Category: History

Pilgrims Were Peaceful Research Reveals

Pilgrims Were Peaceful Research Reveals

By Bob Small

Another organization I learned about from presentations at the 2021 Bill of Rights Banquet was the Plymouth Rock Foundation.

I was skeptical about many of its claims after first sailing through it voluminous website — especially the one regarding 50 years peaceful relationships with the Native Americans.

Reviewing numerous other websites, though, had my questions answered positively.

Especially interesting sections of the Foundations’ website are America’s Hometown Thanksgiving; A lesson from Plymouth, and Who were the Pilgrims.

Previously unknown to me was that The Pilgrims kept their treaties with the Pakauoket and Wampanong, and other tribes, from 1621 to 1675, when King Phillips War began and that started as was a civil war between tribes with the Pilgrims choosing a side.  In terms of percentage of population killed, this war was more than twice as costly as The Civil War and The Revolutionary War.

Also, the Wampanong brought deer and seafood.  The American Turkey Union should publicize this.

The Pilgrims, in England, were Seperatist Puritans who felt their congregations should separate from the Church of England as under the 1559 Act of Uniformity, it was illegal not to attend Church of England services. Penalties included both fines and Imprisonment.

Some of the sources I used to confirm the Foundation’s claims

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas.com/archive/2019/11/thanksgiving-belongs-wampanong-tribe-602422/

https://www.patriotledger.com/story/news/2020/11/13/pilgrim-400-arrival-provincetown-mashpee-wampanoag-nation-quadricentennial/6267362002/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/native-intelligence-109314481/

Some of these articles use the models of restorative narrative.

This is a link meant for grade school students,  from Eastern Illinois University: https://castle.eiu.edu/-wow/classes/fa09/Plimouth?Lessons5.html

Having recently viewed Ken Burns documentary The West, one can only wish that other settlers, many of whom considered themselves Christians, would of followed the example of their Pilgrim predecessors, rather than violating almost every subsequent treaty with Native Americans.

Pilgrims Were Peaceful Research Reveals
Pilgrims Were Peaceful Research Reveals

Angelo Bruno Receives Visitor

Angelo Bruno Receives Visitor —The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, on Feb. 23, 1964, published the below article by their reporter William Lawrence Sr. concerning a meeting with the noted Angelo Bruno.

We thought we’d share it:

Angelo Bruno Receives Visitor --The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, on Feb. 23, 1964, published the below article by their reporter William Lawrence Sr.
Angelo Bruno Receives Visitor --The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, on Feb. 23, 1964, published the below article by their reporter William Lawrence Sr.
Angelo Bruno Receives Visitor

Tony Taylor Telstar Hero R.I.P.

Tony Taylor Telstar Hero R.I.P. — Beloved Philadelphia Phillies icon Tony Taylor died, July 16, at age 84. While there have been articles recording his athletic achievements we missed the one noting what will put him in the history books centuries hence, namely being the first athlete to appear in a transatlantic satellite broadcast. It happened on July 23, 1962 when part of a Chicago Cubs-Phillies game was broadcast as filler before remarks by President Kennedy to inaugurate Telstar. It showed Tony flying out to right field.

Here it is. Tony’s appearance is at 19:38.

Tony, this is for you:

Tony Taylor Telstar Hero R.I.P.

Celebrate Columbus, Ignore Zinn

Celebrate Columbus, Ignore Zinn. Celebrate Columbus, Ignore Zinn. Yes, we should celebrate Columbus. Celebrate Columbus. Celebrate Columbus. Celebrate Columbus. Yes, celebrate Columbus.Celebrate Columbus, Ignore Zinn –Let us today, this Columbus Day  ignore Howard Zinn, who was after all a very bad historian, and celebrate the guy who, for all intents and purposes, discovered America.

Vinland, after all, never really took.

Howard Zinn was a socialist who wrote  “A People’s History of the United States” which used to be able to be read for free  at a site, appropriately enough regarding Zinn, called HistoryIsAWeapon.com. It no longer seems to be available there, however.

Zinn claims that America has always been ruled by oppressors — the 1 percenters who own a third of the wealth and keep control by fermenting dissent among the 99 percent who are the rest of us  — and starts his claim with Columbus who he says committed genocide on the residents of the West Indies.

It seems to be the theme pushed by the hipster crowd in the twenty-teens.

Well, the truth is the Spanish were pretty rough on the native peoples of the Caribbean, something we know from Spanish sources, but the cruelty was obviously not done at the direction of Spanish authorities as steps were taken to stop it when complaints reached them. Further, the native peoples of the Caribbean were not without their flaws either. The name for the Caribbean comes from the Carib tribe, from whence we also get the word cannibal.

And while Columbus was  far from perfect he does not appear to be the gratuitously cruel tyrant Zinn and our hipster friends claim him to be. In Columbus’ own words this is what he says about the Lucayan peoples of the Bahamas who Zinn et al alleges he mutilated and slaughtered: “They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal… . Your Highness may believe that in all the world there can be no better people … they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are always laughing.”

It seems the revisionists are getting their signals crossed, which is understandable as Zinn is a rather bad historian.

America is a place that allowed tens of millions of Europeans and Asians to escape the feudalism that infected their homelands and her discovery only deserves to be celebrated. Even Africans should celebrate. Slavery existed in Africa — it wasn’t Europeans doing the slave catching — before the trans-Atlantic slave trade and it was only after the founding of the United States did the push begin to end it. Pennsylvania was one of the first recognized governments in in history, to ban slavery which happened in 1780 in the middle of the Revolutionary War.

Hipsters ironically want a day named for Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas and there is a point to that as the Bishop is one of history’s good guys.  On the other hand, he was the one who suggested that the labor lost due to the death of Indians be replaced by Africans and some credit him with the start of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

History is a bit more nuanced than Zinn and the hipster crowd make it out to be.

One more bit of irony:  Zinn’s work was popularized by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck who grew up near Zinn and were family friends. Damon and Affleck are now part of the one-percenter crowd. They have yet to give most of their money to the rest of us, and certainly have not led any crusades to end the tax breaks for performing artists who receive mega millions per film.

Celebrate Columbus, Ignore Zinn

Racism Definition, Anti-American AntiFa And Honest Abe

Racism Definition,  Anti-American AntiFa And Honest Abe — The hate-group Antifa is portrayed by crony corporatists,  establishment media and Deep State Republicans as opponents of racism and defenders of the oppressed despite its funding by mega-oppressor George Soros and despite it being on The New Jersey Department of Homeland Security’s watchlist.

Please recognize that this group is a bad thing. They are modern-day brownshirts filled with hate and motivated by a desire to rule. They are worse than modern-day Klansmen and Nazis in that the modern-day Klan and Nazi Party are run by incompetents that would make Elmer Fudd look smart.

Antifa is run by pros and has a well-planned agenda.  “. . .fascisti si dividono in due categorie: i fascisti e gli antifascisti”* as the great Ennio Flaiano said.

Few people called “racists” are. Racism is the practice of defining ethnicities, categorizing human beings in them and then declaring certain categories don’t deserve civil rights. It’s a vile thing and the vast majority of Americans consider it such.

If someone should call you a racist for holding a political opinion or liking a certain candidate, make them define the word. Odds are they won’t even try. Antifa and its fellow-travelers want the definition to be arbitrary. They want it to be used only when it advances their agenda without people thinking about it.

For the snowflakes who may not been given an accurate depiction of American history in the public schools here is how a great man suggested we unify this country after a bloody war:

Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.

The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

 

*Fascists are divided into two categories: Fascists and the anti-fascists.

Racism Definition , Anti-American AntiFa And Honest Abe

Racism Definition , Anti-American AntiFa And Honest Abe

School Closing Numbers Pass Into History

School Closing Numbers Pass Into History  — All things must pass. KYW has stopped broadcasting school closing numbers on snow days, which it had been doing since the 1960s. Listening for them was a well-remembered part of childhood for several generations. That’s right sonny, we had to listen to the radio to find out if we didn’t have school.

School Closing Numbers Pass Into History

Happy Birthday William Penn

Happy Birthday William Penn

By Leo Knepper

On Oct. 14, 1644, Pennsylvania’s founder William Penn was born in London, England. Penn had a rebellious streak and was a man who was ahead of his time. Ivan Martin’s introduction to Penn’s book No Cross, No Crown provides a brief account of his life. By limiting himself to the highlights, Martin manages to condense Penn’s life to a mere seventeen pages.  Happy Birthday William Penn

Despite being born into an aristocratic family, Penn was kicked out of Oxford at the age of 17. At the age of 24, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Penn was imprisoned for his writings, which attacked the doctrines of the Church of England. The Bishop of London ordered Penn’s indefinite imprisonment until he recanted his previous statements in writing. Instead, he used the supply of paper and ink to write No Cross, No Crown. Penn spent eight months in the Tower before he was released; without recanting. Essentially, Penn spent eight months in an unheated cell in solitary confinement for his religious beliefs. One of his more famous quotes neatly encapsulates his personal philosophy, “Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”

Penn’s numerous encounters with the courts and persecution by English authorities inspired many of the innovations he included in Pennsylvania’s first Constitution. Penn used the Constitution to limit the power of government, a novel idea at the time. He was the progenitor for many of the liberties enumerated in the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights including a free press, trial by jury, religious tolerance, and the amendment process itself. Penn also insisted on low taxes. His focus on freedom and free enterprise led to an explosion of growth for Penn’s Woods.

William Penn’s guiding principles and dedication to his “Holy Experiment” paid dividends for Pennsylvania’s earliest settlers and American’s today.

Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Happy Birthday William Penn

Hiroshima Nanking Manila Apologies

Hiroshima Nanking Manila Apologies
Better to end a war than start one.

Hiroshima Nanking Manila Apologies  –President Barack Obama kicked off the Memorial Day weekend for 2016 by apologizing for ending World War II.

So when are the Japanese going to apologize — at least in a way that seems sincere — for starting it? And for the vile things they did which would be unimaginable if they had not actually done them?

Consider the Nanking Massacre. Up to 300,000 civilians including women and children were murdered face to face after suffering sexual abuse and torture.

How about the Manila Massacre in which between 100,000 and 500,000 Filipinos were murdered on the verge of the city’s liberation. Yes, this also included raping and torturing children.

How about subjecting people — including U.S. POWs — to twisted scientific experiments?

They almost make the Nazis look good.

Most people who lived through World War II figured Hiroshima and Nagasaki were small time payback and that Japan really didn’t get anything close to what it actually deserved.

Hiroshima Nanking Manila Apologies

 

 

Remember Martin Luther King Jr.

Remember Martin Luther King Jr.We were remiss this year in giving Martin Luther King Day the recognition it deserves. While we didn’t forget Monday entirely, our remembrance was in code.

So here is a belated tribute.

Rev. King probably would have been proud to be called an Uncle Tom.

Here is the text of his wonderful “I Have A Dream” speech given, Aug. 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial. Note the phrases praising God, The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: “For Whites Only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”¹

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Remember Martin Luther King Jr. 

Argentina History And USA Future

Argentina History And USA Future This video describing how Argentina fell from one of the world’s strongest economies — the video actually lists it as second behind Britain — to its present miserable state in a century is an ill portent for America.

The reasons can be summed up as greed, cronyism, corruption and progressivism.

One critique. This is the song they should have picked:

Hat tip Judy McGrane

Argentina History And USA Future
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