David Randall is Director of Research at the National Association of Scholars.
Sometimes, reform offers come too late. Joseph Galloway, speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, came to the First Continental Congress with a clever plan—the Plan of Union—to unite the British North American colonies in their own Parliament, subordinate to Great Britain’s Parliament. The American Parliament would vote on many matters, but Britain would have a veto. […]
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The Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress was adopted on October 14, 1774. It’s important for all sorts of good reasons. The representatives of the colonies—except distant Georgia—came together for the first time to endorse a joint action. They invoked natural law to justify their rights as well as their rights as Englishmen—“the […]
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Another day, another science scandal. Recently, we learned that leading Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease researcher Eliezer Masliah is seriously suspected of research misconduct. A Science investigation has now found that scores of Masliah’s] lab studies at UCSD and NIA are riddled with apparently falsified Western blots—images used to show the presence of proteins—and micrographs of brain […]
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A prime piece of scientific research intended to ameliorate the irreproducibility crisis has itself been withdrawn for failing to adhere to proper reproducibility standards. One of the prime directives of reproducibility reformers is to preregister your research—say in advance what you intend to do and how you will do it—so we know you didn’t repurpose […]
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Between August 25 and August 27, 1774, the First North Carolina Provincial Congress met in New Bern, North Carolina. There they passed resolutions that they would not import any goods from Britain, including slaves, until the Intolerable Acts were rescinded. They also selected delegates for the First Continental Congress, which would meet the next month. […]
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In the first days of August 1774, the Association of the Virginia Convention met and promulgated a series of resolutions that would guide its delegates to the First Continental Congress. These endorsed the policy of embargo with Britain—including slaves—until the Intolerable Acts were rescinded. The resolutions also endorsed in advance actions that would be taken […]
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Thomas Jefferson wrote A Summary View of the Rights of British America in 1774, basically the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. That’s how he got to the drafting Committee of Five for the Declaration in 1776. Fine job you did in 1774, Thomas; why don’t you write another version now? Back in 1774, […]
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Virginians made the rejection of the Intolerable Acts revolutionary. The Intolerable Acts were outrageous abrogations of American liberty. Massachusetts was their primary target, but sympathy began to spread beyond its borders. The Orangetown Resolutions showed how small-town New Yorkers could commit themselves to solidarnosc with Boston. But the most important acceders were the Virginians. Virginia […]
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It was an immortal day dedicated to liberty. Stalwart patriots met on July 4, 1774. 1774? Yes. Two years before we declared our independence, the residents of Orangetown, New York subscribed to the Orangetown Resolutions. The Resolutions stated, in part: 1st, That we are and ever wish to be, true and loyal subjects to his […]
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Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts, George III gave them his royal assent, and, at once, America rose in unanimous rebellion. No, of course not. American patriots were outraged. But in 1774, they weren’t yet at the point of armed rebellion. The radicals of Massachusetts, Samuel Adams and the Boston Committee of Correspondence, proposed instead a […]
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On June 22, 1774, the Quebec Act received royal assent. This, the climax of the Intolerable Acts, not only provided for greater accommodation of Catholicism and French law in Britain’s recently conquered colony of Quebec but also expanded its borders—to include virtually all of the trans-Appalachian West down to the Ohio River. It cut the possibility […]
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The Wall Street Journal cries alarum: “Flood of Fake Science Forces Multiple Journal Closures.” Dozens of scientific journals have become paper mills—homes for rings of pseudo-academics to cite one another, review another, and puff up their publications with bogus research to secure the rewards of academic employment. After it bought its Egyptian rival Hindawi, academic […]
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On June 2, 1774, the Quartering Act became law. A royal governor, if Britain’s North American colonies would not provide and pay for barracks, could now house British soldiers in any colonial “uninhabited houses, out-houses, barns, or other buildings” without consent of the legislature, township, or any American. The sun would not set on a […]
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The Administration of Justice Act and the Massachusetts Government Act, two of the four Intolerable Acts, became law on May 20, 1774. The Administration of Justice Act allowed a royal governor to remove from one colony to another, or to England, the trial of a royal official for actions up to and including murder, committed […]
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Socialists and Communists have been celebrating May Day for more than a century now—in the Communist regimes, by a grim display of marching soldiers, tanks, and artillery. On May Day, we should remember how many innocents were butchered by the fanatics who sought to impose the Communist nightmare on humanity—and how many millions led and […]
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Calvin Coolidge said it best: “To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.” Every American should know that wonderful truth. Learning it should be the keystone of social studies instruction in our schools. That’s why the Civics Alliance and Freedom in Education are publishing […]
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The nation’s 250 Anniversary is only 29 months away. The National Association of Scholars is commemorating the events that led up to the Second Continental Congress officially adopting the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This is the forth installment of the series. Find the fourth installment here. Intolerable is a strong word. We […]
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Tradition-minded education reformers who wish to pass on to our children attachment to the ideals and institutions of the American republic and nation need to create new programs and schools independent of the existing far-left monoculture in academia. One way to go about this is to build up a network of autonomous Centers, such as […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The American Mind on January 26, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. Radical ideologues are working to destroy Americans’ memory of our beloved past. They vilify and erase our forefathers in our children’s textbooks and jettison their names from public schools and national landmarks. And especially since 2020, they […]
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Christmas, for me, is the German Jewish holiday passed down from my father’s mother. “My father’s father was a Baptist minister,” said my dad, “and my father’s family didn’t do Christmas trees or any of that. The Puritans’ America wasn’t gaudy that way. Trees, candy canes, and ornaments was stuff the Germans brought over. It […]
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The distinguished British historian Andrew Roberts has just written, alas, an attack on the Boston Tea Party that is much beneath him. The Tea Party, it turns out, was an entirely self-interested operation, with nary a shred of idealism about it: It was in no sense a spontaneous activity: some accounts of it portray a […]
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The University of Arizona (UA) has just floated a proposal to establish a program for graduate students aimed at sharpening their hatred for America. UA is, of course, a public university, so Arizona taxpayers are being asked to pay for an effort to turn future leaders of the country into revolutionists. It is called “Emancipatory […]
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It is not news that the Lancet is politicized. The once-respected journal, the gold standard for medical research publication, has been hawking radical left policy in the guise of “medical policy” for a generation and more. America’s medical establishment may never be quite as radical as the Lancet, but it usually adopts Lancet’s positions with […]
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My colleague John Sailer writes that, in pursuit of “diversity,” “Every day the universities wake up and break the law.” However, the American Bar Association (ABA) is giving the universities a run for their money. It’s running a Business Law Section Diversity Clerkship Program that reserves its beneficiaries to the “diverse,” defined as: Law student […]
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Scientists are figuring out how to make scientific research more reliable. The federal government should take what they’ve learned and make it mandatory. Since 2018, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) has been beating the drum about the irreproducibility crisis. That’s the failure of an enormous amount of modern scientific research to meet an elementary […]
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Americans always have drawn upon the history and the greatest books of Western civilization to inspire them to their greatest words and deeds. Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address echoed the medieval church reformer John Wycliffe when he spoke of government of the people, for the people and by the people. George Patton became the […]
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Bureaucrats wouldn’t have an excuse to hide documents if the documents were born-open—that is, publicly accessible electronic documents from the moment of their creation. And bureaucrats do hide documents, especially in the schools and universities. Want to know if China is donating money to your university? Secret. Want to know your child’s curriculum? Very secret. […]
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The trouble with a day job spent defending Western civilization and the Great Books canon is that you obsess over what clueless eighteen-year-olds desperately need to have assigned to them in class. They are blank slates who know nothing earlier than Friends re-runs; how do we convey to them most efficiently the thread from Plato […]
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Higher education administration has become dysfunctional and dangerous—illiberal, incompetent at its core educative functions, but all too effective at infecting our republic’s civil society with woke ideology. It must be reformed. Yet the radicals who have captured our colleges’ and universities’ bureaucracies have been so effective that, at this point, it seems impossible for successful […]
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Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard will not end higher education’s race discrimination by itself, even if the Supreme Court unequivocally strikes down affirmative action. America’s colleges and universities are already planning for massive resistance to preserve race discrimination, and they will have the support of state and federal bureaucracies, as well as the commanding […]
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