History – Daniel Hochhalter

Is there any hope for America? Should that even be our focus?

Published by Daniel on April 23, 2023

Over the last several weeks, I have wrestled with a question that just will not go away: is there hope for America?

I taught high school history and government for almost twenty years, and I have always concluded that the idea behind the United States was a good idea.

The United States was by no means perfect. There are several black spots on our history: slavery, the relocation and/or slaughter of the American Indian, the internment camps of Japanese Americans following Pearl Harbor, McCarthyism, Jim Crowe…

The list goes on. I am not naïve enough to pretend we’re perfect. No nation is.

However, what makes the American idea unique is that it is based on an accurate understanding of human nature. The framers of the constitution knew human nature is fallen. read more

2 Comments

Finding the hope of advent in the darkest corners of humanity

Published by Daniel on December 6, 2016

For week two of Advent, the theme is hope.

In 2016, the world seems dark and filled with conflict. War and violence are common; our hearts ache with uncertainty and loss. We take sides against each other, both literally and figuratively.

But it is in this darkness that hope shines brightest.

In the 2006 movie Children of Men, the world faces a bleak, hopeless future. For unexplained reasons, humanity has become infertile. No baby has been born in eighteen years. The world, fractured by despots and terrorists, has descended into chaos. The human species is being wiped out by attrition and war.

Then, amazingly, a woman becomes pregnant. Like the infertility, this event is unexplained.

At the climax, a fierce battle rages outside as the woman, hiding in a decrepit building, gives birth. A miracle baby is born. read more

Remembering D-Day: “The eyes of the world are upon you”

Published by Daniel on June 6, 2015

On June 6, 1944, on five French beaches—Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword, and Juno—the U.S. and other Allies launched the largest military operation in history. Their objective was to establish a beach head, liberate France from the Nazis, and ultimately move on to Berlin to defeat Adolf Hitler and win World War II. And they succeeded. Today, seventy-one years later, we honor the 3,000[i] Allied heroes who died in that “D-Day” offensive which turned the tide of history.

Near the visitors’ center of the Omaha Beach Cemetery and Memorial, at Colleville-sur-Mer on the Normandy coast of France, there is a slab of pink granite with a time capsule, set to be opened on June 6, 2044—the 100th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. The plaque on the slab is emblazoned with the five-star seal of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander of the European theatre during that invasion and later the President of the United States. read more

3 Comments

Category: History

Is there any hope for America? Should that even be our focus?

Finding the hope of advent in the darkest corners of humanity

Remembering D-Day: “The eyes of the world are upon you”