History Revisited 3

The halo the revisionist historians have put on the head of John McCain is just a bit of dishonest overreach making him look like a really great guy.  The truth is far less flattering.  This article deals with McCain and his history which in my mind is not a very good one. Quote: "As for his occasional “maverick” stands against his own voters: Couldn’t he have saved himself the trouble of having to make those agonizing displays by just switching parties? Yes, it takes stones for a Republican to admit Barack Obama is not “an Arab,” that slavery is bad, or that the Dixie Chicks shouldn’t be burned alive. But most Democrats don’t have to call pressers on these issues. McCain’s tragedy as a politician is that he is forever torn between his intense desire to pander to the bomb-humping, deregulating right and the fact that he so obviously thought most Republican voters – particularly the religious ones – were dipshits. This schizophrenic brand of politics has left McCain marooned between two electorates that could never quite embrace him, and have since drifted apart at light speed. For this, For Whom the Bell Tolls celebrates McCain as a relic of a past when “reaching across the aisle” was still possible. The film’s extraordinary lineup of gushing interviewees – Bush, Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, etc. – is an implicit endorsement of this idea."    https://www.theburningplatform.com/2018/05/23/john-mccains-revisionist-history-is-a-team-effort/

Revisiting the history of the starts of the American Revolution in 1775 and the Civil War 80 years apart. And a bit of speculation.  Quote: "For those who understand Fourth Turnings it shouldn’t be a surprise these two important events happened in those years. 1775 is 243 years ago (three 80 year generational cycles ago). 1861 is 157 years ago (two 80 year generational cycles ago). If we go back 80 years from today it puts us in 1938. Was anything big happening in 1938? So here we are. I wonder what happens next."    https://www.theburningplatform.com/2018/04/19/this-day-in-history-the-american-revolution-begins-1775-first-blood-in-the-civil-war-1861/

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were alarmed with the implications of the Alien and Sedition Acts signed into law by John Adams.  They launched a series of resolutions to offset the grasp for federal powers the Alien and Sedition represented. This item provides a good summary of the details.  Quote: "Madison took Jefferson’s advice and penned a lengthy defense of the Virginia Resolutions known as the Virginia Report of 1800. (Sometimes called the Virginia Report of 1799.) Madison fleshed out the Virginia Resolutions at length and answered the opposition’s arguments point by point. Most notably, he asserted the people of the states have the final authority to determine the constitutionality of an act.

    “The States then being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently that as the parties to it, they must themselves decide in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.”  

While the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions did not actually nullify the Alien and Sedition Act, they form the philosophical foundation nullification actions rest upon. Ultimately, it remains up to states to take action in the ways they see fit to stop the exercise of unconstitutional federal power – or as Madison eloquently put it “interpose for arresting the progress of the evil.”   http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2017/12/22/this-week-in-history-virginia-passes-james-madisons-resolutions-of-1798/

Woodrow Wilson's legacy is not so stellar.  Quote: "Coupled together, Wilson's failures had an air of inevitability to them. His political inexperience did play a part in his failure to secure a lasting peace at Versailles with his assumption that the Allied victors would have no imperialist appetites. Perhaps nothing could have been done to halt these vengeful leaders—after all, the much more politically canny FDR (who claimed Wilson as his role model) also failed to reckon with another type of imperialism at Yalta. But Ronald Reagan was also a two-term governor and was able to combine idealism and toughness in a manner beyond Wilson. He stood up to Gorbachev by telling the Soviet leader that he would not "let the Soviets win." At the same time he idealistically helped end the arms race between the United States and the Soviets. As a result, he achieved much more than Wilson. As Margaret Thatcher said of Reagan's performance, "He ended the Cold War without firing a shot." O'Toole does try to connect the dots to today by asserting that Wilson was a 20th century president of the "hope and change" variety. But his hopes were unrealistic, and the change he left behind led to Lenin and Hitler and another world war."    http://freebeacon.com/culture/review-the-moralist-woodrow-wilson/

More unpleasant history regarding the Vietnam War.  Kennedy intended to withdraw but was assassinated and LBJ reversed course and went in full bore.  Interesting international and political intrigue follows.  http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/04/13/in-ironic-twist-syria-to-head-un-panel-on-chemical-disarmament/ 

This is a piece about a real hero who gave his life protecting the blind from abuse during WWII.    https://fee.org/articles/this-priest-didnt-back-down-from-the-nazis-or-the-communists/?

This is a tragedy that hit the family of an innocent woman at the hands of a privileged political figure from a privileged political family.  Punishment  came in the form of a slap on the wrist.  What he deserved never resulted. An example of unequal justice for the elites not available to most mere citizens.    https://www.theburningplatform.com/2018/04/04/the-grisly-history-of-chappaquiddick/

This is a warning President Eisenhower delivered to the Nation in his final address to the nation. Quote: "On Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the world about the rise of what can now be referred to as the ‘deep state.’ In his outgoing remarks from his farewell speech, Eisenhower bravely called out the shadow government who operates behind the scenes to promote war and profit from mass murder. He called this entity the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower, who was a retired five-star general, led the allies into Germany on D-Day. Being one of the few five-star generals in history, Eisenhower knew what he was saying when he warned that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”    https://freedomoutpost.com/57-years-ago-eisenhower-predicted-rise-military-industrial-complex-seeing/

There is a piece of the Military Industrial Complex involved in the power play the left is engaged in trying to get Trump out of office.   They do not want peace.  They thrive on conflicts.

This man was a principled president.  But progressives portray him as a dunce.  https://fee.org/articles/he-was-a-president-who-understood-principle/?

This is for anyone who thinks ideas spawned by Communist minds are in the best interests of humankind.  Stalin was a monster.  Quote: "The modern historian Anne Applebaum is determined that no one forget what Soviet communism really was, and in many ways her latest book, Red Famine, is simply a cry for remembrance of the Holodomor—the great Soviet starvation of the early 1930s, in which nearly 4 million Ukrainians died because Joseph Stalin had an idea, and the political regime he ruled allowed him to implement it."   And, "Robert Conquest's path-breaking 1986 study, The Harvest of Sorrow, convinced most readers that the famine had in fact taken place, though the Soviets never fully admitted it and, as Applebaum acidly points out, Western journalists (notably the New York Times‘s Walter Duranty) helped keep the millions of deaths hidden from the world. The only question that remains these days is whether Stalin directly intended the deaths. He certainly caused them with his policies, and he was obviously willing to allow the slaughter to continue, once it had began. But did he want a Ukrainian genocide from the beginning? Given the archival evidence of Soviet pride in destroying the kulaks, the answer seems to be both yes and no. Stalin planned on any number of deaths, and he pursued his agricultural reforms even once it was clear that no goal other than punishing the peasants was being served. "Stalin did not seek to kill all Ukrainians," Applebaum writes. But he did intend to eliminate "the most active and engaged."    http://freebeacon.com/culture/review-red-famine-by-anne-applebaum/?   Readers will note that even back then the New York Times was the leftist rag it still is.