Afleveringen
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Often our New Yearâs resolutions are lighthearted, and usually, the flesh being weak, they are fleeting. Before Valentineâs Day or maybe even before Epiphany, we have slipped back into our old ways. But these lighthearted resolutions reflect a deeper, more serious impulse.
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At the time of the American founding, celebrations of Christmas in America varied widely, from Puritans and Quakers who shunned or ignored it, to other Protestants and Catholics who honored it in their own Christian ways, to those who spent the day in âriot and dissipation,â like an ancient Roman Saturnalia. But E Pluribus Unumâout of many oneâwas the American motto on the Great Seal, and over the generations, out of many ways of celebrating or ignoring Christmas, came a recognizably American way.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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President Kennedy told a special joint session of Congress that it was âtime for a great new American Enterprise.â
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December 7, 2021 is the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought America into World War II. It is one of many days in the American year that inspire reflection on the most violent and determinative human event: warâand the art of war that aims to control and direct that most uncontrollable human undertaking.
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After the American defeat in Vietnam in 1975, the communists confiscated the homes, businesses, property, and savings of those south Vietnamese supposed to be âcounterrevolutionaries.â Hundreds of thousands of these men, women, and children were forced into what were called âreeducationâ camps. Many risked their lives and fled, including Binh and Mai Ngo, who made it to America. Their son became an American hero.
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Sarah Josepha Hale was born in New Hampshire in 1788. In an era when the average American life expectancy was forty years, she lived until 1879â91 yearsâand has been remembered by posterity primarily for two things: the poem popularly known as âMary Had a Little Lamb,â and the American tradition of Thanksgiving. Hale made herself âone of the most influential women of the nineteenth century.â
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What makes Gettysburg Americaâs most hallowed ground? A delegation of Russian historians at the height of the Cold War seemed to know, when American historians had forgotten.
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âChestyâ Puller was a Marineâs Marine. To this day, in Marine Corps boot camp, recruits are exhorted, âDo one more for Chesty! Chesty Puller never quit!â His combat service record is astonishing: he is the most decorated Marine in history. Chesty insisted that he did not love fighting. But if there was a fight, he wanted in on it, and he generally was. But the fighting spirit is not the only reason Chesty is revered by Marines. Bravery in combat is expected. He embodied something more.
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Until the election of 1860, the truths proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence had been the ground of American civic friendship, above all the central truth that all men are created equal. Fidelity to this most American idea held the country together through many divisions since 1776. The Confederate States rejected that idea. America had lost the foundation for civic peace. Ballots gave way to bullets.
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The election of 1800 in America came after a decade of bitter and extreme party strife. Each side accused the other of aiming to overthrow the Constitution and preparing the way for tyranny. There was no precedent, including the experience of 1776, for resolving such differences without appealing to bullets. But ballots prevailed and power was transferred peacefully between uncompromisingly hostile political rivals for the first time in human history.
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Americans are being reminded how fragile and precious an achievement it is to establish the legitimate authority of government through peaceful and free elections. But there would be no ballots without the bullets of 1776. We hold elections in America because, as the Declaration of Independence says, we think âthe just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.â But what divided the American people from the British Crown and Parliament in 1776 could not be decided by a vote alone.
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P.G. Wodehouse was one of the best writers in the English language in the 20th century and the funniest. He wrote nearly 100 delightful books, each one of which in perfectly orchestrated sentences, can make you fall laughing out of your beach chair. He became an American citizen in 1955, wrote an autobiography titled âAmerica, I like you.â Read anything Wodehouse. You wonât regret it.
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There is more of Charlie Brown in most of us than there is Abraham Lincoln or Michael Jordan. We identify with his failures and suffer with him. But it isnât just his failures. Charlie Brown is resilient. He never quits. Despite setbacks and moments of despair, he is at heart an optimist â and one of Americaâs greatest success stories.
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During peak hours, in the 300 block of Brand Boulevard in the city of Glendale, in what is called âMetropolitan Los Angeles,â you might see a line of eager people making their way into Portoâs Bakery & CafĂ©. You might see a similar scene in Buena Park, Burbank, Downey, or West Covina. Portoâs is a many-splendored gift to the Southland. And itâs not just the empanadas; itâs the spirit of freedom and enterprise. Rosa and Raul Porto and their children brought this gift to America from Cuba a lifetime ago.
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The Declarationâs great American proclamation that âall men are created equalâ and the first three words of the ConstitutionââWe the Peopleââare profoundly connected. The relation between these two ideasâequality and consentâis the vital center of American political freedom.
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September 17 is Constitution Day in America because on that day in 1787, after 4 months of deliberations, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Independence Hall in Philadelphia proposed the Constitution they had drafted to become the Supreme Law of the land. This was the end of one historic deliberation, but it was the beginning of another. The Constitution would be âof no more consequence than the paper on which it is written,â until it was ratified by the people of the United States.
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Twenty-one years have come and gone since September 11, 2001 became â9/11.â It is a day not just for mourning victims but for honoring heroes, those on Flight 93 and the many civilians and first responders who risked and gave their lives trying to save others.
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Frederick Bailey was born into slavery in 1818. With determination, courage, some help from others, and good luck, he managed to escape to freedom when he was 20 years old. He made his way to Massachusetts, gave himself a new name, Frederick Douglass, started working as a free man and very soon gave a triumphant first speech to an abolitionist group, which launched him on a career as an anti-slavery speaker and writer.
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Americaâs greatest enemy is not the Chinese or the Russians, or some other foreign tyrannyâthough they might indeed kill us if we continue so fecklessly to defend ourselves. But what will they kill? The body of a country that has lost its soul, unless we do something about it. Our greatest enemy is the bad ideas that have miseducated Americans so thoroughly for so long that many of us have forgotten what it means to be a free people.
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Every year in August, the oldest synagogue in AmericaâTouro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Islandâholds a public reading of a letter written by George Washington to the congregation early in his first term as the first President of the United States. The letter ranks high among the documents affirming and defining the unprecedented American experiment in religious freedom.
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