On the necessity of teaching the Constitution, civics in school.

JP Mac Americana, Holidays, Politics , , ,
The Constitution
Happy Constitution Day! Keep the Constitution alive by learning about it and teaching it to your kids.

A generation ago, civics classes used to be ubiquitous in public schools.  Now, as more and more schools teach for standardized tests, the study of the government and the Constitution has fallen by the wayside.  Many Millenials don’t even have a basic knowledge of the Constitution or of civics.  Often when asked, they can’t even name the three branches of government. This is a dangerous trend in this democratic republic we call the USA. For a republic to properly function, it is essential that we the people are aware of our rights and responsibilities as citizens.

If you have school-age children, do you know if their school has any sort of civics curriculum?  Celebrating Constitution Day is a great time to think about such things and take action with your local school board to recommend bringing back civics if it’s not being taught.  If it is, please take time to praise them for supporting civics and Constitutional studies.  You may find that along with music, art, and physical education, that civics could be on the chopping block due to budget cuts or greater emphasis on teaching for standardized tests.  Your speaking up could help innoculate wavering school board members from pressure to cut such valuable programs now and in the future.

If you don’t have kids, take some time to read our important founding documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.  You are in charge of your own civics education.  If you have never read them before, or haven’t since you took civics in school, you might be surprised and enlightened by what’s in them.  There is also something about reading the actual, unfiltered texts that you can’t get by reading a book or hearing about them on TV. (Of course, no harm in doing both!) Arming yourself with this knowledge will help you fight for and protect your most sacred rights as an American.

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LR guests on Political Storm podcast

JP Mac Discussion, News, Politics , , , ,

j-mac-ii-icon1

Thursday, I was a guest on Political Storm’s weekly Real Politics With Real People show.  It was a great honor to be on the panel discussion hosted by Jon Saltzman. The show is a new weekly feature on PoliticalStorm.com created to, “Discuss one subject a week together by a panel of Political Storm Contributors with diverse political opinions.”  This week’s topics were the midterm election and the Kavanagh confirmation hearings.  It was an enjoyable discussion with some pretty knowledgeable fellow guests representing a good portion of the political spectrum.  It’s really one of the few places on the internet where you’ll find civilized political debate, which of course why I recommend you plug into Political Storm to get a wide range of political discourse.

To watch, click Here.

I hope you’ll check it out then tell me how I did.

Thanks!

–  JP Mac

Cruz Drops a Truth Bomb About Democrat Opposition to Kavanaugh’s Confirmation

JP Mac News, Politics , , , , ,
US Senate II
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz Explains Democrat Opposition to Kavanaugh

It was a raucous day Monday on Capitol Hill at the start of the Senate confirmation hearings to approve Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Amidst outbursts from the gallery by anti-Kavanaugh protesters, Senate Democrats pulled out all the stops in an all-out effort to delay the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh, throwing one procedural hurdle after another in front of Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Most of the objections coming from the Democratic side centered around thousands of pages of documents requested by them that they had not received or had time to examine. Committee member Ted Cruz in his opening statement gave a dead-on assessment of why the Democrats are so against Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Here’s an outtake from Sen. Cruz’s remarks that sums up nicely what the true Democrat objection to Kavanaugh’s confirmation:

“We know that every Democratic member of this committee is going to vote no we don’t have to speculate. Every single one of them is publicly announced they’re voting no– doesn’t depend on what they read in documents, doesn’t depend on what judge Kavanaugh says at this hearing they’ve announced ahead of time they are voting no and most of the Democrats in the Senate have announced that in the full Senate but everyone should understand Judge Kavanaugh has handed over more documents than any nominee more than the last five combined, Republican and Democratic nominees. This is not about documents it’s not about qualification it’s not about record, what it is about Democratic senators trying to re-litigate the 2016 election and just as importantly working to begin litigating the 2020 presidential election but we had an opportunity for the American people to speak, they did. They voted in 2016 and they wanted judges and justices who will be faithful to the Constitution that’s why I’m confident at the end of what Shakespeare would describe as ‘a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing,’ I am confident that Judge Kavanaugh will become Justice Kavanaugh and will be confirmed in the United States Supreme Court. Thank you mister chairman.”

Watch Sen. Cruz’s full statement. 

Movie Review: Death of a Nation

JP Mac Books and Movies, Politics , , ,

 

Death of a Nation movie poster
Death of a Nation, 2018, D’Souza Media

The new movie Death of a Nation, by Dinesh D’Souza, is now out in theaters. Its main premise is that Donald Trump finds himself governing over an extremely divided nation, much as Abraham Lincoln did just before and during the Civil War. Like in his previous movies, the protagonists are the Republicans and conservatives. The antagonists are the Democrats and members of the far-left. The movie asks the question: Can the republic be saved from tearing itself apart yet again? In Lincoln’s America, the dividing line was over slavery, an institution supported, D’Souza points out, by Democrats in the north and the south. In Trump’s America, the dividing line is now between two competing visions for America, one an America true to its founding principles of freedom, limited government, and free market capitalism, and another one requiring a fundamental change away from those principles that would have America less free, with more dependence upon government, one headed toward socialism.

Dsouza
Dinesh D’Souza

Death of a Nation attributes the division faced by President Trump in part to a deliberate attempt by some in academia and the media to hide the left-wing, socialist roots of fascism, and the Democrat Party’s historical association with slavery and other forms of racism. D’Souza sets out to correct this by showing the history of the Fascist and NAZI parties and their ties to Marxism. He also debunks the notion of racism being a Republican problem by showing the historic ties of slavery and Jim Crow laws to the Democrat Party.

It had some shortcomings, the musical pieces were nice but superfluous. The movie’s title “Death of a Nation” never really gets satisfactorily explained along the way, though it’s clearly a reference to the D.W. Griffith movie “The Birth of a Nation” which was the first movie ever screened at the White House. While it does not spend a lot of time on comparing Trump’s situation to Lincoln’s, D’Souza achieves his other main goal of countering the progressive narrative that Republicans, especially Trump supporters are fascists and racists exceedingly well. Some critics say the movie rewrites history; no, it corrects the fallacious version that’s been pushed by leftists in academia for decades. Casual accusations of racism and fascism by the Left levied at conservatives will never again go unchallenged. Thanks to D’Souza, the spell is broken.