For Independence Day 2022

(For current politics, please scroll down) 

The inimitable Paul Harvey (1918-2009) and worth your time:

Truly, we stand upon the shoulders of giants.  

Oh, the sacrifices those men made for liberty! 

May we be worthy to have received that liberty!

Recommended Reading

See Slavery — A frank conversation by my dear friend Mustang, who occasionally posts at Politics Rewritten, my friend Layla Elizabeth Kanas-Gonzalez's site.  Worth your time.

Musical Interlude

In the 2021-2022 American Literature course I teach to homeschoolers, excerpts from James Russell Lowell's poem "The Present Crisis" have appeared in our literature textbook. Reading the first stanza in our textbook excerpt brought to mind this hymn from traditional Christian liturgy, set to a particularly haunting melody.  I remember singing this hymn in church — back in the days when churches had physical hymnals.

The words of the hymn speak to me in our present time. See if the words speak to you:

Additional information (worth your time):

The full poem "The Present Crisis" is HERE.  

A brief review of the poem is HERE.  

Also NOTE THE BACKGROUND of Russell's poem, originally written in protest to the Mexican American War (1846-1848), but used in subsequent generations for different purposes because of the timelessness of certain lines and phrases.

October 19th, 1781

Silverfiddle Rant!

The United States of America: Founded in Optimism

Should Independence Day be celebrated on a different day?  History buffs like to point out the Continental Congress voted for independence from Britain on July 2nd.  Some argue that July 2nd should be the day to celebrate, but I used to have a totally different date in mind.  

Somewhere in my young life, can't remember when, I was shocked when I realized the United States did not gain sovereignty on July 4th 1776: That was when the war started, not when it ended in our victory (I was a poor student).

America declared its independence in 1776, but it took another five years to win freedom from the British. That day came on October 19, 1781, when the British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered his troops in Yorktown, Virginia. (America's Library)

That we recognize the declaration rather than the eventual achievement says much about our national character: We are an optimistic people.  God grants all humans the gift of liberty.  It does not flow from a king or government.  We declared ourselves free on July 4th 1776, and that is what we celebrate.

Happy Independence Day!

Memorial Day 2021

This Memorial Day Weekend, amid shopping for bargains, getting together with family and friends after all the months of pandemic lockdowns, and enjoying the traditional Memorial Day Weekend cookouts, let us remember the significance of Memorial Day: honoring Our Fallen, who made the ultimate sacrifice.  

Gone, but never forgotten.

American military cemeteries around the world:

For many, the concept of honoring Our Fallen holds the deepest kind of personal significance:

   

Surely we can all find time to do some reading appropriate for this weekend...2021 Memorial Day: 30 facts, meaning and history to celebrate this holiday.

"A Date which will Live in Infamy"

Silverfiddle Rant!

I wrote this years ago to commemorate Pearl Harbor day.  The chances of our nation being attacked militarily now is almost nil.  An ignorant and debased nation of people easily propagandized is vulnerable to a variety of more subtle, non-violent attacks. Nonetheless, the lesson still applies.

My wife and I took our kids to a museum here in town on December 7th a few years ago. While there, we had the good fortune to meet a WW II Navy veteran who had survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. We also encountered the famous WW II picture of the Frenchman crying. These two contrasting encounters taught my family a lesson that I want to share with you.

At the beginning of our tour I spied the aging sailor wearing a veteran’s garrison cap emblazoned with the words “Pearl Harbor Survivor.” I crouched down and quickly tutored my children on the man’s significance upon that historical landscape. Fortunately, the kids grasped the meaning of the moment and we approached the gentleman. A mellow, unassuming man, he treated our questions with kindness and received our thanks with humility.

At the end of our museum tour we came face to face with the elderly veteran’s polar opposite: the picture of the Frenchman crying. Many of my fellow Americans would probably enjoy hearty anti-French belly laughs at this picture, but I feel only sadness.  This is the face of  people everywhere who lack the means or the will to defend their freedoms. This is the face that trades death and destruction for subjugation and humiliation.

I felt just as compelled to introduce my children to the Frenchman crying as I did to the aging hero. I directed my kids’ attention to the picture and asked them to describe it. “He’s crying,” and “That man is sad,” were the answers I got. They could see his distress and wanted to know what had caused it.

I told them this is how you end up when you're unable or unwilling to fight for your freedom. I told them that if they were not prepared to risk their lives for their country, they had better be prepared to stand on the street crying as the conquerors march by. I insisted they study the picture some more, observe the pain on the man’s face, notice the tears running down his cheeks. “Remember that face,” I told them, “and may that never be you.”

Reliance on Maginot Lines and international organizations provides a sense of security--up until the inevitable failure of such contrivances. Then, alas, it is back to blood and steel. Sadly, we are all too human after all.

The veteran and the Frenchman stand in stark contrast. Taken together, they remind us of two unyielding truths: The opposite of war is not necessarily peace, and freedom is never free.

---
As of September 2020, "according to US Department of Veterans Affairs statistics, 325,574 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are alive in 2020." (National WW II Museum)

Thanksgiving 2020

******

Image from MIT Medical

What a contrast to the above is the below often-used image of the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth Colony!

Should we then feel sorry for ourselves: that this Thanksgiving 2020 we may have to forego some of the usual family gatherings and festivities?  I think not!

In spite of my own doubts as to just how dangerous COVID-19 is, I think that we should reflect upon how un-deprived we are, here in the 21st Century! 

Let us note the true hardships which our Pilgrim Fathers endured: a rough voyage of 65 days on turbulent seas only to arrive in November 1620 to inhospitable shores during brutal weather; a lack of enough supplies until the next gardening season because the Mayflower was supposed to arrive to the already-established Virginia Colony, where there would have been stores enough for the winter and good shelter; the deaths of more than half of the English settlers aboard the ship, because of the combination of both poor nutrition and inadequate shelter for a New England Winter. 

Yet, our Pilgrim Fathers heartily gave thanks — and, before disembarking, even managed to compose the Mayflower Compact, ancestor of our United States Constitution:

...[I]n the Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims wisely chose to establish a government based on civil agreement, not on compulsory divine or biblical authority....

Therefore, instead of whining about what we are not doing this Thanksgiving 2020 and instead of complaining about our draconian Democrat governors and their anti-Thanksgiving edicts, let us be mindful of what Scott Powell wrote in his Patriot Post 2018 essay Thanksgiving: The First and Essential American Holiday: 

Times are very different than they were nearly 400 years ago at the time of the Mayflower’s voyage to the New World. But the qualities of character that made the Pilgrims exemplary are as relevant today as they were back then. A contemporary Thanksgiving makeover might include: rekindling a quest for adventure; growing the faith to hold on to a vision of a promised land no matter what; mustering the courage to go against the crowd and defend the truth; gaining determination to endure hardship; rejuvenating a joyful willingness to sacrifice for others; revitalizing respect and tolerance of people of different beliefs; and renewing the predisposition to extend love and gratitude at every appropriate opportunity.

Please read Scott Powell's entire essay HERE.  Worth your time.

Let us count our blessings!  They are too numerous to count!

There will be time enough later to take our draconian, anti-Thanksgiving political leaders to task.  For now...

Remember This....

Related reading, from the Patriot Post, July 25, 2020: Stolen Elections Show the Vulnerabilities of Absentee Ballots.  Excerpt:

No question about it: some people need absentee ballots — those with disabilities, those living abroad and others who can’t make it to the polls on Election Day. But pushing for more absentee balloting — even all-mail elections — is unwise. It would make election fraud far easier.

In-person voting occurs under the supervision of election officials, with election observers there to make sure everything is on the up-and-up. This transparency is a vital hallmark of the democratic process. Mail-in ballots, however, are susceptible to being stolen, altered, forged and forced.

All states ban electioneering in polling places, but there are no such bans on electioneering in voters’ homes. This leaves at-home voters vulnerable to intimidation and coercion by campaign staffers, political party activists, and others with a vested interest in the electoral outcome.

Four elections in California, Florida, Indiana, and North Carolina — stolen through absentee-ballot fraud — demonstrate some of the problems.....

Read the rest HERE.

What would Stalin have said about mail-in ballots? Hmmmm?

Inconvenient Facts

(hat tip to Bocopro, who posted this as a comment at Z's blog)

A little something else from Bocopro (emphases mine):

I’d kinda like for some of the racebaiters to explain why the 1830 US census identifies nearly 4000 free blacks who owned a total of almost 13,000 slaves.

http://appalachianmagazine.com/2017/01/23/americas-black-slave-owners/

“According to historian R. Halliburton Jr.: ‘There were approximately 319,599 free blacks in the United States in 1830. Approximately 13.7 per cent of the total black population was free. A significant number of these free blacks were the owners of slaves. The census of 1830 lists 3,775 free Negroes who owned a total of 12,760 slaves.’”

Halliburton was, if I read the sources correctly, a black professor.

Another publication, by a black professor named Gates in THE ROOT, has an article discussing “Did Black People Own Slaves?”

Also, there’s RED OVER BLACK: Black Slavery Among the Cherokee Indians, by Halliburton.

Then there’s this paragraph from TOWNHALL’s “Six inconvenient truths about US and slavery:

SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution put a formal end to the institution of slavery 89 years after the birth of the Republic; 142 years have passed since this welcome emancipation. Moreover, the importation of slaves came to an end in 1808 (as provided by the Constitution), a mere 32 years after independence, and slavery had been outlawed in most states decades before the Civil War. Even in the South, more than 80% of the white population never owned slaves. Given the fact that the majority of today’s non-black Americans descend from immigrants who arrived in this country after the War Between the States, only a tiny percentage of today’s white citizens – perhaps as few as 5% — bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor. Of course, a hundred years of Jim Crow laws, economic oppression and indefensible discrimination followed the theoretical emancipation of the slaves, but those harsh realities raise different issues from those connected to the long-ago history of bondage.

Finally, there’s the inconvenient truth that it was white people who did away with slavery in the US.

Whatever. I know that I’m gettin truly weary of hearin about it all. Seemed to me we were doin pretty well in this category before Barry & Mooch came along.

All of the above is what the Democrat Party wants you not to know!

Happy Birthday, America — Land That I Love!

(with thanks to Warren for sending me the link to this video)

Take time to learn this history lesson for this Independence Day 2020:

Recommended Reading

See How Epidemics of the Past Changed the Way Americans Lived: Past public health crises inspired innovations in infrastructure, education, fundraising and civic debate, dated April 1, 2020 and published at Smithsonian Magazine.


Remember...

Voices From The Past

Please take a few minutes to watch the two short videos below:





Below is the most-watched YouTube documentary on the topic of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic — if you have time to watch (over 4 million views):


Now for my family's own stories.......


My father's younger sister, about age 7, died of "the aftereffects of the flu." Something like the 1990 film Awakenings? Full movie HERE at YouTube, albeit poor quality.  I highly recommend the film! It is available via Amazon Prime Video.

Dad occasionally spoke of what happened when his sister died: "The undertaker embalmed Chrissie at the house — and dumped the blood behind the barn."  The funeral service and burial were private.  The influenza didn't stop until everything was shut down: schools, funerals, churches, etc.  And the government refused to believe that something terrible was happening with Americans' health.  Until, that is, bodies began piling up on the sidewalks and in the streets of Washington, D.C.

My maternal grandmother (1898-1981) had a robust immune system. It fell to her to take care of her brother Walter, who brought influenza to their remote location in the mountains of East Tennessee when he was discharged from the US Army, fell ill himself, and gave the flu to his brother-in-law Fred, my grandmother's husband.  My grandmother sent her two children, one born in 1916 and the other in 1918 to her parents' farm and took care of Walter and Fred.

My grandmother related the story of those days in this way: "I got almost no sleep.  I went back and forth between the river for cold water and the menfolks' foreheads.  They were out of their heads with fever.  My sister brought food, called to me, and set the food down about 25 feet from the house; I fetched the food from there.  I don't remember how long all this went on.  Seemed like forever.  But Walter and Fred got well, and life went back to normal."

I asked Wawa how she stood those weeks of hard work as a nurse.  Her response: "Life isn't about what you want to do.  Life is about what you have to do."  She also told me of a particular safely measure she used: teetotaler though she was, she gargled in moonshine morning and evening.  And she swallowed that moonshine, too.

Bringing us back to today....A view of the front lines of this grim war against Coronavirus (dated March 23, 2020): The Growing Chaos Inside New York’s Hospitals.

And one more thing...in the immortal words of Gilda Radner:

Give Thanks

(For politics, please scroll down)

Abraham Lincoln was our first President to make Thanksgiving Day a national holiday. He probably set the observance in late November so as to correlate the holiday with the date of the Mayflower's anchoring (November 21, 1620, by the modern Gregorian calendar but November 11, 1620, by the Julian calendar used by the Pilgrims).

Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation reads as follows:

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

A. Lincoln

Additional reading...

1) Thanksgiving: The Forgotten History of America's Thanksgiving and What It Commemorates

2) How the 'Mother of Thanksgiving' [Sarah Josepha Hale] Lobbied Abraham Lincoln to Proclaim the National Holiday: The author of the children's poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was persistent in arguing that establishing the national November holiday could help heal wounds from the Civil War.

In keeping with above words of President Lincoln, who was in 1863 going through a troubled time with the burdens of civil war and the responsibilities of leadership, let us meditate upon our blessings, truly too numerous to count. And let us remember and meditate upon these words (my paternal uncle's favorite hymn, which we joyfully sang at his memorial service):

Boo!

(For politics, please scroll down)

I wish that the narrator of the video below didn't talk fast as a speeding freight train. Even so, the stories are quite interesting:



A little spooky music and animation (Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns, 1835-1921):


About the above piece:

According to legend, Death appears at midnight every year on Halloween. Death calls forth the dead from their graves to dance for him while he plays his fiddle (here represented by a solo violin). His skeletons dance for him until the rooster crows at dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year.

The piece opens with a harp playing a single note, D, twelve times (the twelve strokes of midnight) which is accompanied by soft chords from the string section. The solo violin enters playing the tritone, which was known as the diabolus in musica ("the Devil in music") during the Medieval and Baroque eras, consisting of an A and an E♭—in an example of scordatura tuning, the violinist's E string has actually been tuned down to an E♭ to create the dissonant tritone.

The first theme is heard on a solo flute, followed by the second theme, a descending scale on the solo violin which is accompanied by soft chords from the string section. The first and second themes, or fragments of them, are then heard throughout the various sections of the orchestra. The piece becomes more energetic and at its midpoint, right after a contrapuntal section based on the second theme, there is a direct quote played by the woodwinds of Dies irae, a Gregorian chant from the Requiem that is melodically related to the work's second theme. The Dies irae is presented unusually in a major key. After this section the piece returns to the first and second themes and climaxes with the full orchestra playing very strong dynamics. Then there is an abrupt break in the texture and the coda represents the dawn breaking (a cockerel's crow, played by the oboe) and the skeletons returning to their graves.

The piece makes particular use of the xylophone to imitate the sounds of rattling bones.

Read more HERE.

Here's another: "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1, Op. 46 by Edvard Grieg (1843-1907):


About the above piece:

The piece is played as the title character Peer Gynt, in a dream-like fantasy, enters "Dovregubbens (the troll Mountain King's) hall". The scene's introduction continues: "There is a great crowd of troll courtiers, gnomes and goblins. Dovregubben sits on his throne, with crown and sceptre, surrounded by his children and relatives. Peer Gynt stands before him. There is a tremendous uproar in the hall." The lines sung are the first lines in the scene.

Grieg himself wrote "For the Hall of the Mountain King I have written something that so reeks of cowpats, ultra-Norwegianism, and 'to-thyself-be-enough-ness' that I can't bear to hear it, though I hope that the irony will make itself felt." The theme of "to thyself be... enough" – avoiding the commitment implicit in the phrase "To thine own self be true" and just doing enough – is central to Peer Gynt's satire, and the phrase is discussed by Peer and the mountain king in the scene which follows the piece.

Read more HERE.

And from the best-selling album of all time (performed by Michael Jackson and produced by Quincy Jones) :


The entire album is HERE (15,838,789 views as of the time of this posting). But not everyone's cup of tea, I know.

Candace Owens On The Democrat Party

Worth a few moments of your time:

Weekend Video: 60 Images You Must See...

(For politics, please scroll down)

One of my Facebook finds and worth your time:

Another retro video below the fold.

Never Forget

Eighteen years ago today....


It will never be distant history for me.

For me, it is as yesterday.  And my anger still burns.

All those hours waiting to hear if two of my homeschool fathers were still alive. Phone services of all types were in a knot, and the wait seemed endless. Both of these men were unharmed, but one had a very close call: he was supposed to be in one of the Pentagon rooms directly hit that horrible morning. Thank God that he was called away to Capitol Hill a mere fifteen minutes before American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon.

And who can forget watching live the collapse of the Twin Towers after being struck by American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175?

And there were those long minutes awaiting the location of United Airlines Flight 93. Thank God for the patriots aboard that flight.

Yes, eighteen years is a long time ago.

But not for me.

And I will never buy into the whitewash of Islam.

Fifty Years Ago: Apollo 11

(For politics, please scroll down)

[source]

What we today in the 21st Century commemorate with a yawn was not taken for granted in 1969.

From The speech Richard Nixon would have given ‘in event of moon disaster’: The White House prepared remarks in case the Apollo 11 astronauts couldn’t return to Earth (Washington Post, July 12, 2019):

To: H. R. Haldeman
From: Bill Safire
July 18, 1969

IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to lead as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

75 Years Ago On The Beaches Of Normandy

Honor The Greatest Generation....

The assault phase of Operation Overlord was known as Operation Neptune.  Operation Neptune began on D-Day (6 June 1944) and ended on 30 June 1944.

Reading for today, from The Last Longest Day by Richard Fernandez:

...It was an all-out throw of the dice. A maximum effort. There was no plan B if it didn't work. Had it failed, Eisenhower would have said: "Our landings have failed and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone." The consequences of defeat would have been incalculable....

[...]

...It is for the current generation to decide whether to build a new dark age of universal surveillance or one of expanding freedom. It is for the present to decide whether to succumb to new cults or keep the flame. The men of the Longest Day have done their job. Only the living can still make history. The past has already made it.

Read the rest HERE.  Worth your time.

The American military cemetery in Normandy, 2003

Claude and Kenneth, two of my cousins, served on the beaches of Normany during Operation Overlord — one cousin in the US Army and one in the US Navy. They were 19 and 21 years old. Miraculously, they both came home physically whole. But psychologically, Claude and Kenneth were forever changed and never again slept through a night without nightmares. Both of my cousins died young, one at the age of 39 and the other at the age of 44.

The Real Seats Of Power In America

Worth your time and consideration (hat tip to Common Cents):

Can we ever get out from under these tyrannical boots?

I wonder if Americans have snoozed for too long.

Boiling the frog: