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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Two hundred and thirty-four years ago today, our nation came into being.  (Okay, if you’re picky, the resolution of independence was approved July 2nd, 1776– so it was 234 years Friday.)  A group of men– some almost destitute, some very wealthy, some young, some old– came together and forged a nation that ruled not by the whims of a monarch or by an elite cadre, but by the consent of the governed.

God bless this nation, and may the governed therein understand these words.

One day next month every student at Loyola Law School Los Angeles will awake to a higher grade point average. But it’s not because they are all working harder. The school is retroactively inflating its grades, tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. The goal is to make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market.

From the Washington Post:

The Marine Corps has discharged 13 junior officers training at Quantico for cheating on a land navigation test [...] They were taking an intense, six-month training course for new officers and were trying to learn how to lead a platoon through rugged terrain. They were sent with a map and compass to a wooded area on the base and instructed to write down numbers painted on boxes left there. The accused wrote down numbers from the previous year’s test…

The defense for both events?  Everyone’s doing it! Which, of course, doesn’t make me feel a bit better.  That just means that there’s more “A+” students out there who are actually A- (or B+, or C-) students graded on a curve.

I also admire the Marine OCS cadets for their sheer chutzpah– they’re going to lead people in combat, and they don’t even have the common courtesy to learn basic skills?  What happens when they’re in a war zone and have to bring their squad back in through a minefield… at night… with no GPS gear?  How many letters to parents will they have to right before it dawns on them that this happened because of their mental laziness?

(NYT article via Jennifer, WaPo article via Laginappe’s Guy)

Now, Larry Grathwohl, the FBI agent who went under cover into the Weather Underground.  You know, the organization founded by Bill Ayers… Obama’s buddy.

Do not for a minute allow yourself to think that the people who stand in opposition to your rights are “safe” because “they think they are right.”  Useful idiots are as dangerous as their masters… and their masters are very damn dangerous.

(Sorry for the language, kinda emotional subject.  I have Korea and Vietnam vets in the family, and the fact that the mush-heads today think Che and Stalin are cool boils my blood.)

Comic book version of Road to Serfdom here.

(Both link one and link two H/T Instapundit)

“I want it to be an international movement. This is the same battle that Ronald Reagan and millions of other people fought in the 20th century; it just has a 21st century New Media battleground. The Cold War is now a New Media War. — Andrew Breitbart

The more I hear of and from Breitbart, the more I like him– his view of the world and mine match up closely.  All too often, the pro-rights crowd tries to be nice, civil, courteous and clean… and they get walked over.  Get scrappy, take the fight to the ground, and get dirty– and win.  Anti-gunners make dick jokes?  Question why they focus on penis humor.  Leftist wants to mock your family?  Ask why they are envious of a working nuclear family.  Obama voter wants to make snide remarks and jet off?  To use the old military strategy– fix ‘em, flank ‘em, and fire on ‘em.  It’s time to stop fencing in a cage match world.

And he’s right about Buckley.  The video of Bill Buckley versus Gore Vidal warms my heart every time I watch it.  It presents the perfect engagement for a scrappy fight– the leftist tosses out insults, handwaves, tries to disengage and flee… only to get pinned down and hit.  An additional bonus for Buckley is the moderator breaking it up.

His next point is that Christians shouldn’t let things slide… and I agree with him.  One of the Biblical doctrines is for Christians to “be always ready to give an answer” when you are questioned about your faith, and the word used in that passage meant to give a legal rebuttal to the accusations of a court.  (It’s also the word from which we get apologetics.)  You are being tried in the court of public opinion… so defend yourself.

The reason I chose the title of this post is because we need to draw a line, or we’ll keep backing up.  “Compromise” to a leftist means you giving them what they want and shutting up so they can brag about it.  The solution is simple– don’t give them what they want, and don’t be quiet about it.  Working with someone who wishes to destroy you and your way of life isn’t a value, it’s a lapdog mentality.  Plus, there’s no satisfaction like seeing the blank expression a leftist gets when you get a really good zinger in on them– it’s like they lose connection with the hive mind for a moment…

You know what surprised me the most about this piece?  Fifty cents a WORD.  I don’t have the reference in front of me, but I remember one of Heinlein’s essays talking about how he negotiated a book sale in the late 1970′s at around seven cents a word.  I’d be interested to know what an entry-level rate is for fiction writing is now-a-days…

(H/T Instapundit)

• A- Student can EXPAND the material by linking disparate ideas and themes and create through synthesis a valid link.
• B- Student can EXPOUND on the material, and can reason through the logic behind the material.
• C- Student can EXPLAIN the content of the material, and has a solid understanding of the fundamentals.

The final in this course was a 2,500 word essay, your choice from 10 available topics.  I chose option 10, the most difficult– link the ideas of an opposing pair of philosophers and show that both sets of ideas have a solid logical base.  I chose Nietzsche and Kierkegaard… which wasn’t actually that hard to do.  The short form goes like this– both saw a basic problem (oppressive morality), but differed on the solution.  Nietzsche created a new morality, but Kierkegaard created new interpreters of morality.

The reason I bring this little story up is that in the modern world, we have plenty of EXPLAINING and EXPOUNDING going on, but no EXPANDING.  People always talk about “being awash in information,” and they are.  The problem is that so few people try to synthesize the information into a useful form.  (This was something Bob Heinlein complained about.  He even took a few years off writing to catch up on and tie together all the new information in his fields of expertise.)  This lack of synthesis is why so many people turn away from certain areas of discussion– politics, gun rights, libertarianism.  Information without synthesis is like watching a channel that drops frames… eventually you’ll turn away.

That’s one reason why I draw from so many sources when I write a post.  Each writer has a different take, does different research, and shines a different light on a topic.  Combined, they are the perfect example of a Fermi problem.  We will probably never figure out for certain (insert your choice here– what the anti-gunners are thinking, what is going on in the White House right now, whether the AK or the AR is better), but we can take a series of guesses of try to piece them together.  Ideas, food, and sound– all are better when blended.

(H/T Linoge)

Seventy-one percent of Americans fail the test [...] [f]ewer than half of all Americans can name all three branches of government [...] [o]nly 24% of college graduates know the First Amendment prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States. [...] [o]nly 54% can correctly identify a basic description of the free enterprise system [...] [t]hirty percent of elected officials do not know that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence.  — Civic Literacy Report

Tam points to a reference at USConstitution.net that points to this study by Columbia Law School.  Apparently, two out of every three people think that “Karl Marx’s maxim, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ was or could have been written by the framers and included in the Constitution…”

Two out of every three people, folks.  Look to your left… look to your right.  If you aren’t this dumb, that means that the other two people are.

The Boob Tube

Another thing that has begun to anger me is the “History” Channel’s constant falling short of the mark on things. (Yes, I put “History” in quotation marks.  Any channel that airs anything by Zinn has no relationship with real history.)  Here’s  a channel that could help to educate Americans… but instead, they produce UFO and ghost shows.

For instance, their new documentary– “America: the story of us“– is pretty good.  Until they began skipping over major portions of history, that is. War of 1812… nowhere to be seen.  Donner party– covered in detail.  Texas revolting against the Mexicans… barely mentioned.  Run up to the Civil War… so biased it wasn’t funny.

• They mentioned that the U.S.– i.e., the South– made 67% of the world’s cotton at the time… but they didn’t mention the North using the South as a cash cow.
• They painted Lincoln as wanting to bring about equality between the races and starting the war to end slavery… which doesn’t check with some of his quotes from both before and during the war.
• John Brown was (once again) painted as crazy and/or stupid.
• And Sheryl Crow got her licks in about all of us interested in our Southern heritage being racists.

Add to this “How the States got their shapes,” and “History”‘s fall from grace becomes even more sorrowful.  The portion of the show that dealt with Florida losing its long Panhandle was comical– to paraphrase the show, Florida “gave up some of its Gulf Coast so that Alabama and Mississippi could have access to the Gulf.”  All well and good… until you realized that Alabama and Mississippi gained those portions before Florida even became a territory, much less a state.  (For reference, 1812 < 1822 < 1845.)  Question– if Florida wasn’t a state at the time, how did Alabama and Mississippi get the land?

Answer: they annexed it.  The Republic of West Florida rebelled against Spain on 23 September 1810… and was annexed by the U.S. Government on 27 October.  Troops reached the area in December with orders “to negotiate with the fledgling government if possible, but … seize the territory by force if necessary.”  That’s right… a Republic– which gained their independence by force from an empire and had a republican form of government– was annexed by force by the U.S. Government.

No wonder Texas modeled their flag after the Bonnie Blue Flag, and the song became so popular during the Civil War.

Leaving the Tangent

Okay, back on topic… why does this matter?  Well, to quote Santayana, “[t]hose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  To use the Republic of West Florida as an example, a person who knows about it and understands it can see how the annexation effected the area for the next century– the use of the flag by Texans, the use of the song and flag during the Civil War, the attitude the South had about Northern interference in their affairs, why the Indians began their raids, etc.– but a person ignorant of history sees these things as a series of unconnected and random events.

Heck, they probably think the people waving the Bonnie Blue Flag at Tea Parties are waving a “neo-Nazi flag” of some sort.

FTC disclaimer:  my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s brother owned several thousand acres of land in the Republic.  I have no chance of ever making a claim on this.  I’ll never see a dime of the money he lost.  I just wanted to make a disclaimer.  Hurrah to the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!