Forgotten History

As Wade Malcom reports, the Chronicle of Higher Education found that Delaware General Assembly is tied with New Mexico for the 3rd lowest percentage of legislators that have a bachelor’s degree. As Wade points out, there are endless jokes to come from this (sarcasm) “startling revelation” but another recently released report is more of a problem not just for Delaware but for America as a whole. While it’s no surprise that our Delaware legislators are less educated than most other states, a new report out from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reveals some startling evidence of a belief long held by many Americans, we are forgetting where we came from and how we got here.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has put out “The Nation’s Report Card” on the subject of U.S. History in 2010. The study finds that there has been little improvement or change in the knowledge of America’s history across grade ranges and it also finds that even the top percentiles of students score just over 50% on the scale. The assessment was done of 4th, 8th, and 12th graders across America and across the gender, race and socioeconomic scales. The students were graded on a scale with 3 major categories of success: Basic, Proficient, Advanced


Continue reading on Examiner.com Forgotten History - Wilmington Education | Examiner.com

The Real Reason Why Sarah Palin Went to Fort McHenry

Most people would say, "She went there because that's where the Star Spangled Banner was written...duh...boring, move on." and they would shrug their shoulders and move on.  But most people would be wrong.  While the Star Spangled Banner was indeed written in the harbor, most people don't know the true story of the battle or the true story of our national anthem.  Sarah does and now I'm going to tell it to you so that you will as well.  The story of the Battle of Baltimore (Fort McHenry) is really one of the most inspiring of all time and it, when combined with the events surrounding the burning of Washington, D.C., shows America's connection to divine providence. 

The British have routed Washington D.C. and while they celebrate by burning the city, something amazing happens.  Out of the blue, with no warning and in an extremely rare event for the east coast, a tornado touched down in the middle of the city.  It tore apart buildings, uprooted trees and sent them flying across the town.  Likewise, it sent British cannon, wagons and soldiers flying as well.  This allowed the American forces, Congress and the President to escape the capital and the clutches of the British Army.  The American government flees into the Pennsylvania countryside while the battered and disorganized army heads northeast to Baltimore.  There, the Americans can catch their breath and regroup in anticipation of the coming battle against the British.

Washington D.C. had been torched and the Americans were on the run in the War of 1812, America's forgotten war.  The British Armada stood in the waters outside of Baltimore and British troops marched on the city riding high spirits from their rout of the American Capital City.  The people of Baltimore, merchants and ship owners, had already committed all able bodied men to their militia which splits itself between the defense of the city by land and manning the city's coastal defense, Fort McHenry.  As the land and naval forces converged, pincing the American military forces and militia at the city of Baltimore, the people decide to sink their OWN ships in a row at the Harbor entrance to block the approach by the British Armada.  It forces the hand of the Brits.

They cannot enter the harbor but they cannot give up the fight.  This is their chance to finally crush the Americans and bring them back into the British Empire.  On September 13th, the British unleashed the most devastating bombardment in the history of warfare to that time.  Shells flew and burst on the ground like fireworks on the Fourth of July.  As the bombardment commenced, the British ground forces attacked the city from the north east.  The bombardment and the attack lasted the entire day but the British shells and infantry were inaccurate and even desperate decoy attempts failed to dislodge the Americans.

A shell falls  into the main magazine (gunpowder storehouse) at Fort McHenry but fails to ignite which saves the magazine.  WE STAND.

Townspeople in Baltimore and those on a truce ship caught in the harbor can do nothing but watch the scenes from a distance.  The British land forces falter and Baltimore is safe as darkness approaches on the evening of the 13th.

A storm rolls in near nightfall and begins to do more to obscure the view of the Fort (which is the key to maintaining control of Baltimore) than the smoke that billows from the many hundreds of cannon unleashing devastation back and forth across the harbor.  Rockets and cannon shells begin to illuminate the darkening sky and at "the twilight's last gleaming", when the night is upon the fort, the flag stands, waving.

Throughout the night, the bombardment continues and the people watch the flag that is flying over the ramparts with great earnest.  Does it stand?  If it does, they know the fort has survived.

As dawn breaks, the bombardment stops. 25 hours of unrelenting fire from the British Armada ceases as the commander of Fort McHenry replaces the storm flag with a new "garrison flag", the largest ever quilted to that time.

It waves over the ramparts of Fort McHenry and instantly the citizens in the harbor and those on the truce ship in the harbor (among them, Francis Scott Key) know that we have survived the attack.  The armada pulls anchor, sets sails and leaves the front of the harbor.  The attack on Baltimore has failed and the Americans have withstood the most fearsome Navy in the world at that time.  Key pens a poem called "Defence of Fort McHenry" that becomes our National Anthem:

O! say can you see by the dawn's early light,
what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

For those of you who never really knew the story of the Battle of Baltimore, where our National Anthem comes from, I hope that this helps to put it into context.  Context is important.  That's why I think it was such a travesty that the Congress left parts out of the reading of the Constitution in January of this year.  They skipped the 3/5ths clause and the 18th Amendment (Prohibition Amendment) as well.  Their defense is that they read the Constitution as it exists today.  Unfortunately for their point, it's not valid.  The Constitution does not contain parts that we can erase.  It legally and purposefully includes those parts that have been changed as WELL as those changes.  We do not delete ANYTHING or "rewrite" the document.  We ADD to it, we do not subtract.  There is a reason for this and that reason is because our Founders wanted us to see America as she is AND as she was.  We must remember WHY we made changes and see our scars if we are to ensure we never cause them again.

So you wanna know what the Israel business means to US huh?

Ok, well it starts with a biblical history:

In Exodus 13:17, "And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt." Instead, the Lord led the Israelites through the Red Sea (this is where Moses commands the waters to part..etc.)…God then leads the Israelites to Mt Sinai which is in the center of the Sinai Peninsula. It is here that the Jews are given the tablets containing the 10 Commandments and are taught God’s laws, and his rules for their worship of him (there was much more than just the tablets…Exodus is the book that explains this)…in Chapter 23 of Exodus, the following occurs:

God's Angel Will Prepare the Way
"I am sending an angel ahead of you. He will guard you along the way. He will bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him. Listen to what he says. Do not refuse to obey him. He will not forgive you if you turn against him. My very Name is in him. Listen carefully to what he says. Do everything I say. Then I will be an enemy to your enemies. I will fight against those who fight against you.
"My angel will go ahead of you. He will bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites. I will wipe them out.

"Do not do what they do. Do not bow down to their gods or worship them. You must destroy the statues of their gods. You must break their sacred stones to pieces.

"I am the Lord your God. Worship me. Then I will bless your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you. In your land no woman will give birth to a dead baby. Every woman will be able to have children. I will give you a long life.

"I will send my terror ahead of you. I will throw every nation you meet into a panic. I will make all of your enemies turn their backs and run away. I will send hornets ahead of you. They will drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way.

"But I will not drive them out in just one year. If I did, the land would be deserted. There would be too many wild animals for you. I will drive them out ahead of you little by little. I will do it until your numbers have increased enough for you to take control of the land.

"I will make your borders secure from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. They will go from the desert to the Euphrates River.

"I will hand over to you the people who live in the land. You will drive them out to make room for you. Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. Do not let them live in your land. If you do, they will cause you to sin against me. If you worship their gods, that will certainly be a trap for you."



So, the Lord ended up giving the Israelites (Jews) all the land from the Euphrates River (runs from the Mediterranean in the west (then South) to the Persian Gulf in Iraq (this would be the northern/western most boundary of the land known as “the Fertile Crescent” which God forbade his people from entering after Adam and Eve were tossed out for eating the forbidden fruit) and from the Red Sea to the Arabian Desert (present day Saudi Arabia)…At that time, the Philistines inhabited a very small sliver of land about 8 miles long x 8 miles wide along the Mediterranean Sea (due west of the Dead Sea) and beneath them were the Amalekites whose lands encompassed MOST of the Sinai Peninsula. David later conquers the Amalekites and the Philistines and fulfills God’s promise…

So I can hear you saying “Evan, you know what I meant…what does it mean to US.” Well look at what we now have here brewing in the Middle East. We know that Turkey, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Oman, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and now Egypt (and arguably ALL of the North African countries) are all anti-Israel which now leaves them absolutely alone. Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally but they will not stand against ALL their Muslim neighbors, they will join them. Look at this map:



The Muslims have been corrupted by a version of Islam that perverts the Quran and they have become the Philistines and the Amalekites. They are uniting against Israel (and us)…and now OUR PRESIDENT is supporting the Islamic Extremists and NOT Israel…he is calling Israel the occupier. Yet the Bible (which Obama says he believes in) tells us different. Even the religion of Islam instructs its followers to believe the word of the Bible and the Torah, both of which contain the scripture above that shows God granting the "Promised Land" to the Jews. We have switched sides as a nation…these are bad times…Beck has been very right…

On the one hand, this is such a slap in the face to Christians and Jews around the world and in America that it is likely to not only wipe out the "bin Laden bounce" but to ensure Obama's 2012 defeat on foreign policy alone but on the other, if the current situation accelerates...we may not be around to see him lose.

Only 49% of Elected Officials can name the 3 branches of government

For all of you who wonder why the Republicans wanted to read the Constitution on the floor, consider this:

No cheating, take this test first:

1) What are the three branches of government? A. executive, legislative, judicial
B. executive, legislative, military
C. bureaucratic, military, industry
D. federal, state, local

2) What part of the government has the power to declare war?
A. Congress
B. the president
C. the Supreme Court
D. the Joint Chiefs of Staff

3) In the area of United States foreign policy, Congress shares power with the:
A. president
B. Supreme Court
C. state governments
D. United Nations

4) The United States Electoral College:
A. trains those aspiring for higher political office
B. was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates
C. is otherwise known as the U.S. Congress
D. is a constitutionally mandated assembly that elects the president
E. was ruled undemocratic by the Supreme Court

5) What impact did the Anti-Federalists have on the United States Constitution?
A. their arguments helped lead to the adoption of the Bill of Rights
B. their arguments helped lead to the abolition of the slave trade
C. their influence ensured that the federal government would maintain a standing army
D. their influence ensured that the federal government would have the power to tax

6) The phrase that in America there should be a "wall of separation" between church and state appears in:
A. George Washington's Farewell Address
B. the Mayflower Compact
C. the Constitution
D. the Declaration of Independence
E. Thomas Jefferson's letters

7) The Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits:
A. prayer in public school
B. discrimination based on race, sex, or religion
C. the ownership of guns by private individuals
D. establishing an official religion for the United States
E. the president from vetoing a line item in a spending bill

8) Identify one right or freedom below guaranteed by the first amendment.
A. Right to bear arms
B. Due process
C. Religion
D. Right to counsel

9) Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government listed below?
A. Make treaties
B. Make zoning laws
C. Maintain prisons
D. Establish standards for doctors and lawyers

10) Who is the commander in chief of the U.S. military?
A. Secretary of the army
B. Secretary of state
C. President
D. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

Answer key:
1) A; 2) A; 3) A; 4) D; 5) A; 6) E; 7) D; 8) C; 9) A; 10) C

Now consider this:
AOL news found out that...

Elected officials at many levels of government, not just the federal government, swear an oath to "uphold and protect" the U.S. Constitution.

But those elected officials who took the test scored an average 5 percentage points lower than the national average (49 percent vs. 54 percent), with ordinary citizens outscoring these elected officials on each constitutional question. Examples:

• Only 49 percent of elected officials could name all three branches of government, compared with 50 percent of the general public.
• Only 46 percent knew that Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war -- 54 percent of the general public knows that.
• Just 15 percent answered correctly that the phrase "wall of separation" appears in Thomas Jefferson's letters -- not in the U.S. Constitution -- compared with 19 percent of the general public.
• And only 57 percent of those who've held elective office know what the Electoral College does, while 66 percent of the public got that answer right. (Of elected officials, 20 percent thought the Electoral College was a school for "training those aspiring for higher political office.")

American Progressivism

I.  Who were the Progressives, and why are they important?

R.J. Pestritto

Shipley Professor of the American Constitution at Hillsdale College 

American Progressivism by Ronald J. Pestritto

In today’s piece, I’ll explain who the Progressives were and why they were important. 
Many on the left today call themselves “progressive,” and they do so not just because it’s a nicer way of saying “liberal,” but also because they very much intend to revive the political principles of America’s original Progressives, from the Progressive Era of the 1880s through World War I.  Why would leftist politicians, like Mrs. Clinton, purposely identify themselves with this Progressive movement?
The reason is that America’s original Progressives were also its original, big-government liberals.  Most people point to the New Deal era as the source of big government and the welfare state that we have today.  While this is perfectly accurate, it is important to understand that the principles of the New Deal did not originate in the New Deal; rather, they came from the Progressives, who had dominated American politics and intellectual cultural a generation prior to the New Deal.
We have no less an authority on this connection than Franklin Roosevelt himself.  When FDR campaigned in 1932, he pointed to the Progressives – and in particular to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson – as the source of his ideas about government. 
In terms of the personalities who made up the Progressive movement, some are familiar to us and others are less so.  The movement was comprised of well known politicians like Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt; but it was also comprised of intellectuals and writers who are less well known but who have been very influential in America.  There were folks like John Dewey, who was America’s public philosopher for much of the early 20^th century.  Even less well known was Herbert Croly, but Croly was highly influential, since he founded and was the first editor of The New Republic – which became the main organ of Progressive opinion in the United States, and is still one of the most important journals on the Left today.  I should add here that Woodrow Wilson actually fell into both of these categories – he was both a well known politician and president, but also was, for decades prior to his entry into politics, a prominent intellectual (a college professor and president of Princeton) who wrote many books and influential articles.
As I’ll explain in my next piece, these Progressives wanted a thorough transformation in America’s principles of government, from a government permanently dedicated to securing individual liberty to one whose ends and scope would change to take on any and all social and economic ills.  Here’s the order of the points we’ll consider in the pieces to follow:

1) What did Progressives think about the American founding, and why did they want to eradicate its principles? 

2) How did we get today’s excessively powerful presidency from the Progressives? 

3) What was the connection between Progressivism and Socialism?  Were the Progressives actually Socialists? 

4) What are some of the critical connections between Progressivism and what’s going on in our country today? 

For more on the Progressives, two of my books may be of interest:

1) American Progressivism, which I co-edited with American historian William Atto, contains a basic introduction to progressive ideas written by Professor Atto and me, and then several selections from the actual writings of Progressives like Wilson, TR, Dewey, Croly, and others.

2) Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, which is a much more in-depth look at Woodrow Wilson and how he was central to originating the liberalism that dominates America today.  This is for those who are really interested in history and political theory.

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II.  The Progressives and their Attack on America’s Founding

As I mentioned in my last piece, America’s Progressives aimed for a thorough transformation in America’s principles of government.  While our founders understood that our national government must have the capacity to be strong and vigorous (this is why the Articles of Confederation were failing), they also were very clear that this strength must always be confined to very limited ends or areas of responsibility; government, in other words, while not weak or tiny, was to be strictly limited. 
The Progressive conception of government, on the other hand, was quite the opposite; Progressives had an “evolving” or a “living” notion of government (yes, we get the term “living constitution” from the Progressives), and thus wanted government to take on whatever role and scope the times demanded.  The Progressives reasoned that people of the founding era may have wanted a limited government, given their particular experience with George III, but they argued that people of their own time wanted a much more activist government, and that we should adjust accordingly.
Quite simply, the Progressives detested the bedrock principles of American government.  They detested the Declaration of Independence, which enshrines the protection of individual natural rights (like property) as the unchangeable purpose of government; and they detested the Constitution, which places permanent limits on the scope of government and is structured in a way that makes the extension of national power beyond its original purpose very difficult.  “Progressivism” was, for them, all about progressing, or moving beyond, the principles of our founders. 
This is why the Progressives were the first generation of Americans to denounce openly our founding documents.  Woodrow Wilson, for example, once warned that “if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface” – i.e. that part of the Declaration which talks about securing individual natural rights as the only legitimate purpose of government.  And Theodore Roosevelt, when using the federal government to take over private businesses during the 1902 coal strike, is reported to have remarked, “To hell with the Constitution when people want coal!”  This remark may be apocryphal, but it is a fair representation of how TR viewed these matters. 
In the next piece, we’ll consider how the presidency was transformed under men like Wilson and TR.

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III.  How the Progressives Originated the Modern Presidency 

As I explained in my last piece, the Progressives wanted to disregard the Constitution in order to enlarge vastly the scope of government.  As a practical matter, how was this to be done?  It happened in a variety of ways, but principal among them was a fundamental change in the American presidency.
Under the system of our founders, government was to have sufficient strength and energy to accomplish its ends, but those ends were strictly limited by the Constitution.  The principal way in which the Constitution keeps the government within its boundaries is through the separation of powers.  As readers of The Federalist and of Thomas Jefferson know, the point of separation of powers is to keep any one set of hands from wielding all of the power in national government.
The Progressives, especially Woodrow Wilson, hated the separation of powers for precisely this reason: it made government inefficient, and made it difficult, if not impossible, to expand the power of government so that it could take on all of the new tasks that Progressives had in mind.  So they looked to the presidency as a way of getting around this obstacle.
Under the original system, the president was merely leader of a single branch, or part, of the government, and thus could not provide leadership of the government as a whole.  In his book Constitutional Government, Wilson urged that “leadership and control must be lodged somewhere.” The president, Wilson pointed out, was the only politician who could claim to speak for the people as a whole, and thus he called upon the president to rise above the separation of powers – to consider himself not merely as chief of a single branch of government, but as the popular leader of the whole of national politics. Wilson even contrasted the “constitutional aspect” of the presidency – its constitutionally defined role as chief of one of the three co-equal branches of government – to the “political” function of the president, where he could use his connection to public opinion as a tool for moving all of the branches of government in the direction called for by the people.
It was in this way that Wilson believed the original intention of the separation of powers system could be circumvented, and the enhanced presidency could be a means energizing the kind of active national government that the progressive agenda required.
In the next piece, we’ll consider whether the principles of the Progressives made them socialists.

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IV.  Progressivism and Socialism 

Since the Progressives had such a limitless view of state power, and since they wanted to downplay the founders’ emphasis on individual rights, it is only natural to ask if they subscribed to socialism.  There are several things to consider in answering this question.  First, when considering the relationship of progressivism to socialism, we must be clear that we are talking about the similarity in the philosophy of government; we are not suggesting that America’s progressives were the kind of moral monsters that we see in the history of some socialist or fascist regimes (although it is the case that their racial views – particularly those of Woodrow Wilson – were indeed morally reprehensible).
Second, we must also bear in mind that there was an actual socialist movement during the Progressive Era, and prominent progressives such as Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt were critics of it.  In fact, Wilson and Roosevelt both ran against a socialist candidate in the 1912 election (Eugene Debs).  The progressives were ambivalent about the socialist movement of their day not so much because they disagreed with it in principle, but because the American socialist movement was a movement of the lower classes.  The progressives were elitists; they looked down their noses at the socialists, considering them a kind of rabble.
Keeping these points in mind, it is, nonetheless, the case that the progressive conception of government closely coincided with the socialist conception.  Both progressivism and socialism champion the prerogatives of the state over the prerogatives of the individual.  Wilson himself made this connection very plain in a revealing essay he wrote in 1887 called “Socialism and Democracy.”  Wilson’s begins this essay by defining socialism, explaining that it stands for unfettered state power, which trumps any notion of individual rights. It “proposes that all idea of a limitation of public authority by individual rights be put out of view,” Wilson wrote, and “that no line can be drawn between private and public affairs which the State may not cross at will.” After laying out this definition of socialism, Wilson explains that he finds nothing wrong with it in principle, since it was merely the logical extension of genuine democratic theory. It gives all power to the people, in their collective capacity, to carry out their will through the exercise of governmental power, unlimited by any undemocratic idea like individual rights. He elaborated:

“In fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Limits of wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be: limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none.”

Roosevelt, too, argued for a new conception of government, where individual natural rights would no longer serve as a principled boundary that the state was prohibited from crossing.  He called in his New Nationalism program for the state to take an active role in effecting economic equality by way of superintending the use of private property. Private property rights, which had been serving as a brake on the more aggressive progressive policy proposals, were to be respected, Roosevelt argued, only insofar as the government approved of the property’s social usefulness.  He wrote:

“We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.”

In the next and final piece, we will consider the some of the most important connections between the original progressives and the resurgence of progressivism today.

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V.  Progressivism and the Current Crisis 

There are important connections between America’s original Progressive Era and the crisis we are facing today, and it is useful to consider these connections on two levels.
The first connection is at a general level, and concerns our abandonment of the Constitution.  The present crisis did not appear out of nowhere, and didn’t simply begin with the election of Barack Obama.  Politicians of both parties spent the better part of the 20^th century disregarding the Constitution, as they looked to have government step up to solve every conceivable human problem.  Thus it ought to be no surprise that the Constitution’s limits on government aren’t even part of the conversation today as our politicians debate the new interventions in our economy and society that seem to come daily. 
Such a state of things would have greatly pleased America’s original progressives.  As I’ve endeavored to explain in these pieces for the newsletter, progressives believed that the role of government should be determined not by our Constitution, but by whatever the needs of the day happened to be.  This is why they sought to eradicate talk of the Constitution from our political discourse; today, that goal seems to have been realized.
The second connection between the original Progressive Era and our situation today has to do with policy.  The progressives knew that our original system of government was not capable of handling all of the new tasks that they had in mind for it.  So they envisioned creating a vast set of bureaucratic agencies.  They argued that Congress should enact very broad and vague laws for supervising more and more facets of the American economy and society, and then delegate to the bureaucratic agencies the power and discretion to enact specific policies.  Both Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt conceived of government in this way.
The New Deal certainly went a long way toward implementing this progressive vision, and what we have seen in our own situation with TARP and the various other interventions is simply greater steps toward the progressive plan.  Our Congress has simply said to the Treasury agencies: here’s a trillion dollars, here’s all the legal authority you need, now go out, determine what is in the public interest, and spend and regulate accordingly.  That is the progressive vision of government, in a nutshell.
For more on the Progressives, two of my books may be of interest:

1) American Progressivism, which I co-edited with American historian William Atto, contains a basic introduction to progressive ideas written by Professor Atto and me, and then several selections from the actual writings of Progressives like Wilson, TR, Dewey, Croly, and others.

2) Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, which is a much more in-depth look at Woodrow Wilson and how he was central to originating the liberalism that dominates America today.  This is for those who are really interested in history and political theory.