Right Wing News blog took it upon themselves last week to poll 100 bloggers from over 40 Conservative sites about American History. ‘Who were the worst Americans of all time?’ they asked. Considering all the warmongers, murderers and rapists we’ve spawned, it might have been a difficult list to compose.

But it rarely pays to overestimate the depth of right-wingers: they made it look easy. The top three slots ended up being American presidents. Democrats, of course.

Above your Benedict Arnolds, Lee Harvey Oswalds and Alger Hisses, the wingnuts put FDR, Barack Obama and — number one — Jimmy Carter as the worst Americans who ever blighted planet Earth.

This did not go well with a lot of folks. Stupefying density rarely does. I mocked the sad little list here. Then I made a mental note to write a few words on the obvious criminals the fools omitted, and then spent all weekend on a lengthy (now annoying) piece I’m putting together on an especially curious right-wing hero (maybe later, if I don’t just chuck it and get on with my life).

So I went back to the original list for this post, but — oops — the post had been deleted. I can’t imagine how pissed off all the college-educated Republicans who jumped onto the lengthy thread must feel. From the definitive pronouncements of web maestros on history’s national disgraces to a vacant webpage. In a matter of a couple days. How sad.

Well, thanks to Google’s cache-ing, this Gem of Historical Analysis, it is not lost. It’s there above, right. You will notice how Conserva-storians, between Richard Nixon and John Wilkes Booth, crammed Jane Fonda, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Will anybody remember Pelosi’s name even 10 years from now? Why, yes they will, because she is so very evil. I can’t find Harry Reid’s name in my “Lions of State” rolodex, right now, this moment, as I keep looking back at the list to remind myself, but Senator Kittyclaws has raked a charcoal trough across America. Jane Fonda chokes America’s neck with a surprisingly sturdy and stylish scarf as we speak.

Which brings us to this: How could 100 Americans of any stripe not consider these people?

–Lee Harvey Oswald
–James Earl Ray
–John Hinckley (!)
–Charles Guiteau
–Leon Czolgosz
–Aaron Burr
–Spies like Jonathan Pollard and Robert Hanssen.
–Criminals and gangsters like Jesse James, Al Capone, and Lucky Luciano.
–Serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.
–Serial child molesters like Father John Geoghan and Dean Schwartzmiller.
–Sociopaths like Ted Kaczynski, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo.
–Spree shooters like James Huberty, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.

That’s a robust list of evil people. How did the wingnuts miss all that? Heaven knows.

However, there are two more people that I would nominate. Why these guys didn’t end up on the original, I think, is a little more obvious: these guys are their kinda guys. These two men are still heroes to plenty of the American right wing:

–Joseph McCarthy. A demagogue and political hack first, last and always. Lied about his World War II record to look good to voters. Said he’d flown dozens of missions though he’d flown 12, said he got wounded in battle when it was just a hazing incident, personally forged a ‘letter of commendation’ from Admiral Nimitz. Exploited Cold War hysteria by claiming he had a list of 200 (or 50 or 80) commies in the State Department. Never managed to prove a single one was, in fact, a Soviet plant. Created an atmosphere corrosive and paranoid, and it broke out of the Capitol and ran across the nation. Encouraged Americans to suspect their neighbors and co-workers, changing American life for the worse. Forced innocent people to testify in public hearings seen by millions, upended or ruined scores of careers. Accused anyone who opposed him or his methods, including Edward R. Murrow, of also being Communist. After 4 years of madness, the nation returned to its senses and came to despise the Wisconsin senator. He drank himself to death in less than another 4 years. Right-wingers like to claim he was right about the commies — several reports out of the former USSR showed there may have been 10 or more of his ‘names’ that were colluding with the Soviets. What they fail to realize is that McCarthy almost single-handedly destroyed America’s ability to figure that out. Unchecked rage and paranoia destroy perception and rational thought. ‘McCarthyism’ is still a poisonous pejorative to this day.

–Nathan Bedford Forrest. An unqualified military genius of the Civil War, revolutionizing cavalry tactics and strategy. Brave to the point of crazy. May have been built for war: when only twenty, killed two men and knifed two more in an act of blood revenge. Became a millionaire before the age of forty relying on two things: cotton farming, which the slaves did, and the buying and selling of commodities — his slaves. Joined the Confederacy, killed 30 men during the War. Refused to accept the surrender of dozens of mostly black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, resulting in a massacre. While even letters from his soldiers bore the massacre’s fact out, he refused to acknowledge it, to his death. After the War, became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, legitimizing America’s greatest and longest-lived terrorist organization. Stripped of his slaves, unable to continue his previous businesses, he ran a railroad and bankrupted it. Ran a prison. Became a great hero to the South after his death, spawning Forrest City, Arkansas, Forrest County, Mississippi, Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park in Tennessee, and the state’s naming July 13 “Nathan Bedford Forrest Day.” A bust of Nathan sits in the Tennessee State Capitol to this day. He’s an emblem of the sweet and sour nature of the memories of the Civil War and the South’s still wounded pride: a great warrior, but a horribly flawed American. Tennessee chooses to embrace Nathan as a “Defender of the South.” He defended a helluva lot more than that.

If you aren’t familiar with the inner workings of cuckoo clocks, well, here’s your chance. No need for the coke bottle specs, these boing-ed springs and toothless gears merely lie around, here on the internetz.

Here’s the question: who are or were the worst Americans? Like Hitler, for Germany. The USSR’s Stalin. Rome’s Caligula, Romania’s Vlad the Impaler. Nancy’s Spike, Tommy’s wicked Uncle Ernie: yuck.

Who are our worst citizens? Well, wouldn’t we like to know? Especially when the undisputed Top Guns of American History — CONSERVATIVE BLOGGERS — are the judges? Hell, yeah, I’d like to know because I could always use a good laugh.

Right Wing News did the polling:

Conservative Bloggers Select The 25 Worst Figures In American History
August 13, 2010

Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history — have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst was? Well, we here at RWN wondered about that, too, and that’s why we decided to email more than a hundred bloggers to get their opinions.

Did and done.

Okay, ready for some highlights? Here we go:

–Number 23: Hillary Clinton. Former First Lady and Senator from New York. Current U.S. Secretary of State. What damage has she done to the United States? Not sure. The White House and the state of New York seem to have recovered. Maybe she’s doing something awful right now? Maybe we should scan the news.

–Number 19: Michael Moore. Moviemaker. He makes movies. Popular movies.

–Number 13 (tie): Richard Nixon. Illegally bombed Cambodia (ushering in the Khmer Rouge), refused to end Johnson’s deadly war (until later), carried out Kissinger’s literally mega-murderous Central and South American foreign policies, broke into the Democratic national headquarters to steal an election, broke into the office of the psychologist of a political enemy to destroy him, conspired to cover up multiple crimes, fired the special prosecutor looking into the allegations, generally subverted the government for political gain. Lied to the American people without end or shame. Destroyed Americans’ faith in government. Resigned in disgrace.

–Number 13 (tie): Nancy Pelosi. First female Speaker of the House, serving 3 years and 7 months. Sought to pass Democratic legislation. Seeks to pass Democratic legislation.

–Number 11: John Wilkes Booth. Giant Wingnut. Assassinated probably the greatest American in history, the Great Emancipator, the man who saved the union, Abraham Lincoln. Threw American politics into disarray, leading to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and the disastrous, thoroughly corrupted Presidency of U.S. Grant.

–Number 9: Timothy McVeigh. Not just America’s Worst Terrorist, one of the world’s worst terrorists. 168 dead, including 19 children.

–Number 7: Lyndon Johnson. Vietnam. And Vietnam and Vietnam. Used an imaginary skirmish, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, to start a war. 57,000 Americans dead, maybe as many as 2,000,000 Vietnamese in addition. Aaaaaannnnnd . . . cut! The Civil Rights Act of 1964? The Voting Rights Act of 1965? The WAR ON POVERTY!?!? AAAUUGGHH!

–Number 4: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. American Commies. Spies. Well, Julius was. Passed on nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Probably. Both executed.

–Number 2: Barack Obama. U.S. President from January of last year to the present, 19 months. Umm . . healthcare reform? Nobel Peace Prize? The War in — oh, he didn’t start that. The War in — nope, not that one either. The Great Recession? Nopey nope. Yes, he’s got to be the second worst American in over two centuries. Still, he’s no . .

–Number 1: Jimmy Carter. Another of the Nobel committee’s devils. Evil incarnate. The Simpsons encapsulated the neon nightmare of pestilence and plague that Carter wrought upon the nation with these two words: Malaise Forever. His most disastrous policy would be . . ? I’m drawing a blank on Carter policies. Any of his policies. The whackos executed Ethel Rosenberg, just think of what they’d like to do to Jimmy. Better sneak up on him, Lucifer Himself is often swinging a hammer putting up houses for the poor.

Well, there you have it. And Good Golly.

But they seem to have skipped over quite a few thoroughly detestable Americans. Many of the Conservative ilk, perhaps? Don’t ya think? I do. More later.

Bhruic 3 hours ago

John Wilkes Booth as one of the worst Americans? His only mistake was that he was 4 years late.
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Gbvic 2 hours ago in reply to Bhruic

ahmen brother.
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Bildo 3 hours ago in reply to Bhruic

Liberal troll?
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Bhruic 2 hours ago in reply to Bildo

Classical liberal? Sure. Troll? Not so much.
Abe was less faithful to the constitution than any other president in American history. He is responsible for the deaths of a few hundred thousand human beings because he wanted to collect tariffs from southern ports, not to free the slaves. Lincoln was a tyrant that has been deified by revisionist historians.

Ah yes, the gays who fought like hell. For Hitler. Why wouldn’t they?

You know who were even more vicious, even than the gays? The Jews. And then the gay Jews — they were the worst. They fought like hell for Hitler. Why wouldn’t they? So Hitler surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, with gay Jews.

Except for the Russians. Like the homicidal ones who routed him right out of Berlin. They were THE WORST. The gay Russian Jews. They fought like hell for Hitler — why wouldn’t they? So Hitler surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, with gay Russian Jews.

Except for the freaky-deeky Americans. THEY WERE THE WORST. The gay Ameri-Russo Jews. Talk about vicious. When they came plowing across Europe, shooting or stomping or having sex with everything that moved, hell-bent on cutting Hitler’s head off, sticking it on a pike and kissing it, trying to make it giggle, he wisely made them all Stormshirt Browntroopers. THEY FOUGHT LIKE HELL FOR HITLER WHY WOULDN”T THEY?? So Hitler surrounded himself, virtually all of the Shoop-Shooper Worm-Boopers, with gay Ameri-Jew-Russkis. Gay-Merry-Jew-Rules-Keys. Gay-Marriage-Yer-Brewskis? I Do! You are now free! To tickle Hitler.

Big Scoop! *yawn* Walter Cronkite was targeted by soviet propagandists! That’s commie operatives! To do what, no one knows! Something dastardly! SOVIET PROPAGANDISTS! Blargle!

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING
‘Most trusted man’, Walter Cronkite, was named a Soviet target by the FBI
By Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media

The late CBS Evening News anchorman Walter Cronkite is named in a just-released FBI document from 1986 as being targeted in a Soviet “active measures” campaign against President Reagan’s anti-communist foreign policy. Cronkite is named as a possible member of a U.S. delegation that would sign a pro-Soviet “People’s Peace Treaty.”

Named as a possible member! Because they wanted him! A member! The FBI filed names! Soviets!

Cronkite, once known as “the most trusted man in television news” because of his influence during the time when three network news programs dominated the national dissemination of news and information, bears a great deal of responsibility for the American military defeat in Vietnam and the communist conquest of that Southeast Asian country.

Sure. For the first few years, he never said a word to oppose the brutal war or its government cheerleaders, but when he finally did, that was pretty sneaky. Cuz’ America had been doing so well, and the government had not been lying, and victory was in sight exactly as it had been for the previous 1,000 days in a row. Also, American citizens never followed any news about the war because its sons and uncles weren’t fighting and dying in it, and its families weren’t ripped apart by the carnage for any reason anyone could recall at all.

Everybody knew the Cronkite bastard was unpatriotic, y’know?

Texas schools board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns
– US Christian conservatives drop references to slave trade and sideline Thomas Jefferson who backed church-state separation

. . “We are fighting for our children’s education and our nation’s future,” Dunbar said. “In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections” . .

Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the “significant contributions” of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war . .

The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous “Atlantic triangular trade”, and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.

So, this is Texans’ more “patriotic ideology”? It looks like flat out lying and cowardice. It also looks like it’s pretty sympathetic to slavery, and I have no idea how that could ever be construed as patriotic. Slavery is and was a heinous evil — why would anyone try to hide or soft-pedal two centuries of it? It’s preposterous.

Nonetheless, if Texas school board members need any more help in whitewashing a history that’s already universally known, presumably because the documented truth hurts their obscene versions of ‘patriotism’, perhaps we can be of some help. There must be plenty of ways to hide the truth about slavery.

Instead of saying the word “slave,” an unpatriotic derivation of the s-word, perhaps teachers can simply say “triangular trades-product.”

Instead of mentioning that they frequently tried to run off plantations to get away from the horrors of trades-product life, Texans might speak of the difficulties of “inventory retention.”

When the inventory were caught and returned to their ramshackle “warehouses,” any mention of subsequent whipping could be substituted with “product lashing and bundling”, a traditional method of “loss prevention.”

Avoid mentioning the practice of breaking up families by selling off children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives — call it “franchising.” Try not to mention these sales of human beings perhaps by calling auction houses vigorous “distribution centers.” And avoid mentioning death — ever — by referring to it as “breakage.”

Of course, any and all temptations to mention The Emancipation Proclamation would be eclipsed by a patriotic effort to quietly assimilate trades-product and its actual history into the oblivion known as “History as Texans Need to See It.”

Lastly, the post-Abraham Lincoln era of American goodwill toward newly and freely distributed inventory will be challenged with how to describe lynching. I would say that re-casting the unfortunate trades-product, taking particular note of it being the focus of attention, as a primitive and public “entertainment center” would buoy the patriotic spirits of both Texans and franchises still in operation.

These little ways of avoiding the un-American mention of American History might be just the thing to get our Conservative friends to embrace all of their nation’s past: the good, the benign and the palatable. It’s about time that the writers of History books took into account their customers, right? If the writers themselves are disappointed to be forced to bend to popular will, if they’re so overwrought by inventing a tailored past for the s-word, tell them they can re-visit “branding” all they want: describe it any way you like, that’s perfectly fine.

April 13, 2010 12:00 A.M.
March Diary

John Derbyshire

I remember it now . .

The Left in power Watching the president’s strutting and preening after the passing of the health-care bill, I found myself thinking that the Left in power have a very characteristic kind of arrogant triumphalism.

“I’m in this race not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation,” announced Obama when declaring his candidacy in 2007. That’s what they’re like, all of them, always.

Everything and everybody on the left are always exactly like that all of the time. Well, that’s simple enough, that’s settled. Don’t know why he even bothers with the quotes to make his case since he’s just established all of it totally and eternally beyond the limits of clarity.

Surprisingly, John doesn’t completely bollix this first quote. Obama invoked the memory of Abraham Lincoln: “. . that there is power in conviction. That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people. He tells us that there is power in hope. That is our purpose here today. That is why I’m in this race. Not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.”

“We shall now create the socialist order,” Lenin is supposed to have said, following his 1917 putsch.

Quote: “We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order.” Don’t know why John is so allergic to the google.

After the British Labour Party’s 1945 electoral landslide, the new government’s attorney general declared that “We are the masters now.”

No.

(Wikipedia says this is a misquotation; but if so, it was, as misquoted, entirely in character for the socialist triumphalism of the time, as evidenced by the fact that that’s how everybody remembers it.)

Unbelievable. Now he googles. So he knows he’s made a mistake, but posts it anyways explaining that his mistake is actually right. “. . as evidenced by the fact that that’s how everybody remembers it.” Truthiness, everybody? That’s evidence, to him. Hey, as long as it’s popular, it must be true. If everybody remembered that Derbyshire were 110 years old, he’d immediately keel over and turn to dust.

The Shawcross Wiki says it was in 1946. But was it some of the give and take in the House of Commons about the usage of terms and words? Naw: it was a declarative statement of the eternally tyrannical intent of liberalism. Why? Because John Derbyshire made his memory the master of “truth.” Actually, it’s his memory of everybody else’s memory, but why bitch about it? It’s only reason number 1,398 of “Why Conservatives are Technically Even More Right When They’re Wrong.” Here’s the Humpty Dumpty passage:

Indeed. Why should any history matter, the actual events of life? The master’s perception of everything is a better indicator of truth than “truth.” Who says so? The master himself. And this post is about the way he remembers something. At least until he writes another post, that one entitled “The Evils Of Liberal Historical Revisionism.” It’s then that he’ll remember Truth is Sacred.

Oh, and incidentally, it doesn’t matter how many smoking hot young blondes Rod Stewart marries, he’s gay. Remember that whole hospitalized-with-a-stomach-full-of-goo thing? That’s the one and only way everybody remembers it.

Aaaannd now, American Patriots everywhere will turn to a substantive figure. They badly need a horse’s ass justification for the sweeping and likely reverberating paleo-Conservative textbook revisions recently prescribed by the Texas State Board of Education. To find that intellectual, let the Republicans look no further than an Arctic-faced T.V. Ranger famous for kicking the shit out of things that annoy him:

Unfortunate that Professor Norris never noted a more obvious and successful attempt at “whitewashing“, by that same heroic State Board:

Numerous attempts to add the names or references to important Hispanics throughout history also were denied, inducing one amendment that would specify that Tejanos died at the Alamo alongside Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. Another amendment deleted a requirement that sociology students “explain how institutional racism is evident in American society.”

Somehow, Chuck missed the racial low-lights. Perhaps he was busy kicking a copy of “Watership Down” at the library. ( . . the ‘good’ rabbits, they’re also individualists throwing off the chains of traditional martial authoritarianism? what?)

The oblivious remains of Norris’ two-dimensional crap qualify as a classic example of wingnuts projecting to cover their snail tracks. To wit: when you’re a bug-eyed revisionist, everybody else is bug-eyed and revisionist. When you’re a whitewasher, the liberals are whitewashing everything, god dammit. When you’re trying to reinvent history to deify your dirty faith, how can liberals justify their attacks on religious freedom?

“Religion,” [Mary Helen] Berlanga said. “Everything was about Religion. There was one [amendment] that said Battle of San Jacinto gave religious freedom. And one lady in the audience came up to me later and said ‘religious freedom? That’s when the Texas Rangers began hanging the Hispanics.”

Berlanga just bailed.

“I’ve had it. This is it. I’m leaving for the evening,” Berlanga said. “The board is pretending this is white America, Hispanics don’t exist. I’ve never seen a rewrite like this. This is a step backwards.”

(Berlanga left in response to a claim by Leo that stereotyping is “sometimes it’s a positive thing.”)

The Great American School Board’s positive view of racism went unrecognized by Chuck, too. In that case, he was returning the remains of Richard Adams’ cryptic warren manifesto when a corner of the (typical Marxist) Reference Desk bolted across some amount of carpet and fanged his knee. And the Desk received a complete crap-kicking. Still intellectually engaged, Norris also proceeded to head-butt some potted plants who, typical of bullies challenged, offered little resistance.

Ah, but he remembers he thinks this much:

He offers that the radical revision is due to “preservationists”? That would be more of the same violent spin. To the pretend Ranger detective, the following would be the opposite of someone “modifying textbooks to fit their ideological whims”:

Last Thursday, a discussion arose over how to describe the United States’ economy:

Scholars on the curriculum teams had argued that “capitalism” and “free market” are commonly used terms in economics courses and everyday discourse…

Terri Leo (R- Spring): “I do think words mean things. . . . I see no reason, frankly, to compromise with liberal professors from academia.” . .

After the discussion, the board voted to strike all instances of “capitalism” from the state’s curriculum.

Get that? Because the word “capitalism” carries with it a belly-full of leftist hooey, apparently. So, imagine now their supposed historical book of reference for all of American History that contains no mention of “capitalism.” Imagine going to the index and running your finger down the “C” page to find nothing between capita, per and capitals. I can’t imagine it. Has there ever been an American History schoolbook like this ‘traditional’ Texas one? I don’t imagine that either.

I guess it’s time to finally write the first American History textbook ever, just now. Well, hey, thank you throwback “guardians . . of tradition”. And thank Texas that someone is finally protecting the kids from all that para-educational mumbo jumbo. Because I also can’t imagine what sort of country we’d end up living in should we tolerate the political whimsy inherent in the mention of a post-modern bomb-throwing Deist like Thomas Jefferson:

The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

Double clutch — what?

Texas School Board Votes to Remove Thomas Jefferson from Curriculum

From the Texas Freedom Network, live blogging the deliberations of the Texas Board of Education: . .

“9:40 – We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.”

Uhhh, what the hell did perhaps the most influential Founding Father of all time ever do that the “preservationists” would want to take note of? Other than, like, the Declaration of Independence and a jillion other landmark uber-American things? Never mind that virtually every other modern western country’s history books will speak, glowingly, of Thomas Jefferson, phooey that. It’s the christianist Texans who’ve finally got an iron grasp of what’s really American and Historic.

All of which which brings us back to Chuck. His iron grasp has just splintered a computer stand that wandered too near the street-punk flora for his liking, but he’s fine, he’s okay.

He remains winded but unbowed by the insults of bruising or crippling stupidity that humble lesser men. He feels that strong Conservatives, like him, must continue to fight against the universal and conspiratorial forces biting at their metaphorical, or literal, American knees. Slashing at them: the always modern-fangled teeth of defiant, atheistic, political liberal humanists. Chuck’s message, a classic, he’d like you to take to heart: ‘Bite Back.’

Get involved in local, state and national politics, and make your voice heard. The time for passivity is over. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

HEH, oops. That would be in the Calvinist sense, of course.

Apparently, Dr. Olasky was earlier taken aback by the criticism of Brit Hume (“Bold journalist Brit Hume” — HA) for telling Tiger Woods to drop Buddhism and become Christian. It offered a better shot at redemption, BRIT! said.

“Maybe so, one Buddhist blogger replied, but Buddhism is a religion of peace without any of those nasty crusades lurking in its past.”

Well, that was a giant, red rag to a peace-loving nerf-horned bull. So Olasky dug up historical events to prove that Buddhism had been violent in the past, including a number of pre- and during-WWII atrocities committed by the Japanese.

Thus, Buddhists have been no better than Christians:

Baran’s review of Victoria’s writing noted, “For too long, we have accepted all eastern teaching with childlike reverence, placing our thinking faculties on hold. Perhaps now, with these new revelations, it is time to re-honor intelligence and questioning and look more carefully at what we inherited and where we are headed.” Christians have gone through such self-appraisals concerning the Crusades. Some Buddhists are ready to do the same.

The essential point?

My point in all this is not to suggest that Buddhism is a religion of violence—it rarely is these days—but that it can be. Buddhism gets a great press in the United States, but it is one more man-made religion that reflects our naturally sinful natures. Murderers and adulterers all need Christ.

Hey, Marvin: why so self-conscious? If Christianity is the one true religion, it doesn’t matter how violent it’s been, right?

A new and fascinating perspective of one of the great American figures of all time, Benjamin Franklin.

Okay, enough pop culture–back to the substantial. Pencils and pens out, time to brush up on our essential American History.

Thanks to my buddy Aaron Williams.