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Political correctness

The Midnight Ride of Sybil Ludington

July 4, 2023

Mike Huckabee

I’ve been astounded recently by the way the left has been so successful at using the phrase “hate speech” and the fear of school shootings to convince young people to demand that their own First and Second Amendment rights be taken away.

Somehow, they have managed to bamboozle a large slice of the young generation into simultaneously believing that they are wise and mature enough to start voting and even writing laws at 16; yet they are so childish and irresponsible, they can’t be trusted to touch a firearm until they’re 21, or to hear an opposing opinion without rushing to a safe space to cuddle a puppy and schmoosh Play-Doh.

When young people don’t know their rights, where those rights came from, and how much was sacrificed to secure them, it’s easy to convince them to trade them away for empty promises of comfort and security. This is the basis of all those quotes warning not to sell your birthright for a mess of pottage, a bit of advice so ancient and universal that it dates back to Esau in Genesis 25: 29-34. But leftists are still counting on young people not knowing it (no wonder they want to ban the Bible from schools.)

These days, students are taught an ugly, twisted and totally negative perversion of American history. They’re taught to hate their own magnificent heritage, and they don’t learn the most basic facts (or even what the word “pottage” means), let alone all the great stories you discover when you dig into real American history. This seems like the perfect week for a lesson in how America came to be born. And I’ll try to put it into terms they can relate to.

Maybe – possibly – today’s students vaguely recognize the name Paul Revere (although they might believe he was a slave trader. I certainly doubt they had to memorize the poem, the way we did.) But how many know there was another heroic midnight rider who warned that the British were coming, only this one was a teenage girl from Duchess County, New York?

She’s just one of many American heroes that kids don’t learn about because modern textbooks scrub history of everything interesting or inspiring in favor of leftist social and political agendas that downgrade America. They depict this as a land of nothing but racism and oppression, not as a land where people of good will have struggled and sacrificed for generations, constantly working to improve things by establishing justice, securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity and creating a “more perfect union” (note that in the original foundational document, the writers made it clear that nothing’s perfect, but we would strive always to keep working together toward perfection.)

Kids, American history is not a list of personal grievances against people who’ve been dead for 200 years. It’s everything that ever happened to everyone before you came on the scene. Seek it out. It can be pretty interesting, and you can actually learn things from it.

For instance: listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of…Sybil Ludington? Movies these days are filled with unrealistic fictional depictions of "girl power," but Sybil was the real article. As the oldest of 11 children, she had to take on a lot of responsibility at a young age. She was barely 16 on the night of April 26, 1777. She had just tucked all her siblings into bed when, suddenly, there came an urgent knock at the door. It was a messenger, coming to warn her father, Col. Henry Ludington, that British troops were invading.

His troops weren’t expecting an attack and were scattered all over the countryside. Gathering them meant a dangerous ride over pitch black roads, through enemy soldiers, wild animals and hostile Indians (sorry: “Indigenous Peoples.”) Understandably, the messenger refused an order to go. But Sybil volunteered. Her father protested, but she pointed out that only she knew where all his men lived. As any father of a strong-willed daughter will recognize, he’d long since learned that arguing with her was futile. So Sybil mounted up and rode off.

It was a rainy night. The British had already set nearby Danbury, Connecticut, on fire, and the flames cast an eerie, red glow on the fog. It spurred Sybil on as she galloped from house to house, banging on doors and shouting that the British were coming. According to legend, at one point, a highway robber tried to intercept Sybil, but she raised her father’s musket and sent him running. Yet another reason why teenagers should think twice before demanding that the Second Amendment be taken away from them.

By dawn, Sybil and her horse were cold, wet and exhausted. She’d roused over 400 troops, who joined the Battle of Ridgefield and helped drive the British all the way back to Long Island Sound. Gen. Washington personally honored Sybil for her heroism.

Today, there are historic markers all along her route, and statues of her in New York and Washington (if they haven’t been torn down by historical illiterates.) But I’ll bet most young people never even heard of Sybil Ludington, a teenager much like them, except she knew what really happened during the American Revolution. Maybe it’s because nobody wrote a famous poem about her midnight ride -- even though her ride was over twice as long as Paul Revere’s. Let’s hope someone turns her story into a hip-hop musical so they’ll finally learn about it.

(Since originally writing this, I decided I should mention that some revisionist historians have labored mightily to try to debunk this story, but the best they’ve come up with is to claim they can’t find documentation of her ride. Too bad Sybil didn’t record it on her iPhone. In a comment that says more about contemporary “historians” than it does about actual American history, one wrote, “Sybil's ride embraces the mythical meanings and values expressed in the country's founding. As an individual, she represents Americans' persistent need to find and create heroes who embody prevalent attitudes and beliefs.” I’d say that when you start out with the attitude that our nation’s Founders’ values were “mythical,” it tends to give you a persistent need to tear down American heroes. But that’s not actually history, now, is it?)

The True Story of Yankee Doodle

July 4, 2023

Mike Huckabee

Usually around the Fourth of July, we hear a lot of songs about all the great things about America: “God Bless America,” “God Bless The USA,” “America the Beautiful” (although you might not have heard them this year because of some people whining that hearing God’s name or praise for America “triggers” them.) But before them all, even before “The Star-Spangled Banner,” there was the original American patriotic anthem, “Yankee Doodle.” However, it didn’t start out as a celebration of Americans, but as a mockery of them.

Since 1776, the song “Yankee Doodle” has been as much a symbol of America as the flag. Every child learns it from the cradle (or used to.) But many of us grew up without ever knowing what it really means. Like, why did he call his cap macaroni? Did he use cheese for hair mousse? (I’ll bet a lot of recent college graduates actually believe that and think he was a speciesist exploiter of cows.) Well, I’ll answer those questions and more.

“Yankee Doodle” dates back long before 1776. It most likely started as a German nursery rhyme, since “dudel” is an Old German word for “fool.” It first became associated with America when British soldiers made up their own lyrics to it to mock the ragtag American Revolutionaries. That baffling line – “stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni” – makes sense when you know that a macaroni wig was one of those ridiculously large powdered wigs that dandies of the time wore. The Brits were ridiculing Americans as a bunch of hayseeds, so dumb they’d think sticking a feather in their hat would make them look sophisticated. Imagine a Huffington Post article about Trump voters from Alabama, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of just how much arrogant condescension they intended to convey.

Unfortunately for the British, it turned out wars weren’t settled according to who had the spiffiest uniforms (in fact, red coats just made you an easier target.) Those unfashionable Americans were fighting for their homes, their families and their freedom. So they did what Americans have done ever since: they took the ridicule aimed at them, threw it back in the faces of those who mocked them, and got the last laugh. “Yankee Doodle” was the Babylon Bee of its time.

The Americans took the song that was meant to belittle them and adopted it as their anthem. They marched to it in the streets, sang it in bars, and made up their own new lyrics to promote the cause of freedom and glorify leaders like General Washington, “upon his strapping stallion.” It wasn’t long before the British learned to dread the sound of that tune, especially when it was played on a fife and drum, accompanied by American militiamen. A Boston newspaper reported that Minutemen who captured two British officers forced them to dance to “Yankee Doodle” until they collapsed. After that, the Brits admitted that that mocking little song didn’t sound so funny to them anymore.

Well, now you know how “Yankee Doodle” came to be the unofficial American battle anthem that later inspired another great patriotic song for this time of year, George M. Cohan’s “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” As Cohan proudly sang, “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, a Yankee Doodle, do or die…A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, Born on the Fourth of July!”

Of course, Cohan was actually born on the third of July. But that’s another story for another day.

Happy Independence Day, America

July 4, 2023

Mike Huckabee

Happy Independence Day and happy 247th birthday to the United States of America! No, this nation was not born in 1619 when slaves first arrived, no matter how many trinkets liberal “journalists” award themselves for creating bogus history. It was born on July 4th, 1776, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which officially kicked out the previous regime and kicked off history’s greatest experiment in freedom.

Today is when all Americans celebrate our freedoms. But sadly, too many young Americans have been miseducated to feel no gratitude for the titanic struggles and sacrifices made by those of previous generations to secure and preserve those freedoms. As the recent pandemic proved, even those who recognize how lucky they are to be Americans are often too willing to trade away their freedoms in exchange for hollow promises of security. As the great philosopher Joni Mitchell once said, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.”

That’s why the Founding Fathers took such care to lock our most important rights safely within the First Amendment to the Constitution. There are more freedoms guaranteed in that one short sentence than people in most nations can even dream of. That’s why for centuries now, people from around the world have risked their lives to come to America (by the way, why do the same people who think America is the worst nation on Earth also demand open borders to accommodate all the people who want to be Americans?) It’s also why legal immigrants are often more patriotic than natural-born Americans: they’re aware of how unique America is and truly grateful for the freedoms too many of us take for granted.

The Founders understood how precious and rare such freedoms are. When the framers of the Constitution first met in 1787, many feared that if they created a strong federal government, it would trample the rights of the people, just like the British king they’d fought to break free of. So to make sure the people’s rights would always be protected, they added 10 amendments - although George Mason thought they were so important, they should come first, as the Preface to the Constitution!

Now, in case you’ve never heard it or have just forgotten (as too many federal judges and a few Supreme Court Justices I could name apparently have), here is the First Amendment, in its entirety. Don’t worry, this won’t take long:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yep, that’s it. This was before government needed a 2,000-page bill just to ruin your health insurance or put $2 trillion on your credit card. Only 45 simple words were needed to protect our rights… 

* To speak freely without fear of government retribution...

* To publish your thoughts so that other Americans can read and debate them (even if they don’t echo the views of people who work at Facebook and Google)…

* To band together with like-thinking Americans and protest peacefully without fear of arrest…

* To petition our leaders to change their policies…

* And to be free from having an official state religion forced upon us, but also from government interference with the free expression of our personal religious beliefs. A lot of people celebrate the first half of that religious right (no state religion) but pretend the second half (no state interference in religion) doesn’t exist.

Until recently, the Supreme Court seemed hesitant to make clear that it means what it says, even though it takes only six words to say it: “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Fortunately, that appears to be changing with recent rulings. Also, note that the phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the so-called “Establishment clause” of the First Amendment, or anywhere in the Constitution. In other words, trying to ban religious people from public office and expressions of faith on public property is not supported by the Constitution.

These are the rights that together create the exceptional free American culture that those of who know real history celebrate today. The Founders thought they were all so important that somehow, they found a way to list every single one of them first.

Then, just to be certain that no future government ever tried to take those rights away, they made the very next amendment the right to bear arms. And having just fought a bloody Revolution against the most powerful military force on Earth with citizen soldiers, they certainly never intended to limit gun ownership only to military members.

And perhaps most importantly, they emphasized that these rights are given by God, not government. None of them can ever be repealed. So no matter how hard some people are trying to scratch some of them off of the parchment, it won’t make a lick of difference. You can’t edit God.

A Life Controlled by the Government is Not Real Life

July 3, 2023

Mike Huckabee

(Partially adapted from the book “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy,” which you can buy here: “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy” - Mike Huckabee)

It seems as if every day’s news brings a story of some egomaniacal politician, bureaucrat or billionaire with another harebrained scheme for how the rest of us should live. We all need to be eating bug paste instead of hamburgers, living in caves, driving cars powered by windmills (when the wind is blowing), and living small, contained, pre-planned, freedom-free, government-monitored lives to “save the planet,” while our superiors (at least, that’s how they see themselves) keep living in mansions and flying around on private jets to “climate conferences” at five-star resorts with surf ‘n’ turf buffets.

What’s almost as galling as the utterly unearned sense of moral and intellectual superiority among this clique of trust fund babies and second husbands of wealthy widows is their smug assertion that we will “own nothing and be happy.” This notion that people are happier when Big Brother Government does all their thinking for them is anathema to basic American values, but they keep coming up with new ways to sell it, as if it were another overhyped and underperforming consumer product.

Remember “The Life of Julia?” That was an early attempt at selling the Nanny State that was rolled out during Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. It was an animated online video that depicted a woman named Julia who was dependent on government for all things from cradle to grave. She could live her life only thanks to the ever-present benevolent hand of Uncle Sugar. This was meant to make people feel grateful for all those “government services” (or more precisely, the administration of those “services”) that have contributed to our $32 trillion national debt and demand more and more.

To most self-reliant Americans, the sad, dull, empty life of “Julia” was a disturbing combination of insult to our intelligence and revelation of what the “nannies” in government really think of us poor, feckless Americans — and their desire to train and condition us to love government more than freedom.

I felt sorry for the people who thought Julia’s sad little life was something to be envied, or celebrated as a tribute to the wonderful, all-encompassing role that government plays in our lives. In my own role as a parent, it was never my hope that I would raise my three children in a way that would make them dependent on me for their entire lives. I would be heartbroken and distraught if my three able-bodied adult children felt unable or unwilling to leave the nest and try their wings; or that my parenting left them paralyzed and clinging to their mother and me for the rest of their lives. (Note: I don’t think I had to worry about that.)

Friends of mine who have children with incapacitating physical or mental disabilities have no choice but to keep them at home for their entire lives. But they provide never-ending care out of love and necessity. The willing sacrifices they make are extraordinary, but they would be the first to say that it’s not the life they would have chosen for their children.

“The Life of Julia” was a startling revelation of how proponents of big government view life and hope to sell their vision of total dependence to the public (the first of many, since Hollywood has recently been cranking out lots of animated movies with leftist messages, and they have the red ink on their balance sheets to prove it.) Intervention by government at each stage of Julia’s existence is all that makes her life possible, from food stamps to Medicaid to rent subsidies to tuition assistance (no doubt to a college that teaches her to love socialism) to the Women and Infant Children (WIC) program to welfare checks to Medicare to even a government-subsidized community garden to putter around in during her sunset years (I’m surprised they didn’t tout the Social Security burial stipend to put the cherry on top), just to name a few of the many programs that act as a cozy, federal hammock. Poor, helpless Julia survives only because she is a tranquilized ward of the state her entire life, as is her child.

But where is Julia's husband/spouse/partner/baby daddy? We never find out. In the minds of those who love Big Daddy government, an actual participating father is so irrelevant, he’s not even worth mentioning. Government is both protector and provider. Who needs dad when you’ve got Uncle Sugar? (Maybe he even fathered Julia’s kid through a Planned Parenthood sperm donor grant.)

I’ve discussed “helicopter parents,” who hover over their children to swoop in and protect them from every scrape, bump, and bruise, who insist they’re special little angels who are always right and who must have their feelings protected at all costs. If you want to see the results of that, look at all the nose-ringed Antifa brats attacking people for daring to express ideas they disagree with, which to them is the equivalent of “violence,” or the snowflake kids rushing to “safe spaces” to squeeze Play-Doh to relieve the anxiety of hearing a different opinion.

Today, we're also faced with the prospect of “helicopter government,” which claims to be ready to swoop in and rescue us from all of life’s trials and tribulations, if we just give them all our money and freedom. Both helicopter parents and helicopter government create whole classes of people who are self-absorbed, weak, dependent, and ripe for trading the hard-fought rights they inherited for false promises of security.

It was shocking but somehow not shocking to read that a recent CATO survey found that nearly 30% of young Gen Z Americans would support putting government surveillance cameras into every home to “prevent crime and abuse.” I guess it never dawned on them that this itself would be a crime against individual rights and a huge abuse of government power.

While helicopter parenting and helicopter government have both warped young people’s minds into not appreciating their precious rights as Americans, only helicopter government can pass the staggering cost of its “hovering” on to those of us who are forced to subsidize their utopian hallucinations. It’s a lot easier to stick people with the bill who haven’t even been born yet and can’t protest, which explains the stupefying national debt.

The best hope for America is that there are still enough of us out here in Bubbaville who are having kids instead of aborting them, and teaching those kids (via homeschooling, if necessary) the real history of America and why their rights are too precious ever to trade away for false promises of security.

We saw “The Life of Julia” and either laughed or recoiled or both. Our taste in films runs more toward things like Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino,” the movie where a gang of punks was threatening a family and trying to force one of their kids to adopt their lifestyle, and Clint held a rife on them and snarled, “GET OFF MY LAWN!”

Trump indictment news

June 28, 2023

Mike Huckabee
In the latest news on the federal indictment of former President Trump, CNN claims it has obtained the audio recording of the 2021 meeting that the Biden DOJ is using as evidence that Trump showed classified documents to people without security clearances.
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