Establishment of America’s Ideals: Skeptics Topic

Tad LaFountain was the featured Society of Skeptics speaker on October 13. His topic for the evening was, “The American Mesopotamia: Establishing America’s Ideals in the Delaware/Raritan Arc.” LaFountain explained, “As I researched American ideals more closely, I became struck by a pattern that emerged. Our ideals have been involved in a process of definition and implementation over the existence of our society, from colonial times to the present. Most interestingly, this process has overwhelmingly taken place in an arc extending from the Delaware Bay up the Delaware River across central New Jersey to the Raritan Bay; I describe this Delaware/Raritan arc as “The American Mesopotamia.” Within this relatively small geographic crucible, a fortuitous combination of English Quakers, Scottish and Scots-Irish Presbyterians, Pietist Germans and Reformed Dutch reached critical mass. Their individual and collective interplays led to radical implementations of fundamental freedoms and liberties, extending to all creeds, nationalities and genders. Concepts such as racial equality, suffrage and equal accessibility to education were developed and brought to fruition here.”

LaFountain is the son and nephew of two of Blair alumni, and his niece is a member of the class of 2011. He attended Westtown School (alma mater of former Blair Headmaster Jim Howard), where his Latin teacher, advisor and tennis coach was Gene Hogenauer, a former Blair faculty member. He is a Princeton graduate (history major) and received his MBA from Wharton (finance and multinational enterprise). He was twice selected for Best on the Street for Stockpicking (semiconductor industry) by The Wall Street Journal and is a former director of research for three smaller Wall Street investment banks. LaFountain is a member of the Princeton Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, and enjoys golf and sailing: “I’m a long-ago Sears Cup semi-finalist (North American junior sailing championships), member of the practice crew for 1968 American 5.5-meter Olympic entry as a high school senior, captain of the Princeton sailing team and Ivy League Dinghy Champion. I now sail like a really good golfer and play golf like a heck of a sailor.”

Click here for the entire fall Skeptics schedule.

Updated 10/14/2009

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