This week’s newspaper column looks for an intersection between famous inventors who traveled together in the early 20th C, and […]
Archive for ‘American History’
Tom Paine: Freethought Hero?
Teaching another course on Thomas Paine, I was struck by an intriguing thought: Here was a man of deep, sincere, […]
Origin Story
“Origin stories function, to a degree, as myths designed to create a shared sense of history and purpose.” Some books […]
An Educational Pilgrimage
from an essay I’ve been writing on “Owning up to Ownership”: As I try to make an effort to learn […]
1619 & 1776
I’m reading The 1619 Project. I’d heard some of the controversy about the NYT project and saw the authors had […]
Truth is Ruthless
That line is from a highly recommended book I just finished reading: Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning […]
Warning from Ken Burns
In a Washington Post interview today, Burns identifies his primary worry about our democracy, in historical context: “I think this […]
Freethought Film
The Center for Inquiry produced an excellent series on American Freethought. With the dangerous rise of Christian Nationalism, this is […]
Thomas Paine Day
Would there be a country named the “United States of America” without Thomas Paine? After all, he is credited with […]
December 2, 1859
This is a day we all should remember the execution of a tragic character in history, a failed leader, a […]
One Nation Indivisible?
For a divided nation, it’s either a wonderful day or an awful one. Celebration on one side, and disappointment, even […]
Christian Declaration
A Declaration of Preference?: If Christians Wrote the Declaration of Independence If America was actually founded to be a “Christian […]
Friendly Freethinker 