Real Patriotism with Terry Moran

There are seasons of history when lies move in on a country and come down on the people like weather. Not one lie, or a few lies, but a whole front of them, settling in, darkening the sky, until it’s as if the only thing that the people can see are lies. The fascist regimes of the last century covered the skies above with lies like that. So did the totalitarian communist states. North Koreans live under that sky still.

The sky over Frederick is the wrong color again. Not the clean gray of rain coming, but a flat, sourceless ochre. Wrong, creepy. It’s like the light of an old photograph that was left too left too long in the sun. It carries a faint campfire smell, but there’s nothing cozy in it. Campfire smoke drifts on the breeze, evanescent and companionable. But this smell is the breeze, is the air, is the atmosphere itself, and it hangs acrid and unhealthy over all of us here. Our sky is slow poison.

Edwin Markham reads his poem “Lincoln, The Man of the People.” On the right are Vice President Calvin Coolidge, First Lady Florence Harding, President Warren G. Harding, and Chief Justice William Howard Taft. Library of Congress photo. This is the third in a series of Sunday columns celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Each column touches on one of the great principles of our nation. The first considered Equality, the second Liberty. This week: Indivisibility.

We’re back home from Michigan, back to Maryland’s steamy, stormy summer, back to work. So let’s talk! JOIN TABLE TALK LIVE HERE How’s your summer going? Join us for a chat at our kitchen table about the week in politics and at home. Drop your questions and comments here, and see you soon! —Terry and Johanna LINK: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/274391?utm_source=live-stream-scheduled-upsell

Early Tuesday morning in Houston, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo took the coffee and the meal his wife had prepared for him, said goodbye to his dog, and walked out of the house he built with his own hands. Lorenzo was 52 years old, a husband and father, a carpenter and contractor by trade. He had spent 35 years building homes in and around Houston, framing the suburbs of that city. Hundreds of homes, by his family’s count.

Allen Ginsburg is arrested at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado, 1978. This is the second of three Sunday columns celebrating the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Each week, we’ll look at one poem that touches on one of the great principles of our nation: Equality, Liberty, and Indivisibility. Last week, Equality—here. This week, Liberty. What does it mean to be free? “It’s a free country,” we like to say. Is it? What do we mean when we say that?

Welcome to the cottage! Johanna’s family have been coming to this place in this beautiful corner of Michigan for 99 years. And from the dinner table, Jo and I talk about things high and low and in-between—birthright citizenship, the Swift-Kelce nuptials, how Trump’s deserted fair says something good about America, and a bit about this special place we love.

We’re coming to you this week from Michigan, our “studio” a 99-year-old cottage built by Johanna’s great-grandparents on a beautiful lake not far from Traverse City. So we’re in vacation mode, and we hope you have some time as this holiday weekend begins to join us. Lots to talk about. Drop your questions and comments here, and we’ll see you at 2PM ET! —Terry and Johanna CLICK HERE: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/265097?utm_source=live-stream-scheduled-upsell

Barbara is not her real name. We do not know her real name, and that fact belongs at the beginning of this story. “Barbara” is a pregnant mother who sued the President of the United States, using a pseudonym. She was asking the Supreme Court to keep the promise our country made to her unborn child, and she was afraid of what her neighbors might do to her family if they knew. Here is what we do know.

Coming to you from Up North in Michigan. See you soon!