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In the first chapter of Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order we read the following statement: "Our own society, like that of any other people, is held together by what is called an 'order.'" Without order, society doesn't cohere. Instead, it flies apart, breaks up, and disintegrates. And, I would argue, a process of disintegration has been underway in the United States for many years. The breakup of the American order has been masked by American prosperity, which has continued throughout the process of social disintegration. To a very great extent, the financial crisis we are experiencing today is...

Research into the family of US First Lady Michelle Obama has revealed that her great-great-great-grandmother was a slave given away at the age of six. According to genealogist Megan Smolenyak, the girl was described in papers only as "negro girl Melvinia". In her early teens, working as a slave on a farm in Georgia, she was made pregnant by an unknown white man. The son she gave birth to around the year 1859, Dolphus, was Michelle's great-great grandfather. Megan Smolenyak, whose discoveries have been detailed in the New York Times newspaper, said she was not surprised by what she discovered....

In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery RACHEL L. SWARNS and JODI KANTOR October 7, 2009 WASHINGTON — In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475. In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a...

Folks, a while back I talked about Islamic Proselytism Increasing Among Latinos in New York and now this piece from CNN, Brooklyn family keeps Latino-Jewish traditions alive, sends me in the direction of an increasing "return to Judaism" movement in Latino communities that I've seen gaining exposure in the media: Every Friday evening, the Núñez family sits down to a traditional religious dinner. Like most families in their Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, their Jewish Sabbath meal includes blessings over the wineand bread, the company of family and friends and excellent food. But for the Núñez family, the...

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a scandal. This story has become breaking news lately thanks to some recent guerilla journalism. But the problems of ACORN represent a broader, and even more scandalous idea: the conventional acceptance of the left's self-righteous claims to having a monopoly on all politics, policy and lifestyles that are good. ACORN, if you haven't heard, is a radical organization that devotes itself with laser-like intensity to the maxim that all politics is local. The group supposedly exists to find affordable housing and provide social services for low-income families. But when two...

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black professor at the center of the racial story involving his arrest outside his Harvard University-owned house, has spoken proudly of his Irish roots. Strangely enough, he and the Cambridge, Mass., police officer who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley, both trace their ancestry back to the legendary Niall of the Nine Hostages. In a PBS series on African-American ancestry that he hosted in 2008, Gates discovered his Irish roots when he found he was descended from an Irish immigrant and a slave girl. He went to Trinity College in Dublin to have his DNA analyzed....

IrishCentral.com Publisher Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black professor at the center of the racial story involving his arrest outside his Harvard University-owned house, has spoken proudly of his Irish roots. Strangely enough, he and the Cambridge, Mass., police officer who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley, both trace their ancestry back to the legendary Niall of the Nine Hostages. In a PBS series on African-American ancestry that he hosted in 2008, Gates discovered his Irish roots when he found he was descended from an Irish immigrant and a slave girl. He went to Trinity College in Dublin to have his...

The White House is some 472 miles from Georgetown, South Carolina. But long before Michelle Obama was born, her great-great grandfather, Jim Robinson, likely toiled in the fields here six days a week, from sunup to sundown.

President Obama has spoken proudly of American Muslims, even referencing his heritage as the son of a Muslim man, ahead of his highly anticipated speech Thursday in Cairo aimed at shoring up relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world. Obama's openness about his own Muslim heritage may seem startling after his presidential campaign last year went to great lengths to debunk false rumors about his religion -- he is Christian -- but the president showed long ago that he is comfortable talking about his roots, which are addressed in his two biographical books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The...

<p>During a conference call in preparation for President Obama's trip to Cairo, Egypt, where he will address the Muslim world, deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough said "the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to -- or before he's been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world -- you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans (are) a key part of Illinois and Chicago."</p>

ABC News' Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller report: The other day we heard a comment from a White House aide that never would have been uttered during the primaries or general election campaign. During a conference call in preparation for President Obama's trip to Cairo, Egypt, where he will address the Muslim world, deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough said "the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to -- or before he's been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world -- you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a...

The top subprime lenders whose loans are largely blamed for triggering the global economic meltdown were owned or bankrolled by banks now collecting billions of dollars in bailout money — including several that have paid huge fines to settle predatory lending charges. These big institutions were not only unwitting victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves, but enablers that bankrolled the type of lending that has threatened the financial system. These are among the findings of a Center for Public Integrity analysis of government data on nearly 7.2 million “high-interest” or subprime loans made from...

Terrorist bombings of nightclubs, restaurants, and hotels are, unfortunately, the stuff of today's headline news. But the bombing of Paris's Café Terminus in 1894 was a new, stunning phenomenon made possible by a violent philosophy and the development of dynamite. Yale historian John Merriman does many things in "The Dynamite Club," his book about the bombing, and does them quite well, from explaining the intellectual and social underpinnings of anarchism to detailing the invention of dynamite to taking us inside the murky underworld of extremist Émile Henry, who built and then set off the 1894 bomb. Discuss COMMENTS (1) THE...

A mong the array of challenges facing Barack Obama in his first year in office will be the ongoing struggle against terrorism, both at home and abroad. As the vicious terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November and the recent Hamas rocket attacks against Israel made clear, no nation involved in international politics and commerce is free from the threat of political violence. The past few years have shown that civilization rests on a much more precarious footing than we might have believed even a decade ago. But who is the real enemy in the global fight against terrorism? Even to...

"Now that the true character of the US political system is increasingly apparent to the whole world, now that the parasitical nature of its economic system is causing ever greater numbers of victims, now that the lies that underpin the US domination of world politics are finally being exposed, the time has come to take a serious look at what the “US victory over the Nazis” has brought us."

The root of the problem is a cocktail of debt with a chaser of pathological optimism, and many Americans got drunk on both. Awash in credit offers, they bought homes, cars, and lots of other stuff they couldn't afford, and hoped for a best-case scenario, in which their home values and rising salaries would take care of it. There were plenty of foolish, crooked, and greedy intermediaries who played key roles in the meltdown -- from the Federal Reserve, which held interest rates too low for too long; to mortgage brokers who defrauded borrowers; to the investment houses that securitized...

The website that lets you find out where your family came from online Last updated at 02:23am on 30.08.08  Ever wondered where in the world you can find the most Crooks, Cranks and Losers?  Or, come to that, the places overrun by people called Smith or Jones?  Well, wonder no more. A website launched today can tell you everything you could possibly want to know about surnames  -  unusual or otherwise.   Pure Klass: Myleene   It uses more than one billion records to show which countries, regions and cities have the greatest concentrations of a given surname. Simply...

Just reading an email from a German friend of mine pointing out that Palin has English, Irish and German ancestry.

...I then added that Pomerania had been historically disputed in all sort of wars, but that now, as the rest of Europe, was finally at peace. Instinctively realizing that this latter observation was the perfect leader of a thread for a nice political conversation, I quickly added that such current status of peace in Europe, and, relatively, in most of the world, was the result of America having become the most powerful nation on Earth ever. Bedazzled by my assertion, more in sheer disbelief than in amazement, he bluntly asked me why it was so. I rapidly quipped that wise...

Our Celtic roots lie in Spain and Portugal May 5 2008 by Darren Devine, Western Mail THE Welsh have more in common with sun-kissed glamour pusses like actress Penelope Cruz and footballer Christiano Ronaldo than pale- faced Germans like Helmet Kohl, according to an academic. Professor John Koch suggests the Welsh can trace their ancestry back to Portugal and Spain, debunking the century-old received wisdom that our forebears came from Iron Age Germany and Austria. His radical work on Celtic origins flatly contradicts the writing of Sir John Rhys, who in the late 19th century established the idea that we...