The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
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The Cahaba Theatre Group's second readers theatre play for their 2025 season will feature "Booth" - The Story of the Lincoln Conspiracy which will be performed on Sunday, February 09th, 2025 at the Clubhouse on Highland at 2:30PM. The auditions for the play will be held this Saturday, January 18th, 2025 at the RentMonster located at 1121 18th Street South, Birmingham, AL from one o'clock in the afternoon until four o'clock in the afternoon. Auditionees are encouraged to bring a headshot and...
January 21, 2025 - The star of the movie, "Braveheart" and the director of "The Passion of the Christ" and "Hacksaw Ridge", Mel Gibson is known for not appearing on podcasts. However, when tenaciously approached by the Erwin Brothers, the faith based film producers who are originally from Alabama, Mel Gibson relented and agreed to appear for the finale of Season 2 of "The Storytellers" podcast with Andrew Erwin. A project of the Kingdom Story Company, "The Storytellers" is an ad driven podcast...
“Abraham Lincoln…has almost disappeared from human knowledge. I hear of him, I read of him in eulogies and biographies, but I fail to recognize the man I knew in life.” Union General Donn Piatt You have to give credit to those who fought to prevent Southern Independence. Post-war, they seized the narrative, stated they were going to “reeducate” Southerners and created a “Righteous Cause Myth” that is still believed by many. Even into the mid-1900s, Southerners fought back as best they could bu...
For a communist country, it was strange to have an unsanctioned gathering of a million people, but 40 years ago in Poland, the funeral of a simple parish priest brought the nation to a halt to pay their last respects. Father Jerzy Popiełuszko was not known as a great scholar or a powerful intellectual. In fact, he barely made the grades to graduate from seminary, but Popiełuszko was a man of the people, and he spoke to them in unadorned, persuasive sermons, chiseling a significant crack in P...
November 12, 2024 - The story of George Washington Carver, an inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, is inextricably linked with Alabama. As being one of the most prominent African-American scientists of the early 20th Century, he was invited by Booker T. Washington to be the head of the Agriculture Department of Tuskegee University in 1896. And George Washington Carver taught at Tuskegee University in Alabama for forty-seven years. Known for his innovations in crop rotation and...
The impact of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's friendship with a Birmingham, Alabama native, Franklin Fisher, is brought to light in the biopic, "Bonhoeffer", now showing in movie theaters across the country. A German Lutheran theologian, Bonhoeffer, moved to America in 1930 where he studied at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Coming from a highly educated German family, Bonhoeffer was not very impressed by the classes being taught at the seminary. But, his friendship with Franklin Fisher, an...
We should be thankful as a nation that electing a president has matured. Two hundred years ago, it seemed certain that Andrew Jackson would be the next President of the United States. Any casual observer would notice that he had won the popular vote and was on track to win the vote in the Electoral College. But when the presidential electors met in December of 1824, what seemed so obvious was soon in doubt. In fact, Jackson would be denied the presidency because he fell short of a majority of...
Communication has always been critical to international growth, development and understanding. But we take the ability of people to communicate for granted as everyone has at his disposal immediate communications: phone, email or text messaging. But instant communication is new, and it wasn’t that long ago that the main source of communication was the written word, transmitted primarily by letters. As each country developed, the need to communicate increased exponentially. Private couriers w...
In 2012, while living part-time in Natchez, Mississippi, I discovered some remarkable facts about the area. Natchez, like many port and trade towns, was populated by a wide array of people, including many transients. Sometimes compared to the “Wild West,” area residents ranged from devout Christians to hardened criminals and all points in-between. Natchez’ government was controlled by the French, Spanish, English, and eventually Americans. It was a short walk from the room I rented in Weymouth H...
Originally published on January 01st, 1960, "Patriot's Daughter: The Story of Anastasia Lafayette" by Gladys Malvern, was reprinted in 2011 as part of the wave of Gladys Malvern historical fiction novels that were being made available to readers once more after being out of print for decades. Gladys Malvern wrote nearly forty-eighty books throughout the course of her writing career and the intent was to bring back all of her nearly four dozen books onto the modern bookshelf. With many of her...
Communication has always been critical to international growth, development and understanding, but we take the ability of people to communicate for granted as most everyone has immediate access to phones, email, and text messaging. While instant communication is new, not too long ago, the main source of communication was the written word, transmitted primarily by letters. As each country developed, the need to communicate increased exponentially. Private couriers worked great for the...
In the January 2023 edition of Alabama Gazette, in “Robert E. Lee, Arlington, and the Ministry of Truth” (https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2023/01/01/opinion/robert-e-lee-arlington-and-the-ministry-of-truth/2480.html), I covered the history and subsequent theft of Arlington House by the Federal Government. Spearheaded by the dastardly Montgomery Meigs, the plan was to seize the Lee/Custis property and turn it into a cemetery. This would serve as retribution against Lee and his family sin...
"Experience must be our only guide. Reason might mislead us." So said John Dickinson at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, some 237 years ago this month. As we celebrate the birth of the United States Constitution, Dickinson's admonition is critical to understanding our Founding Fathers' thoughts that served as the basis for our constitutional government. Our Constitution, revered my many, detested by some and imitated worldwide, has stood the test of time. Even with disputes about its...
The discordant views in modern America mirror much of the animosity of the 1700s and 1800s. Unfortunately, there is presently a dearth of individuals who possess the wisdom and historical perspective of the Founding generation. The great secession document known as the Declaration of Independence spelled out the colonies’ grievances and asserted the God-given right of representative government. Many in Great Britain viewed colonial secession as treasonous since the colonies were part of an e...
On Friday, July 26th, 2024, The American Village which is located in Montevallo, Alabama will close out its summer film series with the 1992 adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's, "The Last of the Mohicans". For those who are feeling their wallets thin out due to the ever-increasing costs of groceries and gasoline prices, there is some relief for their pocketbook as the admission to the film is free. With the movie being set to begin at seven in the evening in the air conditioned West Wing...
In the modern world, we are encouraged to demonize certain individuals and idolize others. For years, those who control the narrative have promoted Abraham Lincoln as an individual to be admired and, sometimes even lionized. As a proponent of centralized power and government/corporate partnerships, Lincoln had and still has many like-minded supporters. Lincoln has also been lauded for his role in ending slavery despite the fact he supported the Corwin Amendment, favored colonization most of his...
The election of 1860 featured four presidential candidates: Stephen Douglas, John Breckinridge, John Bell, and Abraham Lincoln. Stephen A. Douglas – Nicknamed the Little Giant due to his 5’ 4” stature, Illinois-native Douglas was a political giant. A wealthy land speculator and lobbyist for the Illinois Central Railroad, Douglas supported the Missouri Compromise, then sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, whose popular sovereignty provision virtually negated the Missouri Compromise. He cr...
The late Paul Harvey famously said: “Now, for the rest of the story.” “Jim Crow” is a classic example of an incomplete story. Establishment media incessantly blames the South for everything considered “historically bad.” Some modern TV shows and movies will make a sane person want to heave. In reality, when all racial and ethnic groups were in close proximity, segregation was essentially a non-issue in the Old South. Segregation was actually born in the North. Jack Trotter contends that everyo...
The assaults on Robert E. Lee and anyone who fought for Southern Independence never abate. Lee symbolizes most things his critics hate – he was a devout Christian, he believed in the sovereignty of the States within a voluntary federal republic, his primary allegiance was to Virginia (his “country”), and he felt “Union” at the point of a bayonet undermined the entire American experiment in self-government. One might ask: Why did the colonies seek independence if the goal was replication of the m...
When James Monroe addressed Congress 200 years ago, many assumed his annual message would be limited to legislative initiatives. Since he had no spin doctors to help him explain his position, clarify its broad impact, or narrate its context, it was left to him to simply announce the Monroe Doctrine and let others decide its ramifications. Two centuries ago, the New World was shedding Old World political connections as new nation states were emerging after achieving independence. President...
This month, Turkey will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its national Republic Day, which recognizes its transformation from a theocracy to an elected, representative democracy. And, while the contours of Turkey have been around as part of any number of empires, it has only been in recent memory that the nation turned from only facing Mecca and began to look West to the political systems more representative of Europe and Western civilization. Achieving this republic was not an easy task, but...
In the October 2022 Alabama Gazette I covered part of the legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest (https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2022/10/01/opinion/the-false-demonization-of-nathan-bedford-forrest/2434.html). If anyone has been a victim of “the winners write the history,” it is Forrest. From his humble Tennessee roots, Forrest was the quintessential self-made man, a masterful military leader, and the antithesis of most of his critics. After his father died, sixteen-year-old Forrest became the...
Adam Smith, the anchor of that group of inquisitive Scotsmen who spawned the Scottish Enlightenment and significantly changed the world, was born 300 years ago this month. The era of his birth was still primarily agrarian with superstition superseding science. He would alter this status by observing his community, pursuing the life of a scholar, and questioning his experiences in the world around him. And...... he wrote his thoughts down. Scotland was ready to nurture the likes of Smith. With...
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the British Parliament stumbled into what can only be described as a textbook case of how to alienate friends and lose loyal subjects. When the Tea Act was passed in 1773, British conventional wisdom was that decreasing the tax on tea would be well received. And even though the science of economics had not fully developed, reducing the cost of a household staple would arguably increase consumption to the applause of merchants and consumers. Little could anyone...
“I supported President Lincoln. I believed his war policy would be the only way to save the country, but I see my mistake. I visited Washington a few weeks ago, and I saw the corruption of the present administration—and so long as Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet are in power, so long will war continue. And for what? For the preservation of the Constitution and the Union? No, but for the sake of politicians and government contractors.” J.P. Morgan—American financier and banker, 1864. Many individ...
