America

Adam Andrzejewski - Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Chicago - Christianity - Congress - Constitution - Democracy - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Elections - Federalism - Free Trade - GOP - Government - Health - House of Representatives - Illinois - Jobs - Liberals - Religion - Republicans - Senate - Socialism - Society/Culture - State Government - Taxes - Tea Party - Warner Todd Huston - Western Civilization

Tea Party Express Hits Rockford, Illinois

April 6, 2010 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

No posts have emerged from me today because I was away for most of the day witnessing the Tea Party Express as it rolled into rolled into Rockford, Illinois.

Rockford is situated about 90 miles west (and a bit north) of Chicago in Northern Illinois. It’s a region that has been hit particularly hard by this recession and has the highest unemployment rate in a state that has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

The Tea Party Express is ranging across the country in an effort to keep the Tea Party spirit alive. If you want to find out if the Tea Party Express is coming to a town near you, check out the itinerary at www.teapartyexpress.org.

The Rockford Tea Party folks had hoped to get 1,000 Illinoisans to attend their rally, but there was at least 2,000 that actually came (some say 3,000) so they most certainly met their goals. These were some great Constitution-loving Americans that were very concerned about the downward direction that their country is taking. These people were worried, of course, but all seemed buoyed by their shared fellowship in patriotism. These are all great Americans. With citizens like this, we may yet bring our nation back from the brink of the leftism that is destroying Europe… unless Obama, his regime and their co-conspirators can help it.

The pre-event was held by the Rockford Tea Party folks (www.rockfordteaparty.org). And they had a nice line-up of local Illinois pols and political folks.
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Tea Party Express Hits Rockford, Illinois”

Barack Obama - Budget - Communism - Congress - Conservatives - Constitution - Democracy - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Federalism - Founders - GOP - Government - History - House of Representatives - Liberals - Policy - Regulation - Republicans - Rights - Senate - Socialism - Taxes - Tea Party - Warner Todd Huston

Using the System FOR Us: The Freedom Force Strategy

March 1, 2010 by

The National Precinct Alliance is an effort to give tea party folks the guidance to make a difference at home, within their own local political system. This is the only way that we conservatives can influence what is happening in our state government and what is happening in Washington. All our tea party protests are great, but if they aren’t followed up with real political activism — as opposed to mere bombast and carping — we will find that politics will move on without incorporating our ideas, we will stay marginal in the actual power plays in our governments.

So, with that said, here is some info from the National Precinct Alliance:

The Freedom Force Strategy

The American people find themselves in the very difficult position of having to reform their government from the bottom up, after decades of public neglect which allowed politicians from both political parties to behave as though the U.S. Constitution doesn’t exist any longer.

State legislatures have been forced by over-reaching federal policies, to restate, reclaim and reassert Tenth Amendment rights just to defend the citizens of their states from oppressive policies coming out of Washington DC.
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Using the System FOR Us: The Freedom Force Strategy”

Book Reviews - Books - Entertainment - Magazines - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

A Reply to Bill Reed

February 17, 2010 by 2 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

I know you readers have tired of this comic book controversy, but a youngster wrote me another one of those “open letters” on CBR and he was much less unhinged than most of the folks over there. So, I’ll just post this reply to him here and move on. I promise that this will be the last word on this business… well, probably.

Bill Reed wrote his “A Really Open Letter to Mr. Warner Todd Huston” and this is my reply…

Mr. Reed,

Thanks for your letter and thanks for being the only one from the CBR site that even attempted to be even tempered and free of vitriol (unlike Carla Hoffman and all her sycophantic commenters). Unfortunately you make an awful lot of assumptions in your piece that shows a lack of greater perspective and this is a failure that most of your CBR folks are making. All this adds to your feelings about my “lack of courtesy, misconceptions about the comic book medium, and considerable errors of judgment.” In truth it is you and your CBR folks that are mired in these errors.

You begin by saying that you don’t want to “gang up on me.” I beg to disagree. If you didn’t you wouldn’t have bothered to write in the first place. In fact, one of the things I am amused at from your CBR fans is the constant refrain that they all don’t care what I have to say. “Who cares what Huston has to say,” is the oft heard refrain from you folks on CBR. Who cares? I submit that YOU guys care because of the many posts about me, the constant pot stirring, and the rehash seen here. If you guys truly didn’t care you’d have ignored the whole thing.
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A Reply to Bill Reed”

Anti-Americanism - Christmas - Crime - History - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - Race - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Kwanzaa Created by a Rapist and Torturer?

December 22, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Every year I post a pre-Christmas piece on the farce that is Kwanzaa. This year will be no exception. Note, some of the newspaper articles I quote are several years old so some may no longer be online.

Each year, with the onset of Christmas, we are treated to another gauzy, fluff piece about how great Kwanzaa is by yet another PC spewing newspaper columnist. This year, among many others, we find aggrandizement such as the Progressive’s “Kwanzaa is more relevant than ever in recession,” the Chattanooga Times Free Press with theirs titled, “Common ground,” or the one from the Providence Journal headlined, “Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah brighten even the darkest season of the year.”

Several years ago, the Houston Chronicle got in the act with a piece by Leslie Casimir titled “Learning about Kwanzaa from the holiday’s creator.” This one, though, was a bit off the usual track of the how-great-is-Kwanzaa theme because this particular piece celebrated the inventor of the faux holiday, Maulana Karenga, himself. So, instead of merely celebrating this manufactured holiday Casimir amazingly made a hero of the rapist, race monger and violent thug who created it!

Casimir waxed a’glow about how wonderful Maulana Karenga is and her column found a gullible parent who, with kid in tow, went to see the man at a local community center.

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Kwanzaa Created by a Rapist and Torturer?”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Capitalism - Censorship - Communism - Conservatives - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Free Speech - Freedom - History - Liberals - Socialism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

The End of History or a History of the End?

November 24, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

A few years ago, Francis Fukuyama was widely criticized for his book claiming that mankind had seen “The End of History.” Fukuyama contended that liberal democracy had won the debate over which system was best and, therefore, there was necessary no more “moving forward” for man’s social order. While Fukuyama might have thought the question of the best system was settled — that being the Western democratic system — what good does a great system do if no one is aware of it? Unfortunately, we are quickly nearing a time in our schools where any knowledge of our political system or western history is going untaught. It’s so bad that most standard history courses are disappearing from our universities to be replaced by specialties about minorities or single subjects like “genocide” or “homosexual studies.”

Of course, much of the criticism of Fukuyama’s premise was based on a mistaken reading of what he said, but with this failure to teach proper history to our students we might be seeing at least one reason to doubt that liberal democracy is strong enough to stay as top dog, regardless of its efficacy. The liberal democracy as being practiced in the U.S., for instance, is weakening to the point of frivolity, one prone to a breakdown from within, and this lack of a useful education is just another example of this societal crash. Dangerously, proper history is being taught less and less in our universities.

Not long ago, an ominous article in the New York Times reported that specialty courses and professors now far outnumber standard history.
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The End of History or a History of the End?”

Anti-Americanism - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Communism - Congress - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Free Trade - GOP - Liberals - Patriotism - President - Republicans - Socialism - Society/Culture - Taxes - The Law - Warner Todd Huston

Where is THIS Republican Party?

November 19, 2009 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

An excerpt of the 1924 Republican Party Platform:

The prosperity of the American nation rests on the vigor of private initiative which has bred a spirit of independence and self-reliance. The republican party stands now, as always, against all attempts to put the government into business.

American industry should not be compelled to struggle against government competition. The right of the government to regulate, supervise and control public utilities and public interests, we believe, should be strengthened, but we are firmly opposed to the nationalization or government ownership of public utilities.

In 1924 the GOP ran Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge for president. And he won on this platform.

Even then Democrats were trying to tun this country into a less powerful version of Europe by emulating its socialist systems. A proud Republican Party repudiated these socialist tendencies and reiterated its pride in the American way. These principles appealed to the true American spirit and also won elections.

Unfortunately, the very next president, himself a Republican, turned toward socialist, collectivist concepts and set the stage for what later became Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal destruction of the American economic system that compounded a market correction and turned it into “The Great Depression.” And save for a brief time under Ronald Reagan, it appears that the GOP has never recovered its principles as espoused in its 1924 platform.
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Where is THIS Republican Party?”

Anti-Americanism - Europe - Humor - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston - Western Civilization

Europe is Our (Insert Female Pejorative Here)

November 18, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

**And now a word from my inner swaggerer…

Europe is a chick’s name. That’s right, you heard me. The word Europa from which Europe is derived is of feminine gender in origin. In Greek mythology Europa was a Phoenician princess abducted by Zeus. Zeus disguised himself as a bull to pull off the caper.

So, what do we have? Let’s review: Europe is a defenseless but pretty chick fooled by a bunch of bull and ravaged by a God.

Yep. Sounds about right.

Now what about America? How chikified is our name? Well, not much.

As it happens America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, a cartographer and explorer from the mid 1400s who was one of the first westerners to map the coast of the Americas. He was a man, baby.

A man’s man, an explorer, a man of means (well, early in his life, anyway), a sailor. A real tough guy. And even if that isn’t true, at least a person with a swinging anchor and some ballast which is more than we can say for the weeping, cringing Europa.

And since the naming, our two continents have certainly lived up to the theme. Europe, constantly ravaged, always weeping, forever moaning about being nice to folks, and never strong enough to stand on its own for long has been as weak and feckless as can be imagined..

On the other hand America has been the jewel of the world. America was born of the woman but strode forward in confident, self-possessed strides leaving mommy behind sniffling and waving her handkerchief to her successful son and warning him not to forget to write or at least leave a text message. America has spawned riches uncountable with its toils and with the United States at its head has become the world’s father and policeman. It’s a manly nation to say the least.

So, what’s in a name, William old sod? Nothing less than the expression of character (or weakness thereof). We Americans stand astride the world in manliness while Europe swoons by our side in supplication… and nagging, nagging, nagging like the gnarled old hag she has become. Even Zeus would be tired of her by now.

Yep. Europe is our bi_ _h.

Take that you Euroweenies!

So, go on. Call me a cowboy. But whose twirling rope are you Euroweenies gonna reach for when you’ve let the Islamofascists take over your lands? Whose six-shooters will come in handy when the Chinese are blowing you away? Which man in the white hat are ya gonna call on when you suddenly find yourself surrounded by hostiles on all sides? If’n yer lucky, pardner, we might jess lope on by and help ya out. Ya never know. Give us a whistle and see.

… OK, I feel better. And now back to the news.

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Europe is Our (Insert Female Pejorative Here)”

Britain - Christianity - Conservatives - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - Education - History - Liberals - Patriotism - President - Religion - Rights - Society/Culture - State Government - The Law - Warner Todd Huston - Western Civilization

ISI Conference Part Three: More British Than the British!

November 16, 2009 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is the final installment my three part report on the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s one day conference on The Roots of American Order. So here is part two of mine titled Lift a Glass to the Past: America Rooted in Tradition or a New Covenant? (Click for parts one and two)

After a break for lunch, Mark C. Henrie took up America’s Britishness. Henrie wrote the ISI’s A Student’s Guide to the Core Curriculum that explains the value of a traditional core of studies in Western civilization and his session reflected that study.

Capitalizing on Birzer’s citation of Edmund Burke who praised the colonist’s essential Britishness, Henrie made the point that America is best understood not as a break from tradition but as the culmination of a long series of continuous ideals that range back through Western history, specifically through England.

Henrie says that we get four essentials from England.

  • The English language and literature
  • The common law and a respect for the rule of law
  • A desire for self government
  • Manners and a social order

One of the questions that researchers have often wondered is why American English and British English are essentially the same? Why didn’t America reinvent English for its own purposes in the same way the Dutch altered German, for instance? Henrie says that the reason is that the focal point of language in the colonies was contained in the King James Bible and that pervasive reliance on a single source of language arrested any development of a widely diverging American version of English. We Americans inherited the English language through the Bible.
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ISI Conference Part Three: More British Than the British!”

Britain - Christianity - Conservatives - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Freedom - Liberals - Patriotism - President - Religion - Rights - Society/Culture - State Government - The Law - Warner Todd Huston - Western Civilization

ISI Conference Part Two: Christ in Our Soul

November 16, 2009 by 4 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is part two of my three part report on the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s one day conference on The Roots of American Order. So here is part two of mine titled Lift a Glass to the Past: America Rooted in Tradition or a New Covenant? (Part one can be seen here)

The second speaker of the day was Brad Birzer who regaled us on America’s Judeo-Christian History.

Bizer began his session by noting that historian Donald Lutz discovered that the founders used Christian references in their pre-war writing far more than any other source. St. Paul was the most referenced New Testament figure with Micah 4:4 being the most referenced Old Testament verse.

But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it.

On this Lutz quotation, though, I want to clarify something. Many have bandied about the claim that Donald Lutz said that 34 percent of the founder’s writing contain direct Biblical citations. This claim is not altogether true. On the other hand, it is not something to quickly dismiss as fans of the Enlightenment influence want to do, either.
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ISI Conference Part Two: Christ in Our Soul”

Britain - Chicago - Christianity - Conservatives - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - Education - History - Liberals - Patriotism - Religion - Rights - Society/Culture - The Law - Warner Todd Huston - Western Civilization

Lift a Glass to the Past: America Rooted in Tradition or a New Covenant?

November 16, 2009 by 8 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

Is the United States a grand experiment, a new covenant invented out of whole cloth by the fertile minds of the founders from never before seen ideas or is it a nation spawned from deeply rooted traditions of western thought? This was the question posited in a one-day-long conference on classicism in America’s founding sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) and held in Skokie, Illinois, a near northern suburb of Chicago.

The short answer is that the liberal mindset that holds that we should invent the USA anew with each succeeding generation is an erroneous conception of what the United States was meant to be when it was founded. Sure America has some ideas never before seen by political man, but at heart, America is rationalism informed by tradition, not some amorphous mélange of constantly changing ideas.

The founders created a new nation based heavily on Western ideas through British tradition, not one based solely on rationalist thinking. As they struggled to set their new nation on its new Constitutional course, for instance, the words of Founder John Dickinson of Delaware served as their benchmark.

Let experience be our only guide. Reason may lead us astray.

An intimate crowd of 60 some participants enjoyed four separate addresses by lecturers associated with ISI. Appearing behind the lectern were Bruce Thornton, Professor of Classics at Fresno State University; Brad Birzer, Professor of History at Hillsdale College; Mark C. Henrie, Senior VP and Chief Academic Officer of ISI; and E. Christian Kopff, Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

In these three installments, I will lay out what we talked about at this interesting one-day conference.

Part One: How it all Began
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Lift a Glass to the Past: America Rooted in Tradition or a New Covenant?”

Anti-Americanism - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Liberals - Socialism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

I am Loath to Call Americans Stupid, But…

September 17, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

When I see the elitists on the left hold themselves up as being smarter than everyone they survey I am always offended. My American can-do spirit is assaulted by such an elitist opinion. It disgusts me when leftists assume that Americans are stupid. I refuse to accept such an assessment. But then there are stories like this…

Apparently when the House of Representatives voted to admonish Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), now famous for calling out that Obama was a liar during his recent healthcare speech, Americans all across the country rushed to their computers and did some research.

Were they looking up arcane House rules of conduct? How about the names of various elected officials? Maybe they were looking up political history?

Uh, no.
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I am Loath to Call Americans Stupid, But…”

Conservatives - Constitution - Founders - Sam Adams Alliance - Warner Todd Huston

Do YOU Believe in the Constitution?

September 17, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Sam Adams Alliance, a conservative, free market think tank out of Chicago (right in the belly of the liberal beast) has launched a new site today called “I Believe in the Constitution” as a great way to celebrate Constitution day.

So, if YOU believe in the greatest governing document ever conceived by the mind of man, go on over and sig the petition. Then post about it on your blogs and message boards. Put it on your FaceBook, Twitter or MySpace pages.

September 17, 1787, the delegates to the United States Constitutional Convention gathered for the last time in Philadelphia to put their names at the bottom of a very important document: the Constitution of the United States. After long months filled with some of the most important discussions on the role of government in world history, the document which survives, to this day, as a monument to freedom was born. A year later, on September 13, 1788, the same group of delegates would vote to put the Constitution in operation, and the United States of America, as we know it, was born. Over the two centuries since the Philadelphia delegates signed off on it, the Constitution has undergone several changes, notably the addition of the Bill of Rights and the 27 Amendments, which guarantee the basic freedoms all Americans have come to cherish, and which cannot be taken away.

The Founding Fathers, in creating the Constitution, charged Americans with a very important task: to ensure that their values — those of individual liberty and limited government — apparent in the Constitution, be preserved for all generations of Americans. Over the years, these values of liberty and democracy have begun to fray and our Constitution has been neglected.

So what can you do?

Well, for starters, you can pledge your support for the Constitution by going to IBelieveintheConstitution.com, and signing the petition in support of our founding document as it was written and as the Founders intended. You can also re-educate yourself and your family on the Constitution, its history, and its legacy by visiting any of these sites: the U. S. National Archives and the National Archive’s Constitutional Workshop, Congress for Kids, the Department of Education’s U.S. Constitution Teaching Guide, and the National Constitution Center.

And Happy Constitution Day!
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Do YOU Believe in the Constitution?”

Anti-Americanism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Liberals - Patriotism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Democrats Cancel Patriotic Music

September 2, 2009 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

My friends across the aisle always tell me that Democrats love America and are as patriotic as anyone on the right. Unfortunately for them, it is hard to believe that their party is on the same all-American page as the rank and file especially since Nancy Pelosi’s Democrat controlled House of Representatives tried to get rid of the patriotic music that is traditionally played on the House telephone “on hold” system.

House Chief Administrative Officer Daniel Beard decided to rid the world of John Phillip Sousa, God Bless America, the Star Spangled Banner, and any other sort of patriotic tunes played while callers to the House of Representative’s switchboard are on hold. Instead of the traditional patriotic music, Beard thought “smooth jazz” was better.

Then came the complaints. And right after that came the backpeddling.
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Democrats Cancel Patriotic Music”

Founders - History - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Let’s Not Celebrate July 4th

July 3, 2009 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is well known that John Adams had imagined that July second would be the day that future generations of Americans would remember as their day of independence from England, the nation’s birthday, if you will. It was, after all, on the second that it was proclaimed “(T)hat these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

But it was two days later that those gathered in defiance to the King declared a “Declaration of Independency” thereby adopting the famed document that carefully delineated the natural rights by which they claimed independence followed by a list of grievances that would explain why they invoked those rights.

So what are we celebrating? Is it our birth as a nation or are we celebrating the document of Independence? Early celebrations were mixed and a bit confused on that point. Additionally, celebrations on July fourth weren’t that common for a time after the Revolution was over. At first, not many felt a need to celebrate something that had happened and was over. It was time to move on from war in many American’s eyes.

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Let’s Not Celebrate July 4th”

Conservatives - Constitution - GOP - Patriotism - Republicans - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Proud to be a Conservative? Well, Show It!

June 20, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Cypress Times of Cypress, Texas has started a little effort to help conservatives show that they are proud to be American and proud to be conservatives. Times Publisher John G. Winder decided it’s time to show the world that “I Am Conservative America” by having conservatives of all stripes from all across the country send in their photo holding a little sign that proclaims their self pride.

I know, I know. if you are a conservative and are reading this posting, I’ll bet your first thought is to roll your eyes. I do know how you feel because I did the same thing. After all, isn’t it the “feels-good idiots” on the left that indulge in these sorts of empty gestures? These are the sorts of fluffy, pointless things that leftist goofballs do, right? We are serious, ya know? I mean, posting our photos on some webpage ain’t a’gonna change anything, we all know.

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Proud to be a Conservative? Well, Show It!”

Children - Constitution - Family - Media Bias - Patriotism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

At Last a Good Boy Scout Story

April 8, 2009 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

Out of Georgia comes a heart warmer about the Boy Scouts for a change. Instead of radical gays attacking this noble organization, instead of extremist left-wing politicians trying to make a name for themselves by attacking one of America’s finest youth organizations, we have a story that makes you smile. And you can bet it won’t make national news.

Rodrigo and Rosa Cano moved to the United States in 1980. A decade or so later Rosa gave birth to David who the proud parents enrolled in a local Boy Scouts troop when he reached his tenth year. They hoped that young David could further help them assimilate in their new home as young David brought home his Scouting experiences.

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At Last a Good Boy Scout Story”

Anti-Americanism - Democrats/Leftists - Family - History - Liberals - Media Bias - Morals/Sex - Patriotism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

I Am A Tired American

April 5, 2009 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

I am tired of many things going on today, things that seem designed to undermine and destroy our great country. Certainly, we all have the right to express our opinions and, naturally, every American holding any particular ideology will see things that do not correspond to his idea of the “real America” at any given time. It is right and good that we, as citizens, should seek to make the changes we think necessary to make our country strong. We can all agree that people of intelligence and integrity might agree to disagree, but there are some things about a country that, when abandoned or abruptly changed, creates a place markedly different than what it was previously.

These sorts of seminal changes in the fabric of a nation should only be undertaken when that fabric is rotten even to its core. There have been bad spots of America that had to be surgically removed, we all know. But the core of this nation, despite its blemishes, is not now and never has been rotten.

And so I am tired of the many people who are native to this country that want to destroy what it is to make it into what it isn’t, never was, and cannot be. If we wish this country to be as great into the future as it has been in the past this self-destructive behavior must be stopped.
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I Am A Tired American”