"In these stories of loss, trauma, redemption, and eternal hope, we see that God was, is, and always will be at work—even in the darkest moments." - TGC
"Goldman’s book is a thoughtful extended essay on the idea of nationalism ... for Goldman, nationalism entails that if the motto e pluribus unum—one out of many—is indeed meaningful, the unum must be some intelligible unifying principle or other.... Goldman proceeds to trace three rival conceptions of American national identity" - John Ehrett
Edmund Burke, on moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies. House of Commons, March 22, 1775
Below are excerpts from the first fifth of the speech. The speech is public domain. All 24,000 words are available at Project Gutenberg.
I hope, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the Chair, your good nature will incline you to some degree of indulgence towards human frailty… . We are at this very instant nearly as free to choose a plan for our American Government as we were on the first day of the session. If, Sir, we incline to the side of conciliation, we are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We are therefore called upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, again to attend to America; to attend to the whole of it together; and to review the subject with an unusual degree of care and calmness.
"The main lesson [of Rasmussen’s new book Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders] is to not place much hope in the amount of happiness, amity, and social progress that politics alone can produce. And the great teacher of that lesson, the lone Founder who retained a great deal of optimism about the American future, is James Madison." - The Dispatch
1776 Project: “although the argument for less ideologically driven historical education could not come at a more critical moment, the report is a missed opportunity to make it.” - Commentary
"'We were told that on Christmas Eve we would have the largest audience that had ever listened to a human voice,' recalled Commander Frank Borman during the 40th anniversary celebrations in 2008. 'And the only instructions that we got from NASA was to do something appropriate.'" - IFWE
"It’s true that debunkers can score some easy points. The term 'Pilgrims' wasn’t popularized until later. They didn’t wear dour clothes. They didn’t consider their iconic gathering in 1621 a formal thanksgiving... But the basic contours of the holiday are recognizable in that long-ago event." - N.Review
In our last installment, we considered three essential lessons that we may learn from the lives of the Thanksgiving Pilgrims. Here are the final two lessons that we will consider.
The Pilgrims model perseverance in the midst of difficulty (Phil. 3:14).
The Pilgrims were persecuted, jailed, harassed, hunted and humiliated. They knew almost every type of danger and embarrassment. Even modern action films cannot match the stories of their harrowing escapes from danger. They were betrayed by a shipmaster in their first attempt to escape persecution in England in 1607, but that did not stop them.
William Bradford and his mentor, William Brewster, are perhaps the most notable in this regard—having led the church in the midst of peril all the way from Scrooby to Plymouth. When the Pilgrim women and children were arrested after the men had successfully escaped to Amsterdam on their second attempt in 1608, it was these two men who stayed behind to care for those wives and children. Yet Bradford still managed to outlast many of his brethren by serving for more than 30 years as governor of Plymouth Colony.
