah has long expressed support for a more democratic system in Jordan, as well as more authority to powerful tribes who ruled Jordan before the Hashemite regime was instated by the British in 1921.

Ironically, upon his coronation, King Abdullah II was also seen as a proponent of democratic reforms, yet in the intervening two decades of his rule, he has consolidated power in himself, and designated his son Hussein as crown prince in 2009 when the prince turned 15.

The US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE all expressed support for Abdullah in response to the alleged coup narrative. The US and the other Arab monarchs see the ongoing rule of their regimes as necessary for regional stability.

Despite pushing for greater democratic reforms after 9/11, the US has largely refrained from advocating too strenuously for democratization among its Arab security partners.

Instead, despite President Biden’s stated commitment to supporting democracy and human rights, the US shows no sign of altering its robust support for authoritarian governments in the Middle East.

Countries like Jordan and Egypt, that once appeared to be moving towards greater freedom for their people, are now simply additional data points in a global trend towards authoritarianism.

Article on the website, RUSI, The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) is the world’s oldest and the UK’s leading defense and security think tank.

The author, Tobias Borck is an Associate Fellow at RUSI; an independent researcher and analyst specialising in Middle East politics and security; 

As US President Joe Biden assumes office, many governments in the Middle East are looking to Washington to see what the change in the White House will mean for them.

While some Middle Eastern states may have preferred a second term for President Donald Trump, King Abdullah II of Jordan has been among the region’s leaders most eagerly looking forward to the arrival of the new administration — he was the first Arab leader to congratulate Joe Biden on his election in November.

However, for the Jordanian monarchy, one of the US’s — and the UK’s — longest-standing Arab partners, the future looks deeply uncertain.

Even for a country as accustomed to having to navigate crises and a challenging regional environment as Jordan, the past few years have been extremely difficult. 

The Trump administration was not overtly hostile to Jordan, but its actions in the region, particularly with regard to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, pulled into question the Jordanian Kingdom’s most fundamental strategic interests.

Even though Jordan was one of only two Arab countries that already had full relations with Israel (Egypt was the other one), it was essentially sidelined from US efforts, spearheaded by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to further bolster Israel’s position in the region and improve its relations with other Arab governments. 

Jordan cautiously welcomed the Abraham Accords (UAE and Israel agreement under Trump), in principle, but watched in dismay as Washington appeared to move further and further away from its traditional support for the two-state solution with a viable Palestinian state.

The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the cutting of US funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the presentation of the ‘Prosperity to Peace’ plan that contained provisions for the Israeli annexation of large parts of the West Bank and no right to return for Palestinian refugees, all piled pressure on Jordan.

Given its status as the custodian of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, and with a majority of Jordan’s population of Palestinian origin (including 2.1 million refugees), these issues go right to the heart of the Jordanian monarchy’s legitimacy.

Lest they jeopardize their access to US aid, King Abdullah and his government could do little except voice cautious criticism in public, plead their case behind the scenes and hope for political change in Washington.

US economic support for Jordan amounted to just over $1 billion in 2020 (in addition to $425 million in military assistance aid to help deal with over 650,000 Syrian refugees still based in the country), a sizeable chunk of the Kingdom’s annual budget. Government spending for 2021 is estimated to be $13.2 billion. 

Economic necessities meant that Jordan had to walk a diplomatic tightrope elsewhere, too. In the regional rift between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, Jordan could not afford to take sides.

Heavily dependent on its economic relations with all the Gulf monarchies — as trade partners, providers of financial aid and hosts of hundreds of thousands of Jordanian expatriate workers — Jordan had to tread carefully for over three years. 

However, King Abdullah is an experienced crisis manager — since the death of Sultan Qaboos of Oman in January 2020, he is the Arab world’s longest-serving head of state — and there are some rays of light in early 2021.

The Biden administration is likely to pay more attention to Jordan’s concerns; the Gulf monarchies have finally decided to reconcile; and the arrival of vaccines gives possible hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight.

None of this, however, is going to ultimately resolve Jordan’s problems. In fact, even once the dust thrown up by the Trump administration, the Gulf crisis and the pandemic settles, the Kingdom has to confront new realities that bring into question both its regional role and the sustainability of its muddling-through domestic strategy. 

The Biden administration may reinstate funding for Palestinian organizations and restore America’s rhetorical commitment to a two-state solution, without making it any more likely to become reality.

The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital or the expansion of settlements in the West Bank have created realities that make the establishment of a Palestinian state an ever-more distant prospect.

Israeli annexation of at least parts of the West Bank is also sure to continue to loom on the horizon, particularly if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds a way to hold on to power. 

The normalisation of relations between Israel and the Gulf states means that Jordan’s traditional role as a useful intermediary has become largely irrelevant, leaving it somewhat adrift in the turmoil of regional politics.

Moreover, Gulf support for Jordan’s economy had already started to dry up before the pandemic and there are reasons to assume that it will not rebound any time soon.

King Abdullah can continue to cycle through prime ministers and cabinets , they have had 15 prime ministers since Abdullah’s coronation in 1999 — but this will not substantially reduce socioeconomic pressures at home. Serious economic reforms risk further provoking popular discontent, while some of the security measures the government has implemented to maintain control over the population risk negating any benefits they might produce, such as a more open business environment. 

It will clearly be a difficult year for Jordan. Amman will look to Washington for help — political and material — and hope that it can reclaim at least some of its former status as a useful intermediary, whose continued stability is factored into the Biden administration’s regional policy.

So folks, it turns out there are essentially two separate issues here. One is Prince Hamzah, the popular elder son of the late King Hussein, who rattled Jordan’s security chiefs with his recent contacts with disgruntled tribal figures. The other involves a number of officials who are alleged to have had links to at least one other country.

Yet governments in the region know that were Jordan’s monarchy to fall, this could trigger a dangerous chain of events. Hence the rapid and public declarations of support for King Abdullah from his neighbors. Waiting in the wings, both al-Qaeda and ISIS would be only too delighted to see chaos reign in a country that has so far been a linchpin of stability in the Middle East.

So, with our lesson today, do we continue to back Jordan with our cash and military, or do we cut our losses and leave them at the mercy of their neighbors? Better yet, will throwing more money at the Middle East in general, eventually solve the problems in that region of the world?

Article on The News & Advance website by Cal Thomas

At a news conference recently, President Biden said of Georgia’s new voting law, “It makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”

Not only President biden has used the term, but last July, former President Barack Obama used it in his call to end the Senate filibuster in July when he advocated for federal voting rights legislation during his eulogy at the funeral of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.

“Let’s honor him by revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for. And by the way, naming it the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, that is a fine tribute,” Obama said, going on to list ways voting rights could be protected.

“And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster — another Jim Crow relic — in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do,” he said.

Obama’s phrase, “Jim Crow relic,” has been adopted by activists and elected Democrats all the way up to President Biden.

So now a little history.

The name came from a song written by Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice.

“Rice, a struggling ‘actor’ (he did short solo skits between play scenes) at the Park Theater in New York, happened upon a black person singing (a song titled ‘Jim Crow’) — some accounts say it was an old black slave who walked with difficulty, others say it was a ragged black stable boy.

Whether modeled on an old man or a young boy we will never know, but we know in 1828 Rice appeared on stage as ‘Jim Crow’ — an exaggerated, highly stereotypical black character.

“Rice, a white man, was one of the first performers to wear blackface makeup … His Jim Crow song-and-dance routine was an astounding success that took him from Louisville to Cincinnati to Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and finally to New York in 1832.

He also performed to great acclaim in London and Dublin. By then ‘Jim Crow’ was a stock character in minstrel shows, along with counterparts Jim Dandy and Zip Coon.

Rice’s subsequent blackface characters were Sambos, Coons, and Dandies. White audiences were receptive to the portrayals of blacks as singing, dancing, grinning fools.”

President Biden and other Democrats apparently want us to believe there has been no racial progress since then.

Democrats should remember their history when it comes to African-Americans and voting, since it was members of their party who opposed civil rights legislation, defended slavery in the 19th century and promoted “black codes” in Southern state legislatures that denied many rights to former slaves.

Those were elected Democrats who stood in schoolhouse doors, denying access to black children. Democrat sheriffs clubbed people in the streets during demonstrations and sicked dogs on them, among other indignities. It also was the party that required “poll taxes” and “literacy tests” for blacks, violating their right to vote.

The Georgia law leaves in place many voting options, in addition to showing up on Election Day. It eliminates signature matching, which should appeal to both parties. Vote tabulators no longer will have to subjectively decide the authenticity of two signatures.

Instead, voters will receive an ID number with their mail-in ballots or applications. Those numbers must match. In person voters who do not have an ID can easily obtain one.

How is doing a better job of ensuring ballot integrity and boosting confidence in election outcomes racist? Critics claim the new law negatively affects African American voters. Do they think Blacks are so incompetent they can’t do the minimum required in order to vote?

For years, Democrats have expanded voting laws to include registration at the DMV, early voting, and absentee voting with no excuses (still allowed under the new law).

The Georgia law, which is being duplicated in other states with Republican majority legislatures, seeks to prevent vote harvesting and voting by people who don’t exist, or who have moved out of state.

Today’s Democrats like to claim “voter suppression” when Republicans attempt to make sure every ballot is legitimate.

Most people are willing to accept the defeat of candidates for whom they voted if they believe the system was fair and the tabulations accurate. Achieving that end is the purpose of the new Georgia law. It’s not about Jim Crow, or for that matter, “Jim Eagle.”

 So what are these Jim Crow Laws the Democrats have been referring to?

Article from the editors at History.com

Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation.

Named after the Black minstrel show character I just referred to, the laws—which existed for about 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1968—were meant to marginalize African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or other opportunities.

Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence, and death.

The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.

Black codes were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation.

The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.

The legal system was stacked against Black citizens, with former Confederate soldiers working as police and judges, making it difficult for African Americans to win court cases and ensuring they were subject to Black codes.

These codes worked in conjunction with labor camps for the incarcerated, where prisoners were treated as enslaved people.

 Black offenders typically received longer sentences than their white equals, and because of the grueling work, often did not live out their entire sentence.

During the Reconstruction era, local governments, as well as the national Democratic Party and President Andrew Johnson, thwarted efforts to help Black Americans move forward.

So, do you not find it ironic that our president is using the term Jim Crow, when it is his party that created it?

Violence was on the rise, making danger a regular aspect of African American life. Black schools were vandalized and destroyed, and bands of violent white people attacked, tortured, and lynched Black citizens in the night. Families were attacked and forced off their land all across the South.

The most ruthless organization of the Jim Crow era, the Ku Klux Klan, was born in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a private club for Confederate veterans.

The KKK grew into a secret society terrorizing Black communities and seeping through white Southern culture, with members at the highest levels of government and in the lowest echelons of criminal back alleys.

At the start of the 1880s, big cities in the South were not wholly beholden to Jim Crow laws and Black Americans found more freedom in them.

This led to substantial Black populations moving to the cities and, as the decade progressed, white city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans.

Jim Crow laws soon spread around the country with even more force than previously. Public parks were forbidden for African Americans to enter, and theaters and restaurants were segregated.

Segregated waiting rooms in bus and train stations were required, as well as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows.

Laws forbade African Americans from living in white neighborhoods. Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails, and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped.

Some states required separate textbooks for Black and white students. New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race. In Atlanta, African Americans in court were given a different Bible from white people to swear on. Marriage and cohabitation between white and Black people was strictly forbidden in most Southern states.

It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning African Americans that they were not welcome there.

As the 20th century progressed, Jim Crow laws flourished within an oppressive society marked by violence.

Following World War I, the NAACP noted that lynchings had become so prevalent that it sent investigator Walter White to the South. White had lighter skin and could infiltrate white hate groups.

As lynchings increased, so did race riots, with at least 25 across the United States over several months in 1919, a period sometimes referred to as “Red Summer.” In retaliation, white authorities charged Black communities with conspiring to conquer white America.

With Jim Crow dominating the landscape, education increasingly under attack and few opportunities for Black college graduates, the Great Migration of the 1920s saw a significant migration of educated Black people out of the South, spurred on by publications like The Chicago Defender, which encouraged Black Americans to move north.

Read by millions of Southern Black people, white people attempted to ban the newspaper and threatened violence against any caught reading or distributing it.

The poverty of the Great Depression only deepened resentment, with a rise in lynchings, and after World War II, even Black veterans returning home met with segregation and violence.

The North was not immune to Jim Crow-like laws. Some states required Black people to own property before they could vote, schools and neighborhoods were segregated, and businesses displayed “Whites Only” signs.

In Ohio, segregationist Allen Granbery Thurman ran for governor in 1867 promising to bar Black citizens from voting. After he narrowly lost that political race, Thurman was appointed to the U.S. Senate, where he fought to dissolve Reconstruction-era reforms benefiting African Americans.

After World War II, suburban developments in the North and South were created with legal covenants that did not allow Black families, and Black people often found it difficult or impossible to obtain mortgages for homes in certain “red-lined” neighborhoods.

The post-World War II era saw an increase in civil rights activities in the African American community, with a focus on ensuring that Black citizens were able to vote. This ushered in the civil rights movement, resulting in the removal of Jim Crow laws.

In 1948 President Harry Truman ordered integration in the military, and in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional, bringing to an end the era of “separate-but-equal” education.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which legally ended the segregation that had been institutionalized by Jim Crow laws.

And in 1965, the Voting Rights Act halted efforts to keep minorities from voting. The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended discrimination in renting and selling homes, followed.

With the passage of all these acts, along with the Supreme court decisions, Jim Crow laws officially came to an end.

So, with what you now know. Is asking for a voter ID or ending the filibuster equivalent to a Jim Crow law?  Callers?

President Biden recently held his first press conference and in addressing the immigration issue and if we should close our border and turn the huge influx of immigrants away, he stated  “That is not the United states. That is not who we are.”

Really? Let’s take a look at our history when it comes to immigration and maybe someone will bring this to the attention of our current President.

The first immigrants to come to the United States arrived from Europe during the Colonial period. Many were merchants looking to trade and barter or settlers in search of religious toleration.

When they reached North America, also known as the New World, they encountered groups of Indians who welcomed them.

Other groups of immigrants arrived involuntarily. English convicts were sent over as they were not wanted in their own country and, beginning in 1619, African slaves were forcefully transported over as part of the slave trade.

Slaves, without rights, were commonly wanted for cheap labor but convicts were a nuisance to the Colonies. The act of dumping English convicts led to the first passage of immigration enforcement legislation.

The Colonies fought against the English Parliamentary Law that allowed criminals to be sent over and passed their own laws against that practice. Ironically, these laws were passed by recent descendants of criminals that had been sent over previously.

With the creation of the United States, there was much debate over who were the “founding fathers”. At the time the population was a combination of Europeans of all different nations and languages, Native Americans and African slaves.

However, neither Native Americans nor African Slaves were even considered citizens.

It was a question of whether the United States was a country of one specific group; White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant men and women or one that welcomed newcomers from different countries, different religions and who spoke different languages.

Difference of opinion on this point created the first political party, the Federalists.

The Federalist Party was fearful of French immigrants influenced by the French Revolution. They feared them coming to the United States and causing a political disturbance.

Their fear convinced Congress to pass a stricter Naturalization law in 1795.

Immigrants were required to be a resident for 2 to 5 years to be considered a citizen.

In 1798, Federalists took power and changed the law to 14 years of residence and additionally passed the Alien Enemies Act, Friends Act and the Alien Sedition Act signed into law by John Adams.

These laws allowed the President to deport any immigrant who he believed posed a threat to national security. (again, this was 1798)

In 1800, the new Democratic Party under Thomas Jefferson, took power and eliminated the Alien and Sedition Acts deeming them as unconstitutional and as violations of the First and Tenth Amendment. Furthermore, the Jefferson administration moved the citizenship requirement back to five years of permanent residence (where it is today).

During the 19th century a huge wave of Europeans immigrated to the United States.

Several of the first European immigrants were Irish and German. The potato famine in Ireland and the loss of land from the British pushed the Irish to immigrate to other countries.

Likewise, Germany was under severe economic depression and religious intolerance that forced many Catholics to leave.

Immigrants chose the United States for several reasons, but two factors played a major role.

First, rapid industrialization increased the need for cheap labor.

Second, the United States was beginning to claim land from the Spanish and native people in the western half of the US.

Many people feared this massive number of immigrants coming into our country.

In a report from the Congressional Select Committee in July 1838 congressional members thought the increased immigration rate was a threat to the “peace and tranquility of our citizens” and classified immigrants as “paupers, vagrants, and malefactors…sent hither at the expense of foreign governments to relieve them from the burden of their maintenance”.

The anti-immigrant fears led to organized groups against European immigrants such as Order of the Star-Spangled Banner and the Know Nothing Party.

In 1875 Congress passed an exclusion law banning prostitutes and convicts from entering the United States.

Between 1860 and 1915 another wave of European immigrants entered the United States. Many came from Russia, Austria and Italy and a large portion of this new group were Jewish.

Congress now decided that immigrants should be required to pass a medical exam and have no criminal record in order to immigrate to the United States.

The 1891 Act barred people having any contagious diseases or history of crime.

In 1903, people in the United States were also fearful of European radicals entering the country and so the government added anarchists and subversives to the 1891 Act.

Fear was so widespread that Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt decided to establish the Dillingham Commission to report the effects of immigration on the country.

The Commission recommended that the United States no longer accept immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe and furthermore all immigrants were to pass a literacy test.

In 1917, under the Wilson administration (Democrat), Congress passed the first comprehensive immigration act which included a literacy test requirement.

In 1924 the National Origins Act was passed putting a quota system on the number of immigrants who entered the United States. The law effectively stopped any more large flows of European immigration.

The Chinese also started immigrating to the United States in the 1800’s after a population explosion and a food shortage in China.

When Chinese immigrants could be used for cheap labor they were instantly recruited (transcontinental RR) but the second an economic shift took place in the United States, immigrants were given the cold shoulder.

Initially, United States businesses recruited Chinese men to work as day laborers. The idea was that they would come and work temporarily, save money and return back to their families in China.

California in particular was supportive of Chinese immigration and lured a lot of immigrants to settle in the western half of the country.

However, priorities shifted when gold was discovered in California in 1848. California passed laws that banned Chinese from mining.

After the Civil War the Chinese were recruited again to build levees and the railroad. When all the projects were complete the Chinese did not return to their country because there weren’t any economic opportunities for them there.

The welcoming of Chinese immigrants stopped abruptly as fear grew that they were taking over jobs and were a threat to society. The Chinese had now virtually taken over the fishing industry in California.

In 1882 the first of three Chinese Exclusion Acts was passed, The statute suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared the Chinese as ineligible for citizenship.

The act was renewed in 1892 for another ten years, and in 1902 Chinese immigration was made permanently illegal.

The legislation proved very effective, and the Chinese population in the United States sharply declined.

It was not until 1943 that China and the United States became allies during World War II and the exclusion laws were repealed.

Mexican Immigration

After the Mexican War in 1849 the United States claimed the territory that now includes California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado, Utah and Nevada.

The Mexicans in these areas had an option to return to Mexico or stay living in what was now considered the United States. Most did not return and the United States did not enforce any border laws.

Between 1900 and 1930, Mexican immigration into the United States rose dramatically as cheap U.S. labor was once again needed.

Employers recruited Mexicans to work in agriculture after Chinese and Japanese immigrants were excluded from working in the United States.

 However Mexican workers were at a great disadvantage as they had no working rights. Anytime they organized a strike against abuse from employers they were simply deported.

In the 1930’s the United States suffered from the Great Depression, and the first campaign against Mexican immigration began.

Border patrol and police officers sent hundreds of thousands of people back to Mexico, some whom were citizens of the United States. 1930’s!

Once again during World War II there was a labor shortage and immigrants were needed to fill the gap.

So, in 1942 the “Bracero” program was created. Temporary workers were brought in mainly from Mexico but also Barbados, the Bahamas, Canada and Jamaica to work in agriculture.

Working conditions were awful for immigrants. They were paid very little and their children were not allowed to attend schools.

When John F. Kennedy was elected President, he realized the need to reform the immigration laws.

Kennedy proposed a bill that created a system for allowing immigrants into the country based on family ties and special skills called the Immigration and Nationality Act also known as the Hart-Cellar Act. President Johnson signed the bill into law.

The new system had a major effect on countries in the Western hemisphere, especially Mexico.

The 1965 Act allowed large masses of immigrants from Asia and Mexico to now enter the US.

So folks, there is a common theme throughout all of this. We have been taught that people come here solely because it is the land of opportunity. As you can see from our history, you can see it was anything but that.

So why do they come? They come because of what they are fleeing. This was the case in Europe in the 1830’s, 1850’s, and the 18870’s. It was the case throughout the 20^th century with the World Wars, and now it is still the case in the 21^st century.

So what are our current immigrants fleeing?

The Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are among the world’s most dangerous countries. At 90 for every 100,000 people, the homicide rate is nearly five times what the World Health Organization considers an “epidemic.” People face an insurmountable level of violence, insecurity and lack of economic opportunities. “Join-or-die” gang recruitment policies make life nearly impossible for innocent youth in gang-controlled areas. Business owners face extortion and threats from gangs while corrupt and inadequate policing fails to protect them.

For the last 5 years, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have suffered extreme drought, destroying corn and bean harvests, the mainstay of the Central American diet.

Meanwhile, farming practices like incorrect fertilization and burning and deforestation of hillsides are depleting the land and threatening the livelihoods of tens of thousands of farmers who depend on seasonal rainfall to grow the food that feeds their families.

During the last extreme drought of 2018, 2.2 million farmers in the Dry Corridor suffered crop losses, leaving 1.4 million people without an adequate amount of food. 

Struggling with rampant violence, chronic poverty, and failed harvests due to environmental degradation and climate change, entire families have made the difficult decision to leave their homes and flee north.

In October 2018, multiple migrant caravans set off from Hondurans and other Central American countries—comprising about 10,000 people in total—with the intention of reaching the United States in search of asylum and a decent life.

Since then, tens of thousands more people have made the dangerous trek north, through Mexico, an exodus that highlights the need to address the violence, poverty and other root causes of this humanitarian emergency.

Migrant shelters along the route from Guatemala through Mexico have been in a perpetual state of emergency since the first caravan made its way to the United States in 2018.

During the past year, many of Mexico’s migrant shelters closed their doors to prevent the spread of COVID-19 but continue to host the people who were already there, even if for much longer than planned.

Under the Trump administration, migrants seeking U.S. asylum were not allowed to cross into the US for processing.

As a result, they were forced to stay Mexico’s US border cities or return home to their crime and poverty-stricken countries.

Tens of thousands have been stuck in Mexico, many without safe shelter, and highly vulnerable to abuse, exploitation by the drug cartels and Covid 19 contagion.

Now enters the Biden administration that is now pushing for open borders.

So, I must ask President Biden and his administration, “Have you not studied your American History?” Are you not aware of our immigration policies dating all the way back to the times of Thomas Jefferson?

If you know our history, how can you say that restrictions on immigration, “Is not America, that it is not who we are?”

Callers?

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

Living through the Great depression dropped our parents and grandparents 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.

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

The great depression created  some of the worst times in our history only to be immediately 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.

During last week’s show I talked about war production in St. Louis. 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 I stated at the end of last week’s show, 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.