Topic: Gettysburg

The NBA announced it will paint "Black Lives Matter" on its courts, while the UK's Premier League has replaced player names on jerseys with the slogan. In Tennessee, plans were approved to exhume the remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Additionally, Antifa reportedly planned a protest at the Gettysburg battlefield involving the vandalism of graves.

Cliff Stoll expresses confusion over the utility of LinkedIn, noting that he has no work to offer the people who try to connect with him. He pivots back to education, arguing that schools should focus on teaching students to recite poetry or explain the Peloponnesian War rather than just vocational trades like C++ programming. Stoll believes the true goal of schooling is to foster intellectual capability rather than just technical proficiency.

The modern American Thanksgiving was officially codified by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 following a campaign by writer Sarah Hale. The holiday was originally intended to celebrate the Union victory at Gettysburg rather than the legendary 1621 pilgrim feast, which was a one-time event modeled on the British "Harvest Home." Franklin Roosevelt briefly moved the date to extend the Christmas shopping season before it was returned to the fourth Thursday of November.

The movement to remove or deface offensive symbols has expanded to include the Edmonton Eskimos team name and the Christopher Columbus statue in New York. Activists are now targeting Confederate monuments in Gettysburg, raising concerns about potential physical confrontations. There is speculation that this cultural purge could eventually extend to classic literature and films, such as "Gone With The Wind" or "Uncle Tom’s Cabin."

President Obama's Memorial Day address included the phrase "last full measure of devotion," a direct quote from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. This linguistic choice, combined with the release of Steven Spielberg's film *Lincoln*, suggests a calculated effort to associate the current administration with the Civil War president. Observations regarding modern military epaulets also suggest a return to Civil War-era uniform styles to reinforce this historical imagery.

The hosts analyze President Barack Obama's Thanksgiving message, arguing he has framed it as a "war holiday" focused on the military. Dvorak details the historical genesis of the holiday, citing his research on Sarah Hale and Abraham Lincoln's 1863 codification of the event to celebrate the Union victory at Gettysburg. They dismiss the traditional pilgrim narrative as "reverse-engineered sentimentalism" and note that Thomas Jefferson originally opposed the holiday.