The Narthex

With Lafayette, Jefferson, and Madison in a single carriage, the large entourage -- the Committee of Arrangements, cavalry, and “a numerous body of citizens” -- left Monticello at 10 a.m. on Friday, November 5, 1824, for Charlottesville, about five miles distant. The population of Albemarle County (which did not include…

Yesterday, November 17, marked an anniversary: 35 years ago the Lord freed the Czech and Slovak peoples from Communist oppression through the Velvet Revolution. Let us not forget that great moment in human freedom in 1989. Five years ago, I walked across Charles Bridge, that famous span in Prague, going…

The principal source for what occurred on Lafayette's November 1824 visit to Jefferson is the November 10 issue of Charlottesville’s Central Gazette, later credited to Charles Downing.[1] While it has not survived, it was reprinted in whole or in part in papers of Richmond, Alexandria, Lynchburg and Fredericksburg. READ FULL BLOG POST

I now turn to Lafayette’s extended stay with Thomas Jefferson at his home in Monticello. In November 1824, Lafayette spent ten full days with Jefferson and visiting the University of Virginia and Charlottesville (where yours truly now lives), and four days with James and Dolley Madison in their home at…

A young Frenchman, Julien Icher, founder of the Lafayette Trail, has been working with the American Friends of Lafayette to erect historical markers at each of Lafayette’s stops.[1] Also during this bicentennial, there will be a number of reenactments. For example, one woman planned reenactments of his visit…

The waving of a 24-star flag, red-white-blue bunting, banners, and fireworks throughout the country to celebrate Revolutionary War hero General Lafayette during his up-close and in-person visit in 1824-25 contrasts sharply with the anxiety and unease many Americans today feel when they see Old Glory flying.[1] For me…

The District of Columbia and other jurisdictions have passed laws to re-name Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples’ Day or Native Americans Day. In 2021, President Biden proclaimed Indigenous Peoples’ Day to be celebrated on the same day as Columbus Day. (Given my surname, you might suppose that I favor this development.…

Tim Walz has been called out several times over the accuracy of his claims, most recently about his alleged presence in communist China during the Tiananmen demonstrations of June 1989. During the October 1 Vice Presidential debate, “Knucklehead” Tim walked back his earlier claims to being an eyewitness to history,…

If I were to run the Big City Standard Zoo, it would become a whole lot smaller. Snakes and turtles, birds and bugs would stay. But there’d be no mammals except for “rescues,” and they’d be temporary guests only. Pleased with my zoological reform, I’m emboldened to think big. What…

An almost perpetual cultural cringe is a feature of what passes as intellectual life in the West nowadays. If we are “white” we have much to be ashamed of; if we're elderly males as well we are almost beyond the pale. So in commenting on any current events that touch…

August 14 is the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, martyr. Kolbe, a 47-year old Polish Franciscan, gave his life in substitution for another man in Auschwitz’s starvation bunker. To recap: Kolbe was arrested by the German occupiers of Poland in February 1941 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In…

July 21-27 is Captive Nations Week. Congress designated in 1959 the third week of July as Captive Nations Week and asked the President to proclaim it annually. (Congress initially designated Captive Nations Week by itself in 1953). Joe Biden issued an executive proclamation on July 19. Captive Nations Week commemorates…

July 22 used to be a state holiday in Communist Poland marking the day that the traitors imported by the Soviet Army installed themselves in Lublin in 1944 as the “Provisional Government of National Unity” and would proceed, for the next 45 years, to torture Poland with their pretensions to…

Michael Novak’s The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics (1972) generated an ethnic pride movement in the 1970s. Americans of Eastern and Southern European ancestry, Latinos, and others came out of the WASP shadows to acknowledge that their heritage remained -- and legitimately remained -- part of their American identity. I…

Comparisons between different “systems” of slavery never read well. Every discussion of this repulsive practice that appears to excuse or exonerate it is indefensible. But Wilfred Reilly, in “Why slavery is not America’s original sin” (in Spiked, linked below), demonstrates that the horrors endured by Africans in “the Middle Passage”…