America Must Lead

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Prime Minister of Denmark and former NATO Secretary General, is the author of The Will to Lead: America's Indispensable Role in the Global Fight for Freedom.

He's got a great segment at Prager University:

Owen Wister, The Virginian

I picked up a copy.

Get yours at Amazon, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains.

Also, The Virginian (Enriched Classics) Mass Market Paperback – Deluxe Edition.

Higher Education's Prejudice Problem

From Professor Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today (via Instapundit), "MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Higher ed’s prejudice problem: It’s bias against conservatives, Republicans and libertarians. But help may be on the way."

How Much Are Americans Willing to Pay for Open Immigration?

From the great George J. Borjas, the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, at the New York Times:

.@MichelleMalkin The Immigration Debate We Need: #NoAmnesty #StopAmnesty #MAGA https://t.co/ycKkrIXoGT

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 27, 2017

#Oscars Got Fewer Viewers

Following-up, "Didn't Watch the #Oscars."

Well, turns out a lot of people didn't watch the Oscars.

At Bloomberg:

Despite a dramatic ending, the Oscars got fewer viewers than last year https://t.co/6BEX8k1EYk pic.twitter.com/zkKR5Zp8Ga

— Bloomberg (@business) February 27, 2017

That's because the #Oscars are out of touch with everyday, lunch-bucket Americans and traditional values. #BoycottOSCARS #AcademyAwards https://t.co/YyfGVaYd8K

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 27, 2017

Marloes Horst Sets Sail (VIDEO)

Via Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Eliot A. Cohen, Conquered Into Liberty

Okay, back to the frontier genre.

At Amazon, Eliot A. Cohen, Conquered Into Liberty: Two Centuries of Battles along the Great Warpath that Made the American Way of War.

#PresidentTrump: The Oscars 'Were Focused so Hard on Politics' They Could Not Get the Basics of the Ceremony Right

At Memeorandum.

"Trump, in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News in the Oval Office” https://t.co/BsRDltlILh

— Jon Passantino (@passantino) February 27, 2017

Impact Segment: Is Hatred on the Rise in America? (VIDEO)

I don't think so.

But see Roger Simon, via Instapundit, "Who's Behind the Latest Spate of Anti-Semitic Bomb Threats?"

And from Bill O'Reilly's "Impact Segment," featuring Charles Krauthammer:



Bonus Video: At CBS Evening News, "More Jewish Community Centers threats, cemetery vandalism amid FBI investigation."

Megan MacKenzie, Beyond the Band of Brothers

Here's something different to shake things up, heh.

From Professor Megan MacKenzie, Beyond the Band of Brothers: The U.S. Military and the Myth that Women Can't Fight.

the logistical gymnastics of #WomenInCombat trolls trying to discredit #Ranger women is blowing my mind. Band of Bros is over. Get over it.

— Megan H. MacKenzie (@MeganhMackenzie) January 20, 2017

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Plus, Elmer's All Purpose School Glue Sticks, Clear, Washable, 4 Pack, 0.24-ounce sticks.

BONUS: Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.

Backlash at Orange Coast College

Following up from December, "Olga Perez Stable Cox, Orange Coast College Professor, Flees the State After Death Threats (VIDEO)."

Caleb O’Neil, the student who video-d the professor, was disciplined; then came the backlash against the college, and rightly so.

At Instapundit, "BACKLASH CAN BE A GOOD THING: A student was punished for filming professor’s anti-Trump rant. Then came the backlash."

Didn't Watch the #Oscars

And I'm glad I didn't.

What, it was a two-hour Trump-trashing smut show, with a totally FUBAR best picture award mix-up at the end?

These leftist Hollywood elites get what the deserve.

Spoiled brat leftist #MerylStreep slams righteous #KarlLagerfeld. #Oscars #AcademyAwards https://t.co/cPIP7TMbzT

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 27, 2017

I'm not watching the #Oscars. #AcademyAwards https://t.co/qdoRqvXUbL

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 27, 2017

Not watching, for precisely this reason. But thank you Dana. #Oscars #AcademyAwards https://t.co/jp9lYL5ogg

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 27, 2017

Not for me. Not watching: "5 ways politics could steal the show at #Oscars." #AcademyAwards https://t.co/LqWwl9Yy8D

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 27, 2017

Lolz. So glad I tuned out the #Oscars. Looks like I was right: Totally FUBAR. #AcademyAwards https://t.co/Hm2jOUB887

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 27, 2017

The most politically correct movie won for best picture. Who'd have thunk it? #Oscars #AcademyAwards https://t.co/WZWnj8aGdX

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 27, 2017

'You had one job!': #Oscars flub engulfs accounting firm: #PwC https://t.co/BXmQooc1RC

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 27, 2017

#PricewaterhouseCoopers apologizes for #Oscars fail: #PwC https://t.co/IhHvopMkmr

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 27, 2017

This image sums up the end of the 89th Academy Awards pretty well https://t.co/g03MyJxRHT pic.twitter.com/XeQuQ4LuhB

— kcranews (@kcranews) February 27, 2017

Blanca Blanco

At Drunken Stepfather, "BLANCA BLANCO OSCAR NIGHT FLASH OF THE DAY."

Fergus Bordewich, Killing the White Man's Indian

My ultimate goal of all this reading on Native American history and the frontier West is to have a sound basis of rebuttal against the hateful leftists in my department who are expanding the curriculum, quite dramatically, to include Latin American and Indigenous studies. I'm not against that. What I'm against is one-sided indoctrination, which according to more than a few students, is quite rampant on my campus.

So, while I enjoy reading the general histories and more specialized (polemical and leftist) studies, my main hope is to develop my own curriculum and syllabi for courses on race, class, gender, and culture, because these things are coming down the pipeline ready or not. It's best practice to be able to serve all of our student demographics, not just the far-left, non-white constituencies who are being taught leftist revolutionary doctrines and hate-America ideologies.

In any case, here's a wonderful antidote: Fergus Bordewich, Killing the White Man's Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century.

I'll have more later.

When America Opened Its Doors

I posted on A. Roger Ekirch on Saturday.

He's the author of American Sanctuary: Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity in the Age of Revolution.

Kathleen DuVal, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has a review.

At WSJ:

'Refugees were the ideal citizens for a republic." @KathleenADuVal _When America Opened its Doors_ #vastearlyamerica https://t.co/i0QVknRb9J pic.twitter.com/O69zu1svUq

— Karin Wulf (@kawulf) February 18, 2017

America’s founders—both its leaders and those protesting in the streets and fighting the British Army—saw immigrants as vital to the mission of the fledgling nation. The Declaration of Independence accused King George III of “obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners” and refusing “to encourage their migrations” into the colonies. To the Founders, the king’s restrictions on immigration were evidence of his desire to keep the colonies backward and under his thumb. In the newly independent United States, they firmly believed, immigration would accelerate economic development and help the country become a player among the powerful empires of Europe.

As A. Roger Ekirch’s deeply researched and elegantly written “American Sanctuary” reveals, early Americans saw the United States as a sanctuary for people oppressed by the old tyrannical governments of Europe. Refugees were the ideal citizens for a republic: Having fled tyranny, they would be a bulwark against it. And they came. Nearly 100,000 Europeans immigrated to the United States in the 1790s, a dramatic addition to a population that was just under four million at the start of the decade.

But when the French Revolution turned radical in the 1790s, some Americans began to worry. They feared that French as well as Irish immigrants would drag the new, still-fragile country into anarchy. Harrison Otis, a congressman from Massachusetts, gave a speech in which he railed that he did “not wish to invite hoards of wild Irishmen, nor the turbulent and disorderly of all parts of the world, to come here with a view to disturb our tranquility.” South Carolina Rep. Robert Goodloe Harper proposed getting rid of naturalized citizenship altogether. And from the beginning Congress limited naturalized citizenship to any “free white person.”

The war that broke out in 1793 between Britain and revolutionary France sparked the first great divide in American politics. Thomas Jefferson and others supported France, grateful for its help in defeating Britain in the American Revolution and for following the United States into revolution itself. But other Americans, including John Adams and George Washington, were aghast at French revolutionaries’ use of the guillotine and the Bastille. After Washington’s administration negotiated a treaty with the British in 1794 that struck supporters of France as too cozy, New Yorkers threw rocks at Alexander Hamilton. Some congressmen even talked of impeaching Washington.

Into this fractious debate about the place of the United States in the world came the bloodiest mutiny in the history of the British navy—a mutiny that forced Americans to decide if the country was truly a haven for lovers of liberty, even those who had killed for its sake.

Probably half of the HMS Hermione’s diverse crew had been “impressed”—meaning that the British navy had forced them from non-British private merchant ships into British service. On one day alone in 1795, sailors from the Hermione boarded 20 American ships, took nearly 70 crewmen (most of whom claimed American citizenship) and forced them into the British navy. On most ships of the era, impressed sailors grumbled but did not mutiny, but circumstances combined with the revolutionary times and a particularly cruel captain to push the Hermione’s crew over the edge. On the night of Sept. 21, 1797, off the coast of Puerto Rico, several of the crew charged into the captain’s cabin, brandishing swords and axes. After killing him, crew members searched the ship and killed all 10 officers.

Mr. Ekirch’s gripping and timely book both conveys the drama of this long-forgotten mutiny and reveals its importance to the early American republic. The first part of “American Sanctuary” tells the story of the mutiny, and the rest of the book traces the crisis it prompted—specifically when some of the mutineers from the HMS Hermione fled to the United States. Would Americans side with rebels against British tyranny, or with the rule of law on the high seas? Would the United States turn its back on Thomas Paine’s charge in “Common Sense” to be “an asylum for mankind” by extraditing mutineers to Britain?

The man that put all of these questions to the test called himself Jonathan Robbins. A little over a year after the mutiny, an American schooner docked at the port of Charleston with Robbins aboard. He had reportedly bragged to his shipmates that he had been one of the mutineers on the now-infamous Hermione. Charleston officials put him in jail, where an officer who had served on the Hermione prior to the mutiny visited him and declared that the man in the cell was in fact Thomas Nash, one of the mutiny’s leaders. After the British consul in Charleston requested the man’s extradition for court-martial, U.S. Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and President John Adams determined that this was a simple case of mutiny and murder on a British ship. With their approval, the man calling himself Robbins was handed over to British justice.

It was a huge political mistake...

Keep reading.

Robert W. Merry, A Country of Vast Designs

At Amazon, Robert W. Merry, A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent.

George Ciccariello-Maher

Remember how I've been saying that indigenous studies are the hippest of the far-left disciplines right now? Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a revolutionary Marxist, and I suspect she's pretty much a model for those working in the genre.

Readers might recall how George Ciccariello-Maher got in trouble a while back for tweeting "All I want for Christmas is white genocide."

He's doubling down, it turns out, lol:

pic.twitter.com/jhkpg2W965

— George Ciccariello (@ciccmaher) February 26, 2017

And since I'm researching this stuff, here's his book, at Amazon, Decolonizing Dialectics.

Kristen Keogh's Rainy Forecast

It's raining today.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."




And at Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup..."

Cartoon Credit: A.F. Branco, "Trump Transgender Guidelines."