American Character: John Peter Muhlenberg

  

John Peter Muhlenberg was pastor of a church in Woodstock, Virginia, prior to the American Revolution. His interest in government was evident—he was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1774 and was known as a follower of Patrick Henry. As events unfolded into 1775, a year that saw the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill initiate colonial resistance to British policies, Muhlenberg sensed that as a pastor he had a responsibility to challenge his flock to put… Read more »

Beware the Radical Presbyterians

  

There’s your first warning for today. As you probably have suspected, I and others like me take our orders from the alternative media. Whatever they say we should say, we dutifully follow suit. We never think for ourselves; we want others to think for us. Unlike those who listen to the mainstream media . . . Yes, there are those of us who haven’t yet seen the light. We continue to describe terrorists as terrorists. Further, we constantly identify those… Read more »

Creating Prosperity

  

It was during the Great Depression of the 1930s that our political leaders decided that the best way to become prosperous was to “prime the pump” via government spending. We adopted the philosophy of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, who said that deficits don’t really matter that much. Prior to the Great Depression, most Americans didn’t look to government to create prosperity. They understood that the free market accomplished that feat. Ronald Reagan tried to wean us from the… Read more »

Terror & the Future

  

In my review of the president’s speech in this blog yesterday, I concluded he doesn’t understand that we have a real enemy out there, and that his response to terrorism is without any real moral conviction. This is probably because he doesn’t believe, in the deepest part of his heart, that the threat is genuine. What further evidence do we have of this? Well, here’s a reminder. The idea that terrorists should be treated as ordinary criminals is central to… Read more »

The Afghanistan Policy

  

After months of waiting, the nation finally received the result of all that agonizing over the future of our Afghan policy. The speech that President Obama gave at West Point on Tuesday evening focused on the following: We are in this mess because of the failures of the Bush administration; Gen. Stanley McChrystal will get 3/4 of what he wanted for this war; We are going to get out of it as quickly as possible. Let’s take those three points… Read more »

Islam, Christianity, & the Media

  

Watching or reading the mainstream media, one might never know that Christianity historically has been the basis for American civilization. If someone completely unfamiliar with America’s history were to go by what he learns from the media today, he would probably believe: Christians are the most intolerant individuals in society, seeking to impose their values on everyone else Christianity is the source of all societal ills The “Religious Right” is the bane of politics When it comes to Islam, however,… Read more »

Education's Historic Shift (Part VII)

  

Protestant evangelicals, toward the middle of the nineteenth century, sought to set up state-controlled education because they thought they would be the ones to control it, and then be able to keep America fundamentally Protestant in spite of the new Catholic immigration. They looked for a model for how to do this—and they found it. In order to find it, they had to travel to Europe to a country called Prussia, which forms the nucleus of modern-day Germany. Prussia, at… Read more »