Civil Rights
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Cruelty is a Feature, Not an Accident
Thursday, September 16th, 2021The terrorist attacks on 9/11 ignited the rise of Big Government Conservatism. Just a few months before, George W. Bush had won a razor thin election by presenting himself as a compassionate conservative. Within days of the September attacks his mask fell off. Bush started to channel the blood lust rising in conservative circles. I […]
Yes, I’m a Feminist
Friday, September 10th, 2021In 1862 the United Kingdom’s Parliament passed the first in a series of Contagious Disease Acts. The Members of Parliament considered sexually transmitted diseases a matter of national security. The MPs believed prostitutes spread the disease to the Armed Forces and weakened them. The Acts specifically targeted suspected prostitutes, not the soldiers, sailors, or marines. […]
The Best Hope for Peace
Thursday, August 19th, 2021I was born in Heidelberg, Germany, in a United States military hospital. My dad proudly served in the US Army for 27 years. He was there to defend against a Soviet invasion. The US Army first arrived in Europe during World War Two (1939-1945). It was part of an Allied Coalition that defeated the NAZIs. […]
Seeds of Sedition
Thursday, July 29th, 2021The January 6 attack on American Democracy grew from seeds planted 40 years earlier. In the 1980s conservative activists created incendiary rhetoric to attack our government. Since the New Deal, conservatives had lost to a wave of progressive legislation. The Federal Government improved the lives of seniors with Social Security and Medicare. It improved the […]
Voting Preserves Our Republic
Thursday, July 15th, 2021Voting is the life blood of a democracy. Votes express the will of the many to direct the actions of the few. Voting preserves our Republic. Restricting voting kills democracy. Americans have struggled over the last 232 years to expand voting. In the beginning, woman couldn’t vote. Slaves couldn’t vote. Men without property couldn’t vote. […]
Limited Government and Accountability
Thursday, April 22nd, 2021The contrast between United States Constitutional Law and Biblical Law are striking. The US Constitution places limits on government. The Bible grants absolute power to kings and fathers. Let’s look, for example, at one of the most famous stories in the Bible. The Bible tells this story to illustrate the wisdom of Solomon. We, however, […]
Original Intent to Suppress the Vote
Thursday, March 25th, 2021People who scream about the “original intent†of the Constitution too often don’t know the “original intentâ€. Or if they do understand the “original intentâ€, they want to use it to restrict their neighbors’ hard won freedoms. Voting rights clearly fall into the second category. The Constitution originally intended voting restrictions. States had the right […]
Act of Terrorism in Grayson County
Thursday, March 18th, 2021Studying history shouldn’t take a profile in courage. Too many people want history to be a safe space for ancestor worship. History is part of the humanities. We study humans. Humans can be beautiful. They can be ugly. We should try to replicate the beauty and avoid the ugly. We can’t do either if we […]
Progressive America
Thursday, March 4th, 2021I am proud to live in Modern America. America is a progressive country. Our democracy allows us to create laws to improve our lives. Over the past 230 years much has changed for the better. The progress has been slow but steady. In the 1820s white laborers won the right to vote. In the 1870s […]
The Pretender
Thursday, December 10th, 2020America has never had a pretender before. Pretenders were regular features of European monarchies. In monarchies the government, called the Crown, was the personal property of the king. It passed from father to son or, rarely, to his daughter. In America, we have a Republic. The term “republic†derives from the Latin phrase “res publica.†[…]
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