An Apologist View of History

  The 1930s in United States history were in stark contrast to the decade immediately preceding.   The Roaring 20s had been an age of growth and excess during which the horrors of modern warfare were exorcised from memory.   Life in the moment and the expansion of credit to fuel this view, per the Austrian Cycle Theory, set the stage for the Great Depression. [1]   The boom in the economy was followed by a period of stagnation, which in turn was followed by the bust of the Great Depression.   Many economic theories and models have been created to determine the cause and ultimate correction of the Great Depression.   Bernstein outlined many groups or types of these theories in his article “The Great Depression as Historical Problem.”   While all of the strongest theories modeled some aspects of the Great Depression, the work of Josef Steindl may have provided the closest theoretical model.   As capital is concentrated overtime.   Holding of c...

  In 1892, a young businessman from England who had settled in America found himself on the losing side of a merging between General Electric and Thompson-Houston.  Thomas Edison’s company was seeking to acquire Thompson-Houston.  J.P. Morgan backed Thomspon-Houston, forcing the acquisition of Edison GE, putting Edison himself out of business. [1]   The young businessman, Sam Insull, had worked to help build Edison GE and was placed into a quandary.  Faced with the prospect of working for the newly formed General Electric Corporation as a vice president or taking a substantial pay reduction to run Chicago Edison, Insull chose Chicago Edison. Insull would lead the company for over forty years, developing the municipal utility into the service provider for much of northern Illinois.   As early as 1903, Insull was looking ahead to the merger of Chicago Edison with the nearby Commonwealth Edison to enlarge the companies service territory. [2]   Insull, h...

  Seeing a need to adapt for further development in the opening years of the 20 th century, Chicago leaders commissioned a group to make recommendations concerning use of and necessary improvements to the Chicago waterfront.   The commission looked back to the preceding decade of shipping to determine how to proceed.   The period following the Civil War saw many infrastructure changes within the state of Illinois with a focus on the use of Chicago as a hub.   President Polk had vetoed an infrastructure bill in 1848 based on perceived unconstitutionality of the Federal government to interfere in state economic matters.   Despite the president’s objections, the further expansion of the United States into the west would require improvements to the transportation infrastructure.   Using data from the Census Bureau as well as historical shipping numbers from both primary reports and secondary sources, the influence of rail and steam on Chicago can be demonstrat...

  Maybe I am alone in this.   As a young boy when I asked my father about where our family came from,  h e would tell me what he knew, which only went back as far as his grandfather, who immigrated to the United States prior to the First World War.   My aunts both researched the family tree, exploring the various feeders to the family back to the colonial period, with one exception, the Baksa’s.   For my entire life there has been an impenetrable wall in the research named Matias Baksa.   We know that the family is of Magyar descent.   The Magyars are an Asiatic tribe, a branch of the Huns, who arrived in Europe during the later Roman Empire.   This information was fuel to the fire of my childhood brain but the stories I dreamed of were not based in truth. I know of at least one other man who faced a similar dilemma, my father-in-law.   He was abandoned by his mother and lost his father all by the age of eight.   He told his children a...

  Many cultures throughout time have sought to ensure the peace of a people group by tying together the forces of the secular and the spiritual.   Constantine’s conversion and proclamation of Christianity as the religion of Rome is discussed as a positive event.   Yet, from the establishment of the colonies through the framing of the Bill of Rights and the final disestablishment religion in the 1830’s, the predominately Christian founders of the United States recognized the need for not only physical liberty, but mental and spiritual liberty as well. John Leland, in his article “The Rights of Conscience Inalienable”, lays out five causes for the Establishment of Religion and the corruption behind each. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0100704904/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=73569084&pg=1   The right to evaluate and decide for oneself is based upon historical, logical, and moral grounds. The first cause for Established religion is based upo...