Bacon's Rebellion

  • The Destruction of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation

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    James A. Bacon

    by Andrew Holowchak

    In 1985, Daniel Jordan—a Ph.D. in history from University of Virginia—became president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and runs Monticello. He would preside over Monticello for the next 24 years, during which time Thomas Jefferson’s life and legacy would be radically transformed through information made readily available by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

    Under his guidance, TJF created a $200-million-plus endowment, built the Thomas Jefferson library, purchased historic Montalto Mountain, established the Thomas Jefferson Parkway and walking trail, brought in the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies (1994), and began many educational programs.

    Jordan realized that preservation of Monticello entailed increase in the number and amount of donations as well as telling the whole story of Jefferson. He was successful in the first. Concerning the second, said Jordan early in his presidency to his staff, “From January the first on, we’re going to try to tell the most honest [sic] story we can about Jefferson and slavery and race and the plantation, and it’s all going to be based on serious scholarship.” That was a promise he did not keep.

    When Peter Onuf became Thomas Jefferson Foundation Scholar in 1989, things especially came undone.

    (more…)

  • Kernels

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Chicken Tacos, Please

    Many Virginians, including this writer, have been warily following the financial markets and their investment portfolios as President Trump’s tariff policies change almost daily, seemingly on a whim sometimes. They should be encouraged by a term coined, as reported by the New York Times, on Wall Street to describe these wild fluctuations in policy and the markets — the TACO trade, as in Trump Always Chickens Out.

    Turnabout

    A current article lends credence to the frequent lament on Bacon’s Rebellion regarding what is regarded as the overwhelming liberal bent of university faculty. The source of the article may surprise some — the Atlantic.

    The author describes efforts by Johns Hopkins University and leading institutions of higher education to attract conservative scholars. Some might call it DEI for conservatives.

  • Chipping Away at the Rule of Law: Scott Jenkins Edition

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    James A. Bacon

    Scott Jenkins. Photo credit: Dailyvoice.com

    by James A. Bacon

    From time to time, I highlight the bad behavior of Virginia elected officials as warnings that the public must remain ever vigilant in protection of honest government. These days, I can’t keep up. Wrongdoing has become so widespread that I could make it the subject of a blog all its own. More profoundly worrisome than run-of-the-mill graft, though, there is a deeper malaise in our country: a nationalization and politicization of local grievances that threaten respect for the rule of law.

    Such is the case of Scott Jenkins, the former Culpeper County sheriff who was convicted of fraud and bribery charges in 2023, sentenced in March, and then pardoned yesterday by President Trump. Jenkins and his family, Trump posted on his Truth Social media platform, “have been dragged through HELL by a Corrupt and Weaponized Biden DOJ.”

    (Lest anyone jump to the conclusion that I’m singling out Trump for his complicity in this trend, I see the problem as Democrats and Republicans engaging in a string of escalating abuses. There is plenty of guilt to go around.)

    Jenkins had served as county sheriff for 12 years, running as both a Republican and an independent. He courted controversy in 2019 when he announced plans to deputize county residents if the Democratic-controlled General Assembly passed “further unnecessary gun restrictions” and to safeguard the right of “law-abiding citizens to protect their constitutional right to own firearms.”

    At some point, the principle of protecting constitutional gun rights for all degenerated into a racket of doling out deputy-sheriff privileges in exchange for cash.

    (more…)

  • Warned Again of Energy Shortfalls, Democrats Again Pretend to Care

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Here we go again. As the 2025 election year heats up and warnings rise about electricity shortfalls this summer, the legislators behind Virginia’s coming ban on hydrocarbon electricity are pretending they see the problem. 

    A May 22 headline out of a recent legislative meeting on energy claimed that “Democratic leadership signals willingness to reexamine Virginia Clean Economy Act.” The reporter cited comments to him by two legislators made after the meeting, after the microphones and public streaming camera were turned off. 

    Fool us twice, shame on us. During the 2024 session of the General Assembly, similar “signals” that VCEA would be reviewed were sent and widely reported. But the legislation proposed and passed by the majority party this year focused instead on ways to hasten the path to an electricity grid more dependent on weather-vulnerable, intermittent generation from wind and sun. Ask the folks in Spain how that is working out.   

    Virginia was saved from most of those new laws only by a series of vetoes from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. The vetoes only kept an existing crisis from getting worse. It fixed nothing. The long outage in Spain and Portugal, coupled with fresh warnings from the regional electricity trading entity PJM and the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation, should keep Virginia’s shaky grid infrastructure in focus. Wrote PJM of this summer:  

    This season also marks the first time in PJM’s annual assessment, however, that available generation capacity may fall short of required reserves in an extreme planning scenario that would result in an all-time PJM peak load of more than 166,000 MW.   

    (more…)

  • Abuse of Statistics: Loudoun Edition

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    James A. Bacon

    Stats on the rack. Torturing statistics until they confess. Image credit: Chap GPT

    by James A. Bacon

    The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office is making more traffic stops this year than last. The number of stops conducted between Jan. 1 and March 31 this year totaled 7,088, up roughly 65% over the 4,290 stops made during the same period last year.

    Sofia Saiyed, director of New Virginia Majority, knows exactly what to make of those numbers. The stops, she says, are “pretextual,” and the Sheriff’s Office is “practicing racial discrimination to target the immigrant community and funnel them into the deportation pipeline,” reports Loudoun Now.

    What’s her evidence? She’s not claiming that Hispanics are getting stopped disproportionately more than Whites, because they’re not. She’s saying that, if stopped, they are more than eight times more likely to get searched. “This is clear racial profiling,” she says.

    Is it really now? Or is this just another case of abused statistics?

    First, we’ll look at the statistics themselves, and then we’ll see what the Loudoun County Sheriffs Office says about them.

    (more…)

  • Memorial Day 2025

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    James A. Bacon

    by Gordon C. Morse

    You can tell a few things simply from the limited information that appears on these headstones. Pvt. Moseley served in the 38th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Division and died on July 23, 1918. That would have put him, in all likelihood, along the Marne River near or east of Chateau-Thierry. The German Army launched its last great offensive of 1918 on July 15 and it quickly stalled along the Marne — an outcome to which the U.S. contributed greatly. The French and U.S. counter-attacked three days later and the Germans never regained the initiative.

    Pvt. Mosely’s headstone sits in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, a First World War facility otherwise known as Belleau Wood. From Paris, it’s a relatively easy drive up the A4 to the exit at Château-Thierry and from there it takes 15-20 minutes to reach Belleau, the village that lends its name to this American Battle Monuments Commission cemetery.

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  • The Ride to Remember

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    James A. Bacon

    by Chap Petersen

    Image credit: Fairfax City Patch

    Yesterday Fairfax City celebrated the annual “Ride of the Patriots” rally at Patriot Harley Davidson in Fairfax City. 

    A Memorial Day staple for 25 years in the City, the “Ride” is a fun way for ordinary citizens to connect with bikers, veterans and significant others who ride into our community from all points of the USA. The ride has gotten smaller over the years; in its heyday, we would have 10,000 bikes lined up on Lee Highway to go thundering down to the Pentagon — but the point and passion remain the same. Put simply, it’s about freedom. Yesterday morning, I had a chance to speak to the assembled crowd about “Heroes in our Community’.

    The Fairfax High School boys who landed at Omaha Beach with the 29th infantry division; Sergeant James Robinson of Annandale, Virginia who won a posthumous Medal of Honor in Vietnam, Fairfax County Police Detective Vicky Armel (FHS’ 83) who was killed in the line of duty in 2006; and Lt. Col. Justin Constantine (FHS ’88) who survived a life-threatening wound in Iraq to live another sixteen years as an American hero.

    The very best of our community.

    (more…)

  • Quote of the Day: Derrick Max

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    James A. Bacon

    “When will Virginia (and America) learn that the answer to increasing diversity in elite schools (and board rooms for that matter) is not quotas or lowering standards, but improving the academic outcomes of African American students — 40 percent of whom are trapped in failing public urban schools. We need DEI to stand for Diversity through Educational Improvement!”

    — from his weekly Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy newsletter

  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    Compiled by the Bull Elephant

  • How John Reid Was Played

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Paul Goldman

    The latest poll predicting a Democratic ticket sweep this fall doesn’t come as a surprise to anybody who has read my columns here. When Donald Trump was in the White House the last time, the Dem nominee for Virginia governor won by the party’s biggest percentage in 32 years. Ralph Northam also swept in his running mates. The only question remaining this November is whether the Democratic ticket eight years later can do better.

    Take it from me: The last four elections have led to ticket sweeps by one party or the other. Virginia’s famed constituency of independent cross-ticket voters exists no longer. 2025 is going to produce the fifth straight ticket sweep, the first time since the end of the one-party Byrd Machine era. President Trump has made NOVA a radioactive zone for the Republican statewide ticket.

    I doubt many Bacon Rebellion readers got a chance to listen to my radio interview last month with Andre Whitehead. In that interview, I explain why I thought John Reid had fallen into a trap far more his own making than he or the media has acknowledged. 

    I believe he has been played by Governor Youngkin and the MAGa crowd here in Virginia. He didn’t really see what was coming due to inexperience. 

    (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    James A. Bacon

  • The UVa of Mr. Jefferson

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    We hear a lot on this blog regarding the current state of the University of Virginia. The Jefferson Council wants to lead it “back to Thomas Jefferson’s legacy of freedom and excellence.” If one examines the actual early years of UVa under the direction of the Sage of Monticello, an interesting contrast arises.

    Let’s examine the faculty. One of Jim Bacon’s most frequent criticisms is how the current UVa president, Jim Ryan, has assembled a faculty of doctrinaire liberals. He longs for the good old days of free inquiry.

    Mr. Jefferson was very particular about whom he hired as faculty at UVa. and was careful not to hire anyone who might espouse a heretical position. As described by Dumas Malone, the esteemed Jefferson biographer (The Sage of Monticello, pp. 397-418), those faculty members not selected by Jefferson or James Madison, his close collaborator, were selected by Jefferson’s agent sent to Europe to find professors. 

    The most difficult position to fill was the professorship of law. Jefferson’s first choice turned it down, perhaps preferring a promising law practice to a teaching position at a still non-existent university. Another possibility could have been James Kent, a distinguished New York jurist, but Jefferson would not even consider him due to Kent’s “consolidationist” views. “An angel from heaven who should inculcate such principles in our school of government should be rejected by me,” he wrote to his talent scout. To Madison, he expressed a fear that “Richmond lawyers” or “someone infected with the doctrine of consolidation” might be proposed. To guard against such an eventuality, he saw it as his duty to prescribe the textbooks in government that were to be used. (Malone, p. 417)

    (more…)

  • One Down, Six to Go

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    James A. Bacon

    The making of an intellectual monoculture at UVA

    by James A. Bacon

    “Conservative students at the University of Virginia,” a fourth-year student once confided to me, “know who all the conservative professors are. … All seven of them.”

    That was only a slight exaggeration. Through my work with the Jefferson Council I have identified dozen faculty members openly identifying as conservative and/or libertarian out of roughly 1,700 faculty members. I have met three or four more not yet willing to come out of hiding.

    Jim Ceaser

    Whatever the precise number, it is pitifully small. And it shrank by one this month when James W. Ceaser retired from the Department of Politics, where he has taught for half a century. He ran the Program for Constitutionalism and Democracy (PCD), which provided the few courses at the University where students could gain exposure to major intellectual traditions of American politics, including the thinking of the founding fathers.

    Ceaser’s efforts to find a replacement to run the program with a professor sharing similar philosophical views long foundered on a reef of indifference. He has no idea if the program will survive in a form remotely resembling his vision for it. With no one passionately devoted to the program’s founding spirit, he fears, it could well be co-opted to serve other ends.

    UVA has become a political monoculture. Despite their reputations as counter-culture radicals, Baby Boomer professors were an intellectually diverse lot. As Boomer faculty members retire, UVA is replacing them almost uniformly with younger scholars with a center-left orientation. The tale of the Center for Constitutionalism and Democracy is a case study in what that process looked like and how, despite the protestations of President Jim Ryan that he is committed to intellectual diversity, conservatives are approaching extinction at UVA.

    The problem isn’t that conservative professors get purged or canceled, says Ceaser, it’s that departments dominated by leftist professors don’t give attention to conservative ideas and research, and they are not inclined to hire or promote those who are. The indifference runs through the academic hierarchy from deans and department heads to the provost and president.

    “The lack of interest is endemic,” Ceaser says. “No one is pushing for intellectual balance.”

    (more…)

  • Preschoolers Gone Wild?

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    The number of Virginia preschoolers with disabilities has increased 24% of the past two years. The response of the Virginia Board of Education? Hire more special education teachers!

    Voting 7 to 0, the Board directed the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) to remove the requirement for special-ed teachers to do graduate-level coursework as a means of boosting the supply by at least 70 positions, reports The Virginia Mercury.

    I suppose the action makes sense… if there is a genuine need for more special-ed teachers. But let’s think this through.

    A 24% increase in the number of preschoolers with disabilities in just two years?

    What the heck is going on?

    (more…)

  • It’s a Holiday Weekend. Take the Early Slide.

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Many years ago, when I worked at The Washington Post, I overheard one of our national reporters griping on a Friday afternoon.

    I wasn’t eavesdropping. You could hear him across the canyon of a newsroom.

    “No one in the effing federal government answers their phones on Friday,” he shouted, slamming down his phone and adding a few more descriptive expletives about the goldbricking official he was trying to reach.

    (Note to those under 40, picture this: There was a time when office workers were tethered to actual telephones with spiral cords. These communication contrivances rested on desks and were equipped with heavy receivers that made a most satisfying noise when smashed back into their cradles in anger.)

    Some time after that outburst, probably at the end of a slow-news week, a group of us simultaneously tried to reach several dozen government officials at 3 p.m. on a Friday afternoon for a quick metro story. We wanted to see who was working. Besides us.

    If memory serves, the answer was no one. I can’t find a copy of the feature story. We thought it was highly amusing. It’s doubtful the federal workers on the receiving end felt the same way. Continue reading.

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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