“When I was a kid, we celebrated Washington’s Birthday on February 22nd, each year. That officially recognized day honored George Washington, first president and the ‘father of our country,’ began in the 1880s (even before I was born). Then in 1968, someone discovered that Abraham Lincoln also had a February birthday and was apparently feeling slighted. So, what could we do but get the two big guys together for a mega national holiday? Lincoln was a pretty consequential president, after all. But the holiday came to be known as Presidents’ Day … and as the Encyclopedia Brittanica notes, ‘is sometimes understood as a celebration of the birthdays and lives of all U.S. presidents.’ Is this some sort of ‘everyone gets a trophy’ thing?” (02/17/25)
Source: Association of Mature American Citizens
by Robert B Charles
“A recent study says we have 2000 federal agencies, departments and commissions – although they are not sure. Is that not government beyond control? What would our Founders say? Interestingly, the first thing they would say is that power without limit is tyranny. On this, they all agreed. If limits are not imposed, government is soon oppressive. ‘Our Constitution is an instrument for the people to restrain the government,’ wrote Patrick Henry. If one branch dominates, oppression follows. Wrote Madison, ‘Wherever the real power in a government lies, there is the danger of oppression.’ Nor are assaults on liberty – by bureaucrats or others – always noisy. Sometimes they are quiet. Rights are taken, authorities asserted, money spent imperceptibly.” (02/17/25)
“Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelensky has agreed to hand over to the U.S. $500 billion worth of his country’s rare earth minerals. On the back of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s comments ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine, this looks like a dreadful deal on the surface. But it may be the best one available.” (02/17/25)
“Reactions to Jimmy Carter’s death have a bit of the feel of socialism’s defenders who say the system, despite apparent failures, has never really been tried. Evangelicals who lean left are using Carter’s legacy to take a win for their brand of faith-based politics and jab at both the Religious Right and MAGA evangelicals. … In the process, Carter’s most prominent defenders are using the same logic that Christian Nationalists employ when arguing that liberalism (and secularism) has been a failure and that America needs Christianity. Progressive evangelicals have used Carter’s career not only to score points against the Religious Right but to support a faith-based politics that they believe will turn the United States Christian.” (02/17/25)
“Back in 1997, in the dim pre-history of American Greatness, David King published a book entitled The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia. In almost two hundred pages of photos, it demonstrated the ways that Stalin’s Soviet regime literally erased historical events and persons no longer considered to be consistent with the dictat of The Leader. Such efforts involved extensive censorship and coercion, typically requiring the removal not simply of images and documents but the people to whom they were attached, who often wound up in a Gulag if they were lucky or in a ditch if they were not. At the same time, as the book shows, even more insidious than the coercion was the regime’s wholly cynical attitude towards truth, an attitude so well analyzed by George Orwell’s 1984 that it has come to be described by the colloquialism ‘Orwellian.'” (02/17/25)
“U.S. officials have a long history of portraying Washington’s allies and clients as democratic, even when their behavior is blatantly authoritarian. Such cynical hypocrisy was at its zenith during the Cold War, but it is surging again. A similar trend is evident with respect to U.S. interference in the internal political affairs of other countries through such mechanisms as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Such agencies fund regimes and political movements that are deemed obedient to Washington’s wishes and supportive of U.S. foreign policy objectives. Conversely, U.S. administrations actively undermine governments or movements that they consider hostile or even just insufficiently cooperative. The actual nature of U.S. clients often is a far cry from the carefully crafted democratic image of them that Washington circulates.” (02/17/25)
“The magic pot of money is a Washington evergreen. Some politician or policymaker theorizes a fantastically large sum of government spending that can be easily excised from programs without affecting deserving beneficiaries or angering powerful interest groups. The belief in its existence has inspired many a politician to go on the hunt, but thus far, the quarry has proved elusive …. Yet every generation, a new hero sets out to find these mythical riches so that they can be returned to their rightful owner, the American taxpayer. Musk thinks he is that hero, having suggested that with the support of the president, we can find $1 trillion in deficit reduction. And hey, he has certainly performed many epic feats. So perhaps he will finally slay the dragon of government inefficiency and liberate this pot of money from its hoard. But that’s not how you should bet.” (02/17/25)
“The panic that gripped Europe’s political elites after JD Vance delivered some overdue home truths in Munich found expression back home in the most embarrassing question ever asked by a network anchor. Our vice president had accused smug Eurocrats at the Munich Security Conference of abandoning free speech and allowing unchecked migration to roil their countries, warned them to respect their voters and told them America should not bear the primary burden of funding Europe’s security. ‘If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump,’ he said. ‘You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value.’ Cue apoplexy here and abroad.” (02/16/25)
