American Glossary – County Highway

Jeremiad

America's Founding Document Debunked

Power grab by wealthy merchants targeted the men who fought and died for the Revolution

Honest soldiers deprived of pay

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are foes, not friends

By B. Duncan Moench

It sounds like a joke (and maybe it is), but a nursing-home occupant and a New York crime family boss are about to compete in an “election” to serve as our country’s next chief executive. Neither man believes that they need to debate anyone in public to secure their party’s nomination — and that judgment is almost certainly correct. Our whole lives, we’ve been fed fanciful stories about our nation’s fabulous “democracy” enshrined in its glorious Constitution. Now is probably the time to admit something: We’ve been conned. The fact that the written text of the Constitution never uses the word “democracy” is no accident. Yet the US education system — and most of the country’s major media operations — center themselves around safeguarding the country’s precious “democracy” in order to pull the wool over the eyes of us rubes. For the American Establishment, the Constitution’s immaculate-conception origin story operates much like Christianity’s concept of God: A loving, kind, and …

Departments

Bouquets and Brickbats

By The Editors

To Avi Curtis and Liam Ireland of Waukee, Iowa, who went trick-or-treating last year only to notice a bowl of candy outside one of the houses being stolen by a group of young thieves. Using the candy they had collected for themselves, they refilled the empty bowl and then stood outside the house and distributed it to their fellow trick-or-treaters. Liam explained that he had lost his brother to suicide ten months earlier, on Christmas Eve, and his brother had taught him that acts of kindness were important. “He did everything for me, so I show other people kindness,” he explained. To rock legend Michael McDonald, formerly of the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan, who took the time to meet 11-year-old superfan Paisley Gardner, invited her to a show in Nebraska, and then winked at her onstage. Asked what she loves about McDonald, Paisley identified the qualities of his famous voice: “It’s very, very wispy and sounds like an angel.” To everyone who donated to Victorville Helping Hands and …