Free Republic

Idaho's Democrat Senator Frank Church[i] was one of my heroes when I was in high school. Church wrote a letter of recommendation for me to Harvard and offered to nominate me to an appointment to any of the U.S. military academies. In the summer of 1971, he took me to lunch in the dining room of the United States Senate, where, for the first time in my life, I tasted French onion soup[ii]. He asked me if I would like to serve as an intern in his office in Washington, D.C. when I graduated from high school. (It was an...

To someone my age, grandchildren are terribly important because they represent the future. I’m writing this because I want to make sure that my grandchildren understand some things that will be very important to their future – and to their children's future. Any American who studies history – whether ancient history or recent history – should realize two major lessons from history: Lesson 1. You and I and the ordinary working person in this country have a quality of life that in most of the world has been available only to a very few, extremely wealthy persons of royalty. Of...

Prior to our preemptive incursion into Iraq, I overheard my teenage grandchildren spouting multiculturalism nonsense they had been taught in school. I wrote them the following letter as part of an attempt to overcome this brainwashing. It provided the starting point to what has now developed into a weblog called "From Sea to Shining Sea" that I launched one year ago. I have decided to republish this piece each year in July.

About four years ago, I became extremely disturbed at overhearing conversations my grandchildren were having at a large family gathering – conversations that were obviously being fueled by poisonous attitudes being inculcated in them about America by their public school teachers. I wrote them a letter as a first step in a campaign to try to undo the harm being done to them and to their country. That letter developed into an e-mail discussion group – and then into a weblog. To read the letter, go to my site and enter the words - to my grandchildren - in the...