Tag: American History

Commentary: America’s Students Deserve a History and Civics Education Free of Political Agendas

RealClearWire

Across the political spectrum, Americans are recognizing the importance not just of school choice but of what students actually learn in schools. Elected representatives have finally taken notice as well. In Michigan, the state legislature has proposed two bills that seek to address how American history and civics are taught.

Unfortunately, some want teachers to tell students that they should understand American history primarily by looking for racism, injustice, and oppression. The phrase “critical race theory” (CRT) has been used mainly in academia to describe this filter on history and civic instruction.

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Commentary: The Movement of Black Lives Matter

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If Black Lives Matter were a civil rights organization, one would reasonably expect its patron figure to be Martin Luther King, Jr., and its aspiration to be King’s vision of a race-free America where individuals are judged on their merits and not by their skin color. Instead, the revered figure and inspirational icon for Black Lives Matter activists is a designated terrorist and convicted cop killer: Assata Shakur. 

In the 1970s Shakur was a member of the Black Liberation Army, a group that robbed banks and murdered police officers to achieve a Marxist revolution. Shakur is still wanted for the 1973 murder of Werner Foerster, a New Jersey state trooper who stopped her for a broken taillight on her car, whereupon she pulled out a gun and shot him. The 34-year-old officer and Vietnam vet was lying wounded on the pavement pleading for his life when Shakur walked over and finished him off, execution-style. Foerster left behind a wife and two young children. Shakur was convicted of the murder but escaped from prison in 1979 with the help of left-wing terrorists, including Susan Rosenberg. With the help of Rosenberg and others, Shakur fled to Communist Cuba, where she has lived as a fugitive for nearly 40 years. After being pardoned by Bill Clinton, Rosenberg went on to become board vice chair of Thousand Currents, the left-wing nonprofit organization that served as Black Lives Matter’s fiscal sponsor from 2016 to 2020. 

The dedication page of Patrisse Cullors’s memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist, contains these lines written by Shakur, which allude to the most famous incitement from Marx’s Communist Manifesto:

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. 

It is our duty to win. 

We must love each other and support each other. 

We have nothing to lose but our chains.

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Newt Gingrich Commentary: General Lee and the Importance of Preserving American History

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Earlier this month, a 21-foot-tall bronze statue of Robert E. Lee — perhaps the most famous monument to the Confederate general — was removed from Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va. Supporters of the statue’s removal, including Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), hailed the event as a triumph for racial justice.

The left has decided that Lee, the most recognized and celebrated figure of the Confederacy, is intolerable, a man who should be erased from American history. This maelstrom surrounding Lee has reached a fever pitch in recent years, as the woke movement has grown.

In short, anyone who dares mention Lee at all better demonize him as pure evil or else face the wrath of the progressive mob. This is retroactively imposing cancel culture on the past, while silencing free speech today.
In this context, Allen Guelzo’s newly released biography on the Confederate general, Robert E. Lee: A Life, is especially welcome and important.

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Proclaiming Justice to the Nations’ Laurie Cardoza Moore Talks About Her New Campaign, Taking Back America’s Children

Julie Carr

Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed PJTN’s Founder and President Laurie Cardoza-Moore to the newsmakers line to talk about her Taking Back America campaign.

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Constitutional Lawyer and Author of The Authoritarians Jonathan Emord Talks About His New Book and the Rapid Rise of Socialism and Marxism in America

Julie Carr
American flag flowing in the wind

Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed constitutional lawyer and author of The Authoritarians, Jonathan W. Emord to the newsmakers line to discuss his new book, rising socialism, Marxism, and the administrative state in America.

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Commentary: Historians Selling Out for Leftist Star, Nikole Hannah-Jones

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Nikole Hannah-Jones

The University of North Carolina’s decision on June 30 to offer tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones came about through a torrent of threats (often tweeted), profanities, doxxings, and assaults—tactics that have become increasingly commonplace among professional activists and racial grievance-mongers.

Hannah-Jones, of course, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion writer and architect of the New York Times’ notorious “1619 Project,” which claims that America’s true founding was not in 1776 but rather in 1619, when 20 or so African slaves arrived in Virginia. Hannah-Jones contends, moreover, that the American War of Independence was fought solely to preserve slavery. 

More than two-dozen credible historians, many of them political liberals and leftists, have debunked Hannah-Jones’ claims. Though, as we’ll see, some are less firm in their convictions than others. What’s clear, however, is that peer review is passé in the era of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Forget a stellar record of scholarly accomplishment—that’s a relic of “Eurocentrism.” Far more important these days is a candidate’s enthusiasm for social justice. It was Hannah-Jones’ celebrity activism and her “journalism,” not her scholarship, that formed the basis for the university’s initial offer of tenure earlier in the spring.

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Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson on Age-Inappropriate Wit and Wisdom Curriculum and Parental Engagement at the Local School Board Level

Julie Carr

Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Jack Jonson to the newsmakers line to outline his concern over the inappropriate wit and wisdom curriculum in Williamson County and the importance of parent involvement with local school boards.

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Executive Director of Seeking Educational Excellence Charles Love Recounts His Experience of Growing Up Black in America

Julie Carr
Charles Love

Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed the Executive Director of Seeking Educational Excellence Charles Love to the newsmakers line to discuss his recent essay and growing up Black in America.

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Executive Director Matthew Spalding of the 1776 Commission Urges Parents to Run for Local School Boards and Stop CRT

Julie Carr
Matthew Spalding

Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Vice President of Hillsdale College and Executive Director of the 1776 Commission Matthew Spalding to the newsmakers line to discuss the continued efforts of the Commission and sounds the alarm for parents to get involved locally.

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University of North Carolina Revokes Tenure Offer for ‘1619’ Founder Nikole Hannah-Jones

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Nikole Hannah-Jones

The University of North Carolina, after briefly considering the possibility of offering a full-time tenured position to Nikole Hannah-Jones, has ultimately reneged and turned down the offer due to mounting pressure, the New York Post reports.

Jones, the founder of the controversial “1619 Project” and an alumnus of the university, is now reportedly being considered for a mere five-year contract where she would instead serve as a “professor of practice.” The decision was ultimately made by UNC’s board of trustees, even though the left-wing faculty of the university overwhelmingly supported hiring her full-time.

Susan King, dean of UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media, called the decision “disappointing” and “chilling,” before baselessly claiming that Jones “represents the best of our alumni and the best of our business.”

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Network of Enlightened Women’s University of Florida Co-President Ophelie Jacobson Talks About Her Recent Op-Ed and Being a Conservative on College Campus

Julie Carr
Ophelie Jacobson

Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed NeW Co-President at the University of Florida Ophelie Jacobson to the newsmakers line to discuss her recent op-ed on cancel culture and her experiences on campus as a conservative.

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Commentary: Too Much of a Unity

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“The city comes in to being for the sake of life, but it continues for the sake of the good life. ” — Aristotle, Politics

“[The Declaration of Independence] was the word, “fitly spoken” which has proved an “apple of gold” to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple — not the apple for the picture.”—Abraham Lincoln, “Fragment on the Constitution and Union”

The crisis of our time requires clear thinking about political means and ends, and the ways they are connected. The two epigraphs above address this central question of practical wisdom—the first from the general perspective of theory, the second as relates to the particular nation of the United States. Both quotations may be familiar to educated conservatives, and particularly to those students of political philosophy broadly associated with the Claremont school of thought. Yet there is a danger that such familiarity may breed, if not contempt, then the forgetfulness that settles on “sonorous phrases” which lapse into clichés. I would like to reconsider these arguments made by Aristotle and Lincoln—along with some related observations by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson—not as hackneyed commonplaces but as genuine insights that remain relevant and even urgent. Circumstances in the coming years may require new or unusual means to secure the ends of liberty and justice. Our thinking must be appropriately radical.

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Prof. and Author of ‘Debunking Howard Zinn,’ Mary Graybar Joins the Tennessee Star Report to Talk About Her Approach to the New Book

Julie Carr

Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed professor and author of Debunking Howard Zinn Mary Grabar to the newsmakers line to discuss her new book.

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Commentary: Reflections on the Bill of Rights

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The deep divisions plaguing our country may find a remedy in the most unlikely of places: the Bill of Rights. Ratified 229 years ago on December 15, 1791, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. There is little public commemoration of December 15, in contrast to the tradition of celebrating two famous dates in the history of the United States—the Fourth of July, the day that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, and September 17, the day that the members of the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787. Yet, of the three documents, the Bill of Rights is perhaps the one most invoked by citizens and advocates in everyday life.

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In Joe Biden’s 50 Years of Public Service He Did Not Accomplish Anything, Says Crom Carmichael

Julie Carr

Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio.

During the third hour, Carmichael reviewed Joe Biden’s history noting that in his 50 years of public service he had not accomplished anything. He noted that Biden did however manage to support issues that prohibited the advancement of Blacks through busing and exorbitant prison sentence policies.

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Leahy and Carmichael Discuss Historian Jon Meacham’s New Interpretation of American History

Julie Carr

Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast live from Music Row on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Leahy was joined on the newsmakers line by the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael.

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Americanism and the Spirit of American Liberty

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In 1782, just as the American War of Independence was coming to an end, Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, who had come to North America from France in 1755 and by 1765 had settled in New York, published Letters from an American Farmer. In it, he asked a fascinating and enduring question: “What then is the American, this new man?” Crèvecoeur’s question suggests that 18th-century Americans were somehow different from all other peoples, and thus he invites us, some 230 years later, to reflect on the nature and meaning of America.

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Gov. Lee to Provide Grants to Schools That Teach American History, Civic Values

Jason M. Reynolds

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced the launch of the Governor’s Civics Seal and mini-grant program to provide support and recognize schools and districts that prioritize teaching the nation’s history and civic values.

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Ohio House Bill Would Kill American Government and History Testing

Anthony Gockowski

  The Ohio House is currently considering a bill that would reduce the number of state-mandated standardized tests students are required to take by eliminating four end-of-course exams, including the American history and American government exams. House Bill 239, referred to as the Testing Reduction Act, was introduced by Reps.…

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Commentary: A History Textbook That Inspires, Not Lectures, Students About America

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by Jenna Robinson   From the very beginning, it’s clear that Wilfred M. McClay’s Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story isn’t a typical textbook. The title alone alerts readers that McClay’s book will not be the kind of history text that has become so popular in…

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Commentary: ‘Exactly When Did You Think America Was Great?’ Says Eric Holder. Here’s the Answer.

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by Jarret Stepman   There’s no doubt that one of the flashpoints of the modern culture war in America is the debate over our nation’s history. On one side, there are Americans who believe that the United States is a unique country, a shining city upon a hill that while…

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Commentary: Fight the Denigration of American History

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by Michael Finch   American history is everywhere under attack. The recent skirmishes started with the campaign to remove Confederate statues, but it surely won’t end there. As our betters in America’s universities want us to know, the whole of American history is suspect. In our media, in the popular…

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