Volume II, Issue XLIV
Cover: Ellicott's Mills in miniature as created by Bob Kirchman in 1971/1972 at age 20. It was refurbished and corrected to reflect current research for the B&O Museum's 'Roads to Rails' exhibit last year.
Remembering our Roots
The 'other' Weekly News Magazine [click to read] presents: "How to Restore the American Dream." If the American Dream is merely about home ownership and material security, we're down for the count. In the late seventies the government sought to make home ownership available to all. In 2007 we got the bill for it.
But if we see the American dream as something more... those desires that drove people to our shores in the first place, we're ready for a renaissance.
The Pilgrims, the Anabaptists and Moravians were drawn to this land by the promise of freedom to worship and live without interference from hostile government interference. Indeed they preferred the risk and hardship it entailed to the relative safety of servitude.
By 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville observed an amazing young nation taking shape and wrote:
"I sought for the greatness of the United States in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, her fertile fields, and boundless forests--and it was not there. I sought for it in her rich mines, her vast world commerce, her public school system, and in her institutions of higher learning--and it was not there. I looked for it in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution--and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great!"
Though many would seek to obfuscate this heritage, a serious study of history shows that our nation perservered and grew, often against impossible odds, as her founders labored and prayed, trusting in Divine Providence.
The Free Market Did NOT Cause the Great Depression
Great Myths of the Great Depression [Click to Read] by Lawrence W. Reed
"President Herbert Hoover is mistakenly presented in standard history texts as a laissez-faire president, but he signed into law so many costly and foolish bills that one of Franklin Roosevelt’s top aides later said that “practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started.”
"Americans voted for Franlin Roosevelt in 1932, expecting him to adhere to the Democratic Party platform, which called for less government spending and regulation." -- Lawrence W. Reed
The really frightening thing about history is how it repeats itself.
The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure [click to read].
Required Reading:
In light of the President's recent assertion that 'America is not a Christian Nation' I would like to offer Alvin Schmidt's book Under the Influence, How Christianity Changed the World. There are many legitimate arguments to be made about how Faith and Government should function together but a look at the principles that our Nation was founded upon will show a clear Judeo-Christian influence.
"If no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life, the Christlike work which the Church of all denominations in America has done during the last 35 years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian." -- Booker T. Washington in 'Up from Slavery' (1901)
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