RealClearMarkets | by Steven Malanga | Nov. 25, 2009

Reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower, an account of the voyage of the Pilgrims and the settling of Plymouth Colony, what strikes me most is not simply the extraordinary suffering of those who made the crossing, or how close to failure the entire venture teetered for years, or even the author’s recounting of the first celebration we’ve since dubbed Thanksgiving.

What leaps out from the pages of the history, probably because it’s so little a part of the common narrative of the Pilgrims, is a crucial decision by the colony’s governor, William Bradford, to change the fundamental organization of Plymouth’s economy, a move which secured the colony’s future. As Philbrick describes it, after three years in America the Pilgrims “stumbled on the power of capitalism” and in the process ensured the colony’s survival. more »

AmericanThinker | J.C. Smith | March 15, 2009

The darkest times in human history have all begun when someone decided “not to let a serious crisis go to waste”. In fact, it is in times of economic crisis that folks are most susceptible to the ideas of tyrants. We look for an answer, any port in a storm that will shield us from the unknown. And in our desire to be safe, we open ourselves up to things that we would never have dreamed of allowing in normal times. more »

American Thinker | Bruce Walker | Dec. 23, 2008

In the Mumbai Massacre terrorists particularly targeted Jews, focusing special attention of the Chabad house. The Holocaust denial in Iran and the proliferation of literary outrages like The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion or monstrous tracts like Mein Kampf, are sad proof that hatred of Jews is not limited to terrorists operating in India. The chic Leftists of Europe unite with terrorists in their reflexive hatred of Israel and unspoken anti-Semitism.

Grimly, not just anti-Semitism found violent expression in the generally placid India. This year alone, more than 100 Christians have been murdered in anti-Christian riots on the subcontinent. The ancient Christian community in Iraq is facing slow extermination. The defamation of Christian faith in elite salons has never been more gleeful than now. more »

Interesting. http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/history-of-religion.html

LifesiteNews.com | Matthew Cullinan Hoffman | September 7, 2007

Reveals Chilling Parallels with the Ideas of Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger

An Israeli doctor has recently published an account of the Nazi use of abortion, euthanasia, and sterilization to eliminate groups they deemed “inferior stock”, especially Jewish and Slavic people.

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Macon.com | BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA | August 8, 2007

MOSCOW –Russian Orthodox priests consecrated a wooden cross Wednesday at a site south of Moscow where firing squads executed thousands of people 70 years ago at the height of Josef Stalin’s political purges.

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Ed. (Jacobse) I haven’t thought the thesis through (or read the book), but it outlines the decline of the Democratic Party from a fresh perspective.

Townhall.com | Rich Lowry | August 2, 2007

From a distance of nearly 50 years, the liberalism of 1960 is hardly recognizable. It was comfortable with the use of American power abroad, unabashedly patriotic and forward-looking. But that was before The Fall.

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Ed. (Banescu) The cancer of communism is alive and well in Orthodox Russia.

Reuters | July 25, 2007

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s youths admire Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — who presided over the deaths of millions of people — and want to kick immigrants out of Russia, according to a poll released on Wednesday.

The poll, carried out by the Yuri Levada Centre, was presented by two U.S. academics who called it “The Putin Generation: the political views of Russia’s youth”.

When asked if Stalin was a wise leader, half of the 1,802 respondents, aged from 16 to 19, agreed he was.

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The London Telegraph | A N Wilson | July 16, 2007

One Nobel prizewinner who is thoroughly deserving of his laurel crown is Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Last week I was writing about Heinrich Böll, and it was he who welcomed Solzhenitsyn to the West after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974. It was one of those moments of televised news one never forgets.

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Townhall.com | George Will | July 8, 2007

WASHINGTON — Some mornings during the autumn of 1933, when the unemployment rate was 22 percent, the president, before getting into his wheelchair, sat in bed, surrounded by economic advisers, setting the price of gold. One morning he said he might raise it 21 cents: “It’s a lucky number because it’s three times seven.” His treasury secretary wrote that if anybody knew how gold was priced “they would be frightened.”

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Ed. More from Salvo.

Salvo | Greg Koukl | July, 2007

Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade

Are black people human beings? Believe it or not, there was a time when the Supreme Court’s answer to this question was no, not if they were slaves.

It was 1856. Dred Scott, a black slave, had been taken north of the Mason-Dixon line into Illinois and Wisconsin, where slavery was prohibited by the Missouri Compromise. Scott sued for his freedom and lost. The Supreme Court ruled that the Compromise was unconstitutional. Congress, they said, had no authority to limit slavery in that way.

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Townhall.com | Paul Greenberg | June 22, 2007

Kurt Waldheim is dead. It says so in the New York Times, and doubtless in all the other official records-from his death certificate to his extensive resume. His papers were always in order, his career well documented: law degree, University of Vienna; a string of diplomatic posts culminating in his appointment as Austria’s foreign minister; secretary-general of the United Nations; president of Austria.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal | John Fund | June 11, 2007

Reagan’s prophetic Berlin speech, 20 years later.

Rip Van Winkle has nothing on Jan Grzebski, a Polish railway worker who just emerged from a coma that began 19 years ago–just prior to the collapse of communism in his country. His take on how the world around him has changed beyond recognition comes at an appropriate time. It was 20 years ago tomorrow that Ronald Reagan electrified millions behind the Iron Curtain by standing in front of the Berlin Wall demanding: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

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New York Times (free registration required) Sergei Kivrin March 21, 2007

At the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, Hierodeacon Roman, a bell ringer, may be able ring the tower’s original bells by next year.

MOSCOW, March 20 — The bells of Lowell House at Harvard — so much a part of the university’s tradition that they have their own society of bell ringers — will soon return to the Russian monastery from which they were sold more than 70 years ago.

The Russian Orthodox Church and the university announced a final agreement on Tuesday to move the bells next year to Danilov Monastery, the residence of the Russian patriarch, after a replacement set for Harvard is completed.

The bells have become a symbol for the resurgence of the Orthodox Church and its drive, much like Russia’s, to reclaim its former glory.

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