Who Was Paul Revere?

Seems like such a central historical figure, but hey, our culture's messed up, starting with the public education system.

Here's Eric Metaxas, for Prager University:



And ICYMI, buy his book, If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty.

David Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality

Garrow's book is cited at the Los Angeles Times, "Norma McCorvey, once-anonymous plaintiff in landmark Roe vs. Wade abortion case, dies at 69."

The L.A. Times obituary, by the way, is much better, way more honest, than the New York Times's. A key point: McCorvey never had an abortion.

In any case, here's Garrow's book, Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America

*BUMPED.*

I just pulled out my old copy in the original hardback.

But it's still available in paper.

At Amazon, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Revised and Enlarged Edition).

One of the added sections at the revised edition is "Schlesinger’s Syllabus," an essay on "the thirteen books you must read to understand America."

How awesome. If only more professors steeped their students in these classics.

Abraham Lincoln's Birthday

I love President Lincoln. He's my favorite president. I just wish I could transport back in time and meet him.

He was born 208 years ago today.

In any case, here's Scott Johnson, at Power Line, "REMEMBERING MR. LINCOLN," and "THINKIN’ ABOUT 'LINCOLN' AGAIN."

While only 272 words, the #GettysburgAddress is still one of the most powerful speeches ever given. #PresidentLincoln #LoveLincoln pic.twitter.com/pGELhijcxW

— The National Mall (@TheNationalMall) February 11, 2017

FedEx Driver Shuts Down Flag Burning Protest in Iowa City (VIDEO)

Barstool Sports is loving it, "Protestors Try to Burn The American Flag in Iowa City, Hero FedEx Dude Saves the Day":

What a goddamn hero! FedEx guy! Do work buddy! A bunch of punk ass protestors doing punk ass protestor things like trying to burn the Amrican flag and the FedEx dude was having NONE OF IT. They picked the wrong day to protest in Iowa City. FedEx guy stopped delivering packages and saved the damn day. I wanna kiss that FedEx dude on the mouth...

More.

Flag burning sets off clash at pedestrian mall in Iowa. https://t.co/s3wHt7Rovd

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 27, 2017

This FedEx guy is my hero. Merica.pic.twitter.com/WEcS268m75

— Cloyd Rivers (@CloydRivers) January 27, 2017

Cody Wilson, Come and Take It

*BUMPED*

My winter break's about half over now, so I don't know when I'll be able to get to this book, but it looks awesome.

The dude's known as a "crypto-anarchist," heh.

At Amazon, Cody Wilson, Come and Take It: The Gun Printer’s Guide to Thinking Free.

Well, Shoot, I Was Waiting for Trump's Purge Anarchy

Scott Eric Kaufman has died.

The hand of God swept to smite that asshole from the earth.

When I think of the one person I'd purge if purge anarchy was a possibility (in our times of troubles), it'd be SEK.

Sorry not sorry.

This was an evil person, a perfect representation of the evil the left produces. There is no redeeming quality. There's nothing redeeming I could even think of in his case. He was an all-around despicable person and I'm cheering his exit from this mortal existence.

Good riddance.

In any case, long time readers will get it. If you're a newbie around these parts, see "The Lies of Scott Eric Kaufman — Leftist Hate-Blogger Sought to Silence Criticism With Libelous Campaign of Workplace Harassment."

Jason Brennan, Against Democracy

I know this is an interesting book, perhaps even vital, when the Jacobin foams at the mouth in denouncing it. See, "Bleeding Heart Bullshit."

And from the blurb at Amazon:

Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us--it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But, Jason Brennan says, they are all wrong.

In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results--and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse--more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government--epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable--may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out.

A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines.

Brennan is supposedly some hip new libertarian dude, although I'm not familiar with him, and I'm not that big on libertarianism (since it ineluctably devolves to leftism and anti-Semitism, frankly, at least in its current manifestations amid the culture wars).

But if the guy in fact harks back to a more Milton Friedman-esque style of libertarianism, I could throw some weight behind it.

In any case, here's another review, at Free Beacon, "Free People at the Polls — Review: Jason Brennan, 'Against Democracy'."

Statement from Dean Melanie Wilson About Professor Glenn Reynolds's tweet

I saw this at Memeorandum yesterday, "Statement from Dean Melanie Wilson about Professor’s Tweet."

And at Instapundit, "THE UNIVERSITY ENDS ITS INVESTIGATION: “In short, no disciplinary action will be taken against Professor Reynolds. The tweet was an exercise of his First Amendment rights.” Though perhaps not the most brilliant such."

Heh, it goes with the territory these days. If you're a conservative online, and a public intellectual college professor, expect the attack mobs to come after you with 20 divisions.

More here.

Glenn Reynolds 'Planning on Quitting Twitter'

I just saw this, at Politico, "USA Today suspends columnist Glenn Reynolds for one month."

Instapundit's got the best column over at the newspaper. That'd be lame of he got canned, so obviously posting on Twitter's not going to be worth it.

Frankly, I quit for a week after Robert Stacy McCain's @RSMcCain got banned. I didn't miss it that much.

In any case, here's the Professor, "TWITTER HAS UNBLOCKED MY ACCOUNT ON CONDITION OF DELETING THE OFFENDING TWEET."

Also, "OPENED UP TWITTER TO SEE THIS..." Click through to see the offending tweet.

Frankly, it wasn't what he said. It's who he is. Leftists hate Glenn Reynolds and they want his scalp. The Internet's one big lynch mob and demonic fever-swamp progs seized a chance to destroy the Instapundit.

More at Zilla of the Resistance, "The Long Knives Are Out for @Instapundit – The Mob Demands He Lose His Job":

Leftists can use violent rhetoric and actual acts of violence against people with impunity, but a politically incorrect statement by a non-leftist MUST be punished, according to our self proclaimed moral superiors, so the “offended” will scream and howl until the target of their rage is utterly ruined.

USA Today published an apology from Reynolds along with a statement from the paper that his column has been suspended for a month, but in the comments section, predictably, there is screeching that he should also lose his job at the university where he works.

The University of Tennessee is now investigating the good professor.

The PC mob will not be satisfied until they have utterly destroyed a good man’s reputation and ability to make a living.

It's true. And all of that over a throwaway snarky tweet.

.@Instapundit Considering anarchy in #Charlotte last night, to "run them down" would be purely defensive. Screw the leftist speech police.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 22, 2016

Glenn Reynolds, @instapundit, has been reinstated. Deets at https://t.co/AUY3qZQGJc pic.twitter.com/lQ3xgCZx2g

— reason (@reason) September 22, 2016

(Longtime readers know that I've dealt with these lynch mobs myself and they're demonstrably evil. It's chilling too, but you can't back down. Fight these fuckers, even if you have to hire a lawyer. They'd murder you if they could get away with it, so watch your back. I do.)

Equality, Liberty, Justice

Heh.

It's the formula for a better world, and a richer one, from Deirdre McCloskey, at NYT, "The Formula for a Richer World? Equality, Liberty, Justice":

We can improve the conditions of the working class. Raising low productivity by enabling human creativity is what has mainly worked. By contrast, taking from the rich and giving to the poor helps only a little — and anyway expropriation is a one-time trick. Enrichment from market-tested betterment will go on and on and, over the next century or so, will bring comfort in essentials to virtually everyone on the planet, and more to an expanding middle class.

Look at the astonishing improvements in China since 1978 and in India since 1991. Between them, the countries are home to about four out of every 10 humans. Even in the United States, real wages have continued to grow — if slowly — in recent decades, contrary to what you might have heard. Donald Boudreaux, an economist at George Mason University, and others who have looked beyond the superficial have shown that real wages are continuing to rise, thanks largely to major improvements in the quality of goods and services, and to nonwage benefits. Real purchasing power is double what it was in the fondly remembered 1950s — when many American children went to bed hungry.

What, then, caused this Great Enrichment?

Not exploitation of the poor, not investment, not existing institutions, but a mere idea, which the philosopher and economist Adam Smith called “the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.” In a word, it was liberalism, in the free-market European sense. Give masses of ordinary people equality before the law and equality of social dignity, and leave them alone, and it turns out that they become extraordinarily creative and energetic...

RTWT.

Hat Tip: Instapundit.

Jan Crawford at the National Constitution Center (VIDEO)

Watch, an interesting segment, at CBS This Morning, "National Constitution Center tells the story of America":

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia tells the story of how our founders created a government by the people with an elected president -- and a Constitution that endures and protects us all. Jan Crawford reports.

I don't think the question is whether we can "keep" the Constitution so much as we can preserve the liberty that it was originally designed to protect. The Constitution will be with us for a long time. It's how much the interpretation and practice of our constitutional norms have changed that's troubling.

Hey Ungrateful Leftists, Catch a Flight to Cuba, LOL!

Michelle Malkin cracks me up.

She's got an Independence Day video, at the link.

I think conservatives took over the #AmericaWasNeverGreat hashtag, lol.

To the #AmericaWasNeverGreat ingrates: It's our day to tell you to SIT DOWN==> https://t.co/GRYH1xmaST #IndependenceDay

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) July 4, 2016

Our Eternal War for Independence

From Daniel Geenfield, at FrontPage Magazine, "We are a nation of rebels":

How will you celebrate the Fourth of July?

With fireworks and parades, hamburgers and hot dogs, sweating bands playing Sousa marches and parades down Main Street? Will you remember the men who fell in the first war and all the following wars that were fought to preserve our political and personal independence from foreign and domestic tyrannies? Will you consider what you might have done in the days when revolution was in the air?

Those are all good things. They remind us to celebrate and what it is we are celebrating.

I sat on the warm grass beneath the shade of a spreading fig tree listening to a band run through a repertoire of everything from Yankee Doodle Dandy to Over There. An elderly disabled veteran with a flag listened intently to the orchestra and a small child clambered awkwardly up a tree as his father worriedly urged him to climb down. It could have been a scene from any century. The Fourth is timeless.

It is timeless because it is still going on. The War of Independence went on underneath that fig tree, it continues on in your town, your city and in your community on this day and on every day.

Independence Day is a commemoration, but it is not a mere commemoration. The struggle is not over.

America became America out of a hatred of powerful central government. The War of Independence was not a battle between two countries. America’s Founding Fathers started out as Englishmen who wanted to preserve their rights from a distant and out of touch government.

The War of Independence was a civil war between those who wanted a strong central government and those who wanted to govern themselves. The fundamental breach between these two worldviews led to the creation of an independent nation dedicated to the preservation of independence. This independence was not mere political independence. It was personal independence.

America as a separate nation did not yet exist. Even the Constitution that embodies its purpose was a decade, a war, a failed experiment in government and many bitter debates away.

Nations come and go. Political unions are created and dissolved. There are nations today named Egypt and Greece that have little in common with the historical entities that once bore those names. The Declaration to which those remarkable men pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor was not for a flag, which then still bore the Union Jack, or for the invention of yet another administrative body, but for the rights of peoples, nations and individuals to be free to exercise their personal and political rights.

The war for these things was fought, but it has not ended. It began then, but it continues today.

It is not a war against King George III. It is the ongoing struggle between the people and those who would govern them that is at the heart of our independence.

There are two visions of how men are meant to live today, just as there were in 1776. Revolutions and wars may occasionally clarify these visions, but they do not permanently resolve them. New governments are quick to adopt old tyrannies. Freedom is a popular rallying cry for rebels. But few rebels wish to be rebelled against. That is what made America unique. That is what still does.

We were not meant to be a society of sinecures for public servants. We did not come into being to be ruled by bureaucrats. Our birth of freedom was not meant to give way to the repression of a vast incomprehensible body of regulations administered by an elite political class in Washington D.C.

Americans are rebels. And if we are not rebels, then we are not Americans.

We are not a nation founded by men and women who followed the rules. It is not our capacity for obedience that makes us true Americans, but our capacity for disobedience.

The Declaration of Independence was a document of rebellion by a band of rebels. “Damned rebels” as the big government monarchists saw them. The men who signed it pledged their lives because they expected to be executed for treason. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were acts of rebellion against the entire order across what was then seen as the civilized world.

American greatness came about because we were willing to break the rules. It was only when we began following the rules, when as a nation we made the maintenance of the international order into our notion of the greatest good and when as individuals we accepted the endless expansion of government as a national ideal that we ceased to be great.

When we think of great Americans, from Thomas Jefferson to the Wright Brothers, from Andrew Jackson to Daniel Boone, from Theodore Roosevelt to today’s true patriots, we think of “damned rebels” who broke the rules, who did what should have been impossible and thumbed their noses at the establishments of the day. American greatness is embodied in individual initiative. That is why the Declaration of Independence places at the center of its striving, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It was for these individualistic ends of freedom that government had to be derived from the consent of the governed, that a war was fought that changed the world and it is these ends that we must celebrate.

Rebellion does not always mean muskets and cannon. Long before the War of Independence, we had become a nation of rebels who explored the wild realms of forests and streams, who forged cities out of savage lands, who argued philosophy and sought a higher purpose for their strivings, who refused to bow to their betters out of an accident of birth. And at our best, we are still rebels today.

When we dissent from the system, we rebel. When we refuse to conform, when we think differently, when we choose to live our own lives instead of living according to the dictates of our political rulers and pop culture arbiters, then we are celebrating the spirit of freedom that animates the Fourth.

When we defy the government, when we speak out against Obama and the rest of our privileged ruling class, when we demand the right to govern ourselves, when we fight to hold government accountable, when we question what we are told and the need to be told anything at all, then we are keeping that old spirit of rebellion alive. We are still fighting for our independence from government every day and every year that we choose to live as free people. That is the glorious burden of freedom.

Freedom is not handed to us. It is not secured for us by politicians. Like the Founding Fathers, we are made free by our fight for freedom. Preserving their legacy cannot be meaningfully recreated through any means other than the committed struggle for the same ideals.

This Fourth of July, celebrate by continuing to be a rebel, question and challenge the left’s worship of government. And don’t stop on the Fifth or in July. Or in any year or any decade or any century.

We here at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and at Front Page Magazine don’t.

Our family of writers, activists and commentators, and that includes you, inspired by David’s courageous spirit continue to question authority, challenge government and fight for the independence of the individual against the tyrannies of the radical left and Islamic theocracy, every day, week and month of the year.

And we welcome you to our revolution.

Patriotic Bikini Hotties

A roundup, at Egotastic, "Patriotic Bikini Hotties and Other Fine Things to Ogle."

And of course the annual posting of the fabulous Angie Harmon:

Deal of the Day: iBobber Castable Bluetooth Smart Fishfinder

At Amazon, iBobber Wireless Bluetooth Smart Fish Finder for iOS and Android Devices.

Also, Cuisinart CGG-306 Professional Portable Two-Burner Gas Grill.

More, 50-70% Off Calvin Klein.

Plus, from Roger Simon, I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.

And from Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism.

BONUS: David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States).

Assignment America: A Look at What Makes Texas Texas

At the New York Times.

Thank goodness some Americans are determined to preserve their heritage and values.

What makes Texas Texas https://t.co/jfY813VjmC pic.twitter.com/iyo61lciLh

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 7, 2016

The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty

From Eric Metaxas, out June 14th, If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty.

From the Amazon blurb:

If You Can Keep It is at once a thrilling review of America's uniqueness, and a sobering reminder that America's greatness cannot continue unless we truly understand what our founding fathers meant for us to be. The book includes a stirring call-to-action for every American to understand the ideals behind the "noble experiment in ordered liberty" that is America. It also paints a vivid picture of the tremendous fragility of that experiment and explains why that fragility has been dangerously forgotten—and in doing so it lays out our own responsibility to live those ideals and carry on those freedoms. Metaxas believes America is not a nation bounded by ethnic identity or geography, but rather by a radical and unprecedented idea, based upon liberty and freedom. It's time to reconnect to that idea before America loses the very foundation for what made it exceptional in the first place.

Pre-order here.

Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Costa Mesa (VIDEO)

I don't know if these are the same sponsors as the Costa Mesa gun show I attended a couple of years ago, but to attend these things is to forget you're in California. There's a huge interest in Second Amendment rights in the once-Golden State, despite the far-left moral bankruptcy in our politics.

At ABC News 7 Los Angeles, "CROSSROADS OF THE WEST GUN SHOW COMES TO COSTA MESA AS OBAMA PUSHES TOUGHER GUN REGULATIONS."

Dana Loesch, Defeating the Plot to Disarm America

She really is.

And she was back on CNN a little while ago, on Anderson Cooper's show. I was surprised. I had CNN on because I was too lazy to turn the channel over to Fox while I was blogging, heh.

Here's her book, Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America.