It’s been thirty-five years now. Pound for pound, I imagine the IDF is still the toughest fighting force in the world. They can’t afford not to be.
Category Archives: History
“Our Live, Our Fortunes, And Our Sacred Honor”
A perennial classic from Rush Limbaugh’s late father. The people currently running the country certainly have lives and fortunes, but they seem to be a little short of the “honor” stuff, sacred or otherwise.
And celebrate, amidst the hot dogs, barbecue, ice cream and fireworks, and commemorate this anniversary appropriately, with an oral reading of the document that was signed two hundred and thirty five years ago today.
[Update early afternoon (PDT)]
More thoughts from Jeff Jacoby:
If Nature and Nature’s God intended human beings to be free and equal, then the only legitimate government must be self-government. For if none of us is naturally subordinate or superior to anyone else, no one has the right to rule us without first obtaining our approval. Political power, Locke had written, stems “only from compact and agreement, and the mutual consent of those who make up the community.’’
The Declaration of Independence emphasized the point. Not only are all persons endowed by nature with the unalienable rights of equality and freedom, it avowed, but “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’’
No lawful government without consent and self-rule: It was an extraordinary doctrine for its time. . . . July 4 marks more than American independence. It commemorates the great political ideals, rooted in faith and philosophy, that vindicated that independence – and that thereby transformed the world.
But some wish to transform it back.
Anti-Anti-Colonialism
Most Jamaicans think they’d be better off if they were still a British colony.
No kidding. Decolonialization, particularly for the British Empire, was a disaster for most of the former colonies, particularly in Africa (of which Haiti is a bit of, in the western hemisphere).
The Decisive Battle
Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg, the battle that, combined with the fall of Vicksburg to Grant on July 4th in 1863, broke the back of the Confederacy, though the war would go on for almost two more years. Here’s an interesting story about the fiftieth reunion. Two years from today will be the sesquicentennial. Needless to say, there will be no veterans of the battle attending. Or if there are, they would be interesting medical curiosities, from which we might learn a lot about longevity.
Seven Years Ago Today
I should have posted this earlier, and it’s hard to believe it’s been that long, but I drove up to Mojave on the twentieth of June, 2004, to see the first flight of SpaceShipOne into space. I put up several blog posts about it, starting with this one. Just consecutively click on the next post (at the top of the page) to see them all, along with links to other posts.
Give Me A Large Government That Spends My Money To Tell Me What To Do
..or give me death. The real story of the Founding of the nation, by Frank J.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: Will the Democrats destroy us all?
Only if we let them.
It Doesn’t Look Like The Depression
Color photographs of the thirties. I always think of the world as being black and white back then, because that’s what all the photos are. It kind of reminds me of this classic exchange between Calvin and his dad:
Calvin: How come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
Dad: Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It’s just that the world was black and white then. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Calvin: But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?
Dad: Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.
Calvin: But… But how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn’t their paints have been shades of gray back then?
Dad: Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the ’30s.
Calvin: So why didn’t old black and white photos turn color too?
Dad: Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?
That kid’s going to need a therapist.
What Sarah Palin Got Wrong
Thoughts from a Revere historian.
I agree with him that one of Palin’s character flaws is an inability to admit error. It’s one she shares with the president.
It Couldn’t Possibly Be Because She Knows History
See, when Sarah Palin gets something right that her critics get wrong, it’s just because she’s lucky:
Patrick Leehey of the Paul Revere House said Revere was probably bluffing his British captors, but reluctantly conceded that it could be construed as Revere warning the British.
“I suppose you could say that,” Leehey said. “But I don’t know if that’s really what Mrs. Palin was referring to.”
McConville said he also is not convinced that Palin’s remarks reflect scholarship.
“I would call her lucky in her comments,” McConville said.
Well, I think I have to go with the professor here:
But Cornell law professor William Jacobson, who asserted last week that Palin was correct, linking to Revere quotes on his conservative blog Legalinsurrection.com, said Palin’s critics are the ones in need of a history lesson. “It seems to be a historical fact that this happened,” he said. “A lot of the criticism is unfair and made by people who are themselves ignorant of history.”
OK, but at least they understand business, and economics, and world affairs. Right? I mean, they are our moral and intellectual superiors. We can be sure of this because they tell us so.
[Update a few minutes later]
Now who looks stupid? They never realize how stupid they look. It’s part of the problem of stupidity. Anyway they’re being stupid doesn’t fit the narrative.
Two Thirds Of A Century
I remember when I was a kid, and my mother saying, “I can’t believe it’s been thirty years since D-Day.” She had been a WAC, stationed in Egypt at the time. My father (whom she had not yet met) was shooting at Messerschmitts and other German fighters from the waist of a B-25 over Italy, Romania and other eastern European countries. The success of the invasion was the beginning of the end of the war in Europe and, despite the last gasp at the Battle of the Bulge the following winter, essentially sealed Germany’s fate.
Well, she’s gone now (for over twenty years), as is my dad (over thirty) and so are most of the participants in that event. The youngest of them are in their mid-eighties, and slowly, the greatest, most destructive war in history is passing from living memory. How many veterans of Gettysburg were still alive in 1930? That battle, combined with the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi to Grant the day after that famous union victory, similarly sealed the fate of the Confederacy. It is said that after Reconstruction, Vicksburg refused to fly an American flag for decades, until the thirties. If so, it’s probably because, by then, few were around to remember that ignominious and infamous day in the city’s history.
The passing of that generation would be less poignant, and unsettling, if we were preserving their memories, and properly teaching our children history. But given the disastrous state of both public education and academia, we cannot rely on the next generation knowing anything about that longest day:
I playfully launched in to a mock exam, using the small images of each of the war’s principals from the front cover. “Okay, who’s this?” I demanded, pointing to the visage of Winston Churchill.
From my friend, silence. And a blank stare. ”Uh, alright,” I hesitated unevenly, “how about him?” I pointed to Stalin.
“Oh, Franklin Roosevelt, I think,” offered my friend earnestly.
Mental panic was setting in. “And this?” I pointed to Hirohito.
“ . . . Gandhi?”
Our impromptu exam ended with howls of laughter from my chair, and a red face in the other.
You don’t need to be a history fanatic to recognize most of those men. And if you’re, say, an elementary-ed student expected to teach the subject, it’s helpful to know the subject, right? And preferably before you pick up a book on it . . . “for kids.”
But here’s the thing: my friend is smart. An “A” student, attending a respected university.
For all the talk about lesson planning, creative learning, compassionate engagement, etc., from the education reform crowd, how often is it asked: Do our teachers know their subjects?
Sadly, the answer in many cases is “no.” Worse yet, the texts are too focused on the contributions of lesbians and African-Americans and Siberian-Americans and on how awful and wart-filled is our history (we enslaved people, but didn’t lose six-hundred thousand white men to free them) to pay attention to things like the ideas of those evil slave-holding Founders, or the people who stormed a beach sixty-seven years ago to liberate a continent from totalitarianism. And the price we’ll pay for it in the future may well be the need for another D-Day, particularly when we have a president who seems to be unfamiliar with that history, or that of the Middle East.
[Update a while later]
Here is Ernie Pyle’s dispatch, published almost a week after the fact.
[Update early afternoon]
More D-Day memories. There are as many amazing stories from that war as there were participants. I’m actually a little surprised that there are as many as 1.7M vets left.