One-hundred miles north of St. Louis, Hannibal is still a rural Missouri community tied to agriculture and commercially proud of its literary history that brings in thousands of visitors from around the world and millions of dollars.
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While there, I heard a story, and that afternoon drove a few miles west of town to see. There on the roadside, beneath the towering cedars of the old Big Creek Cemetery, lies enduring evidence of Mark Twain’s impact 139 years after the first book’s publication.

A granite headstone marks the resting place of Laura Hawkins, who was a pretty little girl when she lived across the street from and first caught the eye of a little boy named Sam Clemens. Many years later Clemens confided a secret to his childhood playmate. It was a secret she could not keep in death.

And so Laura Hawkins' gravestone carries two names. One is Laura Hawkins, who died in 1928. The other is Becky Thatcher, a pretty little girl granted eternal life by her childhood pal.

Todd Lewis
2 days ago
A proper education is so important on so many levels. Part of a proper education is that it be Christian education. In the past most educational institutions had a self-consciously Christian ethos. Part of that ethos is that men are evil by nature and must be restrained, if not transformed. It could easily be seen that history's struggle meant the restraining of evil and encouraging the good. But you also had to understand the difference. Most people don't understand the difference anymore. For example, if someone thinks there is such a thing as "better'' socialists and that they are able to get it right this time you are seeing a depth of ignorance that cannot be plumbed.

1776 is not 2023, and the men who founded America could only look back at history from when they lived. They saw—rightly—government tyranny as the greatest enemy of human freedom, and they created a system designed to curtail that tyranny and enable people to be free in harmony with the rights their Creator had “endowed” them with—“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And it was these principles—especially the second one, “liberty”—which, very soon in historical terms, led to the nearly world-wide abolition of slavery.

Slavery has existed for thousands of years all over the world. Within almost 100 years of the Declaration of Independence, economic slavery was virtually extinct. There are, of course, still pockets of sex slavery and child trafficking in the world today; men will always do evil. But, along with the wage-earning system of capitalism produced by the Industrial Revolution, the values launched by America’s Founders led to the eradication of the slavery so much of mankind had endured for all human history. And one might argue effectively that without the “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” ideals, the Industrial Revolution and capitalism might have adopted slavery, too.

Let’s hope the principle of “life” will soon abolish the Leftist barbarians’ practice of killing unborn children. //

America’s great Founding Fathers constructed a system where the people tell the government what to do, not the government telling the people what to do. There has never been a country in human history based on that ideal. And the Left absolutely hates it. If you don’t believe it, go live in China like I did for ten years. And that is slavery—not economic ownership, but government oppression. Which is worse: being owned and told what you can and cannot do by a land owner or being owned and told what you can and cannot do by a government tyrant? We want neither, but who, ultimately, has more power? Government oppression is slavery by a different name, and our Founders knew it.

Patrick Henry, 1775, on the oppression of the British government: “Is life so dear, and peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and SLAVERY? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me LIBERTY or give me death.”

The aim of the Leftist Democratic Party is to return to pre-1776. They don’t want you to be free; they want to control your life; they want to tell you what they will allow you to do; they want to create the human utopia that exists only in their wicked, perverted, debased minds. And the only way that utopia can be created is if they have total power and can enslave you by government decree.