Can you correctly answer these 6 questions on the origins and history of American Thanksgiving?
As our nation nears its 250th birthday, Ken Burns’ miniseries should give us a newfound appreciation for the sacrifices of our ancestors.
A landmark work of over 100 scholars, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution provides unique line-by-line analysis explaining every clause of America's founding charter and its contemporary meaning. Second edition completely revised.
- An unprecedented collaborative work of 114 leading scholars, with over 200 original essays
- Completely revised, nine years following the original landmark work
- Foreword by Edwin Meese III, 75th Attorney General of the United States
American Founders
Leaders at the Creation of the Republic
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Key Topics
The Founding Era
Why the American Founding Matters
Leading Founders
Their lives, ideas, public service, and selected writings
Primary Documents
Records of the Founding
The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
China accounts for 70% of global REE mining and 90% of the world’s REE processing/refining. These minerals are essential for weapons systems and electronics. Beijing’s export restrictions on 12 REEs could very well disrupt the global economy and pose a risk to the U.S.’s defense supply chains. This is unsustainable and dangerous—and it has gone on for far too long. Washington must decouple.
Beijing’s practice of weaponizing its REE dominance is straight from the CCP’s unrestricted warfare playbook, a concept first outlined in 1999—combining elements of resource warfare, economic warfare, and lawfare (the CCP’s uses laws and regulations to further its national interests, when and where it sees fit).
China’s announcement to impose export restrictions on resources that it has monopolized aligns with its ongoing demands over recent months, including the demand that the U.S. change its official language regarding Taiwan independence. //
Without a state that is capable of protecting its citizens from foreign and domestic threats, its foremost responsibility, as well as ensuring economic independence, economic prosperity is not possible. National and economic security are essential building blocks.
China’s tightening of export controls should serve as a reminder of the need to decouple. //
But tariffs alone will not break China’s stranglehold on minerals. Achieving this goal will require sustained government intervention—although unfavorable to us small government proponents, it is the best path forward during such a national emergency—and a rollback of environmental and licensing regulations that CCP-backed environmental groups have been fighting for (green warfare). It was the Chinese state’s aggressive subsidization and regulation of its REE industry—coupled with destructive globalist policies—that made this dominance possible.
A new portrait of the founding father challenges the long-held perception of Thomas Jefferson as a benevolent slaveholder. //
With five simple words in the Declaration of Independence—“all men are created equal”—Thomas Jefferson undid Aristotle’s ancient formula, which had governed human affairs until 1776: “From the hour of their birth, some men are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” In his original draft of the Declaration, in soaring, damning, fiery prose, Jefferson denounced the slave trade as an “execrable commerce ...this assemblage of horrors,” a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” As historian John Chester Miller put it, “The inclusion of Jefferson’s strictures on slavery and the slave trade would have committed the United States to the abolition of slavery.”
That was the way it was interpreted by some of those who read it at the time as well. Massachusetts freed its slaves on the strength of the Declaration of Independence, weaving Jefferson’s language into the state constitution of 1780. The meaning of “all men” sounded equally clear, and so disturbing to the authors of the constitutions of six Southern states that they emended Jefferson’s wording. “All freemen,” they wrote in their founding documents, “are equal.” The authors of those state constitutions knew what Jefferson meant, and could not accept it. The Continental Congress ultimately struck the passage because South Carolina and Georgia, crying out for more slaves, would not abide shutting down the market. //
But in the 1790s, Davis continues, “the most remarkable thing about Jefferson’s stand on slavery is his immense silence.” And later, Davis finds, Jefferson’s emancipation efforts “virtually ceased.”
Somewhere in a short span of years during the 1780s and into the early 1790s, a transformation came over Jefferson.
Pride among Democrats tumbles, while independents also hit new low, more than offsetting increase among Republicans //
A record-low 58% of U.S. adults say they are “extremely” (41%) or “very” (17%) proud to be an American, down nine percentage points from last year and five points below the prior low from 2020. The 41% who are “extremely proud” is not statistically different from prior lows of 38% in 2022 and 39% in 2023, indicating most of the change this year is attributable to a decline in the percentage who are “very proud.” //
In January 2001, when Gallup first asked Americans how proud they were, 87% said they were extremely or very proud. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the figure increased to 90%, and it held at that level or higher between 2002 and 2004.
The percentage who were extremely or very proud dropped to 83% in 2005, but it did not vary significantly from that mark for the next 11 years. In 2017, a new low of 75% said they were proud, and national pride has deteriorated further since then.
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LOL — @SpeakerJohnson is OVER Jeffries' crap.
"Ronald Reagan said one time, 'No speech should be longer than 20 minutes.' Unlike the Democrat leader, I'm gonna honor my colleagues time and be a little more brief than that." 😂
0:20 / 0:20
1:55 PM · Jul 3, 2025. //
"My friends and colleagues, we are so blessed, we should not take it for granted. We live in the most free, the most successful, the most powerful, the most benevolent nation that has ever been on the face of the Earth. And there's a reason for that — the reason that we are the greatest nation is because we were built on the ultimate foundation. And the bold Declaration that my friend Hakeem Jeffries articulated earlier is true. We unite under that. The bold Declaration that we do hold these truths to be self-evident. What is a self-evident truth? It's something that's obvious. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' — it does not say 'born equal,' it says 'created equal.' And...it is our creator that gives us our rights.
"See? The powerful thing about that is we're the first nation in the history of the world that acknowledged that our rights do not derive from government — they come from God himself. You see those words up there — that motto — it says 'In God We Trust,' right above the Speaker's rostrum. You know, a previous Congress put that there in the early sixties....Congress voted to put that there as a rebuke to the Soviets' worldview at the height of the Cold War. Why? Because communism, socialism, find their root in Marxism, and Marxism begins with the belief that there is no God. It's wrong."
"This Congress made a stand those many years ago, and we should do it again — we're different, we're distinct, we're exceptional, because we acknowledge that right there, our motto. It doesn't say 'In Government We Trust,' it says 'In God We Trust.' And we better remember that. He has blessed us with this grand experiment in self-governance now for almost two-and-a-half centuries, and by God's grace, we are working hard, and we are delivering on our promise to Make America Great Again.
If you haven't ventured over to the America 250 link on Whitehouse.gov, this Independence weekend is the perfect time. In partnership with Prager U, the White House has launched the "Founders Museum," with videos that feature AI representations of the founders and revolutionaries of our republic. With the representation of each biography and their contributions to the founding of our nation, the AI animations put forth a challenge to the viewer on how one should carry forward liberty and what was fought and paid for through their sacrifice.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/america250/founders-museum/ //
The videos can be viewed individually, in their respective series (Founding Fathers, Ladies of the Revolution, Major Events, and Declaration of Independence Signers), or as a whole unit. The section also includes a learning option with downloadable biographies, portraits, and documents that allow one to create their own "Founders Museum."
It has long been clear that the leftist activists who succeeded in getting “Juneteenth” added as a federal holiday meant to strip Independence Day of some of its moral and historical significance. The timing of Juneteenth, only a fortnight and change before the Fourth of July, is intended to usurp some of the Fourth’s glory. At the same time, the theme of the new holiday is designed to suggest that slavery, rather than liberty, is the defining feature of our founding. It’s an attempt to make 1776 vie with 1619, with the abolition of slavery being portrayed as our real moment of independence, in place of the moment when we actually proclaimed our independence and declared that “all men are created equal.” //
Per the Office of Personnel Management, the official name of the holiday to be observed on June 19 is “Juneteenth National Independence Day.” The official name of the holiday to follow 15 days later is “Independence Day.” It could hardly be clearer that Juneteenth was intended to compete with, and partially marginalize, the Fourth of July.
America does not need, should not have, and does not legitimately have, two Independence Days. Designating Juneteenth as “National Independence Day” intrudes upon our actual Independence Day. It suggests that Americans’ freedom doesn’t really trace to the Declaration of Independence but rather to the Emancipation Proclamation — or, more exactly, to awareness of that proclamation (more than two years after it was issued). It also suggests that our actual Independence Day doesn’t apply to all Americans. //
PBS writes, “Juneteenth commemorates when the last enslaved African Americans learned they were free.” This, however, is false. After Juneteenth, which marks the moment when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in June 1865 and announced that all slaves in Texas were free, people were still held in slavery in Delaware and Kentucky, border states unaffected by the Emancipation Proclamation. //
Only Congress and the states, through the passage of a constitutional amendment, had the power to end slavery on a national basis.
This fact, and the fact that slavery remained in existence in Delaware and Kentucky after Juneteenth, likely would have been raised in the Senate had it bothered to engage in a genuine debate over whether Juneteenth should be a federal holiday. Instead, that body, which once prided itself on its vigorous deliberations, passed the Juneteenth bill under a unanimous consent agreement in the wake of the George Floyd riots, an act of true irresponsibility and political cowardice.
Since Juneteenth marked the end of slavery in Texas, rather than the end of slavery in the U.S., it a much more sensible holiday for Texas than for the U.S. as a whole.
On a national basis, a date truly worth commemorating would be December 6, the day on which the 13th Amendment was ratified, marking our constitutional triumph over an inherited evil that clashed with our founding principles. On that day in 1865, Americans successfully amended their Constitution to read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” That is a day, and those are words, worth celebrating.
Congress should make December 6 a federal holiday to celebrate America’s abolition of slavery, while eliminating Juneteenth as a federal holiday and thereby confirming that we have but one Independence Day.
In one day, Japan had lost four fleet carriers, a heavy cruiser, and more than 300 front-line naval aircraft. Three of those carriers were lost in the space of a few moments, on the morning of June 4th. The Americans lost the Yorktown, a destroyer, and 150 aircraft. //
I've left a lot of detail out of this account. Explaining everything that happened in the days around this battle would fill a book. But it was the sinking of the Japanese carriers that turned that tide; that was the decisive moment of the war in the Pacific. The war went on for three more years, ships and men were lost, battles were fought and won, and while America suffered some setbacks, after Midway, the outcome was never truly in doubt. The Battle of Midway was the turning point. //
The famous American film director John Ford was on Midway when it was attacked on June 3rd; you can see his account of that battle here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr4YgpKU8ak. //
Eccentric
2 hours ago
The loses for the Japanese were not just the carriers and planes.
They also lost the majority of their experienced naval pilots. The US retained theirs.
As US war production ramped up and older obsolete planes were replaced by newer and better ones, the Japanese were unable to compete.
Atticus62 Eccentric
2 hours ago edited
A massive chunk of the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were lost at Midway. The Japanese went no further in their invasion/acquisition strategy after Midway. Everything started to contract for the Japanese after Midway.
Small, little known story that also affected the Pacific War from that campaign. A Japanese pilot landed his Zero on the ground intact and died quickly during the Alaska invasion portion of the the Midway campaign. The US Army recovered that Zero intact in Alaska and kept the discovery top secret.
The technology and plane were analyzed by the US military and the plane flown by many US pilots and they learned how to quickly counter the Zero's strengths. The intelligence value from that Zero was immeasurable. The Zero soon became a sitting duck in dogfights with US aircraft. That was also a result of the Midway campaign that the Japanese never recovered from. It's just not publicized as much because it took place in Alaska. //
Atticus62
2 hours ago edited
Posted this on PJ, but its important to pass along. If people are interested in reading more about the Midway campaign, I highly recommend the award winning 2005 book Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. It is written by Jonathan Parshall & Anthony Tully. It is a 700 page, extremely well written book that gives one a thorough account of the battle and its ramifications.
North Korea is infiltrating the West digitally. We must respond with vigilance, not wishful thinking. //
Pro tip for companies: ask prospective employees if they think Kim Jong-un is fat. Seriously. Multiple companies have caught North Korean operatives this way. They won’t criticize the regime—because they don’t want to die. And they’ll walk away from the job if you ask.
Lastly, a moment of reflection.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler, grandson of 10th U.S. President John Tyler, has passed away at age 96.
Yes, you heard that right: the grandson of a man born in 1790 lived into the third decade of the 21st century. That’s not just trivia—it’s a powerful reminder of how young our republic truly is.
John Tyler served before the Civil War—before Lincoln. And now his grandson, a man who lived through the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, the Space Race, and the internet age—is gone.
In a culture obsessed with the now, we forget how close the past really is. We are not far removed from the Founders—we’re their grandchildren. Literally.
Harrison Tyler preserved Sherwood Forest, his family’s historic estate. He protected Virginia’s architectural legacy. But perhaps his greatest legacy was just living—living proof that America’s past is not distant. Our institutions, our Congress, our civic inheritance—they’re real. They’re tangible. And they’re fragile.
His passing reminds us to cherish what we’ve inherited. To study it. To defend it. And to pass it on.
The line between the Founders’ America and our own isn’t theoretical—it’s family.
Speaking to "Fox News Sunday" host Shannon Bream, the 70-year-old actor revealed ahead of the event that one of the pieces of music at the Memorial Day concert on PBS is called “Rise” and it’s one of the pieces of music his late son, a composer, composed before he died in 2024 following a five year battle with a rare bone cancer. He was 33.
“It’s an incredible thing,” Sinise said when asked about getting to hear his late son’s music being played by the National Symphony Orchestra. “I had sent them a piece of music that Mac had written. It’s a piece called the ‘Rise.’” //
He later posted his speech from the evening with actor Esai Morales, which will have you standing up and shouting “USA, USA.”
“America began as an idea, a dream; the blood of those who placed duty before itself made that dream a reality,” Sinise said. “Our Armed Forces answered the call to service even before the United States became a nation.”
“This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of our armed forces,” he added. “On April 19th, 1775, the shot heard round the world was fired on Lexington Green when militiamen from Massachusetts faced off against British forces. Two months later, the Congress authorized the establishment of a united fighting force drawn from across the colonies. George Washington was nominated to be its leader over eight arduous years of struggle with Great Britain. What emerged as the United States Army became the symbol around which 13 fractious colonies rallied and ultimately won their freedom.”
“The principles established at its founding remain unwavering. Always place the mission first, never accept defeat, and never quit … Our Armed Forces gave birth to our nation,” he continued later. “Today, they sustain that nation’s freedoms on land, sea, air, and in space. This Memorial Day, we salute their selfless devotion to an America made possible by their sacrifice."
“Our Army, Navy, and Marines have always been proud to serve, and we, as a grateful nation, owe them our thanks,” Morales concluded. “More than that, we owe them our country.”
America is the only nation in history to be founded on the premise that all men are created equal
America finds itself in the unfortunate position of being the country that keeps the world in balance. When we slip, or show weakness, the world begins to fall apart. Wars spring up, financial instability rises, poverty and disease crop up, and oligarchs tighten their grip to the detriment of people around the globe. Entropy creeps in when America isn't maintaining its strength and making it clear that countries need to be on their best behavior.
A strong American leader brings peace, justice, and prosperity. A weak one invites collapse.
Children in the home may like the fact that they can run roughshod over their mother because it's easier to get what they want. They may "want mommy" all the time because they know that they can get away with a lot more under her.
It's when daddy gets home that the kids shape up and start acting right. They mind their p's and q's, and do as they're told, because facing daddy's wrath is a terrifying prospect. They may not like daddy as much as they do mommy, but they respect him, and it's that respect that keeps the house from falling into chaos.
When Moran used the term "reputation," Trump returned with the word "respect," and I think that's the reputation we should aim for. Not being liked, or feeling like a part of the "global community." We aren't a part of a global community. We are the United States, and without us, the world descends into chaos. Respect for us keeps things in order, and in order to maintain that respect, we have to flex our muscles and, from time to time, throw a punch.
Our enemies, and sometimes even our allies, may not like it, but what they like or dislike doesn't matter. What matters is that they maintain a healthy respect for us, our economy, our military, and our leadership.
Our reputation among other nations should boil down to, "We don't cross daddy."
I remember being more than a little surprised when I found out that Papi had been living in the US for 10, 15, or 20 years on average and obviously had not bothered to learn the language. Many were truck drivers, and while you don't need to know English to understand what a stop sign is telling you, it did make you wonder what aspects of the rules and regulations of the road they didn't fully comprehend because they couldn't speak the language. And if they couldn't speak the language, it made you wonder about assimilation and how much they knew about the place they were living in.
Thomas Jefferson? Que? Pearl Harbor? Que? The Bill of Rights? Que paso, hombre. //
If you can't be bothered to learn your host country's language, then there are probably a lot of other aspects of the culture that you're ignorant of as well. Like politics or current events, the former of which is downstream from the latter. And if you're unaware of such things, then either you're getting your information from family members (which will have a certain viewpoint) or Telemundo, which has its own slant. Neither of these is a great way to invest in your adopted homeland because you should be educating yourself, separating the wheat from the chaff, and arriving at your own conclusions. That contributes to a more informed and independent society rather than one that just accepts what it is told to accept.
Having a common language is like glue that binds a society. It holds it together and makes it strong, and it's one of the most durable adhesives in a culture. When you don't have a common language, you get tribalism. You get division. You get Balkanization. None of these bode well for what is supposed to have been a melting pot where all of the ingredients meld together and assimilate to become one people. Today, thanks to mass uncontrolled illegal immigration, we may never become what we once were. //
Diversity is great, but only if it adds to the culture instead of splitting it up.
Anyway, the diversity trope is getting so tiresome because if it doesn't put unity of purpose in line ahead of it, then we're going to diversify ourselves right out of a country.
So much for “the shot heard ‘round the world.”
The nation recently celebrated a quarter-millennium since the first battles of the American Revolution, fought at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. But, as a recent Wall Street Journal column noted, you wouldn’t know it from talking to most Americans. The anniversary of events celebrated by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1837 “Concord Hymn” passed largely unnoted and unnoticed, “the shot heard ‘round the world” turning into a quiet squib barely detected, save perhaps for the towns in Massachusetts where the events occurred.
The nation’s impending semiquincentennial — a fancy term for our 250th birthday, which we will celebrate next July — provides an excellent time for Americans to rediscover our nation’s history. In an ideal scenario, the more our fellow citizens recognize the sacrifices that our forebearers made to establish, as Lincoln noted, “a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” the more we might cherish, value, and nurture those freedoms today.
Next year marks the 250th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence — the semiquincentennial. Unfortunately, instead of a yearlong birthday party and a celebration of American history, the stage is being set for 2026 to be a year of neurotic self-loathing.
The U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission (also called America 250) was created to provide national coordination for next year’s commemorative events. Ostensibly, each state and territory has also appointed its own independent committee to plan more local contributions to the festivities. In reality, a minimum of 14 states have adopted programming recommendations from a single non-profit called the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH).
The motivation driving the AASLH’s recommendations is neither celebratory nor constructive. John Dichtl, the president and CEO of the AASLH, recorded a Zoom presentation in 2021 in which he explicitly outlined their goals. He describes 2026 as a “once in a generation opportunity to critically engage with our nation’s history,” and a chance to “foster critical awareness of our faults, past and present, and the changes we need to make now to move toward justice.”
In George Orwell’s prescient novel, 1984, the slogan of the Party is
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
The idea is both simple and profound. By eradicating and reinventing history, it is possible to completely reframe reality for future generations. This is routinely done by leftwing academics searching for penumbras and emanations of the US Constitution. //
Salon runs one of these epic falsehoods titled Sorry, NRA: The U.S. was actually founded on gun control. //
This is simply nutbaggery. Madison’s draft amendment is only intended to protect Quakers and Mennonites from being compelled to provide military service. It’s pretty simple.
Ed-squared also turn the logic of the Second Amendment upon its head. If the Founders had, indeed, harbored fear of an armed populace then they went to great lengths to hide it. Take a look at the militia laws extant in the colonies at the signing of the Constitution.
Connecticut required every male over sixteen to keep a musket, powder and shot.
Virginia declared that all free men were required to possess a musket, four pounds of lead and one pound of powder. If a free man was not financially able to afford a weapon, the county had to provide one.
New York dictated a fine of five shillings to any male, sixteen to sixty, who could not arm himself.
Similar statutes are in all colonies. The clear intent of these laws is not that they link firearms ownership to militia membership, rather they are aimed at people who don’t have firearms in order to ensure the colony has a militia. Think of these laws in the same way that you’s think of laws requiring kids to be immunized before they can go to school. The laws aren’t aimed at people who voluntarily immunize and the purpose isn’t to further public education. Rather mandatory immunizations are on the books as a way of coercing people who would not immunize voluntarily. //
A free and an independent people are a direct threat to the progressive experiment. The only way they will achieve that goal is to lie and lie relentlessly and shamelessly until they control the past. We can’t allow that to happen.