Our Perennial Effort to Do Harm So That Good Will Come:

 The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America

Read all about the origins of our national-standard loyalty oath (this will help you learn not to think those disloyal thoughts).

 The Seven Old North Bridges of Concord, Massachusetts

Q: When is a bridge a bridge too far?
A: When, basically, it exists as a patriotic stage prop, leading only to a cow pasture.

 The first casualty of war is Truth

The other night, on PBS on TV, a British commentator said that the "first atrocity" of the American Revolution had been perpetrated at Concord, Massachusetts by a Minuteman. Did he have his head up his ass? Did he have his head up his ass!

 Artifacts of King Philip's War

Henry David Thoreau viewed some objects that supposedly were left over from King Philip's War. How authentic were these artifacts?

 Conscientious Objection

 Military Conscription

 The Draft

 The Quaker Peace Testimony

 Biological and Chemical Warfare

They say America is an exceptional nation, and there may be something to that. At the very least, we have gotten very good at figuring out how to make large numbers of people die simultaneously in agony.

Various of America's Wars:

 "King Phillip’s" Race War (1675-1676)

The bloodiest combat we ever fought, happens to have been fought in and around Rhode Island. The blood of this race war cries up to you from the ground. The people who remained alive were sold into slavery, with the assistance of the Reverend Roger Williams. Is it true or is it false, that the Newport Quakers took no part in this killing?

 The American Revolutionary War

It was the war for American disunion from England that set us up for our war for disunion of the American South from the American North, because this was what created our ridiculous paradign, that disunion=freedom. Ridiculous ideas produce dangerous situations.

 The Revolution of the Texians (1835-1836)

John Wayne didn't die at the Alamo of stab wounds, but in California of throat cancer from smoking cigarettes. What had made the white Texians fighting mad was not their desire that we all be free, but the fact that those damned stupid Mexican greasers who were running Tejas as a province of Mejico were freeing the black slaves. The Mexicans were taking their human property from them without compensation, and that was just wrong! Something had to be done before things got entirely out of hand!

 Servile Insurrections (Slave Revolts) 

If there had been automobiles before the US Civil War, there would have been bumpers, and if there had been bumpers, there would have been bumper stickers, and one of the most popular sarcastic bumper stickers of all time might well have been YOU CAN SLEEP SOUNDLY TONIGHT, YOUR SLAVES ARE AWAKE! White citizens who relied upon slave labor were "riding a tiger" as it were -- and, as everyone knows, the tricky part of riding a tiger is figuring out how to do the dismount.

The War on Mejico (1846-1848)

On June 15, 1846 a young anti-war protester managed to get a brief statement printed in the Boston Courier, about his principled stand against the US federal government's agenda to engage in a territory-grabbing offensive assault upon our neighbor to the south, Mexico. Our government's complaint against its neighbor, basically, was that it had, horrifyingly, freed its black slaves. --This was one of the very first pieces of his writing that the young anti-war protester in question managed to see in print. (His name, incidentally, was Henry David Thoreau.)

 The Aurora Borealis

Sometimes the Northern Lights can be seen as far south as Virginia -- when, that is, God wants to tell us which side He's on, and that it's OK with Him for us to go kill some more people (Sarcasm Alert).

World War II

Other Wars:

 Chinese Christians vs Chinese Buddhists (1850-1864)

 Armenian Genocide (1914-1923)

Recently, in the newspapers you will note, there has been a story about a Turkish novelist who is facing a sentence of three years in a Turkish prison hell. His crime against Turkishness was, that he had acknowledged, to a Western newsmagazine, the fact of the Armenian Genocide. The Turks had killed a million Armenian men, women, and children in cold blood, he admitted. On his day in court, the populace of the town threw rotten eggs at him in the street.

Warriors and Pacifists:

 Adolf Hitler and the Nazis

Benito Mussolini and the Fascists

 The "Archbishop of Nanking"

Merely the strangest story you've ever heard about a Christian missionary in China...

 The Most Deadly Civil War of All Time

 A Chinese peasant messiah who caused 20 million deaths, and no, I'm not referring to Chairman Mao

Did you know that Jesus had a little brother? Did you know that Jesus's little brother was a Chinaman? Did you know that Jesus's little brother, given half a chance, would chop your head off?

 Friend John R. Kellam, Prisoner of Conscience

Did you know that it is possible to be put in a federal maximum security prison as a draft evader, for adhering to the Quaker Peace Testimony?

 How George W. Bush Learned to Love War

Since on this website we are dealing with a Quaker who was convicted of draft evasion and put in a federal maximum security prison for adhering to the Quaker Peace Testimony, we should compare and contrast this sad history with the experience of other more fortunate draft evaders, such as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

 When Christians were killing Buddhists and Buddhists were killing Christians

 "Chinese" Gordon

The story of Gordon of Khartoum, a famous Brit general who died, get this, with his pants on.

 Dangerfield Newby

What would you do if you were of necessity away from home and your wife wrote you a letter, pleading with you to redeem her and your children from their sad plight? (This letter was found as Dangerfield's dead body was being mutilated by his killers.)

 Osborn Perry Anderson

One of the men who went on the raid against the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia with Captain John Brown was a printer by trade. He survive the raid, and escaped from being hanged by the federal government. He then wrote a book about what had happened. Here is that book, in its entirety. (By the way, Osborn P. Anderson was a person of color.)

 Aaron D. Stevens

One of the men who was hanged the raid against the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia was a man's man by the name of Aaron D. Stevens from Connecticut, a swordsman, who had followed the excitement to "Bleeding Kansas" and had there met and become a follower of Captain John Brown.

 Brigadier-General "Wah" Ward, the mercenary

A Massachusetts lad became a mercenary general, by weeding out Christians where they weren't wanted. He didn't carry a gun, but his desire for loot made him utterly deadly. Mercenaries such as the "civilian contractors" of beautiful downtown Iraq still visit his grave, and honor him as their illustrious forebear.

 Remembering the Alamo

Let's remember the *real* Alamo, shall we, rather than the ones in the movies?

 The killing of the Reverend John Sassamon and the onset of a race war in Rhode Island

As the First World War came about because of the murder of an archduke in Serbia, so King Philip's War came about because of the murder of a minister between Plymouth and Bristol. They called him "Indian John." He was a Harvard man.

 Ammi White  

Did a Concord man scalp a British soldier in Concord, as the army troops alleged?

(Stay Tuned, Much More is Coming!)