Free Republic

RPG game about Warsaw Risisng 05.07.2008 It was published by Bully Pulpit Games, in the US and designed by Jason Morningstar. It proved a huge success in America, though has not found its way to Poland yet. ‘Grey Ranks is a game for three to five players’, write the publishers, ‘that puts you in the shoes of child soldiers during the Warsaw Uprising. The game is designed to be played over three sessions and includes a scene structure, with each scene corresponding to a specific date in 1944. As the game progresses, success becomes increasingly difficult and the player is...

The lyric from the old pop song that proclaimed "Don't Know Much About History," is a label that could well be applied to many Americans. But despite the fact that surveys occasionally tell us that many college seniors place the Battle of Gettysburg as happening sometime in the middle of World War II, the study of history isn't merely for those hobbyists who like to pose as Civil War or Revolutionary era soldiers. Even as we debate the largely unpopular wars being fought with Islamists in Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus of another crucial debate currently raging on the bookshelves...

Gather around class. On July 4, 2008, the United States of America will celebrate its 232nd birthday. Happy Birthday, you “whippersnapper!” The word “whippersnapper” originated about 100-years, before the freedom-loving colonists told King George to go jump in the lake. To be historically accurate, this dynast’s tea is what the rebels threw into Boston Harbor. Whippersnapper originally referred to a young person, usually male, who was unimportant and insignificant – but presumptuous. That epithet certainly applied to our early thirteen colonies. They were unimportant and insignificant, relative to the mighty British Empire, but they were also presumptuous in attempting to...

Last month, workmen jacked up a 206-year-old yellow clapboard house, levered it onto a set of remote-controlled dollies, and trundled it two blocks to a new site in St. Nicholas Park, overlooking East Harlem in New York City. The Grange, as it is called, was the home of Alexander Hamilton, best known as co-author of the Federalist papers and America's first secretary of the Treasury. But this founding father also had an extraordinary role in the infant nation's attempt to come to grips with the curse of slavery. Born in the West Indies, Hamilton was one of the most ardent...

Hartford (WTNH) _ A long forgotten flag was discovered at the Connecticut Historical Society and it dates back to the days of President Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Susan Schoelwer from the Connecticut Historical Society says a handwritten note accompanied the flag inside a simple black box. "You know we have a lot of stuff with a lot of little notes on them. Some of them are true and some of them are not," Susan said. In this case the note claims that the tattered American flag was present at a traumatic event in American history and the hand of a great...

[Click through to article to view interview with author James Piereson.] The central thesis of James Piereson's Camelot and the Cultural Revolution was that JFK's assassination was the key moment that caused a large portion of once sensible liberals to begin to tilt to the far, far left, and for lack of better word, become Unhinged. Like this calm, rational fan of the New Frontier! In the (admittedly totally tasteless) formulation of a friend of mine, the best thing that ever happened to civil rights in this country was the bullet through JFK's head. Along the way, as I wrote...

On July 3rd I went to the local Walgreen's. While standing in the shade out front I was passed by an elderly gentleman on his way inside. I thought I saw the words "Bomb Group" accross the pocket of his polo shirt. So when he came out I stopped him. The shirt said "440th Bomb Group". "World War II?" I asked. "Yes!" He smiled. I shook his hand, adding sadly "the last one we won". "The last one we tried to win." "Amen, Brother." As I watched him go out of sight my mind was on the 56,000 who never...

The Americans Who Risked Everything My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it appeared in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America's Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words which you will see evidenced here: "Our Lives, Our...

FLASHBACK: Wesley Clark, Then and Now. Plus, dodging missiles. [videos]

A Vietnam vet friend of mine argues that maintaining a democracy requires three things: a passion for freedom, tolerance for diversity and intolerance for threats. A letter from a reader, responding to a column on Iraq's struggling democracy, suggested I write about the United States' own tortuous path -- sketching a nation that began with limited voting rights and confronted powerful factions, ethnic animosities, urban riot, rural rebellion and destructive civil war. The reader thought America's saga might help the public "understand that this democracy thing is hard." Hard indeed. Mull my friend's threefold guidance, and you'll find tricky paradox...

Vatican plea to uncover Virgin Mary and show her breast-feeding baby Jesus By Simon Caldwell Last updated at 11:09 PM on 23rd June 2008 [...] ...artists later depicted the nursing Mary fully clothed because the Protestant reformers were generally critical of "the carnality and unbecoming nature of many sacred images". But Miss Scaraffia argued that later depictions had also diminished the Madonna’ s human side "that touches the hearts and faith of the devout". Miss Scaraffia said that when the early Christian artists represented the Virgin breast-feeding they had sought to reveal the reality of God's incarnation. [...] Images of...

Arab’s play offense while Israelis play defense. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of propaganda. ...negotiations. Can anyone tell me what the Israelis are demanding. I’m waiting. On the other hand,the Arabs are demanding the holy city in Jerusalem, the greenline... “right of return”.. Israel always struggling to meet their demands in part, hoping it will suffice.. They have a sense of entitlement while the Israelis have a sense of indebtedness..no way to win a ball game.. The Arabs always rejected the State of Israel & made a conscious decision to convince the world... So they began...

What follows is Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence from his Autobiography. A good portion of the text was deleted or changed by the Congressional delegates; these deletions are indicated by brackets (the last two paragraphs, Jefferson's original and Congress's version are presented side by side in Jefferson's text and here); changes made by Congress are also in brackets but are clearly marked. It was very important to Jefferson that he preserve his original document alongside the version eventually signed. Why? What are the significant differences? What do you make of these deletions? In the second paragraph,...

Professor John P. Maher reviews "July 1914: Soldiers, Statesmen, and the Coming of the Great War: A Brief Documentary History." Edited by Samuel R. Williamson and Russel Van Wyk. 2003. Bedford / St Martin's Press. A commonplace in recent books on the Balkans is to draw parallels between 1990s Serbia and the Third Reich. Williamson and Van Wyk confirm the consensus view that that Germany and Austria-Hungary started the Great War, but fail to pursue another parallel. They say nothing about activities of Germany and Austria in the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. But policy and press in those...

Rick Perlstein, an unabashed man of the left, first attracted wide notice seven years ago with the release of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, his engagingly written and fair-minded study of the rise of the American conservative movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Last month brought the much-awaited publication of the second volume of Perlstein’s projected trilogy on American conservatism. Nixonland (Scribner), as should be obvious from the title, focuses on American politics from the mid-1960’s to the early 1970’s, a time and an era dominated by Richard Nixon. The Monitor asked Perlstein...

Honk if you love Hispanics. A license plate that touts "Hispanics Discovered Florida" may soon join the 109 specialty tags drivers can choose from. The idea to celebrate the contributions of Hispanics came from National Hispanic Corporate Achievers, a Longwood group that sponsors minority job fairs. The plate would become a fundraising tool to support job and mentorship programs. Danny Ramos, the group's president, said the tag's message is about cultural pride for Florida's 3.6 million Hispanics -- even if not all of Latin American or Spanish descent identify with the term.

Germany has been commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Berlin airlift, when the Western allies kept the city supplied despite a Soviet blockade. Veterans of the airlift, many of whom are in their 80s and 90s, attended ceremonies in Berlin and Frankfurt. The American and British-led airlift lasted for more than a year, and involved planes delivering everything from coal to sweets. It was one of the biggest humanitarian air relief missions in history. "I find the courage with which this operation was carried out truly admirable," said German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung. A small group of veteran airmen...

[Heritage Lecture #1090 -- Delivered April 24, 2008] ... It is likewise an honor to be here tonight and to speak to you of responsibility, because I'm keenly aware of the fact that in this room tonight we have an entire army of crusaders for freedom. ... I admire you and thank you for the hard work that you do. You and your colleagues do this because you love and are dedicated to the simple idea of human liberty. You see it as your birthright, and you fight on its behalf. You understand that man precedes the state, and that...

America’s longing for an empire has a long history NEARLY 50 years ago, when William Appleman Williams, one of the 20th century’s most important historians of diplomacy, drew attention to America’s persistent search for an empire, he was denounced for being pro-communist. To challenge deeply held beliefs about American innocence was shocking enough. To contradict cold-war propaganda was worse. Recently, however, such ideological conformism has been disappearing. It has become acceptable to speak of empire, both among those who defend American foreign policy and those who condemn it. “If people want to say we’re an imperial power—fine,” says William Kristol,...

SEOUL : Fifty-eight years ago, a war broke out on the Korean peninsula, and today, the two sides - South and North Korea - remain technically at war and divided. Although it has been more than five decades, there are still South Koreans - who were soldiers at the time - being kept against their will in North Korea. One of the prisoners of war (POW), Kim Jin Soo, recently escaped the North. The 74-year-old POW fought in the Korean War at the age of 17 and was captured by the North Koreans in 1953. All these years, he had...

Are we to believe that in the early 1900s, we could move “238,845,587 cubic yards of material” in Panama, creating the canal where the French failed, but we cannot get oil out of the ground in Alaska in the same time? Are we to believe that we can build a railroad in the 1800s from Omaha to Sacramento in less than ten years, but it will take us longer to drill a hole in the ground and start pumping oil? ANWR is only 50 miles from Prudhoe Bay. Last I checked, Omaha was a little further than that from Sacramento....

Did you know that if you live in Lake County, there is a chance you can still find an ancient Indian artifact in your own backyard? And if you lived in Eastlake in the 1970s, you most likely did. Thousands of artifacts including pipes, stones, shells, bone hair pins and beads, turned up in the area in 1973 when property on Reeves Road was sold to make way for condominiums. Pipes, in particular, were easy finds. "There were so many pipes in the area because there were a lot of tobacco patches there," says Ann Dewald, director of the Indian...

Catholic History Restored by: Malcolm A. Kline, June 23, 2008 One of, if not the main, problem with the way that history has been taught for decades is that students gain little indication of the majesty of it all. Facts that help explain why the world works as it does are casually tossed aside by those we would entrust with passing on the past because they do not fit some theory du jour. Such theories usually spin around the alleged avarice of Christian white males, such as, supposedly, our founding fathers. Richard Hofstadter famously echoed this motif in his still-widely...

Turn on your audio and click the Source URL: http://www.interviewwithgod.com/patriotic/highband.htm

Day is done... Gone the sun From the lake... From the hills... From the sky. All is well... Safely rest God is nigh. Fading light.... Dims the sight And a star.... Gems the sky.... Gleaming bright From afar.... Drawing nigh Falls the night. “TAPS“ - Major General Daniel Butterfield (www.west-point.org/taps/Taps.html ) By ****** That haunting melody never moved me as much as it did recently, at the graveside service of a man who touched my life with his humility, kindness, and a love of fishing. Delbert Lee Fellers was a man who found great pleasure in the simple things we...

The history of Islam in Germany goes back as far as the 8th century. From the reign of Charlemagne, to Goethe's literature, to the Turkish guest workers who arrived in the 1950s and 60s and made a home here, the Muslim religion has been a part of German culture for hundreds of years. The history of Islam in Germany is believed to date back to the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. In the fabled tales of "1001 Nights," al-Rashid is said to have wandered the streets of Baghdad at night dressed as a merchant in order to learn about the needs of...

Battle of Breed's Hill / Bunker Hill A Brief History After retreating from Lexington in April, 1775, the British Army occupied Boston for several months. Realizing the need to strengthen their position in the face of increasing anti-British sentiment in and around Boston, plans were developed to seize and fortify nearby Dorchester Heights and Charlestown peninsulas. The peninsulas offered a commanding view of the seaport and harbor, and were important to preserving the security of Boston. The Americans caught word of the British plan, and decided to get to the Charlestown peninsula first, fortify it, and present sufficient threat to...

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it...

Hi everyone - being a relative newbie, I could yet not resist this one: yesterday I saw 'Unforgiven' by Clint Eastwood for the first time. To start: I found it a stunningly good movie. It's been labelled as 'the very last western', or if you will, a revisionist version of trad western fare. I'd agree with both comments; but at the same time it's not out of step with tradional storytelling. What makes it special for me is the deep humanity in it all. Women of low standing are heroines; Clint stays true to the one woman that once saved...

American History Recovered by: Malcolm A. Kline, June 13, 2008 Because of the game of teapot that American academic historians have been playing for decades, vital portions of U. S. history are in danger of becoming lost to future generations. Fortunately, scholars just outside the academy, who do tend to be more scholarly, are doing archeological digs, metaphorically speaking, to unearth this country’s past. What the former usually do is quote each other. The latter actually dig up the primary documents that tell the actual story. Hoover Institution scholar Alvin Rabushka has done just that in his epic study of...

Hatred and contempt for Jews, Bostom shows clearly, is rooted in the text of the Koran. Mohammed began by wooing Jewish tribes (Jews were numerous in Medina, which was originally a Jewish city), adopting Jewish ceremonies, even stipulating that his followers turn to Jerusalem in prayer. But the Jews dismissed him as ignorant, peppered him with questions, and mocked his mistakes when he answered. Hell hath no fury like a prophet scorned and Mohammed turned angrily against the Jews, wiping out many, expelling others. In the Koran itself Mohammed describes the Jews as “envious” with hearts “hard as rock,” “evildoers”...

Zachary Roth at the Columbia Journalism Review has this odd and quite untrue passage: In recent presidential elections, anyone paying a basic amount of attention to the race has gone to the polls understanding one clear and compelling difference between the candidates: that the Democrat would pick judges who would vote to uphold Roe v. Wade, ensuring that abortion remains legal, and that the Republican would, in all likelihood, pick judges who would vote to overturn it, opening the door to state-level abortion bans. As a result, we’ve all been admirably well informed about the impact of our vote on...

Fellow Freepers, I'll be on the Michael Reagan show beginning at 5:30 EST tomorrow, June 11, 2008, to discuss my new book (out in Sept.), 48 Liberal Lies About History (That You Probably Learned in School). I know, "LS, how did you limit it to 48?" It was tough, but we did have a page limit. When writing this, I looked at about a dozen major U.S. history textbooks used in colleges, and some of the findings surprised even me---and I'm used to bias in academics. *Other than the A-bomb and FDR, the most common picture or image of 20th...

Tuesday, 3 June 2008 Book review: Slavery within the Islamic world - the forbidden truth (L’ esclavage en Terre d’Islam: un tabou bien gardé) Now this looks interesting. A review by Elie Smith, an African journalist living and working in Paris, of the latest  book by Malek Chebal  - L’ esclavage en Terre d’Islam: un tabou bien gardé which he translates as Slavery within the Islamic world -- the forbidden truth. I have taken the review from the website African Path but it is also features on his own blog. The book itself is in French but this particular review is...

And the war of words between Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood goes for one more round. After the 78-year-old Hollywood legend lobed a Dirty Harry-esque one-liner at the pint-sized director - telling him to "shut his face" over criticisms that no African-Americans appeared in Eastwood's drama "Flags of Our Fathers" - Lee has offered up a response. "First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation," Lee told ABCNEWS.com.

Will work at Allendale County archaeological dig rewrite human history? By LIZ MITCHELL Published Sunday, June 8, 2008 Photo: Cynthia Curry of Charlotte holds up a piece of quartz she discovered at Topper on Wednesday. Jay Karr/The Island Packet More than 13,000 years ago, South Carolina was a wild kingdom alive with all sorts of beasts: saber-tooth tigers, beavers the size of Great Danes, camels, elephants and mastodons. Until recently, these animals were believed to have vanished before the first Americans -- called the Clovis people -- arrived about 13,000 years ago from Asia via the Bering Sea land bridge....

Every nation could be described as a manifestation of a unique trait of character and most countries furthermore nurture, give emphasize to and celebrate this national identity of theirs. Some examples of such key national characters (please DO comment if you feel inclined to); USA: Liberty Italy: Creativity France: Refinement India: Spirituality Germany: Self-discipline Finland: "Sisu" (a Finnish term meaning "To have guts") Britain: Elevatedness Denmark: "Hygge" (a Danish word meaning "Good-naturedness", of mind as well as of deed) Spain: Passion China: Cultivation Russia: Chaos - just joking, I would actually say "Heart" (in the sense of having a big...

The Bad War? by Victor Davis Hanson NORMANDY, France -- Questioning the past is a good thing, but rewriting it contrary to facts is quite another. In the latest round of revisionism about the Second World War, the awful British and naive Americans, not the poor Germans, have ended up as the real culprits. Take the new book by conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan, “Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World.” Buchanan argues that, had the imperialist Winston Churchill not pushed poor Hitler into a corner, he would have never invaded...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Archaeologists exploring an old military road in the Sinai have unearthed 3,000-year-old remains from an ancient fortified city, the largest yet found in Egypt, antiquities authorities announced Wednesday. Among the discoveries at the site was a relief of King Thutmose II (1516-1504 B.C.), thought to be the first such royal monument discovered in Sinai, said Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. It indicates that Thutmose II may have built a fort near the ancient city, located about two miles northeast of present day Qantara and known historically as Tharu. A 550-by-275-yard mud brick...

Beware the Bitter Fruits of Apostasy   From the Life of Joseph Smith In the weeks before and after the completion of the Kirtland Temple in the spring of 1836, the Saints experienced a time of harmony and a rich outpouring of the gifts of the Spirit. But the Prophet Joseph Smith warned the Saints that if they did not continue to live righteously, their joy and unity would not last. Daniel Tyler said of this time: “All felt that they had a foretaste of heaven. In fact, there were several weeks in which we were not tempted of the...

Atheists like to promote the false argument that religion has killed more innocent people than any other force in the history of mankind. Is that really true about those people professing the Christian religion? Actually, according to Vox Day in THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST, atheist regimes in the 20th Century alone killed and murdered about 153.3 million people for philosophical, political and economic reasons, while in 2,000 years people mis-representing the Christian faith killed and murdered only about 1.65 million, or 93 times less the number of people in 20 centuries compared to only one century!!! Democide* Statistics, Christianity vs. Atheism...

Black History Timeline Black LDS History Black U.S. History 1619: First African slaves arrive in what would become the United States. 1816: American Colonization Society formed. At the urging of Charles Fenton Mercer, a Federalist member of the Virginia state assembly, Presbyterian minister Robert Finley helps found the organization which is devoted to bring free blacks from what would later be Liberia to the United States. Despite being overtly anti-slavery, ACS members were openly racist and frequently argued that free blacks would be unable to assimilate into white society. Source: Wikipedia 1815: A.M.E. Church Founded The African Methodist Episcopal...

Are you looking for a roller coaster ride of a book - a book you stay awake reading till the wee hours of the morning? Look no further than Rita Kramer's fascinating true story nail-biter, Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France. I can guarantee you this: the four agents' riveting and haunting tales will stay with you for a long, long time

Contact: Eske Willerslev ewillerslev@bio.ku.dk 452-875-1309 University of Copenhagen Rewriting Greenland's immigration history Thirty-six-year-old Professor Eske Willerslev, University of Copenhagen, and his team of fossil DNA researchers have done it a couple of times before: rewritten world history. Most recently two months ago when he and his team discovered that the ancestors of the North American Indians were the first people to populate America, and that they came to the country more than 1,000 years earlier than originally assumed. And the evidence is, so to speak, quite tangible: DNA samples of fossilised human faeces found in deep caves in southern Oregon....

Introduction Biblical history is the history of Israel. It is different from all other histories. Secular scholars consider the movements of nations and armies to be the core of world history. Church historians, on the other hand, consider the great ecclesiastical conferences and development of denominations and institutions to be at the heart of human history. It is remarkable, but the Bible alone views history from the vantage point of Israel, especially from Genesis 12 through Acts 8. The prophet Isaiah, for instance, envisioned Israel as occupying “the center of the earth”: In that day shall Israel be … a...

Fill in the blank history month. It seems like every month is a _______ history month. I've heard many arguments why there is a black, hispanic, asian, etc. month, but no white history month. It's a good argument. If every other ethnic group has one, why can we? People walk on egg shells when this question is posed, because "white guilt" has permeated this country. If you even argue for it, you're called a racist. Mind you, ________ history month celebrates the achievements of whichever ethnic group has dibs on the month. I've done the math, and adding up all...

Peter Jones says the Romans made things work by keeping it simple. Gordon Brown could learn from this world in which complexity was an ill to be avoided not embraced In South Shields there is a Roman funerary monument dedicated to 30-year-old Regina (‘Queenie’). It is dated around ad 200, at the height of the Roman occupation of Britain. It tells us that she was originally a slave from St Albans, freed by and married to one Barates from Palmyra in Syria. What on earth was Barates doing in South Shields, for pity’s sake, over 4,000 miles from home, in...

Judge: Is he drunk? Deputy: He’s dead, sir. Judge: Dead drunk? Deputy: Plain ol’ dead, sir. Judge: Explain yourself. Deputy: He died up there, sittin’ at the bar. People wanted us to take him away. Judge: You imbecile. This is a court of law. How am I to have an inquest? Deputy: Couldn’t say, sir. Judge: Well, the writ of habeas corpus is there for a reason. Bring the accused forward. Deputy: What’s the charge, sir? Judge: Never mind that for now. Did you frisk the man? Deputy: Here and there, sir. Judge: Does he have any money? Deputy: A...

When Barack Obama talks about avoiding the "money culture" and the lifestyle of suits and big houses, there is nothing per se wrong with such a call to public service. By the same token, he makes many fine points in his frequent recitals of U.S. history in which the Underground Railroad, the freedom riders, women suffragists, and icons of the civil-rights movement figure prominently. The problem is different and twofold: First, in almost every allusion to our collective past there is mention of reform and protest, all of it needed of course. But after a while, whether inadvertently or not,...

Here's a fact: The human mind, despite its outward protestations, tends to like things in black and white. Yes, it's trendy to claim allegiance to many shades of postmodern, multicultural gray, but don't be fooled: the human psyche, fine-tuned through years of experience, is a sorting machine. It likes, no, it loves, categories: Good. Bad. Friend. Foe. Shaken. Stirred. It's certainly satisfying, and sometimes even therapeutic, to be able to sort things into tidy boxes--to try to put the universe in order--and this is particularly true in politics. Unfortunately, as recent global events have shown (including the convoluted struggles in...