Tag history | Hannah Ihms

August 1, 2014 by Hannah

Why Doesn’t the Cephalic Vein Go to the Head?

[I recently came across a blog post I’d written for my anatomy/physiology students. It was kind of interesting, so I thought I’d post it here.]

Usually a vein or artery’s name helps you find where it is located. For example, the brachiocephalic vein supplies the arm (“brachium“) and head (“cephalicus“). The radial artery is next to the radius, and the digital artery supplies the digit, or finger.

This is all well and good–unless you’re talking about the cephalic vein. If its name made sense, it would supply the head. But it’s nowhere near the head: it’s hanging out in the upper arm. What gives?

Regressive Progressivism

Freedom can be inconvenient. It can demand things of us we’d rather not give, and demand us to think when we’d rather coast. But it’s better than the alternative.

Noah Webster defined a slave as:

“1. A person who is wholly subject to the will of another; one who has no will of his own, but whose person and services are wholly under the control of another…

“2. One who has lost the power of resistance; or one who surrenders himself to any power whatever; as a slave to passion, to lust, to ambition…”

If we refuse to think, others will do our thinking for us. If we cede our right to conscience, the battle is over. Without the ability to personally decide and act upon what we believe to be right and true, we will be utterly defenseless. What’s “right,” or “politically correct,” will then be what those who rule us determine it to be. This is the logical result of relativism: alternate realities must reconcile somehow, and force is the simple, direct method.

All this is nothing new. The current administration’s slogan may be “Forward,” but it’s leading us down a path rejected centuries ago. Collectivism? State-induced infanticide? That’s so 5th century. Progressives are regressing.

Of course there’s the argument that new civilizations need new methods. But we Americans already vetted and rejected these long ago.

It’s ironic that President Obama would deliver his “You Didn’t Build That” speech in Virginia, because this is where we already put collectivism on trial. It didn’t go so well. The Jamestown colony nearly starved. As Jamestown Secretary Raphe Hamor wrote in a letter in 1614:

“[F]ormerly, when our people were fedde out of the common store and laboured jointly in the manuring of the ground, and planting corne, glad was that man that could slippe from his labour, nay the most honest of them in a generall businesse, would not take so much faithfull and true paines, in a weeke, as now he will doe in a day, neither cared they for the increase, presuming that howsoever their harvest prospered, the generall store must maintain them, by which meanes we reaped not so much corne from the labours of 30 men, as three men have done for themselves…”

If a colonist was assured a share in the reapings, why should he break his back bringing it in? The trouble was, not enough food was brought in. Killing the profit motive killed the profit.

As Mr. Hamor further explained:

“Sir Thomas Dale hath taken a new course, throughout the whole Colony, by which meanes, the generall store… shall not be charged with any thing: and this it is, he hath allotted to every man in the Colony, three English Acres of cleere Corne ground, which every man is to mature and tend, being in the nature of Farmers… and they are not called unto any service or labor belonging to the Colony, more then one moneth in the yeere, which shall neither be in seede time, or in Harvest, for which, doeing no other duty to the Colony, they are yearly to pay into the store two barrells and a halfe of Corne: there to be reserved to keep new men… thereby the lives of many shall not onely be preserved, but also themselves kept in strength and heart, able to performe such businesses, as shall be imposed upon them: and thus shall also the former charge be well saved, and yet more businesse effected.”

When a wise Jamestown governor abolished collectivism and put each colonist in charge of his own life, the colony thrived. Over two hundred years later, the Founders encouraged personal ingenuity, for example by placing Article 1, Section 8 in the Constitution. It gives Congress the power “[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Instead of creating bloated agencies such as the National Endowment of the Arts or the National Science Foundation which redistribute funds bled from the productive private sector, the Founders created an environment where an individual could protect and benefit from his own ideas.

But, of course, that required that an individual himself be protected. “Intention to abort” was first grounds for conviction in Maryland in 1652, and Virginia classified abortion as murder in 1710. The Declaration of Independence affirms each American’s “right to life,” and throughout American history this was increasingly interpreted as encompassing unborn children. By 1965, abortion was illegal in all 50 states. Roe v. Wade turned the clock backward. We regressed from what we already knew.

In May, 1857 the American Medical Association appointed a Committee on Criminal Abortion. It investigated the causes of criminal abortion and ways to reduce them, presenting three major findings about “this general demoralization”:

“The first of these causes is a widespread popular ignorance of the true character of the crime — a belief, even among mothers themselves, that the foetus is not alive till after the period of quickening.

“The second of the agents alluded to is the fact that the profession themselves are frequently supposed careless of foetal life…

“The third reason of the frightful extent of this crime is found in the grave defects of our laws, both common and statute, as regards the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being. These errors, which are sufficient in most instances to prevent conviction, are based, and only based, upon mistaken and exploded medical dogmas. With strange inconsistency, the law fully acknowledges the foetus in utero and its inherent rights, for civil purposes; while personally and as criminally affected, it fails to recognize it, and to its life as yet denies all protection.”

After hearing these findings, the Association adopted resolutions “against such unwarrantable destruction of human life.” This remained the official position of the Association until 1970.

How far we’ve fallen. Redistribution is so widespread it’s become commonplace, and on August 1, 2012, the Health and Human Services’s mandate that all insurance companies cover sterilizations, abortifacients, birth control, and abortion took effect.

George Washington’s words ring true today:

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own… The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission.”

July 13, 2012 by Hannah

The Surprising History of African-American Politics

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

Obama’s relationship with African-American voters just got a bit more dysfunctional. This marks the third year he’s been too busy to personally address the National Association of Colored People (NAACP). The best stand-in the White House could provide was Vice President Biden, who emphasized the NAACP’s purpose: “On civil rights, your raison d’etre, the reason for our existence, I want to remind everybody of one thing: Remember, remember what this [organization], at its core, was all about… It was all about the franchise. It was about the right to vote. Because when you have the right to vote, you have the right to change things.” He then claimed that Republicans are threatening this basic right: “[Republicans] see a different future, where voting is made harder, not easier, where the Justice Department is even prohibited from challenging any of those efforts to suppress votes.”

It’s ironic that Vice President Biden would decide to level this charge, given the history of his own party. It is the Democrat party, not the Republican party, that has sought to disenfranchise voters through legal chicanery and, when that fails, outright coercion.

The Republican Party was formed in opposition to slavery. One of its co-founders was Charles Sumner, who in 1865 as a U.S. Senator gave a two-day speech against slavery and was mercilessly clubbed by a pro-slavery, Democratic representative on the Senate floor. Later, in the midst of the Civil War, it was a Republican president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a Republican Congress that passed the Thirteenth Amendment that in 1865 outlawed slavery: all 116 of the Republicans in the U.S. Congress voted for this amendment while only 19 of the 82 Democrats did (and these were the Northern Democrats). Even though the Civil War was over, intense prejudice still existed. As former slave states rejoined the union in the days of Reconstruction, many former Confederate soldiers and sympathizers were present in the Democrat party and not all were content to respect the rights of African-Americans. Congressmen required state legislatures to fully endorse the Thirteenth Amendment in order for their representatives to be reinstated in Congress.

When Southern States adopted Black Codes to intimidate African-Americans, it was a Republican Congress that passed the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It overruled the Dred Scott decision by affirming citizenship for all people born in the U.S., requiring due process in legal matters, and instituting equal protection of all citizens before the law. It was also a Republican Congress that passed the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 that prohibits any citizen of age from being denied the right to vote, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Together, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments held promise of new opportunities for African-Americans. Practice, however, proved difficult. In 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels was an African-American candidate for federal office in Mississippi. He was a Republican, and his political opponents mercilessly disputed his candidacy. Though he was an American, a free man born to free parents, and never enslaved, Mississippi Democrats claimed that he had only been a citizen for two years—from the date that the Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified in 1868—and thus did not meet the requirement that a U.S. Senator be a citizen for at least nine years before assuming office. Overcoming these objections, on February 25, 1870 Mr. Revels became the first African-American U.S. Senator and the first African-American elected to federal office. He restarted the representation of the state U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis abandoned to join the Confederacy.

The significance of this was not lost on his contemporaries. As fellow U.S. Senator, Republican James Nye from Nevada, said: “Jefferson Davis went out to establish a government whose cornerstone should be the oppression and perpetual enslavement of a race because their skin differed in color from his. Sir, what a magnificent spectacle of retributive justice is witnessed here today! In the place of that proud, defiant man, who marched out to trample under foot the Constitution and the laws of the country he had sworn to support, comes back one of that humble race whom he would have enslaved forever to take and occupy his seat upon this floor.”

Republicans had fought for the right for African-Americans to vote, and African-Americans fought for the right to be elected as Republicans. All seven of the African-Americans elected to federal office in the 41st and 42nd Congresses were Republicans.

Such “uppitiness” was not to be tolerated. If African-Americans could not be kept down through legal disputes, it could be solved in other ways. The antagonism that fueled the Civil War found other outlets–the Ku Klux Klan was born. It served as the domestic terrorist wing of the Democrat party, href=”http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/grant-kkk/” target=”_blank”>targeting Republican voters.

It took the action of former Civil War General U. S. S. Grant and legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1871 to stamp down the KKK.

Even with this action, voter intimidation continued. One thinly veiled threat in a Charleston News and Courier read, “Killing is not always murder, and violations of law are not always a crime. There is an earlier law than the statutes–the law of self-preservation. That law was the guide and master in South Carolina in 1876, and it will be appealed to whenever there is any danger of a return to the vileness of negro rule.” Appealing to the members of the U.S. House in 1882 to defend African-Americans’ right to vote, Republican U.S. Representative and former slave John Lynch said: “They were faithful and true to you then; they are no less so today. And yet they ask no special favors as a class; they ask no special protection as a race. They feel that they purchased their inheritance, when upon the battlefields of this country, they watered the tree of liberty with the precious blood that flowed from their loyal veins. They ask no favors, they desire; and must have; an equal chance in the race of life.” The Republican Party reprinted excerpts from Mr. Lynch’s speech in theirRepublican Campaign Text Book for 1882, and documented voter fraud and intimidation in Democratic strongholds.

As time went on, there were extensive efforts to repeal the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments even in 1900, and the flawed “historical” film “The Birth of a Nation” was used as a recruiting film for the KKK beginning in 1915. This was the first film shown in the White House, thanks to President Woodrow Wilson. Direct quotes from President Wilson’s book “A History of the American People,” appeared throughout the film, such as: “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation… until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.” President Wilson segregated the federal government and supported a bill that would have made it a felony for a white man to marry a black woman in Washington, D.C. His endorsement of “The Birth of a Nation” allowed its director to stave off onslaughts from the NAACP.

Between 1882 and 1964, 4,743 lynchings were documented in the U.S.–3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites. Many Republican party platforms condemned lynchingsand Republicans and Democrats introduced anti-lynching bills, but the bulk of the Democratic party successfully stamped out each of these bills and did not address lynchings in their party platform. In 1932, more than 75% of the African-American vote went to Herbert Hoover over FDR; FDR won, however. During his four terms in office, the Democrat party took a new stance on racial discrimination, and began to win over African-American voters. FDR’s successor, Harry S. Truman, became the first Democratic president to support pro-African-American policy, and faced intense opposition from the bulk of his own party. Some Democrats joined Eisenhower in his fight for civil rights. Finally, in the 1960s, a Republican Congress advanced civil rights legislation that a Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed into law.

From FDR’s second term to the present day, a majority of African-American voters have voted Democrat. But this trend is not inevitable. Outspoken African-American conservatives such as Allen West, Deneen Borelli, and Thomas Sowell are showing that the legacy of African-Americans such as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington is alive and well.

Thomas Sowell’s advice on regaining the African-American vote is to boldly show African-Americans the alternatives open to them. This is exactly what Mitt Romney did this week in his address to the NAACP: “When it comes to education reform, candidates cannot have it both ways – talking up education reform, while indulging the same groups that are blocking reform. You can be the voice of disadvantaged public-school students, or you can be the protector of special interests like the teachers unions, but you can’t be both. I have made my choice: As president, I will be a champion of real education reform in America, and I won’t let any special interest get in the way.”

African-Americans have a long and powerful political history. As they become better acquainted with it, their view of the Democrat Party and their place in it may change. If African-Americans look elsewhere for a political home, we must ensure they find a viable alternative.

in History / Politics 0 comments

June 28, 2012 by Hannah

Nine Lives: The U.S. Supreme Court Justices

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

With its wide range of ideologies, the Court has heroes for progressives, libertarians, and conservatives. And in the boxing ring of the Supreme Court chambers these justices engage in some of the highest-stake intellectual fisticuffs ever carried out.

Who are the nine people that decided the fate of Obamacare? It’s worth the time to examine the lives and characteristics of the members of the highest court in the land.

Two justices (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) greeted the world in Trenton, New Jersey, and other justices hail from as far south as Pin Point, Georgia (Clarence Thomas), and as far west as San Francisco (Stephen Breyer). Interestingly, none of the justices were born in the Midwest.

Though some were born into humble circumstances and others enjoyed a wealthy upbringing, all justices obtained their law degrees from Ivy League institutions, with five attending Harvard, three attending Yale, and one attending Columbia.

This uniformity in choice of schools is not reflected in the justices’ ideologies, however. Given the amount of time many justices spend on the Court and the scope of cases they consider, there is a wealth of information about the political views of most of the Supreme Court justices. Two measures commonly used to compare justices’ ideologies are the Martin-Quinn score and the percent or fraction of conservative votes cast by a justice in non-unanimous decisions.

The Martin-Quinn score describes a justice’s political ideology for a given year by assigning more negative values to more liberal ideologies and more positive values to more conservative ideologies. In this way, the evolution of a given justice can be tracked over time, and justices can rapidly be compared to one another. For 2010, the court’s ideology as indicated by their Martin-Quinn scores ranged from 0.024 (Stephen Breyer) to 5.689 (Clarence Thomas). The median score was 2.071 (Anthony Kennedy’s, the most common swing vote). The justices range from casting a more conservative vote about 37.2% of the time (Stephen Breyer) to 82.2% of the time (Clarence Thomas).

How much time said heroes have spent on the Court or can expect to stay there varies widely. The average number of years the justices on this court have served is 13 years, but this disguises a bimodal distribution, with four justices having served six or less years, and five justices finishing 17-25 years on the bench. Liberal justices have spent 1-18 years on the Court, while conservative justices have spent 6-25 years there.

The fact that justices can exert their influence for a quarter century and more shows the breadth of influence a given administration can have years after the Oval Office has been redecorated. Five presidents can claim the current justices as their enduring legacy, with two current justices appointed by Ronald Reagan through Barack Obama, with the exception of H. W. Bush, who has only one appointee remaining. Notably, this appointee is Clarence Thomas, the most conservative justice currently serving on the Court.

The long-term influence of each justice explains the full vetting that each candidate should undergo, and the verbal flayings that some candidates have endured. Still, the confirmation process and final vote varies widely. Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy were unanimously confirmed (98-0 and 97-0), while the Senate was most divided on Clarence Thomas (52-48), followed closely by Samuel Alito (58-42). Of the liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg faced the least opposition (96-3), and Elena Kagan faced the most (63-37). And, of course, we’re speaking only of those candidates who survived the potential borking.

The heterogeneity of the court extends further than ideology or vetting intensity. The justices range in age from 52 to 79, with an average age of 66. The most recent addition to the Court is also the youngest of all time: Elena Kagan, who is 52 years old. The two most elderly justices are Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, from the further ends of the ideological divide.

Another distinguishing factor are the justices’ religious views. The current justices are either Roman Catholic or Jewish, with a 6-3 split. Three of the four liberal justices are Jewish, and all of the more conservative justices in addition to Sonia Sotomayor are Roman Catholic.

All of the individual traits and choices of the justices—their upbringing, ideologies, etc.—impact their decisions in small and large ways. Hearing their interpretations of the Constitution as it pertains to some of the most pressing issues of our day is nerve-racking because we know every human, regardless of how well-educated, well-informed, or well-intentioned, is fallible.

We champion some justices and question others. We wonder just how flexible or forthright each justice will prove to be. In the midst of it all we can see the wisdom of our Founders in entrusting this power to a panel of justices instead of a single, omnipotent Supreme Court Justice. May this Court and every ensuing Court recognize and uphold the letter and the spirit of our highest law.

in Politics 0 comments

June 22, 2012 by Hannah

Did the Founding Fathers Care about the Unborn?

The following was originally published on the Howard County Right to Life blog.

On January 22, 2012, community members from across Howard County gathered at the courthouse in Kokomo, Indiana to remember the unborn children claimed by abortion. Mr. Bill Federer, a historian, author, and President of Amerisearch, spoke about the Christian roots of our nation and the God-given mandate to care for all humans.

Mr. Federer began with a look at the changes in America over the last three decades: “I look at the Scriptures: Deuteronomy 28. It says, ‘These are the blessings if a nation hearkens to the voice of the Lord. They will be a lender and not a debtor. And these are the curses if a nation does not hearken to the voice of the Lord: they will be a debtor and a stranger amongst them will rise up and be their ruler.’

“Do you realize in the last thirty years America has gone from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation? We are the most in-debt nation in world history. So, ladies and gentlemen, we’re on the judgement side of the page.

“What has happened in the last thirty years? Well, we have aborted millions of children. And the same thing that God told Cain [applies today]: ‘Your brother Abel’s innocent blood cries out from the ground.’ There’s a cry that’s going up to Heaven and I believe that what’s staying the hand of judgement is us: is you and me, here.”

He then looked back at the U.S. during the days of slavery, when we were also under judgement. Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, said:

“Fondly we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmen’s 250 years of unrequited toil should be sunk and every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be repaid by a drop of blood drawn by the sword, let it be said: The judgements of the Lord are altogether true and righteous.”

As Mr. Federer pointed out, “Here’s Lincoln. He had the audacity to connect the judgement of the war with the sin of slavery. Is anybody going to connect the dots today?”

History provides more than cautionary tales, however. Mr. Federer relates how President Lincoln lead a national day of fasting and praying, and three days later the course of the Civil War was staggeringly altered.

This course is open to us today: “You are here because you’re stirred in your heart to leave your nice, warm home and come here and stand in the cold because there’s something burning on the inside of you: a flame that’s strong that says I’ve got to do something for our country.”

“I was with Alan Keyes last week. We were talking about the Constitution and he explained that the judge that gave the Roe v. Wade decision said if it could ever be proved that the unborn are considered by our Constitution to be citizens, then this decision is void. And Alan Keyes says, ‘I found it. I found where the unborn are mentioned in our Constitution.’

“I said, ‘Wow! Where?'”

“He says, ‘In the Preamble. It says, “To secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we establish this Constitution.”‘

“Posterity. What’s posterity? Well, those are your descendants that you’ll never meet. Well, if you’re going to care about these descendants that are generations in the future, you’re going to care about the ones that are just one generation in the future. You’re going to care about the ones that are right there in the womb about to be the next generation in the future. You’re going to care about the unborn.

“Our Founders sacrificed their prosperity for their posterity. They pledged their lives and their fortunes and their sacred honor for a generation yet unborn. Today our government is doing the opposite. We’re sacrificing our posterity for prosperity, saddling the unborn with an unpayable debt–besides killing the unborn.

“George Washington, in 1776, stands before his army and he says, “The fate of unborn millions now depends on the courage of this army. We have to resolve therefore to either conquer or die.”

Though the lives of heroes loom large above our mind’s eye, Mr. Federer reminded the crowd assembled that God has placed them here on earth at this time for a reason, and thought forward to the day when our lives are over and we’re listening to the heroes of the Bible tell their life stories.

“One by one, Gideon, the Apostle Paul, and Deborah–all of them [are going to tell their stories]–and then everybody’s going to look at you and say, ‘You: we haven’t heard from you yet! What did you do when it was your turn to be on earth? Tell us what was going on… all the courage and faith you had to stand against injustice and [stand] up for righteousness.’

“Y’know, I don’t want to squirm in my seat and say, ‘Uh, can you call on someone else for a minute and let me think about this?’

“No, I want to say, ‘Let me tell you what they were doing! They were killing babies, they were changing marriage, they were doing everything and I said I’m going to stand up. I don’t know all the stuff they know. I just have my little sling. I’m just going to let the Lord use me.’ Y’know, if anybody’s around when I die, I’ll tell them to put on my gravestone, ‘Not ability, but availability.’ Y’know, you make yourself available and the Lord’ll add the ability. So I look forward to the day that we’re all up there and you get to tell your story and we’ll remember together being here this day.”

For more information about the events at the rally, see this article by Splash!Kokomo. For more of Mr. Federer’s research into the history, see www.americanminute.com.

in Ethics / History / Politics / Sociology / Theology 0 comments