By William H. Benson
The Parallel Lives
Of The NOBLE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS THINKERS AND BELIEVERS:
Roger Williams VS. Cotton Mathers
NEW ARTICLES
Attempts at Thought Experiments: To Assay, To Weigh, To Balance, to Evaluate
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the loser’s tool.” -Socrates
“The propaganda machine is always looking for someone to hate.” -heard on National Public Radio, on Saturday, April 26, 2025
“He who can does; he who cannot teaches.” -George Bernard Shaw. I wonder if G. B. Shaw ever taught junior high or high school students. If he had, he might express a different opinion on teaching, and learn that it is hard work, not so well rewarded, but so worthwhile.
“He who can teach, teaches college; he who cannot teaches kids.” -an elaboration on Shaw’s quote above.
“People who can think, do not get things done, while people who get things done do not have time to think.” -a wise Norwegian author
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. They do not know what they do not know.” -H. L. Mencken
“The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are [so] sure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” Bertrand Russell, from his “Christian Ethics,” in his book, Marriage and Morals
“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider”. -Francis Bacon
In the above passage, Bacon underscores the importance of critical thinking, of pondering a passage, of hesitating to believe or act upon its words when first encountered.
“The people who know how to run the world are too busy cutting hair and driving taxi cabs.” -George Burns
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” -Charles Darwin
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” -H. L. Mencken
The Dunning-Kruger Effect: “A cognitive bias when unskilled people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices.
“Their incompetence robs them of their mental ability to realize it.
“If participants improved their skills in a tested area, their cognitive competence increased, and helped them to recognize the limitations of their abilities.
“As people gain more education and intelligence, they become more aware of their limitations. This awareness can be beneficial helping people avoid costly mistakes.”
A contractor once said of an experienced brick-layer, “he forgot more about brick-laying than most people ever learned.”
“A study in 2018 indicated that Americans who know little about politics and government are more likely than other Americans to overestimate their knowledge of those topics.”
“I know that up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom, we, too, should have rights.” -Dr. Seuss, from “Yertle the Turtle”
4th Amendment: Sections 4 and 5
Two weeks ago in these pages, I looked at the second and third sections of the 14th Amendment. Today I continue with its two final sections, the fourth and the fifth. Section 4 clarifies which debts the U.S. Federal government will honor as valid. The first sentence...
4th Amendment: Sections 2 and 3
Last time in these pages I looked at Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Today I continue. The last phrase in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment declares that no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.” All races are equal...
14th Amendment, Section 1
In early 1866, the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction in the 39th Congress wrestled with the idea that they must write a 14th Amendment to address certain issues: Who is a citizen? How does the country’s laws apply to former slaves and slave owners? Will...
Black History Month: Reconstruction, 1865-1866
In December of 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suggested a plan to reinstate the seceded states back into the Union, his “Ten Percent Plan.”
He would permit each Confederate state to form a new state government after ten percent of the voters in a state took loyalty oaths to the Union and recognized the former slaves’ freedom.
Following Lincoln’s assassination on April 9, 1865, his successor, former Vice-President Andrew Johnson, decided to run with Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan.
Throughout the summer and fall of 1866, the Southern states
Black History Month: Phillis Wheatley and Billy Lee
Two African-American slaves from the eighteenth century: Phillis Wheatley and William “Billy” Lee. The first a woman, the second a man. The first a poet, the second a valet. The two received their freedom from their respective owners, and they each knew George...
National Freedom Day and Black History Month
On Feb. 7, 1926, Carter G. Woodson, a professor of history, announced that he would celebrate and highlight for the first time ever a single week devoted to African-American history, and he called it “Negro History Week.”
He selected the second week in February because of its proximity to Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass’s birthdays, Lincoln on Feb. 12, and Douglass on a day in February.
Older Posts
Frederick Douglass’ “Slaveholder’s Sermon”
On May 11, 2017, the newly-elected U.S. President, Donald Trump, issued an executive order to form a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He appointed Vice-President Mike Pence as chair, and Kansas State’s Secretary of State Kris Kobach as vice-chair.
Assertion is not evidence
On May 11, 2017, the newly-elected U.S. President, Donald Trump, issued an executive order to form a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He appointed Vice-President Mike Pence as chair, and Kansas State’s Secretary of State Kris Kobach as vice-chair.
Unique words in history
December 16 marked the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, when colonial Bostonians dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded three ships—Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver—split open 340 chests filled with tea, and dumped their contents into Boston’s harbor.
This defiant act was directed as a protest against Parliament’s insistence that the consignees of the tea in the American colonies pay an import tax, to keep afloat the struggling British East India Company, which brought the tea to the colonists.
The colonists were angry. They paid taxes to their
Secession and Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln faced an absolute calamity on March 4, 1861, the day when Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the oath of office to Lincoln at his inauguration.
Already seven states from the South had seceded, or withdrawn, from the Union because voters had elected Lincoln President of the United States. Southern voters believed that Lincoln opposed the expansion of slavery into western territories, like Kansas and Nebraska.
South Carolina voted to secede on December 20, 1860, forty-four days…
Election of 1864
Throughout the year of 1864, President Abraham Lincoln believed that he would lose the election in November. He admitted in August, “I am going to be beaten, and unless some great change takes place, badly beaten.” The odds were stacked against him.
Plenty of voters in the Union had reason to despise, even hate, Lincoln.
Tunnels and war coincide
People burrow into the subsoil, build tunnels, plus storage rooms, and stockpile food and water, for one reason, and that is to stay alive. Atop the ground, in the open air, in the sunshine, they feel oppressed, insecure, and poised to die or suffer an injury.
On July 4, 1863, thirty-one thousand Confederate soldiers, trapped inside Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, surrendered to the Union’s commanding officer, Ulysses S. Grant, on the forty-eighth day of Grant’s siege of that town.
During the siege, civilians had dug some five hundred caves into the hillsides, and fitted them out with “rugs, beds, and chairs.” One cave dweller said, “We were in hourly dread of snakes. The vines and thickets were full of them.”
One of University of Northern Colorado’s 2020 Honored Alumni
William H. Benson
Local has provided scholarships for history students for 15 years
A Sterling resident is among five alumni selected to be recognized this year by the University of Northern Colorado. Bill Benson is one of college’s 2020 Honored Alumni.
Each year UNC honors alumni in recognition for their outstanding contributions to the college, their profession and their community. This year’s honorees were to be recognized at an awards ceremony on March 27, but due to the COVID-19 outbreak that event has been cancelled. Instead UNC will recognize the honorees in the fall during homecoming Oct. 10 and 11……
Newspaper Columns
The Duodecimal System
For centuries, the ancient Romans calculated sums with their clunky numerals: I, V, X, L, C, D, and M; or one, five, ten, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000. They knew nothing better.
The Thirteenth Amendment
On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and by it, he declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are and henceforward shall be free.” Lincoln’s Proclamation freed some 3.1 million slaves within the Confederacy.
The Fourteenth Amendment
After Congress and enough states ratified the thirteenth amendment that terminated slavery, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This law declared that “all people born in the United States are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.” The Act equated birth to citizenship.
The New-York Packet and the Constitution
Jill Lepore, the Harvard historian, published her newest book a month ago, These Truths: A History of the United States. In a short introduction, she describes in detail the Oct. 30, 1787 edition of a semi-weekly newspaper, The New-York Packet.
Mr. Benson’s writings on the U.S. Constitution are a great addition to the South Platte Sentinel. Its inspiring to see the history of the highest laws of this country passed on to others.
– Richard Hogan
Mr. Benson, I cannot thank you enough for this scholarship. As a first-generation college student, the prospect of finding a way to afford college is a very daunting one. Thanks to your generous donation, my dream of attending UNC and continuing my success here is far more achievable
– Cedric Sage Nixon
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– Extra Times
FUTURE BOOKS
- Thomas Paine vs. George Whitefield
- Ralph Waldo Emerson vs. Joseph Smith
- William James vs. Mary Baker Eddy
- Mark Twain vs. Billy Graham
- Henry Louis Mencken vs. Jim Bakker
