Smoke rises after shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022. (AP) Last week marked the 246th anniversary of the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge near Wilmington. British troops, aware of the American militia presence but convinced of their own superiority, proceeded across a partially dismantled bridge at Moores Creek into the waiting ambush of nearly 1,000 North Carolina patriots. The British commanders greatly underestimated the patriot’s desire for freedom and succumbed to inventive, guerilla tactics of the revolutionists. The battle marked the end of British authority in North Carolina and prompted North Carolinians to be the first colonists to…

As I explore the present, I can’t avoid comparing it to the past. The names change. The places and faces are never identical. But like a false backdrop behind the camera in a Zoom call, it’s only cosmetic. Essential reality never changes. For instance, on March 7, 1965, a group of voting rights demonstrators blocked traffic as they walked across Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. The marchers did not have a permit; so, the police ordered them to disperse. The marchers disobeyed the police and marched anyway. The result was called Bloody Sunday. Similarly, a group of Canadian truckers blocked the…