Yesterday was Columbus Day, a holiday in honor of an important man who did something important. However, under Joe Biden's misrule, it has been rebranded into a travesty called "Indigenous People's Day." No one is sure what the day is about. Most Americans ignore it while the left enters into a bacchanalia of America-bashing and virtue signaling.

I have a great deal of problems with this new commemorative day because I can't really figure out what we are honoring with that celebration. The contributions made by the aboriginal peoples of North America to American or world culture are exceedingly small. A handful of words — canoe, moccasin, squaw, etc. — have passed into common usage. There are a modest number of burial mounds and some rock glyphs to record their passing. None of the American Indian tribes had developed metallurgy or the wheel. Mathematics and even a rudimentary means of writing were unknown for the most part. Warfare was endemic and brutal, and frequently had the objective of genocide. Slavery was part of the culture of most Indian tribes, as was ritualized torture, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. In short, I find very little admirable about American Indian culture — the documented variety, not the maudlin, Dances With Wolves fake culture the left imagines existed — and can't think of any reason Americans, of all ancestries, have to be sorry that it is a thing of the past. //

Indigenous People's Day is just another assault on America by people who hate the country. Yesterday's statement by Kamala Harris is a prime example of the left and a large number of the America First crowd fetishizing anyone the US has bested economically or militarily.

Yep, Europeans destroyed Stone Age tribal societies mired in superstition and bloodletting and built the greatest nation on Earth. We won, you lost, deal with it.

Historically, and especially from the national identity and unity perspective, Indigenous People's Day makes much less sense than Antebellum South Day. //

3. The American flag is dipped in submission. This is not done.

4. The flag that remains upright is that of the Northern Cheyenne Nation. This is another one of those anomalies that demonstrate just how fake this stuff is. American Indians never had the industry to make flags, and they didn't use flags, so this is just cultural appropriation. The irony of the victory ceremony being conducted in American English, Custer's native tongue, can't be overlooked. //

Ethnic pride is great, but it can't be at the sake of an American identity. If that is where you are headed, trust me when I tell you that you aren't going to like where the path you are following is going to take you. //

Laocoön of Troy idalily
3 hours ago
Winston Churchill: Nations...which go down fighting rise again, and those...that surrender tamely are finished.

Darkest Hour (2017)

We've seen a lot of people pitching in to help out people affected by Hurricane Helene. That's a great thing because there are still so many people in a lot of need and some of the areas are going to have issues for a while, trying to get everything back on line.

Now, this is just a short list of non-government people and organizations that have stepped in. There are a ton of folks who have been helping out, including so many local folks on the ground--and we thank all of them for their efforts.

Sonia Purnell’s just released biography of Pamela Harriman, Kingmaker, attempts to be fairer to its subject than previous biographies. As the subtitle implies, Harriman led a “Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue,” and there is a lot in here about the subject’s early role as a courtesan. Whatever the details of that role, it was far in the past when I came to know and work with Ambassador Harriman on issues of international importance.

During my last four years in the FBI, I worked with dozens of U.S. ambassadors. I served as the Legal Attaché (“Legat” in Bureau jargon) at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. However, for the FBI and the DOJ, our office had wide regional responsibility. We handled the business of the Justice Department with 26 countries in Africa. So, I dealt with a wide variety of our ambassadors at posts large and small.

“Political” ambassadors are often criticized as dilettantes who buy their appointments with large campaign donations. They are contrasted with career ambassadors, who rise through the ranks of the State Department. I have quite a different impression. The political ambassadors, coming from various roles in American society, saw their mission as representing the United States as a whole, while career ambassadors narrowly protected the interests of the State Department, to the exclusion of other agencies.

When I was first assigned to the embassy in Paris, it was led by an ambassador who understood and valued what the FBI could do. Yes, she was a substantial fundraiser for President Bill Clinton, who appointed her, but she demonstrated a love for her adopted country. Pamela Churchill Harriman, a British-born aristocrat, had become the U.S. ambassador to France just months before my arrival in June 1994. //

That is how we happened to set up a luncheon for a group of federal judges.

At that luncheon, Thomas S. Ellis III, a federal district judge from the Eastern District of Virginia, discussed the World War II Normandy landings. Tom Ellis was recommending a new book. He mentioned a specific finding by the author, concerning a key Allied decision.

Ambassador Harriman responded, “No, that was Ike’s call.”

Judge Ellis persisted. “This author says …”

The ambassador: “Oh, no, Omar Bradley told me it was Ike’s call.”

A look of recognition came over Judge Ellis’s face: He realized he was in the presence of someone with firsthand knowledge of World War II.

Pamela Churchill Harriman was truly a remarkable woman. Once married to Winston Churchill’s only son and the mother of Churchill’s only grandson, she was in the room when many of the key decisions of World War II were made. For the next half century, she would continue to meet influential men, be they from London, Washington, or Hollywood. //

Thomas J. Baker is an international law enforcement consultant. He served as a FBI Special Agent for 33 years in a variety of investigative and management positions facing the challenges of crime and terrorism. He is the author of "The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy."

Hurricane Helene brought massive rainfalls and flooding at unprecedented levels, and from northern Georgia to the Southern Appalachians, to Western North Carolina, and parts of Eastern Tennessee, roads have been washed away, entire cities have been leveled, and populations devastated.

But had it not been for concerned citizens and loved ones, and some citizen journalists posting on X, the rest of the country would have been left in the dark. Up until this morning, the legacy media has all but ignored the destruction and never questioned when the worst of the weather started on Friday, why President Joe Biden was sunning himself at Rehoboth Beach, DE or why Vice President and selected Democrat nominee Kamala Harris was schmoozing with her donors in California, all while people lost their homes, their communities, and their lives.

From some reports on Sunday, despite federal emergency declarations being issued, FEMA had not even been activated. //

As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich observed, the scale of the disaster is too massive for the slow-moving FEMA. //

What most comes to the fore is how ineffective and inefficient the federal government is, and how essential and ingenious the local community is. This is what the fabric of America is comprised of, and despite the incessant meddling by this government to try and tear that fabric apart, we remain strong and even more bonded. We are going to be who we are, and the hell they wish to unleash in communities and electorally cannot change that.

Wilson was born in Louisville in 1924. She turns 100 years old this Oct. 4. She started working at Home Depot two years ago.

“That is because I want to communicate with people,” she said. “If you are not working, you lose your art of conversing,” Wilson said. “I’ve retired three times. Each time was 10 years, and I’ve gotten so sick of myself, I couldn’t stand it.”

She spent much of her life dancing and traveled the world with the June Taylor dancers. To this day, she still has the moves. Wilson danced and sang on stage at the age of 94. She performed the song, “If My Friends Could See Me Now.” //

One thing she won’t do is clean her house. Wilson said she pays someone to do that.

”I didn’t get this old without getting smart,” she said.

anon-m6q6
8 hours ago
Post this on all MSN, CNBC, Huff Post and other leftist on-line articles. It drives the libs crazy.
Someone recently asked me why I like Trump. My answer was that I don't really like a lot of things about Trump.

But this election is not about choosing the most likeable person.

Trump represents the future and has proven that he can deliver. He is a patriot to the core and even served his country for 4 years without pay.

That moment when someone says,

"I can't believe you're voting for Trump". I simply reply, “I'm NOT voting for Trump.”

I'm voting for the First Amendment and freedom of speech. I'm voting for the right to speak my opinion and not be censored.

I’m voting for secure borders and LEGAL immigration. I am voting for election integrity to include mandatory voter ID. (Why would anyone vote against this?)

I'm voting for the Second Amendment and my right to defend my life and my family.

I'm voting for the police to be respected once again.

I am voting for law & order and an end to allowing protesters to trespass and burn our cities, destroying innocent small business. (Tim Walz)

I am voting for personal responsibility and the end of the revolving door where criminals are being put back on the street. (Kamala Harris)

I'm voting for the next Supreme Court Justice(s) to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I am voting for doing away with all of the freebies given to all of the illegals and not looking after the needs of the American citizens and homeless veterans.

I'm not voting for Trump. I'm voting for America.

The Cash statue is the second new one Arkansas has sent to replace two existing ones representing the state at the U.S. Capitol. Another statue depicting civil rights leader Daisy Bates was unveiled at the Capitol earlier this year. Bates mentored the nine Black children who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

The two statues replace ones from Arkansas that had been at the Capitol for more than 100 years. The Legislature in 2019 voted to replace the two statues, which depicted little-known figures from the 18th and 19th centuries with Bates and Cash //

There are few performers with greater stature than Johnny Cash. Some might object to putting a statue of an entertainer in the Capitol, and indeed for most, I would agree. But not Johnny Cash. His cultural impact was too great, his music so defining, his life and career so quintessentially American, that he deserves this honor.

Keep singing, Johnny. America will always remember you. //

JSobieski
12 hours ago edited
HURT as performed by Johnny Cash is an awesome song that Johnny truly made his.

I consider this to be my favorite all-time montage in the history of TV. PERSON OF INTEREST is definitely worth watching. This montage mourns the death of key character and moves the plot along ... all without hearing a single word spoken. The song is perfect for this moment in the series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD8qvpMw8Vw

RIP Johnny Cash. I hope America never ceases to appreciate your gifts to this world.

know-it-all JSobieski
12 hours ago
I literally cry a bit when I here JC Hurt (a little bit more when I experience the video)

JSobieski know-it-all
11 hours ago
“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

RACISM CREATED GUN CONTROL

The first law to prevent the carrying of concealed weapons appeared in Kentucky in 1813. Very few people owned handguns back then, but many had knives. And the large Bowie knife was becoming quite popular at that time. Whites in the South feared blacks, so they outlawed the concealed carrying of any weapon, including knives.

The Democrat Party, which owned the south for generations, were afraid of slaves, freed blacks and abolitionists (i.e. Republicans) carrying Bowie knives. To maintain power over these Americans, Democrat politicians, state by state, outlawed concealed-carry. By 1850 every Southern state had made it illegal to carry any kind of concealed weapon.

Today, Democrats are still afraid of the masses. They cannot gain complete power over us so long as we own weapons. Should Harris/Walz somehow cheat their way into power, Americans can expect them to accelerate the war on the Second Amendment that Democrats have waged for decades now.

A former aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and current Gov. Kathy Hochul was arrested Tuesday morning on charges of violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy. The former aide, Linda Sun, is accused of acting on behalf of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party, to further their interests in the United States. Her husband, Chris Hu, was also arrested and charged with money laundering conspiracy, as well as conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification. //

In exchange for her assistance, it's alleged that Sun received millions of dollars in kickbacks and other benefits from the PRC, including:

Within Our Lifetime once again calling for everyone to globalize the intifada. //

Israel War Room
@IsraelWarRoom
·
Follow
Spotted at the "Within Our Lifetime" rally in NYC - "Intifada" threats to terrorize Jews around the world, as well as the logos of these terrorist groups:

• Hezbollah
• Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (HAMAS)
• Palestinian Islamic… Show more
  4:49 PM · Sep 2, 2024 //

Thousands met up at Union Square in Manhattan and marched to Washington Square Park.

They had flares and smoke bombs as some assaulted cops who tried to halt the march.

They also carried Hezbollah, Iranian, Palestinian, and Syrian flags. I’m shocked no one brought a Hamas or ISIS flag.

Of Captain Teach Alias Blackbeard

Edward Teach was a Bristol man born, but had sailed some time out of Jamaica in privateers, in the late French war; yet though he had often distinguished himself for his uncommon boldness and personal courage, he was never raised to any command, till he went a-pirating, which I think was at the latter end of the year 1716, ... //

Being asked the meaning of this, he only answered, by damning them, that if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was.

Josh Brooks @F530Josh
·
Big Army deciding their Soldiers from 130 years ago don't deserve the MOH because history is inconvenient and doesn't work with the modern narrative is a pretty good look.

10:58 AM · Jul 25, 2024 //

Congress started down this road by apologizing in 1990. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act required the Department of Defense to examine the medals. //

No matter what this Potemkin board organized by Austin finds, the facts remain that the 7th Cavalry was operating under legal orders, and the men awarded the Medal of Honor met the criteria of the time. There is no wrong to be righted here. This is simply a political act by the losers to count coup on the winners. Austin's order to “consider the context of the overall engagement" is just a way to open the door to relitigating the Indian Wars by the "stolen land" nutters.

Don't think this is the end of it. //

DaleS 2 hours ago

Wikipedia has a list of the 20 medal winners for Wounded Knee, though they claim the award to Marvin Hillock was for fighting at White Clay Creek, and he was listed for Wounded Knee "due to a later error in War Department lists."

I believe that the battle at Wounded Knee was certainly mishandled and probably avoidable. I'm sympathetic in general to the U.S. Army during the western Indian Wars; they were forced to do a difficult job (often made much worse by the behavior of local settlers and government bureacrats), and most of the time I think they did a pretty good job. But this wasn't one of those times. I care nothing for Austin's conclusions, but Miles at the time was appalled by the battle, and he was actually the superior to the commander at the battle (Forsyth) and relieved him of command. He was in a better position to make that judgment than anyone in the DoD today, and certainly had more experience in Indian fighting than the folks in Washington who reinstated Forsyth. Miles was a fine general, but hard-hearted enough to exile his own apache scouts after Geromino's capture, so for him to call for compensation to Wounded Knee survivors demonstrated that this wasn't the usual brand of Indian fighting. It was a battle, but also ended up as a massacre. I'm willing to trust Miles' assessment of the battle.

With that said, even if what we would now consider war crimes happened at Wounded Knee, this wasn't an unprovoked slaughter like Sand Creek. There was actual combat and likely actual heroism. To take an example from the list:

"Musician John Clancy, artillery, twice voluntarily rescued wounded comrades under fire of the enemy."

I don't know what the late-19th century criteria for assigning Medal of Honor was, but that sounds pretty darn heroic to me, and has nothing to do with killing Sioux, justly or not. After all these years, how could you possibly determine that John Clancy not only didn't deserve his medal, but that he and his fellow honorees should be singled out for "cruelty".

It seems to me if you want to virtue signal by dishonoring the dead, the place to start should be with Forsyth, who was the responsible for the force there. It was his job to see his soldiers acted properly, and to take measures against any of his soldiers who targetted non-combatants. //

Sojourner 2 hours ago edited

The Medal of Honor, at that time, was the only decoration for valor, and the criteria were very different from those today.

^^^This^^^

The whole Wounded Knee episode was a mess. Mistakes committed by both sides. A messy almost-ending to the Indian Wars. But make no mistake, it was a war.

These social justice warriors are wrong here, just as they are wrong in opposing dropping the A-bombs on Japan in August 1945 or, as Streiff notes, our recent base renaming and statue removal mania. They are sermonizing with the luxury of hindsight in a way that is wrong in terms of historiography/hermeneutics.

Just as in mid-July 1945 (when it was clear Japan was going to fight until no one was left alive on the Home Islands; a view, btw, which the Japanese didn't change until AFTER the second bomb dropped), at the time of the Ghost Dance no one knew what was going to happen. But there were enough Indians who felt the pull to cause the Army to be legitimately concerned. On one hand, sorry for the dead Indians. On the other, they paid (perhaps unjustly) the price for the style of warfare their tribe and other tribes had historically waged. Whatever the injustices of Wounded Knee might there have been, it clearly signaled the end of our first War on Terror (which we won, unlike Round 2). The question no one on the social justice side of things wants to answer (b/c they can't) is to name a better outcome (and path to that outcome) than what happened. I'll repeat what I've written here before: the tribes were lucky how the Indian Wars ended. It could have been much worse.

Full disclosure, I was previously more inclined to review the actions at Wounded Knee. But we no longer live in that better universe. Streiff is 100% correct: this isn't going to be a review conducted in good conscience. Instead, it's 100% political warfare waged by those who hate America on those of us who love America. It's yet another play in a series of plays to destroy the fabric of our military and of our country under the guise of "righting wrongs." Base renamings, land acknowledgments, etc. IT'S ALL BS. And it's also utterly ironic; they're doing to us what they criticize America for doing to the Indians. They believe we should have left the Indians alone to live in peace, so to make their point they won't let us live in peace.

Want to be even more revolted, see this:
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/07/20/medals-of-honor-for-soldiers-who-perpetrated-wounded-knee-massacre-may-be-rescinded/

This is what we're up against. When even our supposed allies in the press lead off their articles with titles like this.

Without a civic life shaped by Christianity, there can be no American republic. //

Some will acknowledge the Christian inheritance of America but insist that it’s a point of departure, that once the American experiment was launched, it could be safely separated from the religion that launched it. They think it’s possible to take the “best” parts of the Christian faith without the need to continually affirm Christ. “Christless Christianity,” you might call it.

But it doesn’t work like that. A few months ago the famous atheist Richard Dawkins wondered aloud in an interview why his own country, England, could not just go on having “cultural Christianity” without actual, believing Christians. He said he liked the cathedrals and the Christmas carols, and would like to enjoy them without the bother of actual Christianity. He wants fewer believing Christians and more cultural Christians.

It never occurred to Dawkins that you don’t get to keep the culture without the cult. The sad spectacle of modern England should suffice to prove the point. If there is no one to worship in the cathedrals, they will become concert halls or, in England’s case, mosques. If no one really believes what the Christmas carols proclaim, eventually people will stop singing them.

The same goes for us here in America. The American proposition that all men are created equal is a religious claim, specifically a Christian one. Not to belabor the point, but the American founders only ever believed that all men are created equal because they believed that we are God’s children, created in His image. Our entire system of government flows from that belief; without it the whole system collapses. //

America is supposedly a secular country, with separation of church and state, free exercise of religion, and so on. Yet we find ourselves in the middle of what amounts to a religious war. How could this be?

Because America, like all nations, is founded on religious claims, and relies on those claims for its coherence. We’ve long been accustomed to talking about America as a “propositional nation,” a phrase taken from Abraham Lincoln’s famous line in the Gettysburg Address that America was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The idea is that America is fundamentally different from the ethnic nation-states of Europe, which were based on blood and soil and religion. America supposedly transcended all that. It was based instead on an idea — a proposition. Anyone could become an American if he agreed to the proposition.

And this is true. But nearly everyone who says America is a propositional nation is wrong about what the proposition is. America is not a collection of Enlightenment tropes at the intersection of Locke and Rousseau, a grab bag of philosophical sentiments about the rights of man. America is the creation of Christian civilization.

The proposition at the heart of America, undergirding our nation’s existence, is not just “all men are created,” but Christianity and all that comes with it. Without Christianity, you don’t get free speech, liberty, equality, freedom of conscience. All of it relies on the claims of the Christian faith, none of it stands on its own. //

To be clear, the contest is not between secularism or “wokeism” and Christianity. If we reject Christianity, the future of America will not be a secular liberal utopia, where we go on living off the capital of our Christian inheritance without replenishing it. It’s going to be a new version of paganism, and you’re not going to like it. //

The American founding is therefore not comprehensible in strictly secular, rationalist terms. Our nation begins with a proposition about the nature of God and man. If that proposition is discarded or denied, whatever comes after that isn’t America. It might call itself America, it might even deploy the familiar vocabulary of rights and liberties, but it is not America. //

To fight this new paganism, Christians in America will have to shed the false notion that their religion is a purely private matter, that there must be a “wall of separation” between our religion and our politics. We have to argue, without apology, that public life in this country should be shaped by Christian morality and ordered by its dictates, as it was for most of our civilization’s history.

Most of all, we have to accept that our American culture of self-government and liberty under law cannot long survive cut off from its source, which is and always was the Christian faith.

Without that faith, alive and active among the people, there can be no American republic. If we want to save the republic, we’ll have to become a Christian people once again. And that means we’ll have to fight — and win — a religious war for America. //

We see now that there is more than one way for a nation to fall. There is the Roman way: a centuries-long decline eventually succumbing to wave upon wave of invaders. There is the British way: a dwindling to irrelevance and impotence, passive in the face of an assertive Muslim immigrant population.

And then there is the American way: not to decline and fall, not to dwindle into irrelevance, but to become evil.

The Power of One Vote
The Power of One Vote, Your Vote. Use It.
By the Smallest of Margins…

In 1800 – Thomas Jefferson was elected President by one vote in the House of Representatives after a tie in the Electoral College.

In 1824 – Andrew Jackson won the presidential popular vote but lost by one vote in the House of Representatives to John Quincy Adams after an Electoral College dead-lock.

In 1845 – The U.S. Senate passed the convention annexing Texas by two votes (27/25).

In 1846 – President Polk’s request for a Declaration of War against Mexico passed by one vote.

In 1867 – The Alaska purchase was ratified in the Senate by two votes: 37-2, paving the way for future statehood.

In 1868 – President Andrew Johnson was Impeached but not convicted because the Senate was one vote shy of the necessary two thirds required.

In 1876 – Samuel Tilden won the presidential popular vote but came up one electoral vote shy and lost to Rutherford B. Hayes.

In 1941 – Congress amended the active-service component of the Selective Service Act from one year to two-and-a-half years by one vote, 203 to 202.

In 1948 – A Texas Convention voted for Lyndon B. Johnson over ex-Governor Coke Steven in a contested Senatorial election.

In 1962 – Governors of Maine, Rhode Island and North Dakota were elected by an average of one vote per precinct.

In 1977 – Vermont State representative Sydney Nixon was seated as an apparent one vote winner, 570 to 569. Mr. Nixon resigned when the State House determined, after a recount, that he had actually lost to his opponent Robert Emond 572 to 571.

In 1989 – A Lansing, Michigan School District millage proposition failed when the final recount produced a tie vote 5,147 for, and 5,147 against. On the original vote count, votes against the proposition were ten more than those in favor. The result meant that the school district had to reduce its budget by $2.5 million.

In 1994 – 1.1 votes per precinct in Alaska elected Tony Knowles as Governor and Fran Ulmer as Lieutenant Governor out of 216,668 votes cast in the General Election.

In 1994 – Republican Randall Luthi and Independent Larry Call tied for a seat in the Wyoming House of Representatives from the Jackson Hole area with 1,941 votes each. A recount produced the same result. Mr. Luthi was finally declared the winner when, in a drawing before the State Canvassing Board, a ping pong ball bearing his name was pulled from the cowboy hat of Democratic Governor Mike Sullivan.

Just One Vote
An Election Challenge
Author
Paul Harvey
One voter in each precinct of the United States will determine the next president of the United States. One vote. Thats a big weapon you have there, Mister. In 1948, just one additional vote in each precinct would have elected Dewey. In 1960, one vote in each precinct in Illinois would have elected Nixon. One vote.

One morning in 1844, a grain miller from DeKalb County, Indiana, was walking toward his mill. It was Election Day, but he had work to do and did not intend to vote. Before he reached the mill, however, he was stopped by friends who persuaded him to go to the polls. As it happened, the candidate for whom he voted won a seat in the state legislature"by a margin of one vote.

Now, when the Indiana Legislature convened, the man elected from DeKalb cast the deciding vote that sent Edward Allen Hennegan to the United States Senate. Then, in the Senate, when the question of statehood for Texas came up, there was a tie vote. But who do you suppose was presiding as president pro tempore? Hennegan. He cast the deciding vote from the chair. So, Texas was admitted to the union because a miller in DeKalb County, Indiana, went 10 minutes out of his way to cast...one vote.

More? Thomas Jefferson was elected president by one vote in the Electoral College. So was John Quincy Adams. One vote gave statehood to California, Idaho, Oregon, Texas and Washington. The Draft Act of World War II passed the House by one vote.

Over 200 million Americans are eligible to vote this year. Less than half will. Plato said it: The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. So your vote is important. Historically, you use it...or you lose it. If you're not sure for whom you should vote, turn to a newspaper you can trust. Because everything we've won in 10 wars at the point of a gun can be taken away one vote at a time. Edmund Burke said it another way: All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in this world is for enough good men to do nothing.

As John Dickinson later noted, “the insanity of Parliament has operated like inspiration in America. The Colonists now know what is designed against them.”

And suddenly, the phrase “the common cause” began appearing in pamphlets up and down the East Coast. The “common cause” was a call to all colonists to stand with their oppressed brethren in Boston against tyrannical overreach by the government.

To be clear, the Southern colonies had little in common with their Northern counterparts. For example, their economies were vastly different and dependent on different goods. Georgians could have ignored the plight of their fellow colonists in Massachusetts, but they knew should the same fate befall them, they too would have to face it alone. And so, the colonists moved forward under a united front.

“The die is now cast, the [American] colonies must now either submit or triumph,” King George III infamously said in Sept. 1774.

Colonists owed no obedience to unjust laws. There would be no such submission. They would take death or liberty.

Their sacrifices, willpower, and commitment to the “common cause” is why we celebrate the Fourth of July, Independence Day.

But it is a lack of that “common cause” that has put us in the position we are in today. Government has become too big, and Americans are — just as our forefathers — treated as piggy banks for bureaucrats who spend uncontrollably to finance their partisan agenda. There can be no better tomorrow under these circumstances, but who would know? We’re all too busy endlessly scrolling on social media to realize what’s happening around us. We’re willingly distracted.

America is in need of a “common cause” now more than ever. Too much is at stake.

The Second Continental Congress met inside Independence Hall beginning in May 1775. It was just a month after shots had been fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, and the Congress was preparing for war. They established a Continental army and elected George Washington as Commander-in-Chief, but the delegates also drafted the Olive Branch Petition and sent it to King George III in hopes of reaching a peaceful resolution. The king refused to hear the petition and declared the American colonies in revolt.

On June 7, 1776, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee put forth the resolution for independence: “Resolved, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states…” Voting was postponed while some of the delegates worked to convince others to support independence, but a committee of five men was assigned to draft a document of independence: John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (PA), Thomas Jefferson (VA), Roger Sherman (CT), and Robert R. Livingston (NY). Jefferson did most of the work, drafting the document in his lodgings at 7th and Market Street.

On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted to adopt Lee’s resolution for independence. This is the day that John Adams thought should be celebrated with “Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” (John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776)

Between July 2 and July 4, Congress argued over every word in Jefferson’s draft of the declaration, making numerous changes. On July 4, Congress voted again – this time to approve the wording of the Declaration of Independence. They didn’t actually sign the document that day. After New York’s delegates received instructions from home to vote for independence (they had initially abstained), the document was sent to Timothy Matlack to be engrossed (handwritten). Fifty of the 56 men signed the engrossed Declaration of Independence inside Independence Hall on August 2, 1776.

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution “that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states.” They appointed a Committee of Five to write an announcement explaining the reasons for independence. Thomas Jefferson, who chaired the committee and had established himself as a bold and talented political writer, wrote the first draft.

On June 11, 1776, Jefferson holed up in his Philadelphia boarding house and began to write. He borrowed freely from existing documents like the Virginia Declaration of Rights and incorporated accepted ideals of the Enlightenment. Jefferson later explained that “he was not striving for originality of principal or sentiment.” Instead, he hoped his words served as an “expression of the American mind.” Less than three weeks after he’d begun, he presented his draft to Congress. He was not pleased when Congress “mangled” his composition by cutting and changing much of his carefully chosen wording. He was especially sorry they removed the part blaming King George III for the slave trade, although he knew the time wasn’t right to deal with the issue.

On July 2, 1776, Congress voted to declare independence. Two days later, it ratified the text of the Declaration. John Dunlap, official printer to Congress, worked through the night to set the Declaration in type and print approximately 200 copies. These copies, known as the Dunlap Broadsides, were sent to various committees, assemblies, and commanders of the Continental troops. The Dunlap Broadsides weren’t signed, but John Hancock’s name appears in large type at the bottom. One copy crossed the Atlantic, reaching King George III months later. The official British response scolded the “misguided Americans” and “their extravagant and inadmissable Claim of Independency”.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

There are many reasons. I love the principles upon which it was founded. I love the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — the words themselves and the ideas enshrined in them.

I love that the men who authored those documents valued liberty and recognized the perils of concentrated power enough to attempt to guard against them in a way that, while imperfect, has enabled millions of people to thrive and prosper, while enjoying a degree of freedom previously unknown.

I love that we elect our leaders — as imperfect (and frustrating) a process as that often is.

I love that millions of people have made a point to come HERE because of the opportunities this country holds.

I love that we have a beautiful country full of wonders both natural and man-made and we can travel about it freely.

I love that American ingenuity has led to a wide array of discoveries, inventions and innovations.

I love that you and I can see things totally differently and express that freely.

I’m well aware that our country is far from perfect. I don’t agree with everything we’ve ever done as a nation. I know there’s more than ample room for improvement. But — I guess I see it sort of like many of us regard a family member — imperfect, flawed, but beautiful and beloved. //

JSobieski
5 hours ago
"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth"
Abraham Lincoln, 1862

These words have reasonated in America throughout its history, and they remain true today.