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Beatrix Potter: Victorian through the Child’s Eyes

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“Land is as much personal property as plate or carriages.”

“In future day people will not be able to realize how completely England has been under the thumb of that shifting, incapable old man. May it never again be so completely in any one man’s power for good or ill!”

“If you offer a thing, commonly considered pleasant and desirable, to any person, he will be likely to take it, though he might not have asked for it. Changes are to be treated with the greatest caution, and only granted when really desired and needed.”

“The times are as stirring as those which Lord Macaulay described in the Siege of Londonderry…  In the same way there is as much strange and wild, though times and manners have changed. As wonderful a book as Rob Roy might be written if there was a Scott. There are plenty of odd originals, and dark intrigues, but there is no great colourist to paint them…”

Discover Victorian children’s author Beatrix Potter at Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The Franco-Prussian War and the Rise of Germany: Continental European Politics of the 19th Century

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This was the moment Bismarck had been so carefully arranging since before the Franco-Prussian war. Victory in France could mean only one thing; the ascendency of a new unified Germany. No one had witnessed such military audacity in Continental Europe since the Napoleonic Wars. Paris lay in ruin, and all of France had been turned upside-down. The situation would only be resolved in two world wars, which destroyed the 19th century European structure and formed the modern world. Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Forming a New Nation

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Please watch my new Intern University lecture on concepts of liberty during the founding of America at Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Image of The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton from Wikipedia

The Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps: 50 Years (1960-2010)

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As a former member of a local fife and drum corps here in Midland, Michigan, I have had the honor of performing at events alongside the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps; the official musical escort to the President of the United States. Formed in 1960, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Old Guard, and with it, a new movement across the country to revive the military music of early America, of which I have been so fortunate to play a part. My instrument is a declaration of war on tyranny, and a herald of liberty.  Read more and Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The Battle of Springfield: June 23, 1780

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In answer to their ranked, ordered folly,
We gave them musket and rifle volley;
And when lack of wadding silenced our noise,
Our minister then said, “Give them Watts, boys!”

Known as the “forgotten victory,” the Battle of Springfield demonstrated the American spirit and English animosity more than perhaps any other battle in the American War for Independence. Here, American militia and Continental infantry, some with wadding from Presbyterian hymnals, turned back a British-Hessian army of more than twice their strength. Their British opponents were those who hired foreign mercenaries to betray their own countrymen, because not enough men in England were willing to do so. This was perhaps the most symbolic battle in the entire American War for Independence, and a climax in the enduring tale of American liberty.  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The Magna Carta: Signed June 15, 1215

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“Our king a mock, a coward he
Did fail our land across the sea!
His sword was blunt, his armor weak,
From lack of use with rust did creak.

“And after this expensive venture,
He earned the Roman Pope’s censure,
Till we like Joseph have been sold,
As slaves, by a friend and brother cold.

“What is liberty but from this,
To have a sure deliverance?
At our feet shall tyrants assent,
To spurn not oaths of service lent!”

Thus spoke Sir Robert Fitz-Walter,
A cry for freedom without falter,
Which past nobility rang forth,
Telling mankind liberty’s worth.

Read about the Magna Carta on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The Battle of Glenshiel: June 20, 1719

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The knights of James for battle array,
While James himself is still away,
That reiver Rob Roy and Lord Murray,
Broadsword to broadsword pledged to stay.

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

In 1320, the signers of the Scottish Declaration of Arbroath vowed, “for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule.” Scotland’s only claim to the English throne was through Stuart family inheritance, and when the English decided to switch royal lines, Scotland had a hereditary right to be excluded from the domain of the new English king, being that the terms of inheritance had been violated. If England won, Scotland would have to submit, if Scotland won, England would have to submit.  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The Overton Window: Commemoration of a Theory

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All of us at the Mackinac Center anticipate a busy and fruitful week.  Beginning tomorrow, our President Joe Lehman will be discussing on the Glen Beck Show a theory that is near and dear to all of our hearts.  Here’s a short synopsis cross-posted from Michigan Capitol Confidential…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

www.landmarksofliberty.blogspot.com

Where the ‘Overton Window’ Came to Life

By Tom Gantert | June 8, 2010

Joe Lehman, president of the Mackinac Center, reached into his file cabinet and pulled out a piece of scribbled-on yellow legal pad paper that was the basis of Fox commentator Glenn Beck’s soon-to-be-released novel.

Nearly a decade ago, then-Mackinac Center Vice President Joe Overton had an idea of creating a brochure to market what is now known as “The Overton Window” — the name of Beck’s book.

Overton died in 2003 before he had the chance to fully market his idea.

Now, Lehman will carry that torch when he appears on Fox News’ Glenn Beck Show this week. The plan is for a live appearance, perhaps as soon as Wednesday, with some possible recorded segments and an appearance on Beck’s radio show.

Overton wanted to use a rectangular piece of plastic with a section cut out to create a window. Lehman then placed it on the legal pad numbering 0 to 100 down the side. Only the numbers 30-through-60 could be seen through the plastic window, creating what the Overton Window theorized were the options that politicians would consider supporting.

Anything outside of that window would seem to policy makers too risky to support if they cared about re-election. So the goal was to make persuasive arguments for desirable ideas that weren’t yet within the “Overton Window.”

“You see how his mind worked,” Lehman said as he slid the plastic window up to change the 30-to-60 options to 20-to-50. “He was thinking of a brochure that worked like this. So if you wanted a 20-percent tax rate, you’d have to move the window.”

“Isn’t that cool?”

Ironically, Overton never named the theory that is now getting world-wide attention. On that yellow legal pad, he simply called it the “window of political possibilities.”

The Mackinac Center started training public policy think tank professionals in the window theory in 1998. Lehman said think tanks can shift the window and influence policy when they develop ideas and debate them in the public arena.

When Overton died in a plane accident, Lehman said it was decided to honor him by calling it the “Overton Window.”

“Once he explained it to you, a light bulb would go off in your own mind — ‘Of course! I see it now!’ ” Lehman said.

Sir Edward Elgar: The Last Bard of Great Britain

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Although the light of his musical genius has faded with the passing of time and fancy, Sir Edward Elgar resurrected English Classical music from a long slumber to a climax of patriotic fervor by setting to music the strongest British sentiments that ever beat in an Edwardian Englishman’s heart. With the performance of Elgar’s Coronation Ode at the coronation of King Edward VII himself, Elgar reached at the very heart of the splendor and moral code of the English court and all that had been “Victorian” and would become “Edwardian.” However, even with the utterance of Elgar’s invocation at the 1902 coronation, “Lord of Life, we pray, Crown the King with Life!,” the British Empire stood upon the brink of its greatest and final collapse in the 20th century, and these golden days would soon turn to blood. Elgar became the last bard of Great Britain. Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The Constitutional Convention: May 25 – September 17, 1787

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Compromise has accompanied every great political assembly with mixed results. What distinguishes the compromises in the Constitutional Convention from other political compromises was that the separate factions dividing the Convention were often on opposite and similarly harmful extremes. During the Convention, the surest way of avoiding these extremes was achieving a golden mean, and working out a system that nullified the problems of all extremes. Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Homestead Act of 1862: America’s Grandest Privatization Act

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On May 20, 1862, President Lincoln signed perhaps the greatest privatization act in American history into law, opening 270 million acres of Western lands for private and family settlement, and dispensing to American citizens ten percent of the entire area of the United States. From 1871 to 1951, 1,505,405 homestead patents were processed, and the Homestead Act provided land in the American West until its repeal in 1976. Although distinctly a political act of war, the Homestead Act encouraged the American dream of personal responsibility and right to property independent of government for over one hundred years.  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

A Tribute to the Lusitania: Torpedoed on May 6, 1915

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Although now dimmed by the obvious disaster of the Titanic, the RMS Lusitania’s end was no less tragic. In fact, the sinking of the Lusitania ought to go down in history as an unprovoked atrocity of war. Although not among the immediate causes for the U.S.A.’s entrance into the Great War it did break the neutral disposition of the American public during the War.  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The Battle of Carbisdale: April 27, 1650

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The Marquis of Montrose has landed,

An English invader unfounded

By law or decree has he banded

To render Scotland’s north hounded.

Negotiation was a precarious thing in the 17th century, but for Scotland, foreign treachery and coerced invasion was not to be tolerated.  Charles II needed the Scottish Covenanters’ support in order to win Scotland.  The ambitious Marquis of Montrose was sent north to the Orkney Islands to threaten the Covenanters into terms with Charles.  The Battle of Carbisdale remains a testimony to the Presbyterian, freedom-loving spirit of the Covenanters, and Scotland’s ever ill taste for sudden and immediate subjugation of their country.  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The Battle of Formigny: England vs. France (April 15, 1450)

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Much of Western Civilization in Western Europe has been characterized by the nationalistic animosity between England and France that took two world wars to finally end. But where did this animosity come from? In 1066, the Duke of Normandy (France) invaded England, dethroned Edward the Confessor, and became known as William the Conqueror. At that point, noble titled land in France became linked to the Norman English kings. However, as France followed the Conqueror’s model of royal feudal centralization of the nobility, French lands became a recipe for dynastic contest. Between 1337 and 1453, the kings of England and France waged perhaps the longest single national war in Western history, the Hundred Years’ War. Until 1429, the English were winning the war in almost every land encounter. In that year, nationalist hero of France and Catholic saint, Joan of Arc, broke the English siege of Orleans, setting in motion a twenty four year process of French unification and expulsion of English forces in France. However, the most decisive battle against the English on land was the Battle of Formigny on April 15, 1450. The battle would not only signal the end of the Hundred Years’ War, it would solidify the imperial contest between England and France on the national scale for future eras to come. This division within Western Civilization was born out in many key events of the founding of liberty in the West.  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty…

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern