Tag Archive for ‘Revolution’
Defending “terrorists”: What would the Founders do?
In the midst of all the “Tea Party” chatter these days, it is a tad surprising that the anniversary of another significant Boston event went largely unnoticed last week. It was, after all, 240 years ago on March 5, 1770, that the Boston Massacre took place.
And what was the “Boston Massacre,” class?
A mob [...]
“Tea Bagging” through History
A news report that a “Tea Party” convention planned for February shows signs of unraveling reminds me of another group of “tea baggers” from American History. They had also unraveled in late January. But the year was 1778. It began as a populist uprising against –surprise, surprise—the bankers and lawyers who were making the rules back then.
Don’t Know Much About Emerson
It’s not often that a commencement speech to a class of six makes waves. But TODAY IN HISTORY, on July 15, 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson managed that feat.
In what is known as the “Divinity School Address” a commencement speech made to the Harvard Divinity School’s class of six, Emerson questioned Jesus’ divinity, discounted biblical accounts [...]
A Very Dignified Slave Owner
Writing on the op-ed pages of the New York Times on July 7, 2009, David Brooks clearly touched a nerve. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/opinion/07brooks.html
His column, entitled “In Search of Dignity,” topped the Times list of most emailed articles and drew hundreds on online comments, many of them laudatory. Brooks used the column to celebrate the good manners, civility [...]
Jefferson, Slavery and Nazis in Paris
Last evening, I had a thrilling experience. In a small, darkened room with the feel of a chapel inside the magnificent New York Public Library, I saw Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of his original draft of the Declaration of Independence. For me this was a “Grail Moment.” Setting aside all of Jefferson’s contradictions and human [...]
A Revolting Reading List
Revere and his horse. Jefferson and his quill, Franklin and his kite. Washington and those false teeth. Okay. Most of us now know there was more to the American Revolution than these stock images. And the bestseller lists have been well-stocked over the past few years with books that plumb the “great men” of the [...]
Patriots’ Day: It’s Not About the Marathon
“Listen my children, and you shall hear/of the midnight ride of . . . Joseph Warren?”
Okay. Okay. It doesn’t scan like Longfellow’s original. But that’s the problem. In making sure we “hear” about “Revere,” Longfellow’s famous poem ignored the man whose name should be as familiar as those of John Adams or John Hancock. A [...]
