Annoyance and resistance to the policies of King George III and the British Parliament did not just materialize after the April 1775 battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. In North Carolina in 1765, there had already been strong, active resistance to the Stamp Act, which helped result in its ultimate repeal in 1766.

We’ve also talked a lot this year about North Carolina’s Halifax Resolves and Mecklenburg Declaration, which came before the American Declaration of Independence. They’re seen as so important that their dates are on our state flag.

In 1774, several resolutions, or “resolves,” were passed in North Carolina.

First, on Aug. 8, 1774, 26 representatives from all over Rowan County met to sign the Rowan Resolves. They met in Salisbury, a thriving community on the edge of North Carolina’s frontier, which was the county seat and a trading center for many trails, including the Great Wagon Road.

The resolutions addressed rising agitation in the colonies over Parliament’s “Intolerable Acts,” five laws passed by Parliament in the spring of 1774 to try to restore order after the Patriots’ Boston Tea Party protest over the tax on tea.

The first declarations protesting the Acts in North Carolina, the Rowan Resolves voiced opposition to taxation without representation and called for non-importation of British merchant goods.

Also before any revolutionary shots were fired in anger, Committees of Safety in many of the counties sent delegates to North Carolina’s First Provincial Congress, held a few weeks later on Aug. 25–27 in New Bern. There, 71 delegates adopted 28 resolutions that came to be known as the New Bern Resolves.

What is important for us to recognize about these early resolves is that they did not come close to crossing the line of talking about independence. Instead, they made a point of emphasizing the colony’s loyalty to the Crown while at the same time making clear that British colonists should not be taxed without their consent or the consent of their elected representatives.

Key to the resolutions was the assertion that local assemblies, not Parliament, should have the right to tax. The resolutions also declared that Parliament’s actions to punish colonies that disagreed were cruel and unlawful. The resolves not only addressed the concerns these representatives had for their own colony but also encouraged other colonies to unite against Parliament’s unfair actions and initiated the call for the boycotting of British goods and products in protest.

The New Bern Resolves will be celebrated at the North Carolina History Center at Tryon Palace from 9:30–11 a.m. this Saturday, Aug. 22. Join others celebrating our country’s 250th birthday with a fife and drum parade, reenactors, and the commemoration of the adoption of the Resolves. The event is free and a great way to continue the celebration of our independence!

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Editors at Issues and Insights describe results of a disturbing new poll as
“The Ruination of America.”

A shocking poll has found that voters are more likely to support a Democratic Socialist of America candidate over one who is supported by President Donald Trump or identifies with the Make America Great Again movement. Anyone who doesn’t tremble for their country after learning this is part of the problem.

The CNBC poll taken a little more than a month ago shows that 32% of U.S. voters are more likely to support a self-described DSA candidate while only 29% are more likely to back a candidate endorsed by Trump. The figure falls to 27% for the self-described supporters of the MAGA movement.

Granted, the numbers are not that far apart. But the fact that more than even 10% of voters would cast their ballots for the depraved Democratic Socialists, who celebrated the 100th birthday of Fidel Castro, the jailer, torturer, and murderer of thousands, and demand the U.S. pay Cuba reparations, is discouraging. The danger is no longer on the fringe but in the room with us right now.

The media and the Democratic Party sure have done their job, and they’ve done it well, working hard for more than a decade to make sure large chunks of the population believe that Trump, his supporters, and those who vote for him because the alternatives have been wretched are Nazis, Fascists, racists, and deplorables.

The same media, with the help of the Democratic Party, have promoted, celebrated, and nurtured the socialists, some of whom are in fact communists, that have infested our politics. What we learn every time a Zohran Mamdani, Hasan Piker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, or Darializa Avila Chevalier is gushed over by the media, the useful idiots of Generation Z and any previously standard Democratic politician just how willfully ignorant, deranged, and dangerous those leftist politicians are.

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Jeffrey Anderson writes for the Federalist about the previous president’s impact on today’s prices.

Ever wonder why things that cost $40 just a few short years ago now feel like they cost closer to $50? That’s because they do. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), things that would have cost $40 in July 2020 cost an average of $51.55 in July 2026. No wonder everyday Americans are concerned about affordability.

In fact, per BLS figures, prices have risen more in the past 6 years than they did in the 14 years prior to that. Something that cost $100 in 2020 — just six years ago — now costs, on average, $128.88. That exceeds the price increase over the 14-year span from 2006 to 2020 — as things that cost $100 in July 2006 cost $127.32, on average, in July 2020. So, after years of having prices slowly creep upward, they have shot upward since 2020.

The vast majority of the price increases since 2020 took place during the Joe Biden presidency. When Biden took office, the inflation rate was 1.4 percent. It rose to 9.1 percent less than 18 months later, and the overall annual inflation rate across his four-year term was 5 percent — the highest across any presidential term in the past 45 years. (That figure is based on the consumer price index for all urban consumers in January 2021 versus January 2025.) On the whole, $100 when Biden took office was worth only $82.34 by the time he left just four years later. Not since Jimmy Carter had Americans seen the value of their money drop so precipitously over a four-year span.

Inflation during the Biden years was fueled in part by senseless Covid lockdown policies, which disrupted the supply of goods, and by runaway government spending, which flooded the economy with excess currency. As financial writer John Steele Gordon says, “As the price of money falls, the price of every other commodity must go up.” He adds, “And what causes the price of money to fall? The answer is very simple: an increase in the supply of money relative to other goods and services.”

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Jonathan Leaf writes for the Washington Free Beacon about an exodus from our northern neighbor.

All you have to do is look at some simple statistics. Last year, roughly 150,000 Americans chose to leave the United States. Canada has more exact statistics on emigration. It says that 120,640 Canadians left Canada. The numbers aren’t so different. But the United States has eight-and-a-half times as many people. So, if the United States had the same rate of emigration, we would be losing close to 1.3 million people each year. That’s more than live in Boston and Miami combined.

Here’s an even more shocking statistic. In 2016, Canada legalized assisted suicide. Now eight times as many Canadians die from euthanasia as in car accidents. Increasingly, Canadians are anxious to leave either for another country or the undiscovered country.

What has so turned them off from life in their homeland?

There is no official data on this. But certain issues continually pop up in press accounts and interviews with disenchanted Canadians. This is a short list in no particular order.

Taxes: In some Canadian provinces, the maximum marginal income tax rate approaches 55 percent. The rates get up to 54.8 percent in Newfoundland and Labrador, 54 percent in Nova Scotia, and 53.5 percent in British Columbia and Ontario.

Canada also has a value-added tax (VAT). A VAT is similar to a sales tax, though it’s imposed prior to sale. The Canadian federal VAT rate is 5 percent, and then the provinces tack on their own rates. Quebec’s is a further 9.975 percent, Ontario’s is 8 percent, and British Columbia’s is 7 percent.

Canada treats capital gains and inheritance as regular income, though at a reduced rate. Nonetheless, long-term capital gains in Canada are taxed at up to 27.5 percent (versus 20 percent in the United States), and all amounts passed onto one’s heirs are subjected to the same rule if they have increased in value. In practical terms, this means that nearly all Canadians will face substantial taxes upon their estates when they die.

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Jeffrey Blehar of National Review Online has little good to say about the president’s policies toward Iran.

As it happens, Monday was another big day of note: the 60-day deadline for President Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran. You know, the one that was supposed to buy us a window to tidily resolve that whole “self-inflicted quagmire in the Middle East” thing that Trump swore he’d avoid yet somehow managed to stumble into — again. To mark the occasion (and with no deal in sight), Trump idly responded by threatening to bomb Oman, a third party guilty primarily of being located across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran. Then he went back to grumbling about Fox News’ coverage of his “Military Complex/Ballroom site.”

Don’t worry, Trump won’t bomb Oman. He won’t do much of anything except whine on Truth Social about how strong he is. Because, in truth, Trump is a patsy, a bad businessman; an easily duped stooge currently being fleeced by Persians far more sophisticated about geopolitical realities than he is, with the patience to match. As I have only occasionally pointed out in these pages since late February — because nobody wants to read it and I don’t want to write it — the Iran war is an episode of modern American history comparable in its shame only to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979. . . . and look at that common denominator.

Only when Trump is gone from office will the Republican Party feel comfortable to acknowledge most of this — which is why Trump’s presidential legacy will be a fraught one even for his biggest defenders, regardless of what he does or has done domestically. (The executive orders we cheered will be repealed on Day One of the next Democratic administration, alas. The undoing of the tariff regime will follow soon after that — this I’ll approve of. And as a compromise to please everyone, the scaffolding will finally come off the façade of the Kennedy Center.)

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Stanley Kurtz writes for National Review Online about a disturbing trend in American higher education.

For the moment, I’m not talking about a story you may have already heard: the growing inability of college students to read full books, or even lengthy scholarly articles. … I’m focusing here on a different story, one that’s barely been reported: Colleges are increasingly forcing students to swap out physical books for digital texts.

There’s a whole bunch of problems with digital textbooks. For starters, there’s a solid consensus among researchers that physical books are superior to digital texts for learning, particularly when it comes to long-form exposition and argument — exactly what’s needed in college. For another thing, in the new dispensation, students lose access to their digital textbooks when the course is over. Imagine an economics major who can’t refer back to his Econ 101 tome, or an English major who loses notes and markings she’s made in her sophomore copy of Shakespeare — not to mention the copy itself. Meanwhile, those with less interest in retaining their textbooks — or of greater financial need — can’t sell their digital texts on the secondary market, like they can their physical books. Then there are the privacy issues. Professors and publishing companies can tell whether you’ve cracked your digital textbooks, for how long, and even what passages you’ve highlighted. There’s also evidence that publishers are collecting personal information, even when they say they’re not.

So, why are America’s colleges and universities leading the charge away from physical books? And what can be done to stop what I and a great many students and professors think is a bad idea? …

… All that changed in early 2016, however, when the Obama Department of Education (DOE) promulgated what is commonly known as Rule 164. While the Obama DOE said that it had “initially considered prohibiting institutions from including books and supplies as part of tuition and fees,” it eventually changed its mind and devised a rule that would allow colleges and universities to effectively impose Inclusive Access on the vast majority of their students.

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The Tax Foundation is out with a new report summarizing the key economic impacts from Pres. Donald Trump’s tariff regime, kicked off by his “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2, 2025.

In short, the Tax Foundation analysts found that Trump’s tariffs have: imposed significant costs on U.S. households, harmed GDP, did not reduce America’s trade balance, and amounted to the largest tax increase since 1993.

Here is a summary of their key findings:

• The Trump tariffs amounted to an average tax increase of $1,000 per US household: According to Tax Foundation analysis, the tax burden passed along to U.S. households amounted to an average of $1,000 per household in 2025. They project this burden will be $900 per household this year.
• Tariffs created great uncertainty, rose to highest level since 1947:  Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, U.S. tariff rates have changed more than 50 times. The constant fluctuations create great uncertainty, which is devastating to businesses and job creation. The overall average effective tariff rate rose to 7.7 percent in 2025, up from 2.4 percent the prior year, the highest since 1947. That rate is expected to remain historically high at 6.6 percent this year.
• Tariffs did not reverse the trade balance: One of the top stated goals of Trump’s tariff regime was to reverse America’s trade balance. A negative trade balance, of course, is not a reflection of a poor economy and can largely reflect sizeable foreign investment, as the country is seen as a profitable place to invest. Indeed, the U.S. has experienced negative trade balances for fifty years. After the implementation of Trump’s tariffs, the overall trade balance dropped by just $2.1 billion. The trade deficit in goods, however, actually deepened by $25.5 billion in 2025.
• Tariffs are a drag on the U.S. economy: The Tax Foundation estimates that Trump’s tariff regime will reduce U.S. long-term GDP by 0.4 percent, which could cause a net loss of 367,000 U.S. jobs.
• Tariffs amounted to largest tax increase in more than 30 years: Because of their negative economic impact, the revenue generated from the tariffs – on net – will be lower than the headlines will proclaim. Slower economic growth caused by the tariffs will result in less tax revenue, offsetting part of the revenue collected by the tariffs themselves. Even on net, however, the taxes collected due to Trump’s tariffs in 2025 equated to the largest tax hike since 1993, and the 19^th largest since 1940.

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David Catron of the American Spectator documents a key problem for America’s political left.

In a recent column published by the New Republic, Michael Tomasky asks, “Why don’t lefty candidates do better among working-class voters?” This shouldn’t be a mystery considering that Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in 2024 was delivered by a multiracial working-class coalition. He accomplished that historic feat by building his campaign platform around the things working-class voters care about. The real mystery is why anyone is still struggling to understand this obvious fact. …

… Part of the problem is that our friends on the left don’t understand how to define “working class.” Being intellectually lazy, they rely on the standard academic definition of the working class — adult workers lacking a four-year college degree. “By that measure,” writes José García of the Ford Foundation, “the working class constitutes over 60 percent of the U.S. labor force — more than 93 million people as of 2023. This group is not only large, but richly diverse: Roughly 53 percent are non-Hispanic white, 13 percent black, and 25 percent Hispanic.” Yet this academic definition of working class has little or no meaning to its actual members. Political scientist Nicholas Jacobs explains in The Conversation that the fabled “diploma divide” isn’t a satisfactory definition:

“While a larger proportion of the electorate has obtained a college degree and household incomes have risen, the share of Americans who consider themselves working class has remained remarkably stable: roughly 35 percent of voters for the past 70 years, 38 percent in 2024.… There are conventional ways to define the working class, but they often miss how people understand their own place in society.” …

… The problem here is that not all college degrees — or colleges — are created equal. People with four year college degrees, including most journalists, flatter themselves that they are part of a vaguely defined “elite.” But that term describes individuals or groups with power, influence, and wealth. Yet, in 2026, “higher education” doesn’t confer any of these things. Indeed many universities hand out degrees that are little more than participation trophies.

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Nick Arama writes for RedState.com about one left-wing member of Congress who refuses to accept reality.

The left spread a fiction about the shooting death of Missouri resident Michael Brown back in August 2014 that helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement. 

But Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI-12) was still at it on Friday. Imagine trying to push this now, 12 years later. 

“Mike Brown should still be with us today. 

“But 12 years ago this week, he was murdered by a police officer in Ferguson. Our fight for justice and an end to white supremacy, police violence, and mass incarceration continues. 

“Black lives matter.”

She even posted the graduation picture. 

I’m not sure who she thought she would be fooling, since this very claim was blown apart by Barack Obama’s Department of Justice 11 years ago. There’s absolutely no support for her position. She was nailed big time by reality and X’s Community Notes. 

“Obama’s DOJ found Michael Brown attacked Officer Wilson, struggled over his gun, and charged at him. Physical evidence contradicted ‘hands up, don’t shoot.’ Self-defense justified the shooting. It was not a murder, and there were no federal charges or indictment.”

Period. The end. It wasn’t murder, and the evidence demolished the “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative. …

… One of the most poignant examples ever of how the media are not objective and push a narrative. And they wonder why President Donald Trump refers to CNN as “fake news.” This was just one glaring example. 

It was the fiction spread about this case that set off a lot of demonization of the police, not to mention the riots that followed. 

Tlaib has to know what the Obama DOJ findings were, yet she’s still terming it “murder,” when that is contrary to the facts. So either you have to believe she’s ignorant, or she’s consciously spreading a falsehood. 

Once again, you have a radical leftist spreading a whopper that will stoke racial division.

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Jarrett Stepman writes for the Daily Signal about the latest evidence that democratic socialists are kooks.

The Democratic Socialists of America website called deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro a “stalwart symbol of anti-imperialist struggle and self-determination,” while denouncing Secretary of State Marco Rubio as genocidal.

In a tribute to Castro on what would have been his 100th birthday Thursday, the DSA website commemorated the “historic significance of both this day and the man.”

The fast-growing socialist organization that’s made strong inroads in Democratic Party primary elections over the past year, said that they have “a long history of solidarity with the Cuban people, their revolution, and their self-determination.”

The DSA statement said that it used the Castro commemoration to “recommit ourselves to acting in solidarity with the Cuban people,” and to “opposing Marco Rubio’s genocidal war against the Cuban people and US imperialism writ large.”

They blasted the Trump administration but directed particularly strong criticism toward Rubio.

“The Trump Administration, under the leadership of Marco Rubio, is waging an indiscriminate war against the Cuban people and killing women, children, and babies by illegally blockading critical resources from the Caribbean nation. By intentionally imposing conditions calculated to kill a civilian population, Marco Rubio is leading a genocide,” the DSA statement read. 

DSA then listed a series of demands:

*an end to the genocidal blockade

*an end to all threats of military violence against Cuba

*an end to all imperialist aggression against Cuba

*the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba

*reparations payments to be made to Cuba for the trillions of dollars in damages the blockade has cost the Cuban people 

*the prosecution of Marco Rubio for crimes against humanity

Other socialists also praised Castro this week including online influencer Hasan Piker who declared in a recent video, “I love [Vladimir] Lenin, I love Fidel Castro and I love Che Guevara. They are genuinely —- heroes.”

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