This about the Truckers Revolt, where it can go, from both a known Boomer-historian, Larry Schweikart, and a young millennial, Erin Smith, who more of you need to know, for she too has the right stuff.
You already know Dr Larry Schweikart, co-author of the best-selling The Patriot’s History of the United States (from 2004). Next to my Jerusalem Bible it’s my most underlined book (and I do a lot of underlining.) A prolific writer, Larry’s authored over a dozen other histories while teaching at the University of Dayton since 1985, retiring to Arizona in 2016.
He was a great professor at the University of Dayton. And since Trump he’s been active on Twitter, being paid the honor of having been shut down at least once, probably for telling some unpleasant truth, and having a large following, deserving of being silenced. He’s back again, under the name of @WallsOther, where you can go to see his list of kinky names he’s given to prominent Lefties. E.g, he refers to Joe Biden as “Biteme”. These are important in understanding some of names he uses. (You need this if you’re going to keep up with his political banter.)
I just published his piece ten days ago, “Modern McClellan’s, Avoiding Defeatism” which uses history as a tool to blaze the citizens’ trail thru the trials and tribulations of today. It was the same tool I’d used at RedState.com 2008-2011, having had previous success using it for a 4 years at a small business college in Cincinnati in the ’90s, geared to helping mothers get degrees to get off AFDC to find a job. (Newt Gingrich and the new Republican Congress did this in 1996, freeing millions of mothers from the bondage of welfare, be careful if you Google the Welfare Reform Act because they will lead you to article after article of how this life-saving law started the “Great American Divide” which has finally festered 25 years later.)
At that college I taught American Government and Business Law, and like Dr. Schweikart, felt it my duty to make the course interesting, since these young 20-somethings were there primarily for their degree courses (Computer Science), and not these checkoff’s required for a degree. (I also taught these classes to Soviet-emigres, mostly professional, who could not get reciprocity for the medical and professional degrees in the USSR. They were my age and older.)
A decade later, 2008, while carrying on my consultancy in old Russia, I began writing at Red State. A very popular site, (of all age-groups, I assume), this was not the case with the editors, who were largely Gen-Xers, muchbetter educated than my students in Cincinnati. From the lone boomer on their technical staff I learned my references to the “old days”, and to the roots of liberty, and common sense, were not taken too kindly to by the younger editors. Boring? Preachy? Who knows why. Since writing isn’t the same as stand-up so I was unable to capture the attention of the younger set, so in I was locked out, and UnifiedPatriots.com was born, set up by Dave Poff, that lone boomer behind their technical curtain. UnifiedPatriots took thousands of RedState’s readers, as their rebranded themselves as Bubble Gum music, leaving Rock n’Roll to its own devices. It was was closed a couple of months ago after a a good decade on-line, alas, due to a lack of writers, since most of our writers were also boomers, close to me in age. (I’m 76).
I can list 100 reasons why you should like Larry Schweikart, and he seems to have bridged the great generational divide in print, a thing I never could accomplish. See his piece, cited above, but especially, cited below.)
So hear me, people,
We can start this war with the Left, and maybe even live to see it end politically, in our favor, but unless we can impress on the coming generations, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha, just now reaching teenager-hood, what the core ingredients of America, and American Exceptionalism, really is, America will lose in the end.
The Left has been playing a generational game since the 1930s, at least 4 generations, and we are only just now figuring how deeply that plan runs. It all depends on us running out of generations where there is a consistent stream of cultural memory that connects us to the shoulders we stand on.
My days are numbered. To some extent, so is Larry Schweikart’s, 6 years my junior. (Natural Law). Someone has to pick up the mantle.
But there are the likes of Erin Smith, a millennial I assume. She has podcasts, edits Contextual Insurgent Project where her most recent piece, Atlas Parked has been posted.
It is a long read, about the winnable position we are in vis a vis the Truckers Strike in Canada, if we will only follow the logical course.
A must read in my view.
She’s not talking to oldsters, but to Gen-Xers and her own generation. I am telling you, unless we insist on protecting how our children and grandchildren are taught, and what they are taught and that they be reminded of the necessity to pass this practice on to each generation…for in every generation, it will be contested, we are lost.
Having read Ms Smith’s piece, I then turn you over to Larry Schweikart’s latest piece,
“What Grant started on this date in 1862 we should finish this November and in 2024.”
If you’re under 50, this is why we read, and reread history.
Both are must reads.
