Village Offices will be closed October 8 in Observance of Columbus Day
Village of Ridgewood offices, in obverance of Columbus Day. Garbage and recycling will not be collected. The schedule will resume on Tuesday, October 9.
Category: American History
Labor Day and Young Americans
Labor Day and Young Americans
Statement by Paul T. Conway, President of Generation Opportunity
Washington, DC – (9/3/12) – Generation Opportunity President Paul T. Conway, former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Labor, has issued the following statement:
“Labor Day is a day set aside specifically to honor the achievements of the American worker. But on this Labor Day, as Americans traditionally celebrate with family and friends, the sad reality is that millions of young Americans will not return to a full-time job tomorrow.
“Through no fault of their own, over twelve percent of young Americans are unemployed and have been denied the opportunity to contribute their talents and to achieve success.
“Due to failed leadership and failed policies over the last three and a half years, their lives and dreams have been delayed. It is no surprise that young adults, union and non-union alike, have little enthusiasm for leaders who defend the status quo while offering no ideas for more economic opportunity.
“Young Americans deserve more from their leaders and want solutions that place a higher value on the growth of businesses and opportunity as opposed to government.”
—
For Generation Opportunity, the polling company, inc./WomanTrend conducted a nationwide online survey of 1,003 American adults ages 18-29 between July 27 and July 31, 2012. This study has a ±3.1% margin of error at a 95% confidence interval, and sampling quotas were used to ensure the survey was representative of the larger 18-29 year old nationwide population with regard to race, region, and gender.
76% of Millennials plan to vote in the election for President this year.
Only 38% believe that today’s political leaders reflect the interests of young Americans.
89% of young people ages 18-29 say the current state of the economy is impacting their day-to-day lives (accepted multiples responses) (randomized):
51% reduced their entertainment budget;
43% reduced their grocery/food budget;
43% cut back on gifts for friends and family;
40% skipped a vacation;
38% drive less;
36% take active steps to reduce home energy costs;
32% tried to find an additional job;
27% sold personal items or property (cars, electronic appliances, or other possessions);
26% changed their living situation (moved in with family, taken extra roommates, downgraded apartment or home);
17% skipped a wedding, family reunion, or other significant social event;
1% other;
8% none of the above (accepted only this response);
3% do not know/cannot judge (accepted only this response).
84% of young people ages 18-29 had planned to but now might delay or not make at all a major life change or move forward on a major purchase due to the current state of the economy (accepted multiples responses) (randomized):
38% – Buy their own place;
32% – Go back to school/getting more education or training;
31% – Start a family;
27% – Change jobs/cities;
26% – Pay off student loans or other debt;
25% – Save for retirement;
23% – Get married;
12% – None of the above (accepted only this response);
4% – Do not know/cannot judge (accepted only this response).
76% believe that the lack of job opportunities is shrinking the American middle class.
64% of young people ages 18-29 believe the availability of more quality, full-time jobs upon graduation is more important than lower student loan interest rates.
Last month, Generation Opportunity released the non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) unemployment data for Millennials for July 2012:
The youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds specifically for July 2012 is 12.7 percent (NSA).
The youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year old African-Americans for July 2012 is 22.3 percent (NSA); the youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year old Hispanics for July 2012 is 14.0 percent (NSA); and the youth unemployment rate for 18–29 year old women for July 2012 is 12.6 percent (NSA).
The declining labor participation rate has created an additional 1.715 million young adults that are not counted as “unemployed” by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs.
If the labor force participation rate were factored into the 18-29 youth unemployment calculation, the actual 18-29-unemployment rate would rise to 16.7 percent (NSA).
Labor Day: Union Money in Elections
File Photo by Boyd Loving
Labor Day Union Money in Elections
Amy Payne
September 3, 2012 at 8:59 am
This election year, millions of Americans will donate to the political candidates and initiatives of their choice at the local, state, and federal levels. But for unionized workers, union dues come out of their paychecks and go to political causes—and they aren’t consulted on where that money will go.
In July, The Wall Street Journal’s Tom McGinty and Brody Mullins published an eye-opening report that “Organized labor spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought.”
They broke down the unions’ political spending from 2005 to 2011: $1.1 billion “supporting federal candidates through their political-action committees, which are funded with voluntary contributions, and lobbying Washington, which is a cost borne by the unions’ own coffers.”
But that was only the beginning. Add to that another $3.3 billion for political activity from “polling fees, to money spent persuading union members to vote a certain way, to bratwursts to feed Wisconsin workers protesting at the state capitol last year.” Who pays for this? The workers, McGinty and Mullins report: “Much of this kind of spending comes not from members’ contributions to a PAC but directly from unions’ dues-funded coffers.”
Despite findings that 60 percent of union members object to their dues being spent on political causes, this practice continues. Why?
In the 27 states without right-to-work laws, many unions are able to put clauses in their contracts that allow them to fire workers who do not pay union dues. If a worker wants to work for a unionized firm, he or she is forced to join the union and pay the dues, which can run from several hundred to several thousand dollars a year.
In a new paper, Heritage’s James Sherk gives an example of this rule at work: “The United Auto Workers (UAW), which organized General Motors’ Michigan factories in 1937, is a case in point. Michigan does not have a right-to-work law, so union-represented workers must pay the union’s dues or get fired.”
Notice the year there—1937. The workers coming on the job in 2012 are bound by a vote taken by their ancestors, essentially. “General Motors’ current employees never had the chance to vote for or against the UAW. UAW representation was a non-negotiable condition of their employment.”
Sherk argues that these rules make no sense for today’s workers. Just 7 percent of private-sector union members voted for the union that represents them, and the vast majority of government unions organized at least 30 years ago. The workers inherit the representation of yesteryear, which negotiates their terms of pay, promotion, layoff, and retirement.
Once organized, unions remain indefinitely. Naturally, that gives union leaders little reason to be accountable to their members in any way—they’re not going to have to stand for re-election.
To give unionized workers the freedom they deserve, Sherk says, this system should end.
Congress and state legislatures should at the least require government and private-sector unions to stand for re-election. Re-election votes every two to four years would allow employees to regularly assess their union’s performance as their representative.…
An even better reform would be to give workers representative choice—allowing individual employees to choose who represents them, irrespective of who other employees select. This would remove the union’s monopoly over the workplace, allowing employees to negotiate contracts tailored to their needs.
Workers should have the freedom to choose whether they want union representation or not. And if they do want to join a union, they should be able to choose which union they join. This freedom would give them more say over paying union dues in the first place, and how those dues are used. It would also give them the opportunity to negotiate merit-based raises, which unions do not allow.
America’s unionized workers deserve the same freedoms as non-unionized workers—in an election year and every year.
The History of Labor Day
The History of Labor Day
by the US Dept.Of Labor
Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Founder of Labor Day
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
But Peter McGuire’s place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
Labor Day Legislation
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
A Nationwide Holiday
The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.
https://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm
Labor Day – Village Hall Closed
Labor Day – Village Hall Closed
Please be advised that all Village of Ridgewood Offices will be closed on Monday, September 3, 2012, in observance of Labor Day. There will be no pickup of garbage or recyclables on that day.
The American Spirit
The American Spirit
Paul Gallagher
June 14, 2012 at 9:27 am
Many Americans proudly hang the Stars and Stripes on June 14 to celebrate Flag Day. On that day in 1777, the Second Continental Congress formally adopted the emblem under which generations of Americans have lived, fought and died. More than any other flag in the world, it symbolizes freedom and celebrates the optimism of our Founding Fathers.
Yet today we have voices suggesting that America’s best days are behind her. The experiment, they insist, is over.
“The American dream is a myth,” writes Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, in a recent op-ed. A new USA Today/Gallup poll shows that nearly six in 10 think that the next generation won’t live better than their parents do today.
Such pessimism, however, is unwarranted. More importantly, it’s counter-productive. Even if things were as bad as some people suggest, there is a solution, as Ed Feulner, president of The Heritage Foundation reminds us in his weekly column:
Negative thoughts like this are nothing new. It stands to reason that tough economic times will breed pessimism. Sometimes, though, we need to remind ourselves of the principles this country was founded on, and reconnect with the genius that created the United States of America, the only country founded not on identity, but on ideas.
Feulner, in fact, has just written a book designed to do just that. Co-authored with Heritage trustee Brian Tracy, “The American Spirit: Celebrating the Virtues and Values That Make Us Great“ is a wake-up call for those who may find themselves discouraged by the challenges we face as a nation at this critical moment in history.
Why would such a book be necessary? As Brian explains in the introduction: “Today, millions of Americans are not clear about why the United States is the greatest country on earth and in all human history.” They know they’re free. But they may have never reflected on why their nation is unique — not only in the world right now, but in human history.
As Feulner writes:
“Consider the phrase ‘the American Dream.’ The words themselves reveal something extraordinary. In all the history of man, there has been only one country with the word ‘dream’ attached to it. There is no French Dream or Russian Dream or Chinese Dream. There is only the American Dream, to which people worldwide aspire and have aspired since our founding. From 194 countries, people have come to America to pursue this dream.
“In America, people care very much who you are. They care little about your background. In America, you can start from anywhere, with or without benefits and advantages from your family, and make your own way and your own life. At any time, you can decide to change and do something completely different. Your life is yours to chart.
“In my opinion, this freedom to define your own destiny ultimately derives from the Judeo-Christian tradition. God created us in His own image, and just as God is free, so we are meant for freedom.”
The question, then, is what the relationship of government should be to man. Is man there to serve the government? No. In America, it is very much the other way around — despite the many attempts by liberals to change that relationship throughout our history.
Feulner continues:
“Government’s purpose is not to impose some elite-inspired vision of the good society on the rest of us, but to empower men and women to use their God-given freedom as they choose.
“This opportunity has its roots in our extraordinary founding in 1776. Having such freedom is more the exception than the rule throughout much of human history. The republican form of government had mostly been consigned to the history books since the fall of Rome. Monarchies had ruled the leading powers of the world for centuries.
“By choosing a republic, where the governed control the government — not the other way around — the Founding Fathers displayed faith in the individual’s ability to know better than any elected or appointed official what is best for himself and his family. That’s why they created a Constitution that protects our God-given rights from government. The government does not grant those rights to us as citizens.”
It’s all too easy, in the face of so many difficult problems, to throw up our hands in despair. One look at our flag, however, watered by the blood and sweat of patriots for more than 200 years, ought to cure that temptation. As Feulner’s book reminds us, the American Spirit is alive and well, provided we’re willing to believe in it and do our part to nurture our irreplaceable birthright of freedom.
The History Of Flag Day
The History Of Flag Day
The Fourth of July was traditionally celebrated as America’s birthday, but the idea of an annual day specifically celebrating the Flag is believed to have first originated in 1885. BJ Cigrand, a schoolteacher, arranged for the pupils in the Fredonia, Wisconsin Public School, District 6, to observe June 14 (the 108th anniversary of the official adoption of The Stars and Stripes) as ‘Flag Birthday’. In numerous magazines and newspaper articles and public addresses over the following years, Cigrand continued to enthusiastically advocate the observance of June 14 as ‘Flag Birthday’, or ‘Flag Day’.
On June 14, 1889, George Balch, a kindergarten teacher in New York City, planned appropriate ceremonies for the children of his school, and his idea of observing Flag Day was later adopted by the State Board of Education of New York. On June 14, 1891, the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia held a Flag Day celebration, and on June 14 of the following year, the New York Society of the Sons of the Revolution, celebrated Flag Day.
Following the suggestion of Colonel J Granville Leach (at the time historian of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution), the Pennsylvania Society of Colonial Dames of America on April 25, 1893 adopted a resolution requesting the mayor of Philadelphia and all others in authority and all private citizens to display the Flag on June 14th. Leach went on to recommend that thereafter the day be known as ‘Flag Day’, and on that day, school children be assembled for appropriate exercises, with each child being given a small Flag.
Two weeks later on May 8th, the Board of Managers of the Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution unanimously endorsed the action of the Pennsylvania Society of Colonial Dames. As a result of the resolution, Dr. Edward Brooks, then Superintendent of Public Schools of Philadelphia, directed that Flag Day exercises be held on June 14, 1893 in Independence Square. School children were assembled, each carrying a small Flag, and patriotic songs were sung and addresses delivered.
In 1894, the governor of New York directed that on June 14 the Flag be displayed on all public buildings. With BJ Cigrand and Leroy Van Horn as the moving spirits, the Illinois organization, known as the American Flag Day Association, was organized for the purpose of promoting the holding of Flag Day exercises. On June 14th, 1894, under the auspices of this association, the first general public school children’s celebration of Flag Day in Chicago was held in Douglas, Garfield, Humboldt, Lincoln, and Washington Parks, with more than 300,000 children participating.
Adults, too, participated in patriotic programs. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, delivered a 1914 Flag Day address in which he repeated words he said the flag had spoken to him that morning: “I am what you make me; nothing more. I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol of yourself.”
Inspired by these three decades of state and local celebrations, Flag Day – the anniversary of the Flag Resolution of 1777 – was officially established by the Proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson on May 30th, 1916. While Flag Day was celebrated in various communities for years after Wilson’s proclamation, it was not until August 3rd, 1949, that President Truman signed an Act of Congress designating June 14th of each year as National Flag Day.
https://www.usflag.org/flag.day.html
Presidents Weekend
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John Adams
Learned and thoughtful, John Adams was more remarkable as a political philosopher than as a politician. “People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity,” he said, doubtless thinking of his own as well as the American experience.
Adams was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1735. A Harvard-educated lawyer, he early became identified with the patriot cause; a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, he led in the movement for independence.
During the Revolutionary War he served in France and Holland in diplomatic roles, and helped negotiate the treaty of peace. From 1785 to 1788 he was minister to the Court of St. James’s, returning to be elected Vice President under George Washington.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/johnadams
Thomas Jefferson
In the thick of party conflict in 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a private letter, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
This powerful advocate of liberty was born in 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a planter and surveyor, some 5,000 acres of land, and from his mother, a Randolph, high social standing. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then read law. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow, and took her to live in his partly constructed mountaintop home, Monticello.
Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. As the “silent member” of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/thomasjefferson
James Madison
At his inauguration, James Madison, a small, wizened man, appeared old and worn; Washington Irving described him as “but a withered little apple-John.” But whatever his deficiencies in charm, Madison’s buxom wife Dolley compensated for them with her warmth and gaiety. She was the toast of Washington.
Born in 1751, Madison was brought up in Orange County, Virginia, and attended Princeton (then called the College of New Jersey). A student of history and government, well-read in law, he participated in the framing of the Virginia Constitution in 1776, served in the Continental Congress, and was a leader in the Virginia Assembly.
When delegates to the Constitutional Convention assembled at Philadelphia, the 36-year-old Madison took frequent and emphatic part in the debates.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jamesmadison
James Monroe
On New Year’s Day, 1825, at the last of his annual White House receptions, President James Monroe made a pleasing impression upon a Virginia lady who shook his hand:
“He is tall and well formed. His dress plain and in the old style…. His manner was quiet and dignified. From the frank, honest expression of his eye … I think he well deserves the encomium passed upon him by the great Jefferson, who said, ‘Monroe was so honest that if you turned his soul inside out there would not be a spot on it.’ “
Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1758, Monroe attended the College of William and Mary, fought with distinction in the Continental Army, and practiced law in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Presidents Day : 40% Consider Reagan Most Influential President Of Last 50 Years
>Presidents Day :40% Consider Reagan Most Influential President Of Last 50 Years
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Americans continue to believe Ronald Reagan is the most influential president of the last half century, but they are a bit more divided over which president should be next in line to be honored by a federal holiday.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 40% regard Reagan as the most influential president of the past 50 years. Bill Clinton is a distant second with 16%, closely followed by John F. Kennedy with 14%. Barack Obama, who is making his first appearance in this question, comes in fourth with 11%. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Presidents Day: 44 Facts You Didn’t Know About U.S. Presidents
>Presidents Day: 44 Facts You Didn’t Know About U.S. Presidents
The Huffington Post Seena Vali First Posted: 02/17/2012 11:02 am
While most Americans celebrate Presidents Day Weekend metabolizing the high levels of alcohol in their bloodstreams, we want to make sure that you guys actually learn something.
With that in mind, we collected 44 lesser-known facts about the leaders of this nation. Sure, everyone knows the story about President Taft getting stuck in the bathtub, but did you know about Benjamin Harrison’s fear of touching light switches? Or FDR’s movie credit? Or Gerald Ford’s modeling days?
So set aside your political allegiances and take a brief moment to read up on our country’s presidents. For without them, we would not have Monday off from work.
Presidents Weekend
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George Washington
On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. “As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent,” he wrote James Madison, “it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles.”
Born in 1732 into a Virginia planter family, he learned the morals, manners, and body of knowledge requisite for an 18th century Virginia gentleman.
He pursued two intertwined interests: military arts and western expansion. At 16 he helped survey Shenandoah lands for Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Commissioned a lieutenant colonel in 1754, he fought the first skirmishes of what grew into the French and Indian War. The next year, as an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock, he escaped injury although four bullets ripped his coat and two horses were shot from under him.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/georgewashington
Zachary Taylor
Northerners and Southerners disputed sharply whether the territories wrested from Mexico should be opened to slavery, and some Southerners even threatened secession. Standing firm, Zachary Taylor was prepared to hold the Union together by armed force rather than by compromise.
Born in Virginia in 1784, he was taken as an infant to Kentucky and raised on a plantation. He was a career officer in the Army, but his talk was most often of cotton raising. His home was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and he owned a plantation in Mississippi.
But Taylor did not defend slavery or southern sectionalism; 40 years in the Army made him a strong nationalist.
He spent a quarter of a century policing the frontiers against Indians. In the Mexican War he won major victories at Monterrey and Buena Vista.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/zacharytaylor
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you…. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.”
Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.
The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party’s nomination for President, he sketched his life:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/abrahamlincoln
Grover Cleveland
The First Democrat elected after the Civil War, Grover Cleveland was the only President to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later.
One of nine children of a Presbyterian minister, Cleveland was born in New Jersey in 1837. He was raised in upstate New York. As a lawyer in Buffalo, he became notable for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him.
At 44, he emerged into a political prominence that carried him to the White House in three years. Running as a reformer, he was elected Mayor of Buffalo in 1881, and later, Governor of New York.
Cleveland won the Presidency with the combined support of Democrats and reform Republicans, the “Mugwumps,” who disliked the record of his opponent James G. Blaine of Maine.
A bachelor, Cleveland was ill at ease at first with all the comforts of the White House. “I must go to dinner,” he wrote a friend, “but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring a Swiss cheese and a chop at Louis’ instead of the French stuff I shall find.” In June 1886 Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom; he was the only President married in the White House.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/grovercleveland22
Christmas-as Celebrated by the Presidents
>Christmas-as Celebrated by the Presidents
David Barton
Even though Christmas did not become a national holiday until 1870, it has a centuries old history in America. Interestingly, in colonial America, the southern regions that were more directly linked to High-Church traditions (e.g., Anglicans, Catholics, Episcopalians) celebrated Christmas; but the northern regions especially linked to Low-Church traditions (e.g., Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers) did not. Those Low-Church colonists associated the pomp and grandeur of Christmas celebrations directly with the autocratic leaders and monarchs in Europe that they so opposed.
Massachusetts therefore passed an anti-Christmas law in 1659, and it was not until the 1830s and 1840s that Christmas celebrations became accepted in New England (although as late as 1870, a student missing school on Christmas Day in Boston public schools could be punished or expelled). But by the 1880s, Christmas celebrations were finally accepted across the country and began to appear at the White House. For example:
*In 1889, the first indoor decorated tree was placed in the White House, and in 1895, electric lights were added.
*In 1923, the first National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony was held. In 1954 it was named the Pageant of Peace but in 1969 it became embroiled in a legal controversy over the use of religious symbols. In 1973, the nativity scene that had always been part of the Pageant was no longer allowed, but in 1984, it returned.
*In 1953, the first White House Christmas card was created by President Dwight Eisenhower. (Ike was an artist in his own right and allowed six of his own paintings to be used as Christmas gifts and cards.) President Kennedy’s 1963 Christmas card was the first to include an explicitly religious element, featuring a photo of a nativity scene. And in 2001, the first White House Christmas card to contain a Scripture was chosen by Laura Bush. It quoted Psalm 27: “Thy face, Lord, do I seek. I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living” – a Scripture she had chosen on September 16 (only 5 days after 9/11), based on a special sermon preached at Camp David.
Christmas was celebrated by our national leaders as a religious holiday, not the secular holiday it has become.
For example, every Christmas Eve, President Teddy Roosevelt and his family would pile into the family sleigh (later the motor car) and travel to a Christmas service at Christ Church in Oyster Bay, New York. Following the pastor’s sermon, Teddy would deliver one of his famous “sermonettes” on the true meaning of Christmas and then close the service with one of his favorite hymns, “Christmas By the Sea.”
President Franklin Roosevelt would set up and decorate a tree on Christmas Eve, gather the family round him and either read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” or recite it from memory. (The original story is quite different from the modern movies by that name and is well worth the read.) He would also deliver explicitly religious Christmas Eve messages to the nation. For example, in 1944 following D-Day, he said:
Here, at home, we will celebrate this Christmas Day in our traditional American way – because of its deep spiritual meaning to us; because the teachings of Christ are fundamental in our lives; and because we want our youngest generation to grow up knowing the significance of this tradition and the story of the coming of the immortal Prince of Peace and good will. . . . [FDR then prayed a prayer for the troops, and closed with:] We pray that with victory will come a new day of peace on earth in which all the Nations of the earth will join together for all time. That is the spirit of Christmas, the holy day. May that spirit live and grow throughout the world in all the years to come.
(I recommend you go online to the American Presidency Project and look up and especially read some Christ-centered Christmas messages from Presidents, such as that of Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, Harry Truman in 1949 or 1952, Ronald Reagan in 1982 or 1985, George W. Bush in 2003, and there are many additional examples. You should also watch President Reagan deliver one of his Christmas addresses.)
In recent years, there has been a relentless push from secularists and progressives to transform Christmas. Schools, government offices, and many commercial stores have replaced Merry Christmas with Happy Holidays to appease critics, not realizing that 93% of Americans celebrate Christmas, and 97% are not bothered by the use of the phrase “Merry Christmas.” Yet far too often, the 3% seems to drive public policy; Americans need to push back.
Gratefully, religious Jews have been some of the strongest advocates for keeping Christmas a religious celebration. For example, Burt Prelutsky, a Jewish columnist for a number of national publications, declares:
I never thought I’d live to see the day that Christmas would become a dirty word. . . . How is it, one well might ask, that in a Christian nation this is happening? . . . Speaking as a member of a minority group – and one of the smaller ones at that – I say it behooves those of us who don’t accept Jesus Christ as our savior to show some gratitude to those who do, and to start respecting the values and traditions of the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens, just as we keep insisting that they respect ours. Merry Christmas, my friends!
Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Daniel Lapin agrees:
Secular fundamentalism has successfully injected into American culture the notion that the word “Christmas” is deeply offensive. . . . Anti-Christianism is unhealthy for all Americans; but I warn my brethren that it will prove particularly destructive for Jews. . . . Let us all go out of our way to wish our many wonderful Christian friends – a very merry Christmas. Just remember, America’s Bible belt is our safety belt.
So . . . Merry Christmas!!!
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax
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The Great Thanksgiving Hoax
Each year at this time school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.
It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving’s real meaning.
The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.
The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.
The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.
In his ‘History of Plymouth Plantation,’ the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with “corruption,” and with “confusion and discontent.” The crops were small because “much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable.”
In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had their hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first “Thanksgiving” was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.
But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, “instead of famine now God gave them plenty,” Bradford wrote, “and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.” Thereafter, he wrote, “any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.
What happened?
After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, “they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop.” They began to question their form of economic organization.
This had required that “all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means” were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, “all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock.” A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.
This “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that “young men that are most able and fit for labor and service” complained about being forced to “spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children.” Also, “the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak.” So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.
Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called “The Starving Time,” the population fell from five-hundred to sixty.
Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was “plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure.” He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, “we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now.”
Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that the annual Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in 1863, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.
Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them.
* * * * *
Mr. Maybury writes on investments.
This article originally appeared in The Free Market, November 1985.
Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506)
Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506)
Known as ‘the man who discovered America’, Columbus was in fact trying to find a westward sea passage to the Orient when he landed in the New World in 1492. This unintentional discovery was to change the course of world history.
Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa between August and October 1451. His father was a weaver and small-time merchant. As a teenager, Christopher went to sea, travelled extensively and eventually made Portugal his base. It was here that he initially attempted to gain royal patronage for a westward voyage to the Orient – his ‘enterprise of the Indies’.
When this failed, and appeals to the French and English courts were also rejected, Columbus found himself in Spain, still struggling to win backing for his project. Finally, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella agreed to sponsor the expedition, and on 3 August 1492, Columbus and his fleet of three ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Niña, set sail across the Atlantic.
Ten weeks later, land was sighted. On 12 October, Columbus and a group of his men set foot on an island in what later became known as the Bahamas. Believing that they had reached the Indies, the newcomers dubbed the natives ‘Indians’. Initial encounters were friendly, but indigenous populations all over the New World were soon to be devastated by their contact with Europeans. Columbus landed on a number of other islands in the Caribbean, including Cuba and Hispaniola, and returned to Spain in triumph. He was made ‘admiral of the Seven Seas’ and viceroy of the Indies, and within a few months, set off on a second and larger voyage. More territory was covered, but the Asian lands that Columbus was aiming for remained elusive. Indeed, others began to dispute whether this was in fact the Orient or a completely ‘new’ world.
Columbus made two further voyages to the newfound territories, but suffered defeat and humiliation along the way. A great navigator, Columbus was less successful as an administrator and was accused of mismanagement. He died on 20 May 1506 a wealthy but disappointed man.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/columbus_christopher.shtml
U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE IAN LINKER ISSUES LABOR DAY STATEMENT PRAISING THE AMERICAN WORKER AND RIGHT-TO-WORK STATES
>U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE IAN LINKER ISSUES LABOR DAY STATEMENT PRAISING THE AMERICAN WORKER AND RIGHT-TO-WORK STATES
(Ridgewood, NJ): On Labor Day, conservative Republican U.S. Senate candidate from New Jersey Ian Linker issued the following statement:
We should celebrate all American workers this Labor Day, like every Labor Day, and remember the millions of Americans that are out of work this year. We should also recognize and praise the 22 right-to-work states that exercised their right under the Taft-Hartley Act and preserve for their individual workers the freedom to decide whether or not to join a union and the freedom to decide whether or not to pay union dues – the essence of American freedom. These states preserve workplace freedoms for American workers that unions and their political allies would gladly deprive from their workers. As freedom loving Americans, we should celebrate freedom for all of our workers and our people and oppose any group that organizes in opposition to our founding principles.
