Tag Archive for ‘Revolution’
Don’t Know Much About® “Common Sense”
That saying about the pen being mightier than the sword? As the American Revolution haltingly began, an anonymous writer helped prove it true. “Common Sense” appeared on January 10, 1776 and changed the course of history.
Don’t Know Much About® Constitution Day
On September 17, 1787, 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention meeting in Philadelphia, voted to adopt the United States Constitution. This is Constitution Day.
America’s Founding Fathers: A List of Fascinating Facts
The “Founding Fathers” were real men, not those faces chiseled in stone on Mount Rushmore. Here are some little known but fascinating facts you may not know about some of the men who were present at the birth of the nation –including some whose names you may not know!
Don’t Know Much About® Thomas Jefferson
Among America’s iconic Founding Fathers, is there a more complicated and contradictory figure than Thomas Jefferson? Scientist, humanist, Enlightenment thinker, writer, architect, politician. He was all these things. The confusion over this genius comes from one basic question: How could the man who wrote, “All Men are Created Equal” and “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit [...]
“Sicko Ants on a Crucifix”
Censorship is riding high. It is once again as American as apple pie, assassinations and anti-immigrant vitriol.
Pleading the Fifth (Civics Primer Part 4)
My Civics Primer has been focusing on the Bill of Rights and continues with two more Amendments that deal with the rights of the accused –including perhaps the most famous of all, the Fifth Amendment.
After the Veep, who comes next? (Civics Primer Part 3)
Someone asked me recently what Americans need to know about our history and government. The answer is easy. There’s a test for that. It’s called the Naturalization Test, given by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and applicants for citizenship must pass it. Could most American-born citizens pass it? In my experience testing audiences with [...]
Don’t Know Much About the First Amendment: A Civics Primer
Who is the Vice President? How many Senators are there? How many Supreme Court Justices? A new online survey suggests many Americans can’t answer those Civics 101 questions. That is a point underscored in a New York Times Week in Review article yesterday that points out how many Americans don’t know what the First Amendment [...]
A Tradition of Tolerance? Not really.
We’ve been hearing a lot about America’s tradition of religious freedom and tolerance lately. But for centuries, religion has been used as a weapon to discriminate and cudgel “non- believers” and “heathens,” many of whom came to America in search of religious freedom they never found. The battle over faith in the public square started long before the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
