The songwriter, actor, country/western singer, musician, U.S. Army veteran, helicopter pilot, accomplished rugby player and boxer, Rhodes scholar, Pomona College and University of Oxford degreed, and summa cum laude literature graduate, Kris Kristofferson, recently died at 88.
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The Founding Fathers recognized that an educated citizenry was vital to the survival of our republic. Thomas Jefferson, for example, saw education as essential to giving every citizen the opportunity to participate meaningfully in a free society.
Writing in 1818, our third president described public education as “the means to give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business … to express and preserve his own ideas … to improve his morals and faculties … to understand his duties, and to exercise his rights.”
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What really happened in New York this past week in the prosecution of Donald Trump? The breathless paid script readers of the controlled “press” wanted to gloat and heap disdain on the former President. Their glee was only matched by the vapid analysis of how the verdict might impact the election this year. And a few of the quislings of the Republican In Name Only (RINO) persuasion began to daydream about a return to the Republican Party that played the role of shill to the state, supporting ever more wars of imperial design and furthering the “project” of globalization.
But of course all of these things are mere momentary delusions. In the scheme of things, the Soviet show trail in New York will have little impact on any of these things. It will, however, leave a lasting mark.
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On August 31, 2023, Yale’s 23rd president, Peter Salovey, announced he would be stepping down. Since this announcement, much has transpired in the world of American higher education: the resignation of Harvard and UPenn presidents, the creation of campus encampments nationwide, and the cancelation of commencements at Columbia and USC. These developments point to an American higher education system that is malfunctioning. The breakdown we are witnessing at Yale’s peer institutions will continue until leaders are chosen for their courage to apply wisdom to divisive issues.
America’s Founders understood the importance of higher education. Of all his great accomplishments, only three made it onto Thomas Jefferson’s headstone: Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statue of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and the father of the University of Virginia. Jefferson knew that America’s ability to be great and good – UVA’s motto – depended on the presence of high-functioning universities. America’s first polymath, Ben Franklin, famously said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Framers like Franklin and Jefferson understood the value of academic pursuits, and their example lit a spark that motivated generations of Americans to pursue higher education.
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Ohio businessman and GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy may still be a relative “long shot” in a Donald Trump-dominated contest, but he insists he’s not running for No. 2.
In short, there is “no Plan B,” Ramaswamy says.
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The idea of the “pursuit of happiness” is in our societal DNA. Yet, this “unalienable right,” immortalized in the Declaration of Independence, has often puzzled people. What exactly did Jefferson mean?
Most people think of happiness as feeling good, but that is not what Jefferson meant. Pleasure and happiness are not the same. Our happiness does not depend upon everything going right in our life or getting what we want.
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The final decision, after years of debate, was made on Oct. 8 to remove from the New York City Council chambers the statue of the man we all know to have been a dreaded slaveholder—to the tune of 600 over his lifetime—Thomas Jefferson.
Despite that, writing at Bari Weiss’s Substack, political science professor Samuel Goldman, with whom I concur, is less than happy.
“The removal is disgraceful. Unlike monuments to Confederate leaders that display them in full military glory, Jefferson is depicted as a writer. Holding a quill pen in one hand and the Declaration of Independence in the other, he is clearly being honored for composing an immortal argument for liberty and equality.”
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Holy Cow, the cancel culture has sunk even further. Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Alexander Graham Bell, Ben Franklin, Woodrow Wilson, and many more names from American history are now personas non grata in Washington DC. A committee formed by the mayor has recommended taking their name off city-owned buildings. They also recommended removing federal assets such as the Jefferson Memorial and Washington Monument.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser formed the District of Columbia Facilities, and Commemorative Expressions Working Group, also known as the DC FACES Working Group.
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When Al Sharpton demanded, three years ago, that the funding for the Jefferson Memorial’s upkeep be cut off, people laughed. But they’re not laughing now. Actually, they’re still laughing, but now it’s more of a nervous chuckle in dismal expectation of what’s to come. First it was Robert E. Lee, then it was Christopher Columbus, and now it’s old TJ himself.
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What happens to a government when the consent of the governed breaks down? History has many instances of this some ending with peaceful transformation, others with successful revolution as in our own history and still others with military crackdowns as we currently see in Hong Kong.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in our nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which was written as a series of reasons why the American colonists no longer accepted the rule of King George III. The opening two paragraphs of this seminal document used to be memorized by school children as part of their school exercises, a practice which was largely abandoned in the 1960s. So as a refresher, here is what Jefferson penned:
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Benjamin Banneker was much more than just an inventor. As a mathematician, astronomer, landowning farmer, writer, and surveyor, Banneker was one of the most influential African Americans alive during America’s infancy.
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Our nation, our republic, is unquestionably dependent upon the active and informed involvement of our citizens.
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