Free Republic

Howard Zinn’s America Deborah Lambert, December 18, 2009 America-bashers are working overtime these days to divide our nation into enemy camps. One way to describe it is a war between the country that you and I love vs. Howard Zinn’s America. If you think that the 87-year-old Marxist professor/author of A People’s History of the United States is ready to shuffle off into the sunset, you would be wrong. In fact, Zinn is actively spearheading an effort to “change the way our pre-K through high school children learn American history,” according to Big Hollywood. His curriculum ideas focus on a...

As a share of GDP, the U.S. Federal debt held by the public exceeds 50 percent in FY2009, the highest debt ratio since 1955. Projections indicate the debt ratio may be in the 70-100 percent range within ten years. In many respects, the temptation to inflate away some of this debt burden is similar to that at the end of World War II. In 1946, the debt ratio was 108.6 percent. Inflation reduced this ratio about 40 percent within a decade. Yet there are some important differences –shorter debt maturities today reduce the temptation to inflate, while the larger share...

Notice how this document bears similarities to our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. A declaration of rights made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention; which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government. SECTION I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring...

It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones – and often deliberately so. Far from viewing the past as a potential source of wisdom and insight, political regimes have a habit of employing history as an ideological weapon, to be distorted and manipulated in the service of present-day ambitions. That’s what Winston Churchill meant when he described the history of the Soviet Union as...

... The Great Depression was caused by misguided government policies adopted to avoid the "unsatisfactory conditions" signaled by the crash. The run-of-the-mill recession that ought to have followed the crash was magnified by the policies of the federal government during the administration of Herbert Hoover. In a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research published last August, Lee E. Ohanian examines a continuing mistake during the Hoover administration that helped transform difficulty into calamity. An economics professor at UCLA, Ohanian has written numerous papers on the Depression. In one earlier paper, he pinned the persistence of high unemployment on...

During the summer of 1814, British warships sailed into the Chesapeake Bay and headed towards Washington. The warships sailed up the Patuxent River and anchored at Benedict, Maryland on August 19, 1814. Over 4,500 British soldiers landed and marched towards Washington. The British mission was to capture Washington and seek revenge for the burning of their British Capitol in Canada, for which they held the United States responsible. A force of 7,000 Americans was hastily assembled near the Potomac River to defend Washington. During the afternoon of August 24, in 100°F heat, the two armies clashed. The British Army quickly...

On the eve of the celebration of the birth of the United States, Oleg Atbashian looks at our history through the competing lenses of progressivism and progress. Refusing to get bogged down in the merits of relativity, he finds freedom where equality fears to tread. Excuse me while I question your patriotism, progressive comrades. The Fourth of July is coming and you will not be celebrating it — not with the same thoughts and emotions as the rest of your countrymen. If you have been undermining this country for most of the year, why should this day be different?A critical...

David Barton is the founder of Wallbuilders. He is a brilliant scholar on the true founding of the United States and how ingrained Christianity was in our founders. This is the best video I have EVER seen. He is so detailed and yet succinct, on how we were really founded and who's responsible. The level of black participation in our liberty is astounding and yet, you hear none of it. I speculate that the Al Sharpton's/Jesse Jackson's of this country do not want anyone to hear these truths because it could insite pride in the country from our black population....

Timothy Drew is not a subject of black history month. He has not been the subject of a PBS documentary nor a critical biography. Most history professors, even at prestigious black universities, know little about him. But few African American leaders have cast a larger shadow. Without Drew, there would be no black leaders such as Elijah Mohammed, Malcolm X, Mukasa Dada, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, or Louis Farrakhan; no organizations such as the Black Power Movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Death Angels, or the New Black Panthers; no rap and hip-hop artists such as Public Enemy,...

Clearing the air vs. splitting hairs and distorting Cold War history (Part 1) Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter whitewashed Since the downfall of the Soviet Union, volumes have been written about that late superpower's penetration of American Society and its institutions before and during the Cold War years. It can be said without credible contradiction that what we now know about Soviet spying and infiltration of the U.S. for seven decades vindicates the much-maligned anti-Communists (in and out of Congress) of that era. If anything, they didn't know the half of it. It was they who warned — often to...

The trouble with many of the past ratings of America's presidents is that the "consensus" has been arrived at by academics who act alike, do alike, and think alike. In the view of many, they are suspect of viewing history exclusively through the prism of Ivy League faculty lounge discourse. Alvin Stephen Felzenberg (Ph.D.) — who has taken a fresh and comprehensive look at the nation's chief executives in his book The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game — does not challenge the credentials of the conventional historians. Rather, as he explains in...

America's Founding Fathers are seen by some people today as unjust and hypocrites, for while they talked of liberty and equality, they at the same time were enslaving hundreds of thousands of Africans. Some allege that the Founders bear most of the blame for the evils of slavery. Consequently, many today have little respect for the Founders and turn their ear from listening to anything they may have to say. And, in their view, to speak of America as founded as a Christian nation is unthinkable (for how could a Christian nation tolerate slavery?). It is certainly true that during...

Last Monday began the PBS Series, "WE SHALL REMAIN" with their first Episode "After The Mayflower". The ones that will get my attention begin next week, Monday April 20th, 2009, and especially the April 27th "Trail of Tears" episode which will feature "The Ridge", the Cherokee leader and his clan who I wrote about in "Jesus Wept" An American Story. It will be VERY interesting to see how PBS deals with this situation or if they will be overtaken with the usual political correctness and historical rumor. My story is taken from documented records as well as family letters saved...

Flyers:  Available below Range:  Hartford Gun Club Address:  157 South Main St, East Granby, CT 06026 Website:  http://www.hartfordgunclub.com When: April 18-19, 2009 Range Fee:  $10 per shooter per day Camping available: We can pitch tents on the rifle range.  Ten RV/Electric hookups are also available at $10 per night.  There is a clubhouse with restroom and sink. Hotels: Many hotels to choose from near Bradley Intl Airport (Windsor Locks, CT) (~2 miles away)  Holiday Inn, Best Western, Candlewood Suites, Crowne Plaza, Staybridge Suites, LaQuinta Inn, Days Inn, Sheraton, Ramada. (avoid Motel 6!) Directions:    *  Take I-91 to Exit 40...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Largest Marksmanship Event on the Planet World Record Attempt to be Made Locally Contact: [local name and phone number] On April 18 and 19th, the Revolutionary War Veterans Association's "Project Appleseed" rifle marksmanship clinic will be in town at XYZ [location] for a history-making attempt at establishing a world record for the longest cumulative firing line spread over the largest land area in history - a total of 2.5 miles of firing line spread over the North American continent - from California to Florida, Texas to Minnesota, Arizona to Maine. It will be the biggest marksmanship event...

"When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to China this month, she said human rights concerns could not interfere with talks about the economic crisis." Doesn't that sound eerily similar to the South's . . .

ON MONDAY, August 6, South Carolina's John Rutledge submitted to the Philadelphia convention of 1787 the first full draft of a tentative Constitution. His “Committee of Detail” had been hard at work, during a three-day recess, trying to knit together a hundred different provisions for fashioning a new government for the United States of America. History does not record that anyone paid much attention to the Committee’s draft of a preamble. It read: We the people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina, and Georgia, do ordain,...

In light of the ongoing naval battles with Muslim pirates operating from Somalia.... America has been fighting Islamists for longer than many realize. Even before independence was declared, American ships were pirated, and their Christian crews enslaved, by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the “Dey of Algiers”—an Ottoman Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.... Lacking the ability to project U.S. naval force in the Mediterranean, America tried appeasement. In 1784, Congress agreed to fund tributes and ransoms in order to rescue U.S. ships and buy the freedom of enslaved American sailors....

What was the American Revolution? The American Revolution was one of the great turning points in the history of mankind. It marked the beginning of the end of slavery, led to the founding of the first large and stable republic in history, and inspired the establishment of governments based on the natural rights of man all over the world. In the minds of most Americans, the American War for Independence began on April 19, 1775, when shots were fired on Lexington Green. John Adams said, however, that our War for Independence was not the real American Revolution. That, he said,...

Washington Crosses the Delaware, 1776 Back | EyeWitnesstoHistory.com Washington Crosses the Delaware, 1776 December 1776 was a desperate time for George Washington and the American Revolution. The ragtag Continental Army was encamped along the Pennsylvania shore of the Delaware River exhausted, demoralized and uncertain of its future. The troubles had begun the previous August when British and Hessian troops invaded Long Island routing the colonial forces, forcing a desperate escape to the island of Manhattan. The British followed up their victory with an attack on Manhattan that compelled the Americans to again retreat, this time across the Hudson River...

Congressional committees have agreed to include references to "In God We Trust" and the Pledge of Allegiance to the newly opened Capitol Visitor Center thanks in part to efforts from the Congressional Prayer Caucus and Virginian Senator J. Randy Forbes...

Ask yourself this question: was the housing price bubble, which has burst, caused by (a) a Fed policy of too much liquidity, which caused artificially low interest rates, which in turn caused a great deal of malinvestment, or (b) a Fed policy of too little liquidity which caused high interest rates and a credit-starved economy? If you chose answer b, congratulations, you may have a future as a celebrated author, historian, and Wall Street Journal commentator. Answer b is a theme of a truly ridiculous article by John Steele Gordon in the October 10 issue of the Wall Street Journal...

Today Senator Obama told a little 7 year old girl, "America is no longer what it could be, what it once was, and I say to myself I don't want that future for my children." Obama is saying that America has become a worse nation since his childhood. I'm not one to go after a spouse, but I think given that Michelle Obama said that she was proud of her country for the first time in her life eariler in this campaign. This statement is just another stupid mistake that Obama should've avoided. However Obama is right about one thing,...

Turn on your audio and click the Source URL: http://www.interviewwithgod.com/patriotic/highband.htm

Associated Press New York, Massachusetts launch program to save Revolutionary War trail markers. Bi-state effort hopes to save monuments to 1775-76 route ALBANY -- New York and Massachusetts are launching an effort to conserve dozens of roadside monuments that mark the route taken by patriots who transported the artillery that forced the British from Boston during the Revolutionary War. The granite slabs with bronze plaques serve as markers for the Knox Trail, considered one of the earliest heritage trails created in the United States. The trail mostly follows the original route used by Gen. Henry Knox and his troops in...

They will tell you the Civil War was not about slavery. Remind them that the president and vice president of the so-called "Confederate States of America" both said it was. They will tell you that great-great grandpa Zeke fought for the South, and he never owned any slaves. Remind them that it is political leaders - not grunts - who decide whether and why a war is waged. They will tell you the flag just celebrates heritage. Remind them that "heritage" is not a synonym for "good." After all, Nazis have a heritage, too.

Howard Dean & The 1850s: Convenient Racial Revisionism by Dr. Brian Melton “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates Howard Dean has recently demonstrated conclusively that historical ignorance doesn’t stop with teenage mall-rats and muscle-bound jocks. In fact, it runs all the way up into the very heart of the DNC. The good doctor (who hopefully knows more about his profession than he does about history) has made the claim that the Republican Party “looks like the 1950s and talks like the 1850s.” The 1950s aside, Dean, of course, is attempting to smear the Republicans as a party...

"I just read in an Indian depredation claim I copied from the National Archives last summer that Black Kettle was understood by everyone in 1868 as being a spy for the raiding Indians. He would profess peace and all the time he was gathering information he would later share with the Dog Soldiers to assist them in their raids, etc." Dr. Jeff Broome, author of the very important book "Dog Soldier Justice", the most accurate depiction of the Indian massacres of 1868 "Some of the raiders came from Black Kettle's camp. As was the case on numerous previous occasions, his...

A fantastic short video of the U.S. Civil War compressed into four minutes

Circle of Six: The True Story of New York's Most Notorious Cop-Killer and The Cop Who Risked Everything to Catch Him. http://www.amazon.com/Circle-Six-Notorious-Cop-Killer-Everything/dp/1932857397CIRCLE OF SIX The True Story of New York's Most Notorious Cop-Killer and the Cop Who Risked Everything to Catch Him In 1972, New York City was plagued with protests, riots, and general unrest. It was during this defining year that one of the Police Department's most scandalous cases occurred: the murder of Police Officer Phillip Cardillo. On Friday, April 14, 1972, the police were summoned to Mosque Number 7 in Harlem, led at the time by the Nation...

Colleges and universities across the U.S. -- including some of the most expensive in the country -- are failing to educate students about the nation's history and essential institutions, which is leading to a "coming crisis in citizenship," a study of more than 14,000 randomly selected students shows. Freshmen and seniors at 50 of the nation's colleges and universities were asked 60 multiple choice questions about America's history and government, its relationship to the rest of the world and the market economy in a survey done by the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy on behalf of the conservative...

Every so often, one hears the argument that "Left and Right" are outdated terms, or that there really aren't enormous differences in the ways the Left and Right view America, the world, men and women, and just about every other important aspect of life. I wish this were true. But the gaps between the Left and Right on almost every issue that matters -- including and especially issues of good and evil -- are in fact unbridgeable. That is why, for many years, I have invited leading representatives of the intellectual Left onto my radio show. Not in order to...

The history of the United States is a tale of constant oppression— a story of a checkered past where political leaders and economic moguls continually acted in their own self-interest… or so many left-leaning history authors would prefer modern Americans to believe. American history has been hijacked by the left wing, where the mistakes of America’s past such as slavery, disenfranchisement, and class warfare are overemphasized, while Franklin D. Roosevelt is simultaneously glorified as the savior of the twentieth century with his New Deal policies. While most textbooks of that nature may cast American history in a bad light and...

Freeper Larry Schweikart captures the essence of the unparalleled military success of the US Military with this book. Have their been mistakes? Yes. Have there been defeats? Yes. But the over-riding history of the US military is that of the most tremendous success, coupled with the most compassionate treatment of its enemies, and loyalty to its own, of any military force on earth. In America's Victories, Schweikart uses seven points to punctuate a great deal of the reason why the us miltary has enjoyed such success. Those points are: Gitmo, Gulags and Great Raids Learning from Loss Citizens as...

Link only since Gannett newspapers are not allowed on Freep. http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060425/NEWS0110/604250371/1001/news

So who was George Mason and what's he doing with a university named after him? "Did he invent the Mason jar?" Melanie Ruggiero, 32, of Green Cove Springs, near Jacksonville, mused as she nibbled on salad outside a Fort Lauderdale beach restaurant.

WASHINGTON - Twice as many Civil War soldiers died from insect-related disease than direct combat - an obscure fact Gary Miller has discovered in his unique, decades-long hobby. Since the 1970s, Miller, 48, of Laurel, Md., has pored over books, soldiers' letters and regimental histories for insect references. He found that mosquitoes, body lice and flies were a constant nuisance to Union and Confederate soldiers. Roughly 60,000 soldiers died from malaria on the Union side alone, he said. "I think the beauty of looking at the insects is it's a topic that we all can relate to," he said. "Few...

Perhaps this duel is the most famous in history. Its results certainly meant the end of both Hamilton and Burr. They carried Hamilton from the field and the next day he died. Burr lived for years, but the shadow of his own doom was ever before him. It is reported that late in life he observed that, had he been wiser, he would have known that there was room enough in the world for both Hamilton and himself. Had Hamilton been equally wise, he would have known that calumnies and lies bring forth but bitter fruit. When the news of...

There's no physical evidence that the family who gave the Donner Party its name had anything to do with the cannibalism the ill-fated pioneers have been associated with for a century and a half, two scientists said Thursday. Cannibalism has been documented at the Sierra Nevada site where most of the Donner Party's 81 members were trapped during the brutal winter of 1846-47, but 21 people, including all the members of the George and Jacob Donner families, were stuck six miles away because a broken axle had delayed them. No cooked human bones were found among the thousands of fragments...

If you add your handle to this thread I will ping you to the good stuff on the above topics.

IS TEACHING TRADITIONAL “HISTORY” HISTORY IN CARSON CITY’S HIGH SCHOOL? Meet Joe Enge. Joe is an award-winning, 15-year veteran history teacher in Carson City who has, among other things, written two history textbooks and served on the 1997 task force which drew up Nevada’s history standards. But according to school district administrators, he’s a “bad” teacher. You see, Joe has this crazy idea that American history should include our colonial period, as well as the Revolutionary War period. You know, where the Founding Fathers fought for independence from England and wrote the greatest governing document the world has ever...

•President Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth, Vt., on July 4, 1872. He is the only president born on July 4; however, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe all died on the Fourth of July. •One lucky Philadelphian purchased a $4 picture at a flea market. Behind the picture was an original 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence. It was sold to TV producer Norman Lear for $8.1 million. •After the war, King George III rationalized that Washington would become a dictator and make the Americans yearn for royal rule. When he was told that Washington planned to...

Misquoting Our Founding Fathers    TO THE SOURCE How many times have your heard that "Our founding fathers were not Christians! They were deists!"? It is an absurd assertion. It conjures up images of clandestine gatherings in Philadelphia's Independence Hall where one by one Washington and Jefferson and Adams et al swear allegiance to some obscure deist creed and pledge to set America on the course of eradicating Biblical belief from all corners of the land. Sure some of our nation's founders were deists. Consider the grumpy pamphleteer Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason: "I do not believe in...

Jeff Head's Review of "A Patriot's History of the United States" Larry Schweikart (Freeper LS) and Michael Allen have written a history of the United States that is tremendously broad in scope, and monumental in its approach in our modern times. It begins with Christopher Columbus and proceeds through to current events, including 9-11 and its aftermath, the War on Terror and the fights in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the re-election of George W. Bush.. The work covers over 510 years of history in 825 pages. There are over 70 pages of footnotes at the end of the...

THE founding fathers were paranoid hypocrites and ungrateful malcontents. What was their cherished Declaration of Independence but empty political posturing? They groaned about the burden of taxation, but it was the English who were shouldering the real burden, paying taxes on everything from property to beer, from soap to candles, tobacco, paper, leather and beeswax. The notorious tea tax, which had so inflamed the people of Massachusetts, was only one-fourth of what the English paid at home; even Benjamin Franklin labeled the Boston Tea Party an act of piracy. Meanwhile, smugglers, with the full connivance of the colonists, were getting...

The New York Times recently ran a story about historian David Barton and his efforts to educate Americans on the religious beliefs of the Founders, titled Putting God Back into American History. The article correctly describes Mr. Barton as “a point man in a growing movement to call attention to the open Christianity of America’s great leaders and founding documents.” It appears that while the Times recognizes this movement, it does not yet understand it. Their lack of understanding results in: 1. Minimizing the movement by limiting it to “evangelical” Christians. 2.Equating the State with society and the Church with...

WASHINGTON — On a recent evening, David Barton, a leading conservative Christian advocate for emphasizing religion in American history, stood barefoot on a bench in the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building with a congressman by his side and about a hundred students from Oral Roberts University at his feet. "Isn't it interesting that we have all been trained to recognize the two least religious founding fathers?" Mr. Barton asked, pointing to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin in a painting on the wall. "And compared to today's secularists these two guys look like a couple of Bible-thumping evangelicals!" Even...

JAMESTOWN, Va. (AP) - The Church of England has agreed to allow researchers using radar to look beneath two churches for remains that could determine whether a skeleton found at Jamestown is that of one of the colony's founders, scientists said Monday. Scientists who excavated the site of a 400-year-old fort at Jamestown want to know whether a skeleton discovered there in 2003 is that of Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, captain of one of the three ships that carried settlers from England. To do so, they need to find the graves of Gosnold's sister and niece, who were buried in two...

BOOK REVIEW: A PATRIOT'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES By L. Schweikart and M. Allen; Publisher: Penguin, N.Y., 2004 It is refreshing to see a book like this published by a mainstream publisher. It seems that at least one mainstream publisher sees the advantage of having some balance in their list. Penguin is normally a reliable fountain of Left-wing books. Perhaps they even bored themselves in the end. The book is however on a special "Sentinel" list for specifically conservative books. Quarantining conservative books like a dangerous disease is a sort of a compliment to such books, though. It shows...

Florida Freepers: I will be appearing on WIOD, an AM radio station in Miami, Fla., on January 10, at 3:00 to discuss my new book, "A Patriot's History of the United States: From Coumubus' Great Discovery to the War on Terror." Tune in!!