Hal Shurtleff

Director and Co-Founder of Camp Constitution.

Happy Birthday U.S. Constitution

Published September 16, 2026 | By Hal Shurtleff

September 17 marks the 239 anniversary of the U.S. Constitution. After its approval by the delegates of the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution was sent to the 13 states for ratification; 3/4ths of the states were needed for ratification.   Delaware was the first state to ratify it on December 7, 1787, with all its 30 delegates at its state ratifying convention approving it, and on June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution making it the law of the land.

 

 Background to the Convention:

The United States became an independent nation on July 4, 1776.    The Continental Congress approved of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union-our nation’s first constitution.  It was ratified by the states in March of 1781.   The Articles of Confederation had many weaknesses which included:

It had no means to enforce its laws

It was authorized to conduct foreign policy including making treaties conduct war, receive, and send ambassadors but it had no way of enforcing any of it actions

States could impose its own tariffs.

It did not have a steady stream of revenue and could not pay down its debts or pay its bills.

Congress rarely had a quorum, and any changes in the Articles needed all states to concur.

A number of people realized that the Articles was defective.  An early attempt to address the issue took place at the Annapolis Convention held in September 1786.  Delegates from five states attended which wasn’t enough for a quorum.  However, the delegates proposed that a full convention be held.  Congress asked the states to send delegates to a convention in Philadelphia.  Twelve states agreed to send delegates to Philadelphian.   On May 25, the Constitutional Convention began.

The delegates were made up of the most qualified America had to offer.   All together there were 55 delegates that participated in the convention.  They included George Washington, the “Indispensable Man” who served as of the president of the convention, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, who became known as the “Father of the Constitution,” Roger Sherman, Edmund Randolph, and George Mason.

There was much debate and compromise between states with large populations vs. states with small populations including how the chief executive was to be chosen, how the senate would be chosen, and counting slaves in the census.  Today, there are many that believe that the delegates considered blacks to be less that human, hence counting five blacks as three men.  States with large slave populations wanted to count slaves as full people which would have given slave states more members in the House of Representatives.  Free states and states with small slave populations objected which resulted in the 3/5ths compromise which was repealed when the 14th Amendment was passed.

There were times when the convention almost dissolved, but by mid-September the debates were over and on September 17th, 39 delegates signed the constitution.  The Constitution was sent to the 13 states for ratification in which 3/4ths of the states were needed for ratification.   Delaware was the first state to ratify it on December 7, 1787, with all its 30 delegates at its state ratifying convention approving it.  and on June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution making it the law of the land.

Comments on the U.S. Constitution:

“The Adoption of the Constitution will demonstrate as visibly the finger of Providence as any possible event in the course of human affairs can ever designate it.”  George Washington

“I regard it [the Constitution] as the work of the purest patriots and wisest statemen that ever existed, aided by the smiles oof a benignant Providence…It almost appears as a Divine interposition in our behalf.”  Daniel Webster

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  John Adams

Recommended reading:  Miracle at Philadelphia:  The Story of the Constitutional Convention by Catherine Drinker Bowen.

A Worthy Company by M. E. Bradford

The Weekly Sam: What’s Wrong With Government Education? by Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Published September 12, 2026 | By Hal Shurtleff

 

The enormous failure of our government school system was nicely
summed up by a Boston high school teacher in a recent issue of Education
Week (12/9/98). He said:

“I have about 30 kids in my U.S. history class. They come from nine
different countries; most of them can’t read. Even if they can read the text,
they don’t know what it means. How am I supposed to teach U.S. history to
kids who can’t read? I could come in here every day for 20 years and still
not figure out how to do it.”

Obviously, this particular teacher had no idea how these kids got into
high school without knowing how to read. He had no idea what goes on in
primary school that prevents these children from learning to read, and he
had no idea what to do with older students who are functionally illiterate.
Clearly, the teacher himself is part of the problem. His ignorance of how the
system functions prevents him from helping his students get through it in
one piece. In other words, the compartmentalization of teachers explains
why so many of them have no idea of how the total system works and why
the system can lurch from crisis to crisis without any effective change taking
place.

The real blame for the system’s dysfunction, however, must lie with the
professors of education, the state departments of education, and the
administrators who have all conspired to create the functional illiteracy that
plagues the public schools of America — once considered the most literate
and advanced nation on earth. Deliberately induced illiteracy among
students is a vital part of the plan to dumb down Americans so that they will
be unable to resist the imposition of social and political control by an
arrogant universitarian elite determined to create a new world order based
on humanist-socialist values.

This “education” plan is part of the utopian socialist agenda set down
by the progressives at the turn of the century. The progressives were
members of the Protestant academic elite who no longer believed in the
religion of their fathers. They put their new faith in science, evolution, and
psychology. Science explained the material world (matter in motion),
evolution explained the origin of life (organisms crawling out of the
primordial ooze), and psychology explained human nature and provided
the elite with the scientific means of controlling human behavior.

These men were also socialists. Why? Because they had to deal with
the problem of evil. The Bible tells us that evil is the result of man’s innate
depravity, his innate sinful nature. But since the progressives did not
believe in the Bible, they decided that evil was caused by ignorance,
poverty, and social injustice. And what was the cause of social injustice?
Why, it was this horrible capitalist system with all of its inequities. Socialism,
it was believed, would remove these inequities and thereby solve the
problem of evil. By the way, the progressives did not get their model of
socialism from Karl Marx. They got it from an American by the name of
Edward Bellamy whose book, Looking Backward, published in 1888,
projected the fantasy of a socialist America in the year 2000.
And so, the progressives, dedicated to their utopian ideal, decided to
do all in their power to change America from an individualistic, capitalist,
and religious society into a socialist, collectivist, humanist or atheist society.

How were they to accomplish that? Through the education system. They
would change the curriculum and teaching methods in the public schools so
that American children would emerge as young socialists willing to change
our way of life into a socialist one.
The socialists realized that the transformation might take as much as a
hundred years to complete. In fact, John Dewey wrote in 1898: “Change
must come gradua.lly. To force it unduly would compromise its final success
by favoring a violent reaction .” Dewey then outlined the long-range strategy
which the progressives were to adopt:

What is needed in the first place is that there should be a full and frank statement
of conviction with regard to the matter from physiologists and psychologists and from
those school administrators who are conscious of the evils of the present regime.
Educators should also frankly face the fact that the New Education, as it exists today, is
a compromise and a transition: it employs new methods but its controlling ideals are
virtually of the Old Education. Wherever movements looking to a solution of the
problem are intelligently undertaken, they should receive encouragement, moral and
financial, from the intellectual leaders of the community.

There are already in existence a considerable number of educational “experiment stations,” which
represent the outposts of educational progress. If these schools can be adequately
supported for a number of years they will perform a great vicarious service. After such
schools have worked out carefully and definitely the subject-matter of the new
curriculum,–finding the right place for language-studies and placing them in their right
perspective,–the problem of the more general educational reform will be immensely
simplified.

One hundred years later we can see how successful the Dewey plan
has been in transforming our educational system into one that serves the
needs of the atheist socialist state. Dewey was aided and abetted by a
cadre of reformers that included such luminaries as Edward L. Thorndike,
James McKeen Cattell, Elwood P. Cubberly, George D. Strayer, Charles
Judd, James R. Angell and a host of others. Thorndike, Cattell, and Strayer
ra~ an educational mafia out of Teachers College (Columbia), Cubberly
reigned at Stanford, and Angell became president at Yale.
Change in the curriculum of public education has happened so
gradually that most parents haven’t the faintest idea what is happening to
their children, four million of whom are being drugged daily with Ritalin so
that they can sit in their classroom seats and be socialized without
resistance.

What is truly amazing is the coherence and continuity of the
progressive agenda which is as much alive today at it was when Dewey and
company were pontificating. For example, The Whole Language Catalog, a
sort of bible of the whole-language movement published in 1991, has 15
entries for John Dewey in its index. After citing his debt to Dewey, Kenneth
Goodman, the leading guru of whole-language philosophy, writes:
Whole language picks up where the progressives left off . … [It] takes the
philosophy and positive, child-centered view of the progressive educators and adds
the knowledge of language, of learning, of child development, and of teaching, and
builds a strong scientific base under them . It is this combination of science and
humanistic educational and social philosophy that forms the foundation for whole
language curriculum . … We use the psychological concepts of Piaget and Vygotsky to
underscore Dewey’s concept of learning as transaction: pupils making sense of their
world and being changed themselves in the transactions. (p. 281)

In the early days, the progressives were mainly supported by the major
philanthropic foundations. Today the reforms are being underwritten by
federal and state governments. Three recent federal programs are funding
the massive restructuring of American education in accordance with the
progressives’ plans: Goals 2000 (enacted 3/31/94), School-to-Work
Opportunities Act (enacted 5/4/94), and the Improving America’s Schools
Act, a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965 (enacted 10/20/94). Thus, the Congress of the United States has
become an accomplice in the progressive plan to restructure American
education in the socialist mold.

Apart from needing the funds to carry out their plan, the progressives
also realized that coherence and continuity of their agenda over a hundred
years was vitally necessary if the plan was to be successful. Thus, in 1901
they created the National Society for the Study of Education, wherein the
progressive leaders would be able to formulate their programs of reform,
debate their effectiveness, and pass on the baton to their loyal disciples. By
studying their yearbooks, the first of which was published in 1902, one can
follow the inexorable progress of the socialist takeover of American
education.

All of this was accomplished by tenured professors of education and
behavioral psychologists, working within a maze of well funded professional
organizations, publishing journals, writing textbooks, holding hundreds of
conferences, seminars, and conventions each year. None of this has been
visible to the average parent who puts a child in a public school. Parents
assume that their schools are run by local school boards, superintendents,
principals, and teachers. What they don’t see is the invisible hand behind
this constant pressure for reform that keeps recreating the curriculum .

The average teacher may feel that there is some kind of invisible hand
at work, but teachers would rather blame failure on cultural trends,
excessive television viewing, dysfunctional parents, and such student
disabilities as attention deficit disorder and dyslexia.
Obviously, this is a system of education that cannot be supported by
any Christian. Local control no longer exists. It was inevitable that a
government education system would become a federal system controlled
by those who have been leading us toward totalitarian socialism. Do I
exaggerate? To be convinced that the end goal is a totalitarian system, all
one has to do is read the Student Data Handbook for Early Childhood,
Elementary, and Secondary Education (NCES 94-303). This is the official
guidebook for the computerized data-gathering system dreamed up by our
totalitarian bureaucrats.

The data will include massive information on
health, family, religion, attitudes, psychological assessments, etc. For
example, the attitudinal test is described as: “An assessment to measure
the mental and emotional set or patterns of likes and dislikes or opinions
held by a student or a group of students. This is often used in relation to
considerations such as controversial issues or personal adjustments.”
All of this sensitive, personal data will be housed in a central computer
in Washington making it easy for “educators” to control just about everyone.
But the question is simply this: does the government of a free people have
the right to collect this kind of information on all of its citizens for its own
political or social purposes? Should the government of a free people record
the attitudes and opinions of its citizens so that it can engineer thei r
personal adjustment?

The time has come for Christians to realize what has become of the
“land of the free and the home of the brave.” If Christians want to restore
the full measure of our freedoms, they will have to do what they are
reluctant to do: remove their children en masse from the public schools.
What is needed now is not accommodation to the plans of the American
Pharoah but a full-fledged exodus of Christian children. That’s the easiest
and most peaceful way to put an end to the socialist agenda and return
America to its basic constitutional principles. Will Christians have the
courage to do what must be done? That test will be upon us sooner than
anyone anticipated.

(The above was written in 1999 and it part of the Sam Blumenfeld Archives:

http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/main.htm

American Minute with Bill Federer LABOR DAY: Railroad Strikes, Grover Cleveland, Eugene Debs, Socialist Party of America, Outsourcing

Published September 7, 2026 | By Hal Shurtleff
 

Labor Day. The history is a little more interesting than just picnics and hot dogs.

To appreciate it, some background is necessary.

At the time the United States was founded, most people were self-employed, working as either farmers or in trades, such as:

  • baker,
  • butcher,
  • carpenter,
  • cabinetmaker,
  • upholsterer,
  • tailor,
  • milliner (clothes merchant),
  • cobbler (shoe maker),
  • chandler (candle maker),
  • cooper (barrel maker),
  • wheelwright (wheel craftsman).
  • blacksmith,
  • gunsmith,
  • printer, and
  • apothecary … continue reading …

Download as PDF …
Then, the Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the late 18th century.

Where Ireland burned peat from bogs, Britain burned coal from mines.

The problem was that mines kept filling up with water.

Scottish inventor James Watt came up with an invention to pump water out of mines — a steam pump.

Steam was soon harnessed in the early 19th century to not just power pumps, but railroad steam engines, steam boats, and textile manufacturing machines.

This led to the creation of factories which could mass produce items inexpensively.

Workers moved from farms to factories. The products they manufactured were imported into America.

 

During the colonial era, Britain prevented factories from being built in America.

After the Revolution, Samuel Slater built the first factory in America in 1790, a cotton spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

The first union in America was a shoe makers union in Philadelphia in 1794.

President Washington signed a bill putting a tariff tax on European-manufactured products making them more expensive in order to encourage people to purchase American-manufactured products.

Tariffs were the main source of income for the Federal government, as there was no income taxtill Lincoln’s temporary one during the Civil War.

Most of America’s factories were located in Northern states.

Tariff taxes that helped the Northern states hurt the Southern states, as the South was agricultural with few factories.

 

At one point, nearly 90 percent of the Federal budget came from tariff taxes collected at Southern ports.

This fueled animosity between the North and South prior to the Civil War.

After the Civil War, more tariff taxes were passed allowing Northern factories to grow enormous.

Factories produced items like clothes, glass, dishes, and farm tools for a fraction of the previous costs.

Women were freed up from tedious daily tasks, such as hand-weaving thread, hand-sewing cloth, and hand-washing clothes.

Instead of carrying water from a well, pumps and pipes brought water directly into homes.

New ways of making stronger iron and steel helped build bridges, skyscrapers, steamboats, and mining machinery.

Railroads began taking people safely and inexpensively across the entire nation, opening up unprecedented mobility and opportunity.

Inventions and advances in manufacturing made more goods available at cheaper prices.

Americans experienced the fastest rise in the standard of living of any people in world history.

Factories and railroads hired workers from the millions of immigrants, who, while working, learned the language and trade skills.

President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in 1886 to welcome immigrants, who were mostly English, Irish, Scandinavian, Italians, Greeks, Poles, Russian, Jews, and Germans.

Immigrants were anxious to the learn English language and assimilate, swearing allegiance to their new country.

Most immigrants were hard workers, as noted by German sociologist Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,1904-1905.

It was a foundational textbook in economic sociology, listed as the 4th most important sociological book of the 20th century by the International Sociological Association.

Weber documented how modern capitalism evolved out of the Protestant Calvinism in Northern Europe, which emphasized self-discipline, hard work, frugality, thrift, and avoidance of all forms of indulgence for religious reasons.

Weber described Calvinists, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, traditional Lutherans, pietist Lutherans, and Moravians from Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf’s Herrnhut community.

Religious adherents established private secular enterprises, engaged in trade, and accumulated wealth to support charitable missionary activity.

A literary genre that developed at this time were “rags-to-riches” stories, highlighting individuals who were honest, worked hard, and gained strength through adversity to achieve success.

In 1867, Horatio Alger began publishing a best-selling novels, such as:

  • “Ragged Dick”;
  • “Strong and Steady, Or, Paddle Your Own Canoe”; and
  • “Shifting for Himself: Or Gilbert Greyson’s Fortune.”

These were stories were about immigrants, impoverished orphans, or homeless street boys, who sold newspapers, polished shoes or sold apples, demonstrating the Protestant work ethic, and rose from humble beginnings to achieving success.

In 1894, Orison Swett Marden wrote “Pushing to the Front”, and in 1897, he founded SUCCESS magazine, publishing inspirational stories of success in life through common-sense principles and well-rounded virtues.

Immigrants were not a financial burden on the government, as there were no government welfare programs.

Extended family, churches, and generous individuals who gave to charity were the welfare net.

Some German immigrants brought with them Karl Marx’s ideas of “critical theory,” which divided citizens into groups, pit them against each other in a “class-struggle,” to forcibly redistribute wealth.

These ideas only found limited acceptance in America, as wealth could be achieved in one lifetime if one was innovative and worked hard. This era was referred to as The Gilded Age.

The situation was different in Europe, where wealthy elites owned most of the property, passing it from generation to generation for centuries, leaving little for commoners.

Socialist ideas created labor tensions, with some workers even embracing the anarchist goal of tearing down the capitalist system, naively hoping a utopian socialist economy would take its place.

Factory working conditions were often unsafe, as noted in Charles Dicken’s Hard Times, 1854, and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, 1905.

Though immigrants were not forced to work in factories, many joined in organizing unions push for better working conditions, an 8-hour work day, and income taxes on the rich.

Union organizing flyers were printed in English and German languages.

Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the mechanical reaper, built a factory in Chicago.

A Presbyterian, McCormick felt his reaper would help to fulfill a religious mission to feed the world.

In 1869, McCormick donated $10,000 to Dwight L. Moody to build the Chicago Y.M.C.A.

Beginning in 1882, there was an economic downturn in America.

German immigrants holding socialist ideas organized a protest on May 4, 1886, near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant in Chicago.

The “peaceful” protest turned into the Haymarket Riot. A protestor threw a dynamite bomb at the police.

The blast, and the violence that followed, killed seven police officers, four civilians, and wounded dozens more.

To commemorate the incident, socialist workers made May 1st “International Workers Day.”

Then came a railroad strike.

George Pullman founded the Pullman Railroad Sleeping Car Company.

Pullman saw that workers needed a place to live, so he built them houses in a safe little village around the factory, with rent deducted from paychecks.

To save them the trouble of traveling to the markets, he located stores on site.

Workers were paid company “scrip,” similar to food stamps, which were redeemable at the company-owned grocery stores.

It was considered a utopian workers’ paradise community, in the vein of Sir Thomas More’s Island of Utopia, published in 1516; and Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, published in 1626.

The Pullman community worked for over a decade until there was a nationwide economic depression in 1893, resulting in orders for railroad sleeping cars dropping off.

To keep the company afloat, George Pullman had to make cuts in wages and lay off hundreds of employees, though, for the time being, rents and groceries stayed the same price.

Employees were distraught, as they had grown dependent on the company.

Some employees walked off their jobs,demanding higher pay and lower rents, being unaware that the reason for the cuts was that the company needed to stay in business during the economic crash.

A high school drop out named Eugene Debs got a job cleaning grease from freight engines.

He was promoted to locomotive fireman and joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman.

He briefly served as a Terre Haute city clerk and one-term Indiana state representative.

When the 1893 economic downturn occurred, Debs organized a railroad workers strike in 1894.

Union workers across the nation joined in boycotting trains carrying Pullman cars.

Then rioters pillaged and burned railroad cars, destroying an estimated $80 million worth of property in 27 states.

A New York Times editorial, July 9, 1894, called Debs “a lawbreaker at large, an enemy of the human race.”

“Debs’ Rebellion” became a national issue because it interrupted delivery of mail.

 

President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 U.S. Army troops to break up the strike.

More violence erupted, and two were killed.

After the riots, Americans blamed the Democrat Administration.

Democrat advisor Francis Lynde Stetson warned Cleveland regarding the upcoming mid-term elections of 1894:

“We are on the eve of very dark night, unless a return of commercial prosperity relieves popular discontent with what they believe is Democratic incompetence to make laws, and consequently with Democratic Administrations anywhere and everywhere.”

Cleveland thought it might improve his Party’s election chances if workers were given a day off, so support grew for a national “LABOR DAY.”

Workers wanted Labor Day to be on May 1st to coincide with the “International Workers Day” and the anniversary of the bloody Chicago’s Haymarket Riot.

Instead, Grover Cleveland chose the FIRST MONDAY in SEPTEMBER to celebrate LABOR DAY.

What happened to May 1st?

Patriotic Americans celebrated May 1st as”Loyalty Day,” officially recognized by Congress, April 27, 1955, and proclaimed an annual holiday by President Eisenhower with Public Law 85-529.

What happened in the 1894 elections?

It did not help the Democrat Party as it had the biggest mid-term loss in decades.

What happened to Eugene Debs?

He was arrested, because the railroad strike obstructed delivery of U.S. mail, and he was put in prison for six months.

In prison, Debs “ravenously” read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.

Socialist progressives demanded the redistribution of wealth, resulting in the passage of:

  • corporate income tax, 1894;
  • personal income tax, 1914; and
  • inheritance estate tax, 1916.

Debs and socialist rioters were defended by the attorney Clarence Darrow.

Darrow later defended evolution in the Scope’s Monkey Trial.

After six months in prison, Eugene Debs was released.

He then founded:

  • the Social Democracy of America, 1897;
  • the Social Democratic Party of America,1898; and
  • the Socialist Party of America, 1901.

Debs ran five time for U.S. President as a socialist, 1900 till 1920. He won zero electoral votes, so he wanted to get rid of America’s electoral process.

When World War One started, Debs urged resistance to the draft.

One draft-dodger was Roger Baldwin, who later founded the A.C.L.U. to help defend those who were accused of being socialist agitators.

Roger Baldwin wrote:

“I am for socialism … I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”

 

Eugene Deb’s reputation spread around the world to Russia, where he influenced socialist leader Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin organized the Bolshevik Revolution overthrowing Tsar Nicholas II and killing an estimated 12 million.

Lenin cited Debs in “An Open Letter to Boris Souvarine,” published January 27, 1918, in La Vente, No. 48:

“Look at America—apart from everything else a neutral country. Haven’t we the beginnings of a split there, too: Eugene Debs, the ‘American Rebel’, declares in the socialist press that he recognizes only one type of war, civil war for the victory of socialism, and that he would sooner be shot than vote a single cent for American war expenditure ”

(Eugene Deb’s Appeal to Reason, “When I Shall Fight,” No. 1032, September 11, 1915).

Lenin wrote “On the Appeal of the German Independents,” February 1919, (Lenin MiscellanyXXIV, 1933; Lenin Collected Works, 1971, Moscow.)

“I quoted the statement of the ‘American Rebel,’ Eugene Debs, to the effect that he would rather be shot than agree to vote for imperialist war loans, and that he would agree to fight only in a war of the workers against the capitalists.”

Debs gave an anti-government speech in Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918, resulting in his arrest.

He was charged with ten counts of sedition and sentenced to ten years in prison.

A May Day parade was organized in Cleveland, Ohio, to support Debs, led by union members, socialists, and anarchists.

Their peaceful parade broke out into Antifa-style violence — the May Day Riots of 1919.

Debs’ attorney asked for a Presidential pardon, but Woodrow Wilson wrote “denied” across the paperwork, stating that during World War I:

“… while the flower of American youth was pouring out its blood to vindicate the cause of civilization, this man, Debs, stood behind the lines sniping, attacking, and denouncing them …

This man was a traitor to his country and he will never be pardoned during my administration.”

The next President, Warren G. Harding, also did not pardon Debs, and the White House released the statement:

“There is no question of his guilt … He is … a dangerous man calculated to mislead the unthinking and affording excuse for those with criminal intent.”

Theodore Roosevelt had criticized Debs for fomenting “bloodshed, anarchy, and riot,” calling him one of the nation’s most “undesirable citizens.”

In 1979, Bernie Sanders produced a documentary praising Eugene Debs. He hung a portrait of Debs in the City Hall of Burlington, Vermont, and dedicated a plaque to him in his Congressional office.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin decided to take his revolution global, forming the Communist International in 1919.

Members of Debs’ Socialist Party of Americafollowed suit and formed the Communist Party USA on September 1, 1919.

The Communist Party USA ran candidates for U.S. President every year from 1924 till 1940.

That is when they decided to support Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt for his New Deal welfare programs during the Great Depression and for his treaty with the Soviet leader Josef Stalin during World War Two.

 

Reagan commented on communist infiltration of the Democrat Party:

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.”

Party infiltration was listed as one of the communist goals for America, read into the Congressional Record by Representative Albert S. Herlong, January 10, 1963:

“Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.”

Former Democrat U.S. Senator Zell Miller stated in an interview for his book Deficit of Decency, 2005:

“Unfortunately, the national Democratic Party has lost its way … and they’ve been taken over by the very liberal, left-wing leaning special interest groups that you have in Washington.”

In Chicago, a statue was erected to honor the police officers killed in the 1886 Haymarket Riot.

That statue was blown up on October 6, 1969, by the anarchist “Weatherman Underground”during their Days of Rage.

Chicago rebuilt the Haymarket statue, only see it blown up again by the Weatherman Underground, October 6, 1970.

Weatherman Underground member Bill Ayerslater helped launch the political career of a young Illinois State Senator Barack Obama.

Bill Ayers stated:

“I am a radical, leftist, small ‘c’ communist … Maybe I’m the last communist who is willing to admit it … The ethics of communism still appeal to me. I don’t like Lenin as much as the early Marx.”

Weatherman Underground member Eric Mannhelped train Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matters.

Cullors stated in 2015:

“Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers … We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.”

In America, laborers work hard for wages with which they can buy things, trucks, houses, cars, boats, guns, and other personal possessions.

They also can give away some of their possessions to those in need in charity.

In socialist countries, laborers work hard, but own no possessions.

People with no possessions have nothing with which to be charitable.

Marx and Engles wrote in the Communist Manifesto, 1848:

“The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

In 1971, John Lennon and his second wife, Yoko Ono, co-wrote the song “Imagine,” with socialist-themed lyrics:

“Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try …

Imagine there’s no countries …

And no religion, too

Imagine no possessions …”

Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum stated that by 2030:

“You will own nothing but be happy.”

Marx described socialism as a transition phasefrom capitalism to communism, in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, Part IV:

“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation.”

Lenin stated:

“The goal of socialism is communism.”

Author Ayn Rand wrote:

“There is no difference between communismand socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force; socialism – by vote.

It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

Socialists believe that when governments finally succeed in taking away all the private possessions from everyone in the entire world, then the world will magically become a wonderful utopia called communism.

The term “communism” comes from the Latin word “communis, meaning everything held in common.

Communist goals are not just to end private property, but to end privacy. People will not even have control over their own children.

The government will control everything, on both the production side and the consumption side.

“Capitalism” is where individuals have their own money, or capital, and can invest it in a business to provide goods or services – the production side.

Individuals can also earn money with which they can buy things – the consumption side.

The term “socialism” was coined by French political philosopher Henry de Saint-Simon,1760–1825, to mean the opposite of the “individual.”

Use of the term socialism was popularized by mid-to-late 1800s European theorists, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Leon Trotsky,and Antonio Gramsci.

In contrast to the socialism is Judeo-Christian Western Civilization, which promotes the concept of the individual — that each person has worth and an identity apart from belonging to any group, simply by virtue of being made in the image of God, who is not a respecter of persons.

 

John F. Kennedy stated in his Inaugural Address, 1961:

 

“The Rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

 

Harry S. Truman stated in his Inaugural Address, 1949:

 

“We believe that all men are created equal, because they are created in the image of God.”

Socialist Antonio Gramsci explained that the Judeo-Christian idea of “individual” must be replaced by “group” identity, as he wrote in “Audacia e Fede,” printed in the Avanti!newspaper, May 1916:

“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity.”

James W. Wardner summarized Gramsci’s views in Unholy Alliances, 1996:

“In the new order, socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”
The most opportune time to transition from “individual” to “group” is in crises.

Marx and Friedrich Engels explained (Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 10, page 318):

“Conspirators by no means confine themselves to organizing the revolutionary proletariat – working class. Their business consists in … spurring it in to artificial crises …

For them the only condition required for the revolution is a sufficient organization of their own conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution.”

It should be acknowledged that Unions did help to bring about:

  • an end of child labor
  • an 8-hour work day,
  • a 40-hour work week,
  • minimum wages,
  • safer working conditions, and
  • more benefits for workers.

These benefits, as good as they are, came with a cost.

Companies began to look for ways to cut expenses and limit the power of unions.
Henry Ford’s Motor Company was one of the first companies required to implement union benefits.

A story circulated that Henry Ford wanted to break union control by recruiting Muslims to work in his factories.

Ford was said to have met a Yemeni sailor at port.

Witnessing his hard work, Ford told him if he showed up at his auto factory he would give him a job that paid five dollars a day.

The sailor spread the word, leading to chain migration from Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries to Detroit.

ArabAmerica.com reported, September 5, 2020:

“The origin story of how the Yemeni community in Michigan is an interesting one.

Way back in the early 1900s, Henry Ford started recruiting Yemeni workers to work at Ford’s factories.

After a few years, Ford sent for more workers and the Yemeni American community began to grow.

People who gained citizenship during their time working for Ford brought family over and started lives in Michigan while remaining close to their family back in Yemen.”

Henry Ford may have thus initiated the mass immigration of Middle Easterners to Dearborn and Hamtramck in order to counter unions.

Unions were anti-immigrant, as cheaper immigrant labor undercut union wages.

Another unanticipated consequence of the cost of workers’ benefits was automation and out-sourcing as ways companies could stay competitive in the global marketplace.

After World War Two, America helped rebuildGermany and Japan with new factories.

These overseas factories, with their cheaper labor costs and newer machinery, produced items less expensively and took a larger part of the global market.

They hired lobbyists to push for U.S. politicians to lower tariffs so they could bring their less expensive products in, gaining a competitive advantage over American factories.

Higher costs of doing business in the U.S. included:

  • Higher wages;
  • Increased taxes;
  • Expensive lawsuits;
  • Burdensome regulations;
  • Environmental restrictions;
  • Crony capitalism, globalist capitalism, vulture capitalism, and big tech monopolies, where career politicians provide subsidies, contracts, and relax regulations for companies supporting their political agendas and reelection campaigns; but deny those benefits and even weaponizing government against companies not supporting them.

As American-made products became more expensive in comparison to foreign-made products, consumers bought fewer of them, resulting in American factories needing fewer workers.

“Squeeze the sponge and the water goes out” – as manufacturing costs in America rose, manufacturers moved with their jobs to other countries.

Many companies were sadly put in the position of going out of country or going out of business.

To personalize this, if you needed gas for your car, and the gas station on your side of the street sold it at $4.50 a gallon, but the station on the other side of the street sold it for just $1.99 a gallon, would you cross the street?

Just as water seeks its own level, individuals and businesses are motivated to save money.

President Donald J. Trump’s tariffs are an attempt to bring factories and jobs back to America, making it more profitable for factories to be located here than there.

 

Another by-product of companies moving overseas was their loss of patriotism, creating “globalists.”

Globalists are international big businesseswhose patriotism is to their profits.

Globalists are happy to work with socialist and communist governments as a means secure monopolies and guarantee profits.

Capitalism is effectively split in two:

“individual” capitalism being patriotic,supporting the country that gives equal opportunities for advancement;

and

“globalist” capitalism which squelches competition by supporting one world government socialist politicians who return the favor with profitable government contracts, exception of regulations, and insider trade deals.

 

Politicians receiving money from globalists are pressured to enact regulations which put smaller competitors out of business.

As unions grew, another situation developed. Union leadership often held values different than rank-and-file workers.

Many workers supported the Second Amendment, traditional marriage, biological male and female definitions of sex, and protection of the unborn, yet union leadership often funneled union dues to support candidates who voted for opposing views.

Ironically, socialist strategy includes raising unemployment rates so unemployed workerswill sign up for welfare benefits.

Once they become dependent on welfare benefits, they are inclined to vote for politicians who promise to continue them.

More unemployment means more people on welfare, means an increased Democrat voter base.

If welfare entitlements are threatened, recipients are primed to be organized into revolutionaries.

Socialist thinker Friedrich Engels wrote in 1844 (London: W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 1976; Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844):

“Every fresh slump must ruin more small capitalists and increase the workers who live only by their labor.

This will increase the number of the unemployed and this is the main problem that worries economists.

In the end commercial crises will lead to a social revolution far beyond the comprehension of the economists with their scholastic wisdom.”

 

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushschev reportedly told Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture, in 1959:

“We won’t have to fight you; We’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”

Union membership has declined in America from a high of 35 percent of the workforce in 1954 to currently less than 9.9 percent.

Instead of attracting manufacturers back to America, many unions have focused on increasing membership by recruiting from other occupations, such as government, education, medical professionals, sports, service industry, and retail.

Warning American workers of the hidden danger of the “social justice” movement, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had spent 11 years in labor camps in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, stated, June 30, 1975:

“I … call upon America to be more careful with its trust …

Prevent those … who are attempting to establish even finer … legal shades of equality — because of their … falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road …

They are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent countryin the face of this fearful threat …

I call upon you: ordinary working men of America … do not let yourselves become weak.”

 

America’s entrepreneurial spirit was articulated by Booker T. Washington, who founded the National Negro Business League in 1900.

He stated:

“Anyone can seek a job, but it requires a person of rare ability to create a job … What we should do in our schools is to turn out fewer job seekers and more job creators.”

Reagan stated in 1988:

“I believe we really can say that God did give mankind virtually unlimited gifts to invent, produce, and create.

 

And for that reason alone, it would be wrong for governments to devise a tax structure or economic system that suppresses and denies those gifts.”

A spiritual insight is found in First Corinthians 15:58:

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
—

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The Weekly Sam: Make America Literate Again. Help Distribute “Alpha-Phonics”

Published September 4, 2026 | By Hal Shurtleff

 

Welcome to the “Alpha-Phonics workbook by Samuel L. Blumenfeld.
This book has been used by thousands of parents who have taught their
children to be excellent readers, which includes my children.

It is arranged in 128 easy to follow lessons. Sam rightfully pointed out that
pictures of puppets popping out of trash cans are not needed to teach children
how to read.

This book may also be used for adults who have been taught the
whole word or look-say method and therefore are functionally illiterate.
While this is a free resource, we would like to be able to make this resource
known far and wide. A donation of $5.00 would go a long way, and you can
donate more to help our cause, too.

Go to https://campconstitution.net/product/alpha-phonics-workbook
acquire it.
to

Additional donations to the Camp can be made via your PayPal account
accessed from our website’s homepage: https://www.campconstitution.net
Hal Shurtleff, Director
Camp Constitution

 

Camp Constitution’s Fall “Fling” Retreat at the Alton Bay Christian Conference Center Friday October 23 to Sunday October 25, 2026

Published August 25, 2026 | By Hal Shurtleff

 

                         Camp Constitution’s Fall “Fling” Retreat at the Alton Bay Christian Conference Center Friday October 23 to Sunday October 25, 2026
      Activities include arts and crafts, Bible studies, optional marksmanship,  an evening campfire, and fellowship.
     The cost for the weekend which includes two nights of lodging, five meals and materials will be $220. per person.
  For More Information and/or an application call (857) 498-1309 or E-mail campconstitution1@gmail.com

The Weekly Sam: Defining Whole Language By Samuel Blumenfeld

Published August 21, 2026 | By Hal Shurtleff

 

The other day, I received an e-mail from a lady in California who asked, “What on earth
is the whole-language system?” She had read my article on the making of the black
underclass   http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/1987/BEL%2002-06%20198706.pdf

in which I had identified whole language as the primary cause of reading
failure among so many black students.

Fortunately, the answer is easy to give, because whole-language professors have been
quite open in defining what they mean by their pedagogic philosophy. So I shall quote
some salient passages from their writings.
In a book entitled “Whole Language, What’s the Difference?” written by three
whole-language professors in 1991, we read on page 32:

Whole language represents a major shift in thinking about the reading process.
Rather than viewing reading as “getting the words,” whole language educators
view reading as essentially a process of creating meanings … Meaning is created
through a transaction with whole, meaningful texts (i.e., texts of any length that
were written with the intent to communicate meaning).

It is a transaction, not an extraction of the meaning from the print, in the sense that
the reader-created meanings are a fusion of what the reader brings and what the
text offers … Although students who learn to read in whole language classrooms
are, like all proficient readers, eventually able to “read” (or identify) a large
inventory of words, learning words is certainly not the goal of whole language.

Another passage from page 19 of the same book may be even more illuminating:

From a whole-language perspective, reading (and language use in general) is a
process of generating hypotheses in a meaning-making transaction in a
sociohistorical context. As a transactional process … reading is not a matter of
“getting the meaning” from text, as if that meaning were in the text waiting to be
decoded by the reader.
Rather, reading is a matter of readers using the cues print provides and the
knowledge they bring with them (of language subsystems, of the world) to
construct a unique interpretation.
Moreover, that interpretation is situated: readers’ creations (not retrievals) of
meaning with text vary, depending on their purposes of reading and the
expectations of others in the reading event. This view of reading implies that there
is no single “correct” meaning for a given text, only plausible meanings.

Now you might think that all of this pedagogical insanity is taking place in some kind of
political vacuum. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Whole language practice is
very politically oriented. We read on page 23:

Learning is a social process … Although whole language educators accept the
importance of learning through individual interactions with the environment
(Piaget 1967), they lean more heavily on Vygotsky’s ideas about the social nature
of learning (Vygotsky 1978).

Whole language takes seriously Vygotsky’s notion of the Zone of Proximal
Development (Engstrom 1986) which entails stressing the importance of
collaborations (between students and teachers and between peers) through which
students can transcend their own individual limitations.

You might ask: Who is Vygotsky? Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Soviet psychologist who
worked with Pavlov’s colleagues at the State Institute of Experimental Psychology in
Moscow in the 1920s and ’30s. James Wertsch, Vygotsky’s biographer, writes:
[It] is important to note that Vygotsky was a staunch advocate of dialectical and
historical materialism. He was one of the creators of Marxist psychology …

People such as Vygotsky and his followers devoted every hour of their lives to
making certain that the new socialist state, the first grand experiment based on
Marxist-Leninist principles, would survive.
Vygotsky’s colleague, Alexander Luria, wrote: “Vygotsky was … the leading Marxist
theoretician among us … in [his] hands, Marx’s methods of analysis did serve a vital role
in shaping our course.”

Apparently, these same methods of analysis are also serving to shape the course of the
whole-language agenda. The three professors, cited earlier, state on page 67:
The whole language theoretical premise underlying which topics are pursued and
how they are treated is: “All knowledge is socially constructed.”

Therefore all knowing is political. In an effort to promote critical literacy and thus
to help children learn to read the world, not only the word (Shor & [Marxist
revolutionary] Freire 1987), teachers who work with theme cycles try – no matter
whether the topic is overtly “political” or not – to show how the topic is related to
other more general questions.

They try to demystify social institutions by helping children investigate
connections between surface facts and underlying social structures, between lived
experience and structural features of class, gender and race. They know that not
making connections is as political as making connections.
No further explanation needed. But what about phonics, you might ask? Here’s a view of
phonics given in another book on whole language, “Evaluation: Whole Language, Whole
Child.” We read on page 19:

The way you interpret what the child does will reflect what you understand
reading to be. For instance, if she reads the word feather for father, a
phonics-oriented teacher might be pleased because she’s come close to sounding
the word out.

However, if you believe reading is a meaning-seeking process, you may be
concerned that she’s overly dependent on phonics at the expense of meaning.
You’d be happier with a miscue such as daddy, even though it doesn’t look or
sound anything like the word in the text. At least the meaning would be intact.
My response to that kind of imbecilic pedagogy is that any child who looks at the word
“father” and says “daddy” can’t read. It’s as simple as that. But tell that to a
whole-language teacher. Meanwhile, we the taxpayers are paying for it all.

(The above is from the Sam Blumenfeld Archives

http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/main.htm

The Blumenfeld Archives

Pilgrims to Patriots: A Celebration and Rededication to the Forefathers Monument

Published August 7, 2026 | By Hal Shurtleff

A delegation from Camp Constitution were honored to attend the Pilgrims to Patriots celebration and rededication of the Forefathers Monument last Saturday August 1, 2026.  This daylong event took place in ‘America’s Hometown”-Plymouth, MA.  Our well-staffed information table was busy with attendees from all over the United States stopping by to pick up T-shirts, books, pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution and get their pictures taken holding our Brown Bess firing replica musket.

The program stared at 10:00 AM at the Pilgrim Memorial Park-the original site of Plymouth Plantation with the Massachusetts 1775 Colonial Navy Fife and Drum from Fall River presenting their colors, and an opening prayer offered by Pastor Matthew Dembinsky.   The event had an excellent line up of speakers which included Leo and Nancy Martin of the Jenney Museum, https://thejenney.org/ Bill Federer of the American Minute, Dr. Jerry Newcombe of Coral Ridge Ministries, Tim and David Martin of WallBuilders, and actor and author Kirk Cameron who produced the documentary “Monumental.”  The Pilgrims to Patriots Band performed between the speakers which included a rendition of “My Country Tis of Thee.”

After an afternoon break, the group reconvened at the nearby Forefather’s Monument where the monument was rededicated.  Nancy Martin read the original dedication which took place on August 1, 1889 and Kirk Cameron gave an historical and spiritual overview as well as his personal connection to the Monument which inspired the creation of his documentary.

At 6:00 PM, we participated in a sold-out testimonial dinner for Leo and Nancy Martin and a fund raiser for the Jenney Museum at the 1620 Hotel in Plymouth.  (Readers who would like to donate to the Jenney:  https://www.networkforgood.org/donation/MakeDonation.aspx?ORGID2=900133398&vlrStratCode=9wKJQGl1rasPHo7YmGMedYfKNEvpeEocIQHRRM0CdWr%2fy%2fEA375LpFfLe%2fqTi8%2bf

Thanks to Maura Shurteff, Penny Stevens, Kathy Mickel, Bonnie Manchester, Jessica and Willow Whitworth, Rev. Steve and Edith Craft for helping out at the info table or with videotaping, and a special thanks to Roberta Stewart

 

No, Paris, US air conditioners did not cause Europe’s heat wave

Published July 5, 2026 | By Hal Shurtleff


Euro ruling elites need scapegoats for their incompetence and malfeasance, and we’re it

Paul Driessen

Happy July Fourth and America 250!

We have much to celebrate, beginning with our Constitutional rights, equality and liberties and the prosperity they have bestowed. Indeed, living in this incredible, diverse, energized country, during this time in history, with our modern transportation, communication, healthcare and AIR CONDITIONING technologies, is a true blessing.

We can also be thankful if we aren’t in Europe this summer, with its 40˚C (104˚F) heat wave – and virtually no air conditioning.

Europe certainly could have AC. Willis Carrier invented it in 1902. Air conditioning was common in American homes by the 1960s, and today 90% of all US households and businesses use it to stay cool, reduce humidity, protect equipment and products, work productively … and literally save lives.  

But Europe has chosen not to. Actually, its ruling elites have chosen not to allow families and businesses to install AC systems or afford the electricity to operate them. They want to be global leaders in stopping “manmade” warming and climate change – and ensuring the “inevitable” transition from fossil fuel and nuclear power to unpredictable, unreliable, unaffordable wind, solar and unreliable backup electricity.

Heat waves typically mean little to no wind, and thus no wind power. Clouds and sunsets mean little to no solar power, while high daytime heat means panels become less efficient or even catch fire.

Your ancestors got along fine without AC, the elites tell their subjects. So can you. You’re hot? Open a window and let that balmy 104˚ air flow into your home and workplace.

Europe had some 1,300 excess deaths so far this summer due to the heat, and 2,300 last summer. But it’s not our fault you’re sweltering and dying, its politicians say.

“As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world,” the United States bears “a significant responsibility for global warming and the consequences we in France are experiencing,” Paris Deputy Mayor Audrey Pulvar insists. And much of that is due to Americans’ obsession with air conditioning.

At least France cares about saving the planet, its pols say. We’re even sacrificing people, kind of like Mayans dropping virgins into cenotes, petitioning their climate gods to end a decades-long drought.

At least the USA is only the second worst culprit – after China, which emits 29% of total global carbon dioxide, and where 60% of households have air conditioning, compared to 10% in Europe. In Japan 91% of homes have air conditioning, 86% in Korea and 16% in Mexico. Their alleged contributions to the Euro heatwave are apparently irrelevant.

More than 80% of French citizens (including 78% of Green Party militants!) want air conditioning in residences, schools, hospitals, and public trains and buses. But their political betters view this as sacrilege, as do those in Britain and Germany.

France’s Ecological Transition Ministry avers that AC may be necessary for those who are elderly, chronically ill or pregnant. Other people, however, should eat cold soups, wear hats, wet their faces, turn off computers, and put cardboard over sunny windows. Those other people don’t include ruling classes, however.

Under Europe’s 2-tier climate justice system, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen directed her building manager to turn the AC off on floors 1-7 … but keep offices comfortably cool on floors 8-13, where she and her commissioners work diligently to stave off climate change, keep GMO foods out of EU grocery stores, and otherwise control people’s lives.

The real cause of Europe’s 2026 Summer in Hades is an enormous mid-troposphere high-pressure ridge (an “omega block” in the jet stream) that’s transporting hot Sahara Desert air northward into western Europe. The phenomenon happens during many summers to varying “degrees” and has nothing to do with climate change, natural or manmade.

In fact, many of Europe’s all-time national heat records were set long before modern CO2 concentrations reached 0.0432% (432 ppm): Ireland (1887), Bulgaria (1916), Poland (1921), Sweden (1947), Romania (1951), Norway (1970), Greece (1977).

(In the United States, thirteen of 50 state high temperature records were set in the 1930s and have never been broken. Every state has hit at least 100°F, including Alaska: 100˚F in 1915.)

I grew up nine miles from Wisconsin’s Hearthstone House, the first home in the world lit by electricity (in 1882). My father was born and died in my boyhood home, which was built in 1880 and had electricity not long after Kaukauna (the “Electric City”) built the state’s first municipal hydroelectric plant in 1885.

Air conditioning through my high school years and beyond consisted of an old furnace blower that Dad set up inside our front screen door, to supposedly cool us off by pulling air through the first floor. But my brothers and I sweated bullets all summer long in our sunbaked southwest corner brick-faced bedroom.

My parents finally installed central air conditioning in 1981. “This is wonderful,” he remarked. “I should have done this years ago.”

I certainly agree. Thirty years earlier would have been nice. But it was my parents’ home, their decision.

That’s completely different from Europe’s politicians and bureaucrats decreeing that poor and working classes will not have air conditioning, will not be able to afford AC if units are already installed, and may find government apparatchiks ripping units out if they try to use them.

Europe is undergoing moral and cultural decline – and an accompanying rise in rapes, murders and other crimes – due to “progressive” policies that eliminate borders, allow unfettered, unvetted immigration, and put criminals right back on the streets … or never arrest, prosecute or jail them in the first place.

It’s also suffering economic and healthcare decay, as climate-centric policies eliminate oil and natural gas production, send prices through the roof for “renewable” electricity that will often not be there when families, schools, hospitals and factories need it – and send industries and jobs to foreign shores.

Some decry this as Europe’s suicide. A more accurate term might be civilizational manslaughter, by ruling classes – and those who gave them too much power … and too little common sense and too much disdain for less well-off people they pledged to serve and protect.

There is growing concern that the United States could be heading down a similar primrose path, led by young voters, teachers and professors who fill them with anti-America, anti-free-market claptrap, and socialist-communist-Islamist mayors, governors, politicians and candidates who increasingly control the Democrat Party.

President Trump has helped control these pressures. But he too often gets insufficient congressional support for energy, election and immigration policies, and will soon be another former president.

The coming mid-term elections could prove pivotal, and the 2028 election monumental. America’s patriots need to work like their Revolutionary forebears, not just hope for the best.

Let us all strive and pray for continued responsible energy policies and a renewed and more perfect union for our great nation.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.
Contact me: pkdriessen@gmail.com

Happy 250th Birthday United States

Published July 3, 2026 | By Hal Shurtleff

Happy 250th Birthday United States.

Campers from the Annual Patriot Camp-a Three-Day Annual Day Camp Held in Rockland Maine and co-sponsored by Life Church and Camp Constitution and hosted by the Litchfield Memorial Baptist Church- recite the Declaration of Independence at Chapman Park in Rockland, Maine Wednesday June 24, 2026.

Designed by Eric Conover.