Mark Twain happened to be in Paris in 1867 when the Turkish sultan of the Ottoman Empire was visiting French Emperor Napoleon III. Here is what Twain had to say:
‘Napoleon III, the representative of the highest modern civilization, progress and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive, superstitious - and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under the majestic Arch of Triumph, the First Century greets the Nineteenth!’
George Washington: homeschool
Thomas Jefferson: homeschool
James Madison: homeschool
Patrick Henry: homeschool
Benjamin Franklin: homeschool
The men who designed the government never sat in a government classroom.
Harsh Truth: they didn't need it.
Your kids don't either.
"It is the duty, as well as the privilege & interest of our Christian nation, to select & prefer Christians for our rulers."
—John Jay,
First Chief Justice of the USA
Americans invented wildlife conservation, National Parks, endangered species restoration, and democratic access to public land. That’s why Pax’s art speaks to you on a spiritual level, American:
The greatest problem with everyone who wants to talk about the relationship between the USA and Native Americans is nobody wants to have an objective unbiased opinion. They treat it like a genocide or a story of good and evil when it was a 400 year history of insurgency against countless different tribes with different practices, customs, values, and yes, rules of war.
You had very peaceful natives and then you had natives who would do the most unspeakable things imaginable. And with any insurgency, the line between civilian and military blurs. Natives didn't fight wearing uniforms, they didn't care about who was a soldier and who was a settler. There were atrocities, and in return there were reprisals. Some natives even sided with white settlers to undermine rival tribes.
In the end, it wasn't guns, germs, or steel that made the natives lose, but the inevitable march of progress of a civilization that was rapidly outpacing their own growth in population and technology. The cavalry couldn't defeat the natives, but the railroad that could deploy the cavalry rapidly could.
January 2, 1949. “Blizzard of ‘49” hits Great Plains. 72 hours. 76 dead, 100,000 cattle frozen. Trains buried. Chadron, NE rule: “No travel. Roads gone.” 16-year-old ranch kid Don “Sled” Miller tied 6 sleds to 4 horses. Rope, no runners. Loaded 23 kids from 7 ranches cut off 40 miles out. No heat, no food. Rode 22 hours in -35°F. Fed kids snow + jerky. One horse died. All 23 kids lived. Army saw it, copied “Operation Haylift” next day—dropped hay from C-47s. Saved 2 million cattle. Don got Bronze Star. Became sheriff. Died 2016. His sled rope is at Museum of the Fur Trade. He said: “Snow stopped trains. It didn’t stop me.”