“It can be lost, and it will be, if the time ever comes when these documents are regarded… merely as curiosities in glass cases.”
So spoke Harry Truman about the Declaration of Independence. He also called it a “supreme expression of our profound belief.” How did this world-shattering document come about?
Read all about it at the American Thinker
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| American Exceptionalism |
We were cleaning our basement when we came across some 1976 Bicentennial material that my wife's mother had carefully stowed away. Here is an example.
This 1976 calendar was given away free at Exxon stations. The promotional calendar was distributed at the beginning of the bicentennial year and must have been planned months in advance. She also preserved Founding Father playing cards that were given away at Bob's Big Boy. Lots and lots of other company-sponsored items were given away free to celebrate our country's anniversary and the Declaration of Independence. (My mother-in-law was a very nice person, but cheap. She valued free stuff.)
Google ExxonMobil for our 250th celebration. Crickets. Same for most of Corporate America. Our USA-based companies have found something else to celebrate. Something else to take pride in.
When did patriotism go out of fashion? When did patriotism become scorned? When did we forget, or never learn, the significance of our Founding and the Declaration of Independence?
Not only when, but who decided? Who stole our American heritage?
The best way to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the United States of America is to replace who with we ... We the People.
“The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence, or veiled in fable, and perhaps the world has lost little it should regret. But the origins of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived.” —James Madison
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| American Exceptionalism Series |
— JohnBoy (@JohnBoy6969696) May 28, 2026
Also see the following:
James Madison warning against democracy at the Constitutional Convention
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| American Exceptionalism Series |
I heard these words from Samuel Adams at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. I immediately leaped to my feet and joined the throng marching to Griffin’s Wharf. The destination of the rowdy mob was a cargo of tea owned by the British East India Company. We tossed the tea into the harbor in protest of taxation without representation.
My participation was not on December 16, 1773, the famed night of the Boston Tea Party. It was December 16, 2005. Although a reenactment, it remained a stirring call to arms. Adams’s meaning was clear: the time for talk was over. Samuel Adams’ famous words, “This meeting can do nothing more to save the country!” forced the protesters out of their pews and into the street.
Every revolution needs a rabble-rouser, and Adams was the pervasive firebrand of the American Revolution. He was of normal height for the time, with sharp, angular features. One observer described him as “lean as a greyhound.” John Adams, his second cousin, said, that when riled, his eyes “sparkled like diamonds.” His roots were Puritan, and he disdained finery. A British officer sneered that he looked like a “threadbare clergyman.” Despite appearing average in stature, Adams possessed a larger-than-life personality.
Samuel Adams formed the Boston Committee of Correspondence (1772) to share information, coordinate protests, and expose British tyranny. Within two years, there were 300 similar committees throughout the colonies, converting Boston activism into a colony-wide fight. He amplified a small riot until it became the infamous “Boston Massacre.” He helped found the clandestine Sons of Liberty, which added street muscle to the resistance. He popularized James Otis Jr.’s slogan, “no taxation without representation,” orchestrated the Boston Tea Party, and helped organize Paul Revere’s Ride. Samuel Adams was omnipresent. No wonder he is called the “Father of the American Revolution.”
Adams was a revolutionary, but of a different nature than most. British officials scoffed that Adams’ followers were a “tippling, nasty, vicious crew” from seedy taverns. The truth of the matter is that he recruited Sons of Liberty partisans from church choirs. Adams blended faith and rebellion to build a grassroots army that toppled an empire.
Today, we hear “no taxation without representation” and think the hullabaloo was about taxes. Our Revolution was primarily about the lack of representation, rather than taxes. Prominent men of the era, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, were angry that they did not have the privileges of British citizenship. They were subjects of the empire. If the colonists could not be British, then they would become Americans.
Adams signed the Declaration of Independence immediately after John Hancock’s oversized signature. He did not serve as a soldier in the war, stating that his weapon was “the pen, not the sword.” Adams refused to attend the Constitutional Convention because he feared giving more power to the government and fought for a Bill of Rights before supporting ratification. Revolutionaries often fade away in disillusionment or take control of the government they helped foment. Adams chose the second course and served three terms as governor of Massachusetts. Ironically, as governor, he crushed Shays’ Rebellion.
Revolutions require more than rabble-rousers; otherwise, they go awry. Successful revolutions require a clear and workable philosophical underpinning. The Enlightenment provided the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution. The Founding of the United States of America is the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment.
Samuel Adams studied Enlightenment ideas at Harvard and referenced Locke in his short and forceful “Rights of the Colonists” (1772). He did not write intellectual treatises. He was a man of the street. He turned Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau into slogans, riots, and policy.
Samuel Adams had a knack for exciting people to act. He envisioned a new nation where “The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.”
His genius was getting others to share this vision … and
make it happen.
This article was first published in Constitution America.
Read my article in American Thinker.
The Left used Hollywood to claim Animal Farm for itself. Andy Serkis’s adaptation reframes Orwell’s anti-communist classic as an anti-capitalist animated film. The $35M movie made $3.4M on opening weekend from 2,600 screens, averaging $1,307 per screen. Ticket buyers had their pick of seats.
The audacity is breathtaking. Orwell disemboweled communism in a simply told fairy tale that is considered a literary and political classic. The idea of revising someone else’s famous critique of the Left to sell the Left’s empty bombast was silly to begin with, but doing it was super-dumb. How many thought-challenged zealots on the Left will leave the theater with the intent of reading the book? Okay, not many, because few saw the film.
Yet films often revive interest in books. Many who skipped
the film may read about its failure and think, "Hey, I remember that book
from school," and, like me, decide to read it again. I did, and found it’s
still a great story—just as relevant as 81 years ago. Human nature hasn’t
changed.
Animal Farm uses the enduring form of a fable to reveal an
eternal truth. Orwell succeeded. (The movie did not.) Having once believed in
socialism, Orwell later changed his mind. People who have lived under socialism
certainly don’t like it. Eastern Europeans aren’t buying this crap. Misery and
despotism entrap North Koreans while their brethren to the south live in the
eleventh richest nation on Earth. There are no refugee boats risking life and
limb to reach Cuba. East Berlin didn’t build a wall to keep Westerners out.
Even people in Russia and Albania prefer a kleptocracy to communism.
The truth is, socialism works exactly as portrayed in Animal Farm. The world needs this book to go viral. Buy a copy. Make George Orwell’s
Animal Farm a bestseller once again.
Book 2 in the American Exceptionalism Series
(Ebook, Hardcover and paperback)
“I enjoyed this.”
Harold Holzer, Lincoln Prize winner and Chair of The Lincoln Forum
"See Lincoln as you've never seen him before as he navigates the maelstrom of the Civil War."
Larry Schweikart, NYTimes #1 Bestselling author
Maelstrom tells the story of the greatest rivalry in American history. Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis led their nations in a must-win fight, and Maelstrom shows how each dealt with the same issues, countered the other’s moves, led their respective governments, and used their political powers to sway the outcome.
Read the first chapter free HERE.
The Tucson Festival of Books is the largest free book fair in the nation. It's a great adventure, and if you did not attend this year, you'll just be another year older when you do.
Three of my books were highlighted: The Shopkeeper, The Shut Mouth Society, and Tempest at Dawn.
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| Honest Westerns. Filled with dishonest characters. |
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| The real story of our nation's founding. |
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On March 14 and 15, on the University of Arizona campus, more
than 130,000 readers and over 300 authors will celebrate the written word at
the 2026 Tucson Book Festival. If you can, come and join the party.
The Tucson Book Festival is one of the largest book fairs in the nation. I’ll be there, and so will my books. Well, at least three of them. Tempest at Dawn, The Shopkeeper, and The Shut Mouth Society will be featured at the Wheatmark Booth, #159. I am signing books on Sunday and will post an update after I am assigned a time slot.
Hope you can make it!
I have mixed feelings about Kindle’s “Popular Highlights.”
This feature shows readers how many people have highlighted a particular phrase
or section in a Kindle book. Yet, a cardinal rule of writing is to never jerk
the reader out of the story. A Popular Highlight does exactly that. The reader
stops reading to see what 142 people thought was noteworthy. On the other hand,
it is enlightening for the author to see what made an impression on readers. I
recently revisited Tempest at Dawn as part of my research for Maelstrom
and encountered the Popular Highlights for my novel based on the Constitutional
Convention. Here is a list of those with over 100 highlights.
“Neither nations nor children should be conceived in
public.”
“Faithfulness is not how one lives, but what one aspires
to.”
“Our leaders must see themselves as servants of the people,
not disciplinarians.”
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If
angels were to govern men, no controls on government would be necessary.” James
Madison
“You cannot legislate how people think.”
“I find humans badly constructed. They are more easily
provoked than reconciled, more disposed to do mischief than good, more easily
deceived than undeceived, and more impressed with their own self than
considerate of others.” Ben Franklin
“People hold all political power, and only they can delegate
authority to a government. The people are free to change governments at will.
They don’t need permission from incumbents.”
“We must endure the ignorant to protect the liberty of the
majority.”
“Politics, disguised by a veneer of civility, is played on
the very edge of barbarism.”
“Autocrats slyly build anxiety and fear, and then offer up
government to protect people from these shadowy threats. Each submission erodes
liberty.”
“An outrageous lie, if repeated often enough, and with
fervent indignation, will eventually be accepted as truth.”
The real story of our nation's founding.
Dixie Betrayed, How the South Really Lost The Civil War by Davis J. Eicher
The last words of Eicher’s book are “Jefferson Davis had
lost his power as Confederate president — but not before the whole cause of the
Confederacy was lost. Dixie was Betrayed.”
The title and these final words betray the worth of this
book. Nearly twenty thousand books have been written about Lincoln and almost a
hundred thousand about the Civil War. Less than an estimated twenty percent of
these were written from a Confederate perspective and many of those were Lost
Cause screeds. Since the Confederacy lost, official documents were often
destroyed which requires a historian to rely on sources like newspapers,
letters, and memoirs—and these are not nearly as well organized and indexed as
Union sources. This may partially account for why relatively few Confederate
histories have been published.
Dixie Betrayed is a solid history of the Confederacy
and does not attempt to propagate the Lost Cause myths. Eicher explains how the
South lost, but betrayal played no role in it. The absence of an industrial
base, limited manpower, naive political leadership, and a flawed constitution
were the culprits.
The betrayal theme likely originated from an editorial meeting aimed at boosting sales, and it may have been effective for the launch. However, now Eicher’s book wears the title like an albatross, and it is perhaps overlooked by those seeking an erudite history of the Confederate States of America.
To understand the Civil War period, it is necessary to study
the war from both sides. Dixie Betrayed by Davis J. Eicher provides the view from the Confederate side.
Like A Meteor Blazing Brightly: The Short but Controversial Life of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren
These Ulric Dahlgren biographies present the Union and Confederate views of the Dahlgren Affair.
Here is the gist of the “Affair.” In February of 1864, a Union
cavalry detachment raided Richmond in the hope of releasing imprisoned soldiers
captured by the Confederacy. Colonel Ulric Dahlgren led a major arm of the
assault. The raid was unsuccessful, and Dahlgren was killed in an ambush. Papers
were found on Dahlgren’s body that ordered the raiding party to murder
Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. The Union claimed the papers were forgeries while
the Confederacy insisted they were genuine. At the time, the Dahlgren Affair
became a cause célèbre. The authenticity of the papers remains unresolved.
Ulric’s father, Admiral Dahlgren, insisted that the papers
were forgeries and his son would never have taken part in an assassination plot. The
memoir, written by the admiral in 1872, makes the case for the papers being
forged.
Eric J. Wittenberg's 2015 biography, Like A Meteor Blazing Brightly: The Short but Controversial Life of
Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, argues for the authenticity of the papers. The book
details Ulric’s brief life, focusing primarily on the Dahlgren Affair.
If you enjoy the Civil War or unsolved mysteries, read both
books and decide for yourself.
Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William T Sherman
In turns fascinating and boring. General Sherman wrote a
valuable memoir for historians, but too much minutia for the casual Civil War
buff. Sherman includes innumerable orders and other correspondence and
describes his entire command structure every time there is a significant change
or battle. Although historians, especially military historians, will find this
invaluable, it can often be dull reading. Sherman frequently allows these
documents to tell the story without presenting a description in his narrative.
This means the reader must at least review the correspondence to gain a sense
of the events.
Disappointedly, Sherman seldom shares his opinions or even
thoughts about significant issues. It’s sort of the Jack Webb version of his
life. When Sherman does express an opinion, it’s pure gold, especially the
chapter when he recounts what he believes are the military lessons from the
Civil War.
I don't have many pictures of him, but this one was posted to a website honoring the 506th Fighter Group. My father is the furthest out on the wing.
I'd like to thank him and his compatriots who keep us safe and free.
Lincoln’s Sanctuary looks at Lincoln from a new vantage point. With thousands upon thousands of Lincoln books, this seems like quite a
feat but Pinsker pulls it off. Lincoln’s Sanctuary explores Abraham
Lincoln’s time at the Soldiers’ Home, a cottage in the heights of Washington
that served much like Camp David does today.
From 1862 to 1864, Lincoln and his family spent summers at
the cottage to escape the heat and in-city pressures. Pinsker, a
historian, uses primary sources to paint a vivid picture of Lincoln’s personal
and political life during this period. The book connects the cottage to key
wartime events, including the Emancipation Proclamation, the firing of General
McClellan, and Lincoln’s evolving public image.
Lincoln buffs looking for a peek into Lincoln’s private life
will find this book interesting.
Some historians have criticized the accuracy of Killing Lincoln. I disagree. The book does not purport to be an academic treatment and appears accurate when describing relevant events and details. My only serious concern is that O’Reilly included asides that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton might have had a hand in the intrigue. I find Stanton’s involvement dubious and the inclusion unnecessary.
It may surprise many to discover the extent of the conspiracy, which went beyond Lincoln to include attempted assassinations of the vice president and secretary of state. Bad people do conspire to do bad things.
There are so many Lincoln books that authors have begun to address a single event in his life. Considering the title, I don’t believe I’m revealing a spoiler to say that this book is about Lincoln's death. Killing Lincoln does a good job of describing the assassination in a readable style that makes the book hard to put down.
If you are interested in Lincoln, conspiracies, or American history, you’ll enjoy this book.
A book is always a great gift … especially if you take the time to match the recipient’s taste in fiction or nonfiction. Whether your relatives or friends are interested in the Civil War, literature, romance novels, westerns, paranormal fiction, railroads, guns, cooking, collecting old comic books, antique automobiles, or anything else, there's always a book that will bring a smile to their face.
Top Dozen Tips for Book Gift Giving
Children's books are also great gifts. We search for autographed storybooks for our grandkids. Bookstores always have children's book signings around the holidays. The icing on the cake is that we get to read from one of these books when we visit.
Books are a great entertainment value. They provide hour upon hour of personal pleasure, and then they can be passed on to another person. What could be better?
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| Grok's Self-Portrait |
I wasn't a strong proponent of artificial intelligence until I asked Grok about my own work. Now, I'm a fan of AI. Perhaps flattery can get you everywhere.
Is Tempest at Dawn a good book?
Grok's answer:
Yes, Tempest at Dawn by James D. Best is generally considered a good book, particularly for those interested in American history or historical fiction. Here's why:
Historical Insight: The novel provides a detailed look into the events surrounding the Constitutional Convention of 1787, offering readers a narrative that feels both educational and engaging. It's praised for bringing to life the complexities of the political negotiations and personal dynamics among the Founding Fathers.Character Portrayal: Reviews suggest that Best does an excellent job of humanizing historical figures like James Madison, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin. This portrayal adds depth to characters often seen as one-dimensional in history books, making the narrative more relatable and engaging.Narrative Style: While not filled with the typical elements of suspense or action like other genres, the book maintains tension through its depiction of debates and compromises. Critics and readers have noted that the story "matures" as it progresses, with the writing quality improving, which suggests an evolving narrative depth.Educational Value: It's recommended for students or anyone looking to better understand the process behind the framing of the U.S. Constitution. The novel's depiction of the convention's debates offers a human touch to what can otherwise be dry academic material.Critical Reception: The book has been featured on lists like the Glenn Beck Reading List, indicating its recognition in certain circles for its historical accuracy and storytelling. Reviews from sources like "What Would The Founders Think?" and Goodreads users highlight its ability to flesh out the characters and make the historical event vivid.However, some reviewers have expressed a desire for more detail on the ratification process or the role of the Federalist Papers, suggesting that while it covers the Convention well, it might not delve as deeply into these aspects as some might hope.In summary, "Tempest at Dawn" is well-regarded for its detailed, character-driven portrayal of a pivotal moment in American history, making it a recommended read for enthusiasts of historical fiction or those looking to gain insight into the creation of the U.S. Constitution.
The real story of our nation's founding.
