Len’s Letter #19 Charles Mann’s “1491” — Reconstructing America’s Past
Mann argues that European North Americans and the Native American Haudenosaunee learned from each other. Americans were becoming a people who valued freedom and rejected obedience. He reminds us that European Americans began their rebellion dressed up like Indians to dump tea in Boston Harbor.
Constructing and Deconstructing Nations
We were shocked. Donald Trump allowed Turkey to attack the Kurdish militia that had created a mini state in the northeast of Syria.
Impeachment
This Letter was prepared a few days before Nancy Pelosi’s announcement of an impeachment process.
Len’s Letters #16 Boris Johnson and Brexit. Guest Letter by Mike Faulkner
Nothing in Johnson’s past career in journalism or as mayor of London provides any shred of evidence that he is fit for office as Prime Minister.
Len’s Letter #15 Evangelicals, Israel, and Jews.
Evangelical Christians, Jews, and Israel are an issue. Some Republicans, the President included, believe Evangelical support for Israel will wean American Jews from the Democratic Party. They shouldn’t count on it. We should understand, however, that Evangelical Christian support for Israel goes back a ways and is international.
Len’s Letters #13 Forget the Horse Race
Democrats are accused of a kind of elitism. Meritocratic elites. Members of a meritocratic elite who, perhaps, don’t quite deserve their place. Did they get a head start in the race?Did they get a head start because they were rich? Were their families members of a financial elite. Multi-millionaires. Billionaires. People who really give you a head start.
Len’s Letter #12 THE BARR SUMMARY OF THE MUELLER REPORT AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN
THE REPORT LEAVES OPEN THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS BY CONGRESS OR INDICTMENTS AT A TIME WHEN PROSECUTORS ARE NOT CONSTRAINED BY JUSTICE DEPARTMENT POLICIES PROHIBITING INDICTMENTS OF A SITTING PRESIDENT.
Len’s Letter #11 Tara’s Terror, Tara Westover’s “Educated”
Depressed, Tara Westover, an escapee from her survivalist, evangelical parents, was reading John Stuart Mill. At Trinity College, Cambridge on a fellowship. He described women as having “been coaxed, cajoled, shoved, and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations.”
Len’s Letter #10 Amazon
About twenty-five years ago, ten years before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court approved same sex marriage, a group that looks very much like the current Family Diversity Projects (FDP) was encouraging Massachusetts schools to display some family photographs. The displays, the the FDP’s displays were called Love Makes a Family. The not legally married spouses in these large-scale photographs were of the same sex.