Thomas Houston

“It was these elite families which produced such notable Americans of Scotch-Irish ancestry as Patrick Henry. Andrew Jackson, John Calhoun, James Polk, Zachary Taylor, Sam Houston. and others.””

“A turning point in Yeltsin's intellectual growth occurred during his first visit to the United States in September 1989; more specifically his first visit to a supermarket in Houston, Texas. Seeing aisles and aisles of shelves filled with all kinds of food and household items, each in dozens of varieties, was both dazzled and depressed. For Yeltsin, as well as many other Russians visiting the United States for the first time, a supermarket was far more impressive than tourist attractions like the Statue of Liberty or the Lincoln Memorial. It was impressive precisely because of its normality. A cornucopia of consumer goods beyond the imagination of most Soviets was available to ordinary citizens without the need to queue for hours. And everything was displayed very attractively. For someone who grew up in the frugal conditions of communism, even a member of the relatively privileged elite, visiting a supermarket in the West was a complete assault on the senses.””

“From the Deist’s perspective, truth is not indoctrination by either science or religion; truth is eloquently expressed through Nature, the true, rational Word of God, offered democratically to everyone. As I will show, there’s plenty of evidence from science and religion that hope and joy and meaning and purpose are profoundly illuminating realities embedded in the material structure of existence. God is astounding, and so is the natural realm so conspicuously created for a reason. Common sense guides us to self-evident truths taught by Nature, truths that constitute the essence of Deism, the religious philosophy of choice of many of our democracy’s most seminal Founders, like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine, to name but a few.””