December 14, 2011 Robert Merry’s , A COUNTRY OF VAST DESIGNS is a political biography of President James K. Polk, the Mexican War (1846-1848), and the conquest of the American Continent. Preparing lectures in American history particularly stimulating for me was the Ante Bellum period, partiularly 1830 to 1860, and raising issues serving as prime causation forContinue reading “POLK – THE MEXICAN WAR – BACKGROUND TO CIVIL WAR”
Category Archives: Political & Historical
LOCKEAN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND PARTISAN GRIDLOCK
The bipartisan committee of twelve lawmakers appointed by party leaders to trim $1.2 trillion of the national runaway debt over the next decade on the day their report is due have crumbled. Failing to reach a compromise just how to lower the federal deficit is resulting in the gridlock blame trading game. political parties accuse one another forContinue reading “LOCKEAN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND PARTISAN GRIDLOCK”
AUGUSTINE’S IMPACT ON WESTERN THOUGHT
October 30, 2011 An influential idea in Western thought is that history has a goal and is puposeful. This idea altered the Greek-Roman notion that history and time revoved in meaningless circles with no ultimate goal. With the fall of the Roman Empire to Germanic invaders in 431 AD Augustine, theologian and philosopher, wrote The City of God. Continue reading “AUGUSTINE’S IMPACT ON WESTERN THOUGHT”
LINCOLN AND MLK – HATE VS. FORGIVENESS
October 26, 2011 Philip Yancey’s book What’s So Amazing About Grace in the chapter Arsenal of Grace quotes Alexander Solshenitsyn: “Only a small crack. . . . but cracks make caves collapse.” Later in this chapter references are made to Lincoln and Martin Luther King as champions of grace and national reconciliation. Interesting is the factContinue reading “LINCOLN AND MLK – HATE VS. FORGIVENESS”
WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER! “WHAT’S THE QUESTION?
A car parked in the garage near mine has many admonishing decals displayed on the car trunk area. One reads: WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER! My thought: WHAT’S THE QUESTION?
POLITICS AND THE CHURCH’S BULLY PULPIT
Headline 9/20/2011 in the STARTRIBUNE TWIN CITIES+REGION section: BACHMAN-HAMMOND: JUST THE TICKET FOR OUR TIMES Writer Jon Tevlin observes that both politics as well as religion make strange bedfellows. Rev. Mac Hammond, local televangelist from Living Word Christian Center has joined as an advisor the Bachmann campaign.
THE NOVEL “PASSING” – LIGHT SKINNED ENOUGH TO PASS AS WHITE
October 8, 2011 Recently a program that reviewed new books in the Becketwood library one in particular caught my attention. Immediately I understood it to be the flip-side, or northern racial version of the novel and movie “”Help” set in the South. (See blog – Aug 21: HELP WANTED – MAIDS OF HONOR and “KILLERS OF THEContinue reading “THE NOVEL “PASSING” – LIGHT SKINNED ENOUGH TO PASS AS WHITE”
VISITING HO CHI MINH’S HOME AND MAUSOLEUM
(January 1993 I was a member of the COUNCIL ON INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL EXCHANGE AT HANOI UNIVERSITY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF HO CHI MINH CITY. A few Journal notes follow) Wednesday, Jnuary 6, 1993 This day provided events I had wished to encounter for some years
LAOS AND CAMBODIA ENGULFED BY AMERICA’S VIETNAM WAR
September 4, 2011 (See blog of August 29, 2011: “America’s Involvement in Vietnam, etc.” for the broader context of struggle in Indochina that includes Laos and Cambodia America’s Vietnam War inevitably engulfed Laos and Cambodia resulting in the Third Vietnam War. The final outcome determined Vietnamese hegemony over both Laos and Cambodia with each in aContinue reading “LAOS AND CAMBODIA ENGULFED BY AMERICA’S VIETNAM WAR”
TEA PARTY 2011 INAPPROPRIATELY NAMED
The historic context of the Boston Tea Party in 1773 makes clear that the so-called Tea Party in 2011 has a misapplied name. The roots of the Boston Tea Party lies in the last of four 18th century great European and intercolonial wars. Britain and France each with allies were pitted against
The Bartling Scholarship 