Showing posts with label American History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American History. Show all posts

6/15/2023

Flag Day 2023 reflection: The fight for freedom is HERE

 

June 15, 2023

June 14th is an important day for me every year.

First, it is the anniversary of a tragic loss of an American hero, U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Joshua Klinger, in Al Fallujah, Iraq in 2005. Every year on this day, I reflect on Joshua’s sacrifice for this country, and on a promise I made to his mother and father to take care of him on that deployment. I will be eternally sorrowful for my inability to keep that promise, but I remain eternally grateful when I remember the promise of eternal life granted to believers like Joshua.

Second, it is “Flag Day” established by President Woodrow Wilson on the 100th anniversary of the June 14, 1777, Second Continental Congress’s’ resolution that “the flag of the United States be 13 stripes, alternate red and white,” and that “the union be 13 stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

Full Article

6/11/2023

The Worthy Story of Jim Masterson, Brother of Bat Masterson

 

June 11, 2023

Guthrie, OK. Lawmen c.1890's
Only one figure can be identified among this stoic assembly: Jim Masterson, brother to the renowned Bat. With an exuberant wave of his hat above his head, he commands attention and captures the spirit of a true lawman. While badges adorn the chests of many of these lawmen, only Masterson appears to be armed —a discreet pistol secreted within the confines of his waistband.
Although not as well-known as his brother Bat Masterson, Jim's story is worthy of retelling.
In June 1878, Masterson assumed the role of assistant marshal in Dodge City. In the summer of 1878, Masterson and Wyatt Earp were present when a cowboy named George Hoy opened fire on the Comique Variety Hall. Earp had previously had a confrontation with Hoy. Earp and Masterson returned fire, and Hoy was shot from his horse, suffering a severe arm injury. Hoy passed away a month later, and although Earp claimed to have fired the shot that killed him, it was never confirmed. It is plausible that Jim Masterson was the one who actually fired the fatal shot, but he never disputed Earp's claim and remained silent on the matter.
Over the next two years, Masterson made numerous arrests, primarily targeting intoxicated cowboys passing through Dodge City on cattle drives. In November 1879, he was promoted to Marshal following Bassett's resignation. Apart from the Hoy incident, Masterson was involved in at least one other shooting during his time with the Dodge City Marshal's Office. However, his employment was terminated on April 6, 1881, due to a change in city government and the perception that the Marshal's Office's strict approach needed to be updated and no longer beneficial.
Jim Masterson relocated to Trinidad, Colorado, where he joined the police force. During his time in Trinidad, he apprehended John Allen for the shooting death of Frank Loving, an event known as the Trinidad Gunfight. In 1885, he became an undersheriff in Colfax County, New Mexico. In 1889, Masterson actively participated in the Gray County War in Kansas. He was part of a group of lawmen who conducted a raid on the courthouse in Cimarron, resulting in a famous gunfight called the Battle of Cimarron.
Later, he moved to Guthrie, Oklahoma, and became a Deputy Sheriff of Logan County, Oklahoma. On September 1, 1893, as a Special Deputy U.S. Marshall Masterson played a role in the Battle of Ingalls, a gunfight in Ingalls, Oklahoma, against the Doolin-Dalton gang. He was credited with capturing gang member "Arkansas Tom" Jones.
He died in Guthrie of tuberculosis on March 31, 1895, aged 39.
Read more about the lawmen of the wild west: https://amzn.to/3J39KpD

6/06/2023

RONALD REAGAN, “REMARKS AT A CEREMONY COMMEMORATING THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NORMANDY INVASION, D-DAY,” POINTE DU HOC, FRANCE (6 JUNE 1984)


 June 6, 2023

RONALD REAGAN, “REMARKS AT A CEREMONY COMMEMORATING THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NORMANDY INVASION, D-DAY,” POINTE DU HOC, FRANCE (6 JUNE 1984)

[1] We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

[2] We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

[3] The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers — the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

[4] Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

[5] These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

[6] Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.”

[7] I think I know what you may be thinking right now — thinking “we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.” Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.

[8] Lord Lovat was with him — Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he’d just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.

[9] There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

[10] All of these men were part of a rollcall of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland’s 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England’s armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard’s “Matchbox Fleet” and you, the American Rangers.

[11] Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

[12] The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

[13] You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

[14] The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought — or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

[15] Something else helped the men of D-day: their rockhard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

[16] These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

[17] When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together.

[18] There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall plan led to the Atlantic alliance — a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.

[19] In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose — to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

[20] We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

[21] But we try always to be prepared for peace; prepared to deter aggression; prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms; and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can [listen] lessen the risks of war, now and forever.

[22] It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.

[23] We will pray forever that someday that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.

[24] We are bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We’re bound by reality. The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.

[25] Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

[26] Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their value [valor], and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

[27] Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

Archive Video Of The D-Day Normandy Landings

6/03/2023

Forgotten DC riots did far more than physical damage to America

 

June 3, 2023

The post Forgotten DC Riots Did Far More Than Physical Damage to America appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The three-year anniversary of the Lafayette Square and Black Lives Matter riots in the nation’s capital has come and gone without much media fanfare.

These apparently forgotten riots, and the harsher official response to the Capitol riot seven months later, say much about our media landscape and rapidly transforming legal system.

On May 29, 2020, a riot in front of the White House in Lafayette Square prompted a lockdown to protect then-President Donald Trump and the first family.

At the time, four days after George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis, many in the media portrayed the incident as Trump hiding from protesters and being real mean to them, rather than as an assault on democracy.

But it was a serious riot. Protesters tried to get inside a temporary fence protecting the White House before being stopped by police.

Full Article

5/29/2023

“I Am America!”


 May 29, 2023

By John R. Stoeffler

I lost my first child on the day I was born on April 19, 1775…I am America. He fell on the green at Lexington, his heart pierced by a British musket ball. Many more of my sons and daughters would fall on that day and in the years to come until the guns grew still and peace came to me on that glorious day at Yorktown.

Eighty-six years later my heart was nearly broken as my sons and daughters donned the blue and grey and took up arms against each other. At Manassas, Missionary Ridge and elsewhere my children fell. And I grieved. During this devastating time, my son Abraham Lincoln eloquently expressed my feelings at a place called Gettysburg when he pledged that those who had fallen “shall not have died in vain; and that Government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Fifty-two years had passed when I was called upon to aid my cousins in Europe. This time my children crossed the sea and “over there” at places like the Somme and the Meuse-Argonne many gave their last great measure of personal sacrifice to stem tyranny’s tide.

In the 1940s my children became embroiled in the biggest war the world has ever known. From a harbor called Pearl to Iwo Jima, Anzio, Bataan, and Bastogne they fought and died that the peal of freedom’s bell would not be stilled. And only then, when it was done, did Johnny comes marching home again.

In 1950, my loved ones were again off to stay tyranny’s iron hand in a faraway place called Korea. At places with names like Pork Chop Hill and Heartbreak Ridge did my children again fight and die for freedom, and again I wept for those who fell.

In the 60s and 70s my children took up arms in freedom’s name. From the Mekong to the DMZ to a valley called the Ia Drang many gave some and some gave all. The pride I have in them for the courage and the sacrifice each made has never faded.

Since Viet Nam, more of my sons and daughters have given their all on freedom’s behalf in places with equally strange sounding names like Mosul, Fallujah, the Korengal Valley and Helmand Province.

There are those who hate me and what I stand for. Given the chance they would snuff out the inseparable essentials of my existence, liberty and freedom. They have different names and faces, but their nefarious goal remains the same – to destroy my children and me. Nothing made this so clear as the attack on September 11, 2001 when those dark forces ended the lives of nearly 3,000 of my children for the sole reason that they are Americans.

For some, time passes and memories fade, but through all this I tell you that I remember each of these my children. The faces of those who fell at Bunker Hill are as fresh in my mind today as those who perished at Gettysburg, Chateau-Thierry, Normandy, Pusan, Baghdad, and, yes, on United Flight 93. I know of the dreams each had for their family, and those their family had for them. And where they now lie, be it in my bosom or in some distant land makes no difference as every name and face is forever etched in my mind and heart.

No, I can never forget these my children for I AM AMERICA, and I shall always remember.

5/10/2023

Revolutionary Culture and Its Critics

 

May 10, 2023

Video

America’s Founders Didn’t Support Open Borders, And Neither Should We

 

May 10, 2023

‘The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits.’

There is little evidence that the founders advocated for a free-for-all, open-door immigration policy.  

From the very beginning, even in the absence of immigration law, the founders knew America had to set boundaries. Their top three concerns were the qualifications, assimilation, and allegiance of newcomers. The founders emphasized the moral character and contributions newcomers would bring. 

Full Article

5/09/2023

In 1958 Communists Had 45 Goals to Take Over the U.S. Without Firing a Shot. Here Are the Ones They've Already Achieved

 

May 9, 2023

The 1958 book by Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist, set forth 45 goals communists need to achieve to take over the United States without firing a shot. Some of them are outdated and immaterial. Some are debatable. Let’s see how many commie goals have been achieved.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N. 

DONE. The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 made Communist China a member of the U.N. Today, China is one of five permanent members.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. 

DONE. Communists were once hunted in the U.S. Today, Democrats like Bernie, AOC, and the Squad, with ideas that are clearly socialist, if not communist, are re-elected with ease.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks

Full Article

American Maoism

 

May 9, 2023

Rage meets self-pity as the permanently offended root out false thought.

Those of us who care about the survival of ordered liberty are daily faced with a conundrum: Do we painstakingly chronicle the constant assaults on the life of the mind and civilized norms and risk the charge of being one-note Johnnies? Or do we turn to other, more noble concerns and preoccupations, doing the right and the good? The latter path might seem more high-minded, rooted in a refusal to have our intellectual and political agendas determined by the rage of others. Why should our concerns be determined by the transparently false agendas of those who tear down and repudiate, and who offer nothing constructive in place of our civic and civilized inheritance? Let them pursue the thankless path of total critique, while we teach, build, construct, and sustain a civilized order worthy of human beings.

Ant-Man Star Evangeline Lilly Laments Society That Villainizes Masculinity In Men

 

May 9, 2023

Ant-Man’s Evangeline Lilly laments society that villainizes masculinity in men Ant-Man Actress Evangeline Lilly shared a rant on masculinity and femininity on Instagram on Thursday.

Lilly gave her opinion seemingly unprompted while visiting the Siwa Oasis in Egypt. The 43-year-old actress is known for her roles in Lost and Ant-Man, with fan bases that have garnered her two million followers on the platform.

GOP SENATORS QUESTION NAVAL DRAG QUEEN AMBASSADOR EFFORT FOR SECURITY REASONS

“Why are we only applauding masculinity in women and villainizing it in men? And why are we only applauding femininity in men and debasing it in women? Why can’t we just allow for all of it?” Lilly wrote.

Full Article

5/08/2023

At The Kentucky Derby, The Spectators Are The Sport

 

May 8, 2023

At Churchill Downs, the horses are merely the backdrop of this American cultural touchstone event.

While royal watchers the world over focused on Westminster Abbey and the first coronation of a British monarch in nearly seven decades, the sporting world had other interests in mind this weekend. The first Saturday in May always brings with it the country’s longest continually-run sporting event, the Kentucky Derby.

Among major sporting events, the Super Bowl brings with it more television eyeballs than the Derby. The Indianapolis 500, held later in the month of May some 120 miles or so north of Louisville’s Churchill Downs, attracts more people.

But the Kentucky Derby stands as perhaps the nation’s premier spectator sport precisely because, more than any other event, the spectators are the sport.

Full Article

I’m a doctor and my Black parents saw me break free of segregation. Now medical schools are bringing it back

 

May 8, 2023

Medical schools are returning to ‘separate but equal,’ but doctors know we’re all the same on the inside

My mother and father went to segregated schools, separated from Whites because they were Black. They told me, as a child, that they wanted better for me. They got their wish when I went to Stanford University and then the University of California at San Francisco’s medical school, both fully integrated and welcoming. Before they passed away, they firmly believed that the era of separating people by race was over forever.  

My parents were wrong. 

Higher education is deliberately re-segregating, driven by race-obsessed activists who, bizarrely, claim to oppose "systemic racism." Universities like Harvard and Chicago have held Black-only graduation ceremonies in recent years.

Full Article

5/03/2023

Native Americans United

 


May 3, 2023

Native Tribes of North America Mapped

The ancestors of living Native Americans arrived in North America about 15 thousand years ago. As a result, a wide diversity of communities, societies, and cultures finally developed on the continent over the millennia.
The population figure for Indigenous peoples in the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus was 70 million or more.
About 562 tribes inhabited the contiguous U.S. territory. Ten largest North American Indian tribes: Arikara, Cherokee, Iroquois, Pawnee, Sioux, Apache, Eskimo, Comanche, Choctaw, Cree, Ojibwa, Mohawk, Cheyenne, Navajo, Seminole, Hope, Shoshone, Mohican, Shawnee, Mi’kmaq, Paiute, Wampanoag, Ho-Chunk, Chumash, Haida.
Below is the tribal map of Pre-European North America.
The old map below gives a Native American perspective by placing the tribes in full flower ~ the “Glory Days.” It is pre-contact from across the eastern sea or, at least, before that contact seriously affected change. Stretching over 400 years, the time of contact was quite different from tribe to tribe. For instance, the “Glory Days” of the Maya and Aztec came to an end very long before the interior tribes of other areas, with some still resisting almost until the 20th Century.
At one time, numbering in the millions, the native peoples spoke close to 4,000 languages.
The Americas’ European conquest, which began in 1492, ended in a sharp drop in the Native American population through epidemics, hostilities, ethnic cleansing, and slavery.
When the United States was founded, established Native American tribes were viewed as semi-independent nations, as they commonly lived in communities separate from white immigrants


30 years ago, one decision altered the course of our connected world

 


May 3, 2023

30 years ago, listeners tuning into Morning Edition heard about a futuristic idea that could profoundly change their lives.

"Imagine being able to communicate at-will with 10 million people all over the world," NPR's Neal Conan said. "Imagine having direct access to catalogs of hundreds of libraries as well as the most up-to-date news, business and weather reports. Imagine being able to get medical advice or gardening advice immediately from any number of experts.

"This is not a dream," he continued. "It's internet."

But even in the early 1990s, that space-age sales pitch was a long way from the lackluster experience of actually using the internet. It was almost entirely text-based, for one.

It was also difficult to use. To read a story from NPR, for example, you would need to know which network-equipped computer had the file you wanted, then coax your machine into communicating directly with the host. And good luck if the computers were made by different manufacturers.

But 30 years ago this week, that all changed. On April 30, 1993, something called the World Wide Web launched into the public domain.

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