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There has been ample tongue-clucking about abysmal student scores on the civics and history portions of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), but the real scandal has gone unnoticed. It is certainly a shame that two-thirds of fourth-graders and nearly three-quarters of eighth-graders don’t know the purpose of the Declaration of Independence, and that over half of America’s high-school seniors score below the basic level on history. What’s worse, however, is that some of what students are expected to know about the principles of the American Founding is at odds with what the founders themselves believed. Fourth-graders, for...

A founding member of ELO has been killed in a freak accident when a giant hay bale rolled out of a field and landed on his van. Cellist Mike Edwards died instantly when the 50-stone cylindrical bale careered down a slope, flipped 15ft over a hedge and smashed on to the roof of his van. Mr Edwards, 62, was known for unconventional cello playing including plucking the strings with an orange or grapefruit and his bizarre customs which became a major ingredient of ELO, the Electric Light Orchestra.

Having spent an inordinate portion of the summer reading the academic jottings of recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, it is refreshing to remember that there is another lady on the federal bench who really does know what it is all about. That would be U. S. Court of Appeals Judge Janice Rogers Brown. At the 46th annual meeting of the Philadelphia Society, she very succinctly described America’s founding principles. I had the pleasure of hearing those remarks in person which The Fund for American Studies received her permission to transcribe. “The historian Jacques Barzun divides the last 500...

This concept of self-government was in contrast to the established "divine right" of kings; something which many statists and elitists seem to now embrace - at least in the abstract - as long as it is they who are the "kings." They are, unwittingly, "conservatives" as opposed to true classical liberalism in that they think only they have the right to rule the rest of us due, not to their blood lines as kings, but to their ostensibly superior intelligence. . .

Interactive painting that symbolizes our country today

Posted by constitutionallyspeaking on September 17, 2009 Today is Constitution Day. It was on this day, September 17, 1787, that the Constitution emerged for the first time from the convention in Philadelphia, Pa. Our blessed Constitution that was written not by men of all the same political faction, however, a coalition of men of many political factions, working together to “Form A More Perfect Union” and it was up to ‘We the People” to ensure its long lasting existence. Fast forward 222 years…

"It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world." ~ George Washington I have written before about the critical need for Congress to reassert its authority over foreign policy, and for the American people to recognize that the Constitution makes no distinction between domestic and foreign matters. Policy is policy, and it must be made by the legislature and not the executive. But what policy is best? How should we deal with the rest of the world in a way that best advances proper national interests, while not threatening our freedoms...

David Barton is the founder of Wallbuilders. He is a brilliant scholar on the true founding of the United States and how ingrained Christianity was in our founders. This is the best video I have EVER seen. He is so detailed and yet succinct, on how we were really founded and who's responsible. The level of black participation in our liberty is astounding and yet, you hear none of it. I speculate that the Al Sharpton's/Jesse Jackson's of this country do not want anyone to hear these truths because it could insite pride in the country from our black population....

I have seen articles posted on FR quoting statements of faith by many of our founding fathers and how it influenced their view of governing. Can someone please post some of the most compelling statements as evidence in how their faith played a vital role in their daily lives? It will be much appreciated.

"A Visitor From The Past"

Indian DNA links to 6 'founding mothers' By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer NEW YORK - Nearly all of today's Native Americans in North, Central and South America can trace part of their ancestry to six women whose descendants immigrated around 20,000 years ago, a DNA study suggests. Those women left a particular DNA legacy that persists to today in about 95 percent of Native Americans, researchers said. The finding does not mean that only these six women gave rise to the migrants who crossed into North America from Asia in the initial populating of the continent, said study co-author...

HOW LONG DOES THE USA HAVE? This is the most interesting thing I've read in a long time. The sad thing about it, you can see it coming. I have always heard about this democracy countdown. It is interesting and concerning to see it in print. God help us, not that we deserve it. How Long Do We Have? About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier: 'A...

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's intelligence services are investigating an Islamist Web site that says it is establishing a branch of al Qaeda in Britain, BBC television reported on Tuesday. According to the report, security experts fear a posting on the site, www.alekhlaas.net, declaring "the creation of the al Qaeda organization in Britain" may be genuine. "You don't ignore this sort of thing," Pauline Neville-Jones, the former head of the British joint intelligence committee, told the program. "It may not be a threat from an existing cell... but it does represent a move in the propaganda game and the propaganda game...

h A revolt in an undeveloped colony on the fringe of civilization, led by a big landowner and slaveholder with little education or military experience, brought to success by help from France in its feud with the British colonizers. That's how a cynical European might have described the American Revolution. Jay Winik's new account of the period takes a different view in American Revolution presented as source of worldwide political changes ever since "The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800" (Harper Collins, 659 pages, $29.95). He feels that history may never have seen a group...

'Celebration' banned for Jamestown's 400thEvents marking settlement's anniversary condemn its 'holocaust' Posted: March 8, 20071:00 a.m. Eastern By Bob Unruh© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com This year is the 400th anniversary of the arrival of settlers in Jamestown, 13 years before the Plymouth Pilgrims appeared on America's shores. And there will be discussions on the environmental impact of the settlement and its impact on African-Americans and Native Americans. But there will be no celebration. "You can't celebrate an invasion," Mary Wade, a member of Jamestown 2007 organizing committee, has stated. After all, Indian tribes "were pushed back off of their land, even killed. Whole tribes...

"We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Virginia Baptists, 1808. ME 16:320 "The constitutional freedom of religion [is] the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1819....

ROCK HILL, S.C. - A research facility is planned for York County that will focus on the role of Southern states in the Revolutionary War. Historian Michael Scoggins said the Southern Revolutionary War Institute will be used to educate people about the South's contributions to the war. It's a field he says has been neglected in the past. "There's been various fields that downplay the role of the South," Scoggins said. "When you look at most history textbooks, we are generally given the short treatment." The institute will be based at the McCelvey Center in York and local officials hope...

 David McCullough was born in 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was educated there and at Yale University. Author of 1776, John Adams, Truman, Brave Companions, The Path Between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, The Great Bridge and The Johnstown Flood, he has twice received the Pulitzer Prize and twice the National Book Award, as well as the Francis Parkman Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. The following is adapted from a public lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on March 31, 2006, during Mr. McCullough's one-week residency at the College to teach a class on “Leadership and the History...

There is opposition to a plan by Israeli Arabs to march in the center of the Israeli city of Lod to mourn the "catastrophe" of Israel's creation. Residents of Lod filed a request with Lod Police Commander Amichai Eshed to prevent a public observance in the city on May 15th (the anniversary of the end of the British Mandate) of Al-Nakba – which is Arabic for "The Catastrophe," a reference to the founding of the State of Israel. They wrote in their letter that, "Nakba Day testifies more than anything to the disloyalty of Palestinians in Israel to the right...

In 1773, members of the Sons of Liberty, including people from right here in the Marlborough area, dumped tea into Boston Harbor in protest against the British. It was one of the seminal events of the Revolutionary years. So how is that event presented in today's high school history classes?