Happy Birthday, America! Celebrating the Semiquincentennial Part VII

The 250^th Birthday of our country is a big deal. Most countries don’t even have a birthday they can identify. And while our US Constitution still has another eleven years before it hits 250, the average constitution in world history lasts only 17 years. We’re more than 30 times the average age. So we’re celebrating!

This series of monthly posts began in January. Here’s the series so far:

·       Part I: The Declaration 

·       Part II: The Preamble to the Constitution 

·       Part III: Article I, Lawmaking 

·       Part IV: Article II, The Executive Branch 

·       Part V: Article III, The Judicial Branch 

·       Part VI: The Bill of Rights, mainly 1^st Amendment Religious Freedom 

So, we’ve been doing some learning in our monthly celebration posts. But this month, with the actual birthday this very Saturday, I’m taking one post to focus more on the celebrating than the historical record—although there are some good places to go for your American history learning with your families this summer. I recommend PragerU videos (no cost), and Glenn Beck’s Torch has a “Summer of 250 Study Guide,” free for subscribers, with original songs for each of the Bill of Rights, and plenty more to make our nation’s founding interesting. 

For adults, I continue to recommend Hillsdale College courses, probably starting with Constitution 101. And, again, I recommend this 1989 video of the making of the Constitution, A More Perfect Union.   Anything from Wallbuilders, with David and Tim Barton, is also good; they have books, videos, museums, and more. Here’s a video from a couple of months ago that just popped up for me, about the signers of the Declaration.  Also, I think this weekend the Young Washington movie comes out; I haven’t seen it, but I’m hopeful that it will be good. Washington was an extraordinary person.

And, while we covered the Declaration of Independence back in January, do yourself a favor and take the five minutes to read it sometime this weekend—preferably within hearing of young people.

Celebration

Back in 1976, at our bicentennial, we had a lot of local things going on. I was in a choral group of young adults; I was still 17, but had just graduated from high school, so I qualified for the young adult group at church. We had a director who was studying to become a director, which he accomplished shortly afterward. The only song I remember singing was “Fifty Nifty United States” originally by Ray Charles. We had choreography and everything. I’ve since had my daughter and a homeschool group perform that song. I haven’t found a good video/audio version that wouldn’t be improved by your singing it yourself in your family, so I won’t link to any. But here’s the sheet music. It’s worth learning. It’s pretty fun. And the states in alphabetical order will forever stick in your mind.

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Conservative Partying, Part III: Platform & Resolutions

This is the third of three posts reporting on the Texas State Republican Convention, held in Houston June 8-13. Part I covers festivities, election of officers, and Rule Committee. Part II covers Legislative Priorities.

This post we’ll cover Platform & Resolutions Committee, from the perspective of an editor, which you’re probably not going to get anywhere else (not that the world is clamoring for such a perspective). Anyway, I’m afraid it’s still long, but it’s all in this post anyway. No more splitting into parts.

As I was reporting some arcane detail to my husband, with great enthusiasm, he commented that I sure am passionate about this. And that’s true. I love the words and the ideas—a whole lot more than the politicking. Anyway, here we go.

The Platform Is Conservative

Let me start with something positive. I had a conversation with one of the Committee members, someone for whom this is not her first rodeo either. And she asked me my impression of how the platform is doing. I don’t remember the exact wording of her question, but I was happy to report that, from my viewpoint, our platform is getting more conservative over time, and the grassroots are getting more unified.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Conservative Partying, Part II: Legislative Priorities and (part of) Platform

 

Today is Part II of my debrief of the Texas Republican Convention. Part I is here.

I thought I would do Legislative Priorities and Platform in one post, but this has gotten ridiculously long. So I’m going to split it, and cover Platform & Resolutions in a Part III. (I’m assuming you’ll thank me later.) Most of it is written, so I should get Part III posted in a day or so. Thank you for your patience. I’m still quicker at getting this out than RPT is.

The convention ended Saturday, June 13. After two other editors did formatting and general edits, I spent all of Monday and Tuesday after convention doing a careful edit. There was integrating those changes and finishing indexing, and then a meeting between the Editorial Committee Chair, the RPT Secretary, and the Platform Committee Chair to go over any edits that needed approval—and to add the changes that were made on the floor of the convention, which I believe added one plank and one resolution, plus some other amendments to planks. I have not seen the final wording of those floor changes, other than what I saw on screen at convention. I do not understand the delay following convention to get those to the editors; a process changed after 2022, apparently.

But as of today, as I begin writing on Thursday, June 25, no updated version has been posted since the printed (and online) Permanent Committee Report for either Platform, Rules, or Legislative Priorities.

So we do not yet know the results of the scantron voting. We do not have a list of 8 Legislative Priorities, narrowed down from the 15 presented by the Permanent Committee. And we do not have the edited version of the Platform, which should include those floor changes, and the final numbering.

So all I can write about today is what we voted on, not what the results are.

To see the version we saw for floor debate, you can go here (until they move it or change it). 

I could also mention that this wasn’t that easy to find. I tried the TexasGOP.org site; I found nothing but the 2024 versions there. I couldn’t even find Convention information, other than on the calendar, telling me that event had passed.

I tried looking up the convention, which is a separate site: convention.TexasGOP.org. And all I could find were the schedules provided for convention goers.

So I did another search and found these versions on the “about” page of the convention website, and scrolled down and found the links I needed.

It shouldn’t be this hard, especially for somebody who has been paying attention all along.

If you’d like to watch the floor debates, LP and Platform happened on June 13. Floor debate for Chair election and Rules happened on June 12. And the Permanent Committees were on June 11. Temporary Committee of the Whole for Platform was Jun 10. You can find several of the livestreams on YouTube. 

Legislative Priorities

Legislative Priorities Committee was an addition not that long ago. We added them as part of our Platform Report in our Senatorial District 7 Convention in I think 2016 and 2018. And then Mark Ramsey, the 2018 State Platform Chair, had persuaded RPT to add Legislative Priorities as a separate committee, and was the first Chair of that committee in 2020.

The purpose of Platform is to guide mainly the Texas Legislature (and also some direction to other state leaders and to the US Congress) to know what the grassroots cares about.

The platform continues to be long, with lots of specific details. As we get ignored, we add more details.

There’s so much there, in the RPT Platform, it seemed like a good idea (I think it is) to tell the Legislature what is most important. That’s what Legislative Priorities is intended to do. LPs are, then, an extension to the Platform; in fact, each LP must relate to at least one plank in the Platform. So there’s some communication between these two committees during Convention Committee meetings.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Conservative Partying, Part I: Festivities, Election of Officers, and Rules

 

Last week was the state Republican Party of Texas Convention, June 11-13, with preliminary meetings starting June 8. It was held here in Houston, at the George R. Brown Convention Center, one of just a few facilities in the state big enough to handle this large convention. (The other cities are San Antonion, Dallas, and Ft. Worth, so it’s always going to be in one of these cities.)

There were festivities. But there was also business: elections of officers, and setting the Rules, Legislative Priorities, and Platform for the upcoming biennium. I spent my time editing the platform again (I know I’d said I wouldn’t do it again, but at least I didn’t lead the team or work through any nights). So I’ll cover the other business first and then spend a bit more time on Platform.

Festivities

There was a live elephant. I missed when it came into the main hall, but I saw it in the exhibit hall, behind Governor Abbott, where people were getting photos. They closed the line just before I got there, so I didn’t get pictures with me in them.

Governor Abbott taking photos with supporters

 An elephant, indoors, is pretty awesome. My guess is the Democrats won’t try to compete with a live donkey at theirs. It would be an offense to donkeys, as Ted Cruz quipped.

There were speeches, and songs. Some of the music was really good. I missed much of that, because I don’t get there in mornings, especially when I didn’t get to bed before 3:00 AM. I did listen to livestreams on YouTube. Go to the RPT channel and choose what you want to see.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Bill of Rights: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part VI

We’re reaching the halfway point—and approaching the actual July 4^th birthday—in our celebration of the 250^th birthday of our nation. So far we’ve celebrated by walking through our founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble and first three Articles of the Constitution, covering the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

If we were simply walking straight through, we’d get to Article IV on through VII of the Constitution. Maybe we’ll come back to these in more detail, but for now let’s just summarize those articles:

Article 4 covers interstate rules, and guarantees for citizens going state to state. There are four sections, including information about how new states may be admitted, and how the federal government guarantees protection to each of the states.

Article 5 offers ways to amend the Constitution: amendments can be proposed by either two-thirds of both Houses, or two-thirds of the state legislatures can propose an amendment. This option has been talked of more in the past few years; 20 states so far have voted to go ahead (including my state of Texas), out of a needed 34.

Article 6 talks about paying debts incurred by the national government, and that the federal government shall be the supreme law of the land.

Article 7 talks about ratification of the Constitution, and signatures from representatives of the states at the Constitutional Convention, where the document was written and revised.

Next come the Amendments. There are 27. The first 10 are what we call the Bill of Rights. And that’s the topic for today’s post. Even so, we might not cover all 10. I’m going to go through a little history and background and at least cover the First Amendment. And since there could be books and books written on the First Amendment, we’ll mostly just get to the first right in the First Amendment.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Empire, the Thucydides Trap, and Other Big Picture Things

 

I’ve been interested lately in the bigger picture—and it’s the more positive picture—of President Trump on the world stage. So much interrelates. I’ve written about it here and here. 

One of my sources has been Glenn Beck. But I was clued in by a friend to another source of just this kind of chessboard thinking: Promethean Action. Mainly, I’ve heard from two women, Susan Kokinda and Barbara Boyd, who study and make the connections and try to share this rather complicated viewpoint with the world. I’m still looking into the background, which I may touch on below.

I had heard Susan Kokinda a time or two on Stephen Gardner’s podcast. I had even gone to her Substack once. But then I forgot to keep going there. So I knew who she was when a friend reminded me of this resource, and I’ve been listening and learning—about things I never knew before—this past couple of weeks.

These people are very pro-Trump, in a very serious and non-cheerleader kind of way. They use a deep study of history, maybe particularly ancient Greek history, to understand what we’re seeing today.

I’d like to use a fair amount of their own words to explain what’s happening in the world, at least their viewpoint, which I find compelling.

The Empire

I think it will help to start with The Empire.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Remember Memorial Day Meaning

Arlington Cemetery, from a visit in 2014. Center sculpture is titled “Price of Freedom.”
Lower left is honoring the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Right is the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

I almost forgot about Memorial Day this weekend. It’s the last Monday of May, but there are six days of May after the last Monday. So it came as a minor surprise. I had half written a post for this week, but I’m setting that aside for a few days to do this Memorial Day remembrance.

I admit, it took me a while—longer than it should have—to recognize what Memorial Day was. As a child, it was sometimes called “Decoration Day,” the day we decorated the graves of our ancestors with flowers from the garden. I didn’t attach the military meaning to it; we decorated the graves of all our relatives in a given cemetery, not just military members.

And once I attached the military meaning, then I incorrectly thought of it as a day to honor veterans. I didn’t get it right until maybe a decade and a half ago. Here’s the accurate info:

·       Armed Forces Day, for those currently serving, is celebrated the third Saturday in May (May 16 this year).

·       Veterans’ Day, for living former servicemen/women, is celebrated November 11.

·       Memorial Day, for those who died while serving, is celebrated the last Monday in May (May 25 this year).

 

Originally, Memorial Day was celebrated on May 30, whatever day of the week that fell on. That was changed when the majority of our holidays were placed on Mondays, in 1971, to give people a three-day weekend, which allowed for travel and was probably intended to thereby allow for more celebrating of those days. Unfortunately, a three-day weekend has made some such weekends generic. And Memorial Day may have thus suffered loss of meaning, or reverent remembering.

So to remedy that loss of remembering, I’m adding this post here, in grateful thanks to those who gave their all. As Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address:

…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Memorial Day is meant as a holy day, not a mere holiday. I expect most of us will enjoy the holiday aspects as well. Maybe a cookout or a family outing. But it would do our country well if we also set aside a bit of time to use the day for its intended purpose—to remember the fallen.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.