Saturday, November 25, 2017
On this day in 1863, a Civil War battle cry that later leads to THE best school fight song ever:
Arthur MacArthur, later the father of Douglas MacArthur, won the Medal of Honor at age 19 for his his bravery during the Battle of Missionary Ridge outside Chattanooga when young Arthur charged to the summit at a critical phase in the battle, planted the regimental flag, and shouted “On, Wisconsin!”.
Arthur MacArthur bio
On, Wisconsin
The Battle of Missionary Ridge
"On, Wisconsin"
Union Army Defeats Confederates at Missionary Ridge
Arthur MacArthur, later the father of Douglas MacArthur, won the Medal of Honor at age 19 for his his bravery during the Battle of Missionary Ridge outside Chattanooga when young Arthur charged to the summit at a critical phase in the battle, planted the regimental flag, and shouted “On, Wisconsin!”.
Arthur MacArthur bio
On, Wisconsin
The Battle of Missionary Ridge
Friday, November 24, 2017
On this day in 1963, my dad and I couldn't believe what we were seeing:
Jack Ruby Shoots/Kills Lee Harvey Oswald on Live TV During Packers Game Broadcast
Jack Ruby Shoots/Kills Lee Harvey Oswald on Live TV During Packers Game Broadcast
Thursday, November 23, 2017
Abraham Lincoln Proclaims First Thanksgiving Holiday in 1863
Proclamation 106—Thanksgiving Day, 1863
October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October, A. D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
State Report Card: School Choice students "grow" more than public school counterparts
[Excerpt from article]
Under the new growth measures in the state report card, the positive results for Wisconsin’s school choice programs are staggering. Students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program experienced approximately 8 percent more growth than students in similar public schools. In the Racine Parental Choice Program, the results were even stronger. Students in Racine’s choice schools experienced about 24 percent more growth than students in public schools. Similar results were found for Wisconsin's charter schools, which also offer an important alternative to traditional public education. Such dramatic levels of growth could mean the difference in a child needing to attend summer school, or even being held back.
These findings also damage the claim of school choice opponents that choice programs are ‘creaming the crop’ of public school kids. According to this argument, the families that select into choice and charter schools are already somewhat higher achieving than those that remain in traditional public schools. These results show the opposite. Children enter Wisconsin’s school choice programs with very real learning deficits, which the schools are proving quite effective at addressing over time.
Why Stalin Starved Ukraine
The atrocity and cover-up that shape today's politics
[Excerpt from article]
At least 5 million people died from starvation in the Soviet Union between 1931 and 1934—including 3.9 million Ukrainians. And, despite the contentions of certain historians of the Soviet Union, Applebaum argues that these deaths were no accident. As she notes at the beginning of the book, “The Soviet Union’s disastrous decision to force peasants to give up their land and join collective farms; the eviction of “kulaks,” the wealthier peasants, from their homes; the chaos that followed”—these policies were “all ultimately the responsibility of Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.”
***
People crawled into wheat fields to eat ears of wheat before dropping dead. They died from hunger in the act of eating. Children collapsed and died during lessons. A mother took the bread from her offspring to feed her husband (she could, she said, always have more kids, but she could only ever have one husband). A couple put their children in a deep hole and left them there, in order not to watch them die. A father strangled his own children rather than watch them perish from hunger. Communities that had once been kind and welcoming became mistrustful and violent; lynch mobs tortured people. And in the end, most horrifically of all, people began to eat each other.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
The man who presaged Trumpism
WND: Unserious Nation
Pat Buchanan asks, Are we really a better country today than we were in 1962?
Since 1962, this nation has dethroned its God and begun debates about which of the flawed but great men who created the nation should be publicly dishonored. Are we really a better country today than we were then, when all the world looked to America as the land of the future?WND: Unserious Nation
Monday, November 20, 2017
Sunday, November 19, 2017
On this day in 1863,
Lincoln Delivers Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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