In the years following the bitter Civil War, a former Union general took a holiday originated by former Confederates and helped spread it across the entire country.
The holiday was Memorial Day, an annual commemoration was born in the former Confederate States in 1866 and adopted by the United States in 1868. It is a holiday in which the nation honors its military dead.
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When I was in college, one of my professors had written her PhD thesis on the cultural aspects of the post-civil-war militias, organizations that would evolve into the National Guard of today. These units proliferated at the time to give men, who lived in the shadow of their fathers’ and grandfathers’ Civil War service, a chance to emulate their exploits. When the Spanish-American War began in 1898, the men of these militias volunteered en masse. They finally had a chance to prove themselves worthy of their forbears and do something daring and dangerous.
My professor suggested that she and other academics were in an analogous situation. For them—and they were almost all on the left—missing out on the 1960s meant they missed out on a period of revolutionary change and ferment. For left-leaning academics, the 1960s was the era of breaking rules, smashing idols, and inventing new ideas and methods to address the abandonment of the old authorities. This period featured the debut of influential prophets of “unmasking” so prevalent in academic life today, such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Herbert Marcuse
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In the last six months, we have borne witness to many iconic moments evidencing the collapse of American culture.
The signs are everywhere and cover the gamut of politics, the economy, education, social life, popular culture, foreign policy, and the military. These symptoms of decay share common themes.
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The window that opened in 2019 to allow United Methodist churches to depart their embattled denomination closes in a week or so, at the end of the year, and at this late hour, approximately one-fourth of the member churches that constitute Protestantism’s second-largest denomination have climbed through that window.
In the largest U.S. church schism since Civil War times, nearly 7,700 churches of the roughly 30,000 in the United Methodist Church (UMC) have voted to take their property and go elsewhere.
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A Trump-appointed federal judge has temporarily halted removal proceedings for the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery that began Monday, the Associated Press reported.
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Workers set to relocate Confederate Memorial were spotted Sunday in Arlington National Cemetery preparing the 109-year-old statue for removal. Plans were announced in September that the iconic work would be moved to grounds at Virginia Military Institute’s New Market Battlefield State Historical Park.
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As the government observes Juneteenth as a holiday Monday for the third straight year, support for the Black Lives Matter movement has plummeted significantly as black Americans grapple with rising urban crime and stubborn inflation and grow pessimistic about racism in the future.
Juneteenth, the day that all enslaved Americans found out they were free when news of the Civil War’s end reached Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, was celebrated by black Americans for years.
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In the years following the bitter Civil War, a former Union general took a holiday originated by former Confederates and helped spread it across the entire country.
The holiday was Memorial Day, an annual commemoration was born in the former Confederate States in 1866 and adopted by the United States in 1868. It is a holiday in which the nation honors its military dead.
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CNN has fired Don Lemon in the wake of the controversial liberal talk show host’s disparaging remarks about the race and age of GOP presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley. As the left-leaning cable news network reported, Monday’s announcement came without explanation and “astonished the media industry.” News of Lemon’s departure followed word that conservative host Tucker Carlson and Fox News had parted ways.
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The dates have been revealed for when six United States Army bases will officially have their names changed due to a far-left campaign to rename any installations bearing Confederate names.
According to Axios, the six bases in question are: Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Pickett, Virginia; Fort Rucker, Alabama; Fort Lee, Virginia; Fort Benning, Georgia; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The name changes come after Joe Biden created a federal Naming Commission, for the sole purpose of changing names of federal facilities, monuments, parks, and other territories that were originally named for Confederate figures; the campaign has been widely criticized as an effort to erase American history in the name of political correctness and “woke” racial justice politics.
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Friday is Veterans Day. We celebrate Veterans Day on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year, the day the guns fell silent in Europe following the armistice that ended World War I. For some, it’s a day off from school or work, but for the majority of Americans, it means so much more.
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Political tensions have ramped up year after year, and now nearly half the country thinks a civil war could happen in the U.S. in the next decade.
Newly released polling data from YouGov and The Economist show that “two in five Americans believe a civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next decade.”
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As Joe Biden’s polls stagnate and the midterms approach, we are now serially treated to yet another progressive melodrama about the dangers of a supposed impending radical right-wing violent takeover.
This time the alleged threat is a Neanderthal desire for a “civil war.”
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In California, the first reparations panel in the nation has spent two years trying to decide which African-Americans are eligible for reparations.
According to the Associated Press, the state’s panel on reparations, which was first created following a law signed by Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) in 2020, has been plagued with internal divisions over how many black Americans should receive financial compensation for alleged “racism.”
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Why are progressive regions of the country—especially in the old major liberal cities (e.g., Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle)—institutionalizing de facto racial quotas through “proportional representation” based on “disparate impact”? Why are they promoting ethnic and racial chauvinism, such as allowing college students to select the race of their own roommates, calibrating graduation ceremonies by skin color and tribe, segregating campus “safe spaces” by race, and banning literature that does not meet commissariat diktats?
Why are they turning into one-party political fiefdoms separating the rich and poor, increasingly resembling feudal societies as members of the middle class flee or disappear? What does it mean that they are becoming more and more intolerant in their cancel culture, and quasi-religious intolerance of dissent, on issues from climate change and abortion-on-demand to critical race theory and wokeness?
Isn’t it strange that there are entire states and regions wholly reliant on the money and power of “one-crop” Big Tech monopolies? And why, in the 21st century no less, are Democratic-controlled counties, cities, and entire states nullifying federal law?
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Thursday is Veterans Day. We celebrate Veterans Day on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year, the day the guns fell silent in Europe following the armistice that ended World War I. For some, it’s a day off from school or work, but for the majority of Americans, it means so much more.
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More than 150 years after he led the Union Army to victory in the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant may receive another military promotion.
Recently, lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation in the U.S. Congress that would promote Grant posthumously to the Army’s highest rank, General of the Armies. This honor has only been conferred twice: to John “Black Jack” Pershing following his leadership during World War I and to George Washington posthumously for the nation’s bicentennial in 1976.
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In A.D. 286 the Roman emperor Diocletian split in half the huge Roman Empire administratively—and peacefully—under the control of two emperors.
A Western empire included much of modern-day Western Europe and northwest Africa. The Eastern half controlled Eastern Europe, and parts of Asia, and northeastern Africa.
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We find ourselves in a cold civil war. But we have no real generals. A war without generals is no war at all. There is no liberty or death, only death, the death of our once cherished republic. Leading Republicans who should be our generals fight battles, sometimes with spirit, but they don’t seem to see the war in its entirety, particularly its cultural aspects.
This is a war not over the size of government or taxes, but over the American way of life. The war is between those who salute the flag, and those who take a knee. Those who believe that America is built on freedom, and those who believe America is built on racism. Those who are convinced that America is good, and those who are convinced America is bad. These differences are too large to bridge. This is what makes it a war. In this case, a cold civil war.
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Alan Dershowitz says calls for the impeachment of Joe Biden are “wrong.” He claims in his most recent op-ed at the D.C. establishment’s favorite Republican rag, The Hill: “Whatever one may think of what Biden did or failed to do, it does not constitute an impeachable offense under the text of the Constitution.” With all due respect, Dershowitz is full of crap.
“The Framers,” Dershowitz writes, “insisted that a president could not be impeached unless he committed criminal-type conduct akin to treason and bribery.” If this is true, then why did President Thomas Jefferson call for the impeachment of a federal district judge on the grounds that he was “a man of loose morals and intemperate habits?” Jefferson was a prominent founder, who greatly influenced the framers of the Constitution.
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The COVID pandemic has witnessed the exercise of state “police powers” on a scale and scope unprecedented in America’s peacetime history. Out of fear of contagion, massive amounts of private property in the form of shops, restaurants, bars, and other businesses were peremptorily seized and shuttered. The rights of landlords to collect rents and evict tenants were suspended. The ability of people to cross from one state to another was hobbled by regulations, quarantines, and delays. And most of this was accomplished by governors and mayors acting by decree, with only the most tenuous of statutory authorizations.
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The University of North Carolina’s decision on June 30 to offer tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones came about through a torrent of threats (often tweeted), profanities, doxxings, and assaults—tactics that have become increasingly commonplace among professional activists and racial grievance-mongers.
Hannah-Jones, of course, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion writer and architect of the New York Times’ notorious “1619 Project,” which claims that America’s true founding was not in 1776 but rather in 1619, when 20 or so African slaves arrived in Virginia. Hannah-Jones contends, moreover, that the American War of Independence was fought solely to preserve slavery.
More than two-dozen credible historians, many of them political liberals and leftists, have debunked Hannah-Jones’ claims. Though, as we’ll see, some are less firm in their convictions than others. What’s clear, however, is that peer review is passé in the era of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Forget a stellar record of scholarly accomplishment—that’s a relic of “Eurocentrism.” Far more important these days is a candidate’s enthusiasm for social justice. It was Hannah-Jones’ celebrity activism and her “journalism,” not her scholarship, that formed the basis for the university’s initial offer of tenure earlier in the spring.
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In the face of the Far Left’s attempts to rewrite American history through the now-discredited 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory, Republicans and conservatives must reclaim the key dates and events in American history and there is no better place to start than Memorial Day 2021.
Memorial Day was created not as a “holiday” or an excuse for corporate merchants to advertise sales, but as a solemn commemoration of the dead of both sides in the American Civil War.
In that context Memorial Day commemorates a number of constitutional conservative values, not the least of which is the inviolability of the Constitution itself.
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by Richard Gardiner In the years following the bitter Civil War, a former Union general took a holiday originated by former Confederates and helped spread it across the entire country. The holiday was Memorial Day, and this year’s commemoration on May 27 marks the 151st anniversary of its official nationwide…
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Joe Biden calls it the worst attack since the Civil War. Attorney General Merrick Garland compares it to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI is breaking down the doors of Iraq War veterans and small business owners who have no criminal records, and some are hauled off to rot in solitary confinement in a fetid D.C. jail, for their involvement in the alleged travesty.
The event, of course, is the roughly four-hour-long disturbance at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. As mostly nonviolent Americans dared to protest Congress’ certification of a clearly fraudulent presidential election in a place that once was considered “The People’s House,” lawmakers scurried for cover as reporters and photographers captured part of the ruckus on video and still shots to wield as political ammunition against Donald Trump and his supporters.
But have we seen a full and fair depiction of exactly what happened that day? The answer, as evidenced by an ongoing coverup by the U.S. Capitol Police and the Justice Department, clearly is no.
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Reporter and filmmaker Ami Horowitz traveled to Minneapolis to interview residents about the trial of former Minneapolis Police officer, and killing of George Floyd.
He released a two-minute compilation of interviews Tuesday night, after Chauvin’s conviction for second and third degree murder, along with manslaughter.
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It’s one of the ironic facts of history that Lincoln was fond of the tune “Dixie.” Following the capture of Richmond in 1865, he instructed the Union band to play it in celebration of the South’s surrender. “I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it,” he said. “I now request the band to favor me with its performance.”’
Lincoln’s feelings aren’t hard to understand. “Dixie” is as good as any song that belongs to America. But what was to Lincoln a beautiful melody that had been “fairly captured” has today been marked down by polite society as an anthem of white supremacy and a relic of “Lost Cause” mythology. Indeed, amidst what they’re calling the “reckoning,” a passionate urgency to expunge the Confederacy from history has perhaps never been stronger.
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All of this could be written off as the grudge fantasies of political activists still mad about 2016 except it is backed by some of the wealthiest people in the world.
Consider yourselves warned, America.
A previous entry in this space, written after an active-duty Army sergeant moonlighting as an Uber driver in Austin shot and killed a “mostly peaceful” anti-police protester who pointed his rifle at the driver at close range, talked about the make-believe revolution that has been taking place on the streets of America’s worst-run cities this summer:
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In June, we counted 23 articles written about the prospect of a new or cold civil war in the United States. In July, that number doubled to 46. That’s no mere “uptick.”
Right or wrong, these prognostications from both Left and Right are significant for what they reveal about the nature of the political division in the United States. Interest in this topic will only increase as we approach the election in November and whatever lies beyond it.
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As the summer of our discontent drags on, the fall of 2020 will bring with it either the fall of America or its rise from the ashes. This Independence Day, the battle lines were drawn unambiguously, and the fate of our nation truly does rest on the decision of the American voters in November.
It is now a commonplace that every election of our recent history is “the most important” election ever – and it may often seem there is no reason for this other than to drive up voter enthusiasm and campaign contributions. Of course, each time, the candidates go on the next cycle just four years later, “No, this time it really is the most important election ever!”
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We all know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. It is not just a children’s story. Rather, it is an eternal story about human nature. If people are surrounded by a mass or a mob who speak nonsense as a Truth — with a capital “T” — then perfectly sensible people who internally know better will fall into line and babble the same “Truth.” For a reality check and sanity in the public arena, it ultimately often takes a little kid who simply has not been taught social conformity and political correctness to look and say, “But this ‘Truth’ simply is not true.”
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Alfred Lord Tennyson was right: We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven. Sadly, we do not have the consolation of being able to claim that we are “one equal temper of heroic hearts,” either.
The Marine Corps, long the most countercultural branch of the U.S. military, just banned even the informal use of the battle flag it used to wink at. Widespread emotional and sometimes felonious response to recent actions of a rogue police officer makes it perilous to tag preface that observation with an introductory clause like “For good or for ill,” so revisionist history proceeds not just unchecked, but actually endorsed (there’s no other way to explain awarding a Pulitzer Prize to the 1619 Project).
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During the Iraq War, the insurgency spent a lot of its resources attacking infrastructure, particularly the electrical grid. This made life miserable for ordinary Iraqis.
That outcome seems to go against the logic of insurgency, where the center of gravity is the people’s allegiance. But making life uncertain and unbearable means that even if the insurgents cannot win, they ensure the regime cannot win either. The cultivation of chaos exposes the government as ineffective and ultimately removes its legitimacy.
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Alabama’s port city removed a statue of a Confederate naval officer early Friday after days of protests over the police killing of George Floyd, with the mayor saying the monument was a “potential distraction” to focusing on the city’s future.
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For the first time in history this week, members of the House of Representatives voted without actually being in the chamber. More to the point, they had other members cast their votes for them.
Proxy voting, as it is known, was an extraordinary change to the House rules jammed through alongside Nancy Pelosi’s $4 trillion COVID-19 “relief” package, and it allows Members to delegate their voting responsibility – the one they fought so hard in an election to obtain – to another Member.
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by Ryan Williams As even NeverTrump Republicans are coming around – grudgingly, and with caveats, of course – to recognizing the stakes in our ongoing domestic political fights, it is perhaps impolite to note: Some of us drew these conclusions quite a long time ago. The last two weeks of psychodrama in the…
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by Rob Shimshock A commission recommended Monday that Richmond, Va., remove its statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The Davis statue is one of five Confederate monuments lining Monument Avenue in the city, reported The Guardian. The commission, appointed by Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, said that the Davis monument “is…
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by Richard Gardiner In the years following the bitter Civil War, a former Union general took a holiday originated by former Confederates and helped spread it across the entire country. The holiday was Memorial Day, and this year’s commemoration on May 28 marks the 150th anniversary of its official nationwide…
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