More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.
- How protectionism turns friends into rivals. For the record I support reciprocal tariffs. If a country has a zero tariff on our goods we should have reciprocal zero tariffs on theirs. Canada does not have reciprocal tariffs with us even though we are their largest trading partner.
- The complete insanity of the Democratic Socialist agenda.
- Some mostly forgotten history - George Thomas the Rock of Chickamauga.
To Marshall, more than any other person, belongs the credit for establishing the foundation of the constitutional interpretation." - Jean Edward Smith
Their localism has been given far too little attention and too little credit. In these days, when States' rights are out of fashion, we are too often told that a man's preoccupation with the habits of the place where he lives can only drag on the national progress. We are fortunate that 18th-century Virginia thought differently...
The Federal Constitution was a national road on which there was no return. The leadership of Virginians in Federal life continued only so long as the national government was an aristocratic comradery like that of Virginia. When the United States ceased to be a greater Virginia, Virginians ceased to govern the United States. The virtues of 18th-century Virginia, when writ large, would seem to be vices. Localism would become sectionalism; the special interest of where a man lived would come to seem petty and disruptive."
Of course the biggest vice was slavery which would in time lead to the Civil War.
"The city of Cincinnati was built into a major commercial center with salt from Kanawha and pigs from Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. By the late 1830's, Cincinnati was packing almost one third of all western American hogs...
...Kanawha salt makers could still undersell their competitors, not only because the density of their brine but because their workers were slaves.
Kanawha was in the state of Virginia, which had a huge slave-based tobacco industry that was slowly declining. The large tobacco plantations had more slaves than they could use, and the owners saw an economic opportunity in renting these people to Kanawha salt producers. According to the 1810 census, Kanawha county had 352 slaves, but by 1850, 3,140 slaves lived in the county, mostly assigned to saltworks...
Plantation slaves did not want to be leased to saltworks, and they would sometimes escape while beig taken west. The slaves knew that, like the salt, they were only a short journey to Ohio, which was a free state...
...By the 1840's, Syracuse, not Kanawha, became the leading supplier of salt in the Midwest."
Today was the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.
- This year's Mark Twain prize goes to Bill Maher.
- The Warriors pursuing LeBron James and Anthony Davis? Silly season in the NBA has arrived.
- What Lincoln's second inaugural says to America at 250.
- The Declaration of Dependance. Some history I did not know.
Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.
- America, you saved my life. A look at the US from it's founding today. How can you not think that our brightest days are still to come?
- Dave Portnoy: How I built Barstool Sports. Article should be free for all to read.
- Jonathan Turley: Democrats learn the mob has a mind of its own.
"That McNamara's role was major, the he was by default usurping the role of the Secretary of State, did not faze him. He was intelligent, forceful, courageous, decent, everything in fact but wise...
If it just been a matter of getting the right goods to the right villages, we would have won; unfortunately, what we were selling was not what they were buying. This man, whose only real experience had been in dealing with the second largest automotive empire in the world, producing huge Western vehicles, was the last man to understand and measure the problems of a people looking for their political freedom."
In the words of President Lyndon Johnson, "I forgot he had only been president of Ford for one week."
Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.
- Two top senators urge Trump DOJ to prosecute Fauci despite Biden autopen pardon. Agree - Fauci should be in jail.
- Nathanael Greene was an underappreciated hero of the American Revolution.
- Jonathan Turley: Arkansas shows continued testing improvements from reforms.
Today marks the anniversary of the Battle of Midway - a battle sited by most historians as the turning point in the Pacific in World War II. Below is a good article on the history of the Battle of Midway and its significance.
Just a thought but you could make a whole year of college upper level modern history classes from some of the books of David Halberstam. For example:
History 301: From World War II to Vietnam. The class would be based on Halberstam's book The Fifties and his book The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War.
History 302: The start of the Vietnam War to Japan taking over the US auto market. This class would be based on Halberstam's The Best and Brightest and his book The Reckoning.
These two classes would span the better part of four decades of US history over a single college year. There would be plenty of historical details to review and Halberstam is considered liberal royalty by many - so that should ease the courses being adopted by various universities. Halberstam has become more controversial as the years go by so all of the items from the books should give plenty of subjects and differing takes for historical papers.
So let it be written so let it be done.
Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.
- The nuclear SMP race is down to the wire.
- From the archives: The general wisdom of Ulysses S. Grant.
- Jonathan Turley on the Left's lawfare machine. Illegal criminal immigrants -they left just can't quit them.
Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.
- Jonathan Turley: A Grand Jury Investigates the Real Russian Collusion Conspiracy. Let's hope this results in some jail sentences.
- From the archives: How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.
