Category: History
-
By Selwyn Duke “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” a woman asked Ben Franklin in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention’s close. “A republic, if you can keep it,” he sagely replied. This exchange has been quoted widely. So has a line written in 1798 by our second president, John Adams.…
-
By Selwyn Duke The process of making things right is simple: First you acknowledge wrongdoing. Next you show remorse. Then, finally, there’s the last step: reparation — you make the aggrieved “whole.” That third part is pretty important. If you happen to “skip” it, one may wonder if you were sincere about the first two…
-
By Selwyn Duke A man may look back 50 years, at an old birthday picture, and lament lost innocence and youthful vigor. So can people look back a half century on their land and wistfully observe what was and is no more. In America’s case, on our 250th birthday, some may note that while we…
-
By Selwyn Duke “When Will They Blow Up Mount Rushmore?” I asked that rhetorically in 2017, alluding to the continual left-wing efforts to clear cut our American cultural landscape. And it was not three years later, in 2020, that a leftist did propose doing essentially that. In fairness, though, Oglala Sioux President Julian Bear Runner wanted to be civilized…
-
By Selwyn Duke The first man who staked out a piece of ground and said “This is mine” was a liar, goes a paraphrase of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Yet that man also, the philosopher stated, “was the real founder of civil society.” Rousseau was no fan of our Western civil society, but perhaps that makes his statement even…
