Right Wing Nut House

It was 62 years ago that US Rangers stormed the cliffs of Pointe Du Hoc near Omaha Beach. And as the veterans of that day grow oh so gray and bent, mere shadows of the lithe and limber youths who pulled themselves up the jagged bluffs, one hand over another, their comrades falling all about them, we are reminded that the word “courage” came alive that day.

Too often, we use that word in a base and cavalier way. A Hollywood movie star has “courage” because she revealed to the world that she’s a drug addict. A comic has “courage” because he made fun of the President of the United States to his face. A filmaker has “courage” because he made millions of dollars shooting a “documentary” which shows the US government complicit in the mass murder on 9/11.

And so instead of “courage” being a word with inexpressible significance and meaning beyond its simple definition, it has become a self congratulatory epithet, a hollowed out expression of empty promise and insincerity. Today, the purveyors of myth and shapers of opinion use the word to tell the rest of us who to admire and what to respect. No longer does courage imply sacrifice or a willingness to give all that one has for a cause greater than oneself. Instead, courage defines the selfish desires and overwrought egos of an ideology that sees more irony in the word than reverence.

All of this was in the future 62 years ago when the Rangers lived the word courage by taking the bluffs above the beach. And a short distance away at Omaha, Americans were dying, never knowing that their sacrifice was redefining the word courage for all time. For in their last bloody moments on earth, a titanic struggle was taking place between good and evil that 10,000 years from now, poets will still be singing songs and human beings will still be shaking their heads at in wonder and awestruck disbelief.

It takes genuine courage to confront evil. By its very nature, evil must defend itself by lashing out and destroying anything that attempts to get in its path, lest it perish ignominiously. Those representing good realize this which makes the confrontation between good and evil always a life threatening proposition and thus, an exercise in self-denial and sacrifice. The Rangers on the bluffs and the men in transports speeding toward bloody Omaha that terrible day 62 years ago knew full well what they were in for. They were willing to pay the price to defeat evil.

There were more than 700 war ships on the waters of Normandy that day, firepower never before seen on the open ocean. The men would be landing with tanks and guns and grenades and enough explosives to blow up a small town. But their most potent weapon by far was the courage to face their foes in open combat with the full knowledge that doing so was likely to get them killed. We ask ourselves quite properly, would I have been capable of such a feat? The answer will likely tell us much about ourselves.

Because in those last frantic minutes before hitting the beach, as grown men wept and prayed and steeled themselves for the supreme test of their young lives, they must have found something deep within themselves, something they could mentally and emotionally grasp and hold onto so real and palpable it must have been. What was it? An image of their family? A remembrance of love and closeness that wrapped itself around them and made them feel safe? Or perhaps it was the simple recognition of the here and now with a sublime faith that He that arbitrates our fate has placed me in His keeping and if these be my last moments, let them be meaningful ones.

Whatever rushed thoughts were coursing through their minds as they splashed ashore under some of the most intense combat ever experienced by American fighting men, their courage allowed them to disobey the most primal of instincts to flee for safety and walk into the teeth of the enemy’s fire. And then, the supreme test. Historian Stephen Ambrose:

They were getting butchered where they were all the sea wall because the Germans had it all zeroed in with their mortars that were coming down on top of them. And, “Over here, Captain,” “Over here, Lieutenant, over here.” A sergeant looked at this situation and said, “The hell with this. If I’m going to get killed, I’m going to take some Germans with me.” And he would call out, “Follow me,” and up he would start. Hitler didn’t believe this was ever possible. Hitler was certain that the soft, effeminate children of democracy could never become soldiers. Hitler was certain that the Nazi youth would always outfight the Boy Scouts, and Hitler was wrong.

The Boy Scouts took them on D-Day. Joe Dawson led Company G. He started off with 200 men. He got to the top of the bluff with 20 men, but he got to the top. He was the first one to get there. He’s going to be introducing President Clinton tomorrow at Omaha Beach. John Spaulding was another. He was a lieutenant. Many of them are nameless. I don’t know their names. I’ve talked to men who’ve said, “I saw this lieutenant and he tossed a grenade into the embrasure of that fortification, and out came four Germans with their hands up. I thought to myself, hell, if he can do that, I can do that.” “What was his name?” I will ask. “Geez, I don’t know. I never found out his name. I never saw him before, and I never saw him again, but he was a great man. He got me up that bluff.”

“Unknown but to God” and history, I suspect. In the end, whatever gave them the inner strength to keep going in the face of such murderous opposition, it was as inspirational then as it is today.

It is fitting and proper that we remember their courage today, the young men who lived and died the word courage. But we must also question ourselves about our commitment to that memory. Does it have meaning beyond the misty eyed reminisces of old men? Can we still summon forth the will to perform great deeds in a cause that reaches far beyond our narrow little corner of planet earth in which we live and love and die?

At the moment, the answer to that last question is unknown. But I daresay the fate of the nation rests upon a positive response. For unless we are willing to propel ourselves beyond our own selfish, comfortable existence and find the strength to confront the evil that seeks to destroy us, we are more likely to end up a victim of our own hubris rather than triumphant with the knowledge that we, like the men of D-Day, brought to life the word courage and made it once again something to be lived and felt in our hearts, ever mindful of the sacrifice of those who came before us.

If you are interested in history, or manned space flight, or both, you owe it to yourself to tune in tonight as the National Geographic Channel presents Space Race: The Untold Story.

Based on Deborah Cadbury’s “Space Race : The Epic Battle Between America and the Soviet Union for Dominion of Space,”, this is a NG special that goes far beyond the documentary format and enters the realm of drama.

In fact, there is so much interaction and dialogue between the characters that the narration almost seems superfluous at times. The special effects are awesome and interspersed into the narrative are actual photographs and film of what’s took place.

This is truly a unique documentary format and makes for some absolutely riveting television.

The story follows the two titans of the space age; America’s Wernher von Braun and the Soviet’s mysterious “Chief Designer” whose name was unknown for nearly 40 years, Sergei Korolev. Von Braun, who designed and built the V-2 rocket for Hitler, was a childhood hero of mine - until the release of World War II era documents that showed he knowingly used slave labor in building his rockets. A complex character, realistically portrayed - warts and all - von Braun was one of the true geniuses of the 20th century. It is not an exaggeration to say that if he had been captured by the Soviets rather than deliberately surrendered to the Americans, it is unlikely we would have made it to the moon at all.

Korolev on the other hand was purged by Stalin in the 1930’s and spent several years in Siberia until the Russians realized they needed his expertise to steal the rocket technology invented by von Braun. Rehabilitated, his work spurred the Americans on during the entire space race.

The documentary is making a big deal about the fact that the reason the superpowers were so desperate for German rocket technology was not for peaceful purposes but rather for a platform to deliver nuclear weapons. Um…this is a surprise? To whom? Ten year old children perhaps.

That said, this is a crackling good documentary. The four hour show airs in two parts tonight at 6:00 PM central time. Check your local listings and set your Tivos.

I never thought in a million years I would see it.

In the telephone survey of 1200 individuals, just 47% agreed that “the 9/11 attacks were thoroughly investigated and that any speculation about US government involvement is nonsense.” Almost as many, 45%, indicated they were more likely to agree “that so many unanswered questions about 9/11 remain that Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success.”

Un. Be, Lievable.

This is a direct, purposeful consequence of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Or let’s just call it what it really is: Hatred. Unreasoning, stupid, blind, insane hatred for George Bush and the people who support him.

It’s not difficult to see what happens when the fringe politics of hate goes mainstream. The conspiracy theories, the dark forces that people imagine are controlling their lives (so much easier to blame for life’s failures and disappointments), the Men in Black, the aliens, corporate plots, the Freemasons, and yes, The Davinci Code - these are no longer relegated to the the dark recesses of people’s minds. The beasts have been loosed and they now run amok, wreaking havoc wherever there’s an internet connection and a chat room.

Egged on by supposedly mainstream liberal websites like Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, and other blogs associated with the left, the dark hints and barely concealed innuendo that He knew…He knew…He wanted it to happen… have found an eager audience in the population at large. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is a de-emphasis during the last 25 years in secondary education of subjects that develop critical thinking skills. And Jeff Goldstein could explain better than I the consequences of the battles between intentionalists and their enemies, the post modernists. But more than anything, it is a loss of faith.

The politics of hate has enabled the worst in us to get the better of us. Believing your political opponent capable of such monstrous evil that presupposes thousands of dead Americans bespeaks a sickness in thought and reason for which there is no cure. Not even giving them what they desire more than anything - power - will assuage the psychic pain that causes them to descend into such fits of paranoia and fantasy. If given the opportunity, they would see enemies behind every tree and plotters under every bed.

The politics of paranoia afflicts both right and left for sure. But it has been fully mainstreamed by liberals, wrapped up and sold in slick, well written brochures and talked up in the leftist salons of both Hollywood and New York. Celebrities casually mention their belief in cockamamie theories and are inserted into the 24 hour news cycle so that their inane, idiotic comments are repeated ad nauseum every news update on the half hour. Every time a member of the Glitz and Glitter crowd whose intellectual achievements may include being able to count the number of times they grab their crotch while performing on stage, mouth some ridiculous anti-Bush sentiment, an army of worshipful reporters and cynical paparazzi report and repeat their incoherent ramblings as “news.”

And ordinary people who don’t have the time nor inclination to read the 9/11 Commission report or Popular Mechanics or the dozens and dozens of scientific, peer reviewed articles in the most respected professional journals in the world that fully, completely, and totally debunk most conspiracy theories surrounding the attacks find it easier and more exciting to believe in make believe rather than the cold, hard truth.

After all, believing in conspiracy theories is fun! You’re “in the know.” You know something that others don’t. It makes you feel important. And it gives you a feeling of belonging - belonging to a group of people more noble, more important, than the rest of us simple, drab, hum drum humans.

Except this sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen in educated, western populations. Daniel Pipes did a scholarly study of the history of conspiracy and found that the idea had been declining in western countries over the last 50 years until recently. A resurgence occurred with the Clinton hating of the far right a decade ago as one conspiracy theory after another was advanced against the President, none of which achieved anything close to mainstream acceptance by conservatives.

But when you have a Congressman of the United States - Cynthia McKinney - accusing the President of the United States of having advance knowledge of the attacks on 9/11, you’re not going to get much more mainstream than that.

What enables all of this is hatred of the President. And what is truly frightening is that there are those who don’t hate the President as much as they hate the United States of America and are using the hatred of the conspiracists to advance their agenda.

It might be interesting for some enterprising blogger or reporter to look into the funding for this group, 9/11 Truth.Org. The Zogby poll referenced above was commissioned by this group in conjunction with a conspiracy spectacular they are putting on in Chicago in early June. What is enormously worrying about this “movement” is that the facts don’t matter one iota. You can talk until your blue in the face about the study done by the American Society of Civil Engineers about why the World Trade Center towers fell and it simply goes in one ear and out the other. They will insist, despite the fact that there is not one piece of evidence to support it, that the towers were brought down by a demolition crew.

And with this kind of fevered, religious belief at work, someone could very easily turn such a movement into a crusade. Such shows of emotionalism are not healthy for supposedly rational societies and the leaders they throw up are not usually candidates for the Democracy Hall of Fame.

If this irrational hatred has led us to this point, what will it be like 2 years from now? And if the left were to win back power, would we on the right descend to that level of rage and stupidity? Is it ever going to be possible to find our way back to sanity in our politics and political discourse?

Perhaps part of the answer is at the conspiracists “education and strategy session” coming up in a couple of weeks. I plan on attending this conference and report on what I find there. Stay tuned.

In a letter published in today’s American Spectator, I take James Bowman to task for his execrable review of the film United 93.

Here’s Bowman’s review.

To which I replied (second letter from the top):

Regarding James Bowman’s curious “review” of United 93, it is a pity that the gentleman lost his spectacles and was unable to view the film the same way most of the rest of us did. Surely the film he writes about could only have been shown in his imagination and not in any real world setting where audiences were horrified, mesmerized, and finally moved to tears by the movie’s unrelenting realism and intimacy. Otherwise, his grousing about “too soon” and “no heroism” ring hollow indeed when measured against the film’s power to prick the memory and gnaw at our emotions, still for many an open wound from that awful day.

Hollywood, with its ability to turn reality into myth, is uniquely situated to add events like 9/11 to our national narrative in such a way as to bring understanding and closure. It is a pity that Mr. Bowman failed to absorb the nuances of the film and instead chose to judge the film from such an erroneous and superficial viewpoint.

Despite being shown in more than 1800 fewer theaters than the Robin Williams vehicle RV,, United 93 was the top grossing film for Monday, more than doubling the dollar per screen average of its closest competitors.

Figures from Daily Box Office reveal that the strong opening weekend for U-93 was no fluke and that as word of mouth about the picture spreads, the chances of the film becoming a sleeper hit are rising.

Grossing nearly $1 million ($969,225) compared to $888,385 for RV, U-93’s per screen average of $540 was more than twice that of its competitor’s $244. This reflects the kind of audience that is being attracted to U-93; married adults over 30. These are people much more willing and able to attend movies during the week. And what is truly remarkable is that a film with no appeal to teenagers, no established stars, a minuscule promotions budget, and what most would see as a “downer” storyline, would have such a strong opening weekend and now demonstrate appeal during the week.

U-93 will be swamped - along with every other film - this weekend with the opening of the Tom Cruise project Mission Impossible III. Since most films experience a fall off of between 1/2 and 2/3 their second weekend, it should be interesting to see if U-93 can maintain something around those figures - $4-6 million. Anything beyond that would reflect underlying strength which could bode well for the future.

UPDATE

A friend of mine in “the Biz” emailed me with an interesting fact. Sometimes when a blockbuster like MI3 opens, it helps business for most other films as well. “A rising tide lifts all boats” could be applied to any effect on U-93.

He also says that there are times when that kind of thinking is pure rot and MI3 just might suck the life out of every other film out there.

There you have the perfect industry analyst, a fact I was quick to point out. His response?

“I’ve got to make a living somehow!”

UPDATE II: TUESDAY’S NUMBERS

For Tuesday, RV barely edged U-93 for first, taking in $926,855 to U-93’s $870,575. Remember, RV is playing in 1800 more theaters.

U-93 maintained its per screen dominance by averaging $485 to its competitor’s $255.

UPDATE III: WEDNESDAY NUMBERS

U-93 still running strong in second place with $790,335 averaging $440 per screen. RV grossed $836,740 garnering $230 per screen. Total take for U-93 tops $14 million - considered a little above average for the genre.

People are comparing the film’s opening week to the Clooney project Syriana. The comparison may not be valid because the Clooney film enjoyed a limited release in 5 theaters for two weeks prior to its general release to 1755 screens. Such limited release usually gets a media buzz going about a film, something that the subject matter of U-93 did for that project. Both films showed unusual strength during the week with Syriana’s 2nd weekend falling off 50% against the blockbuster openings of both Peter Jackson’s King Kong and the family film Chronicles of Narnia.

Analysts are expecting a similar performance for U-93 this weekend as it plays against the opening of MI3.

A cockpit voice recording, never heard in public in its entirety, may indicate that United Flight 93 passengers actually broke through the cockpit door and battled the hijackers for control of the plane.

The dramatic recording was played during the penalty phase of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui who shouted to the crowd as he was being led out “God curse you all.”

Previously, excerpts from the cockpit recording gave no clue as to whether or not the passengers managed to storm the cockpit to try and wrest control of the plane from the hijackers. But this snippet seems to indicate that not only did the passengers make it into the cockpit, but actually injured a terrorist:

As the tape proceeded, it was clear that passengers were gaining the upper hand.

Sounds of a struggle can be heard. At that point, the plane appears to go out of control. There are sounds of the hijackers trying to shake off the passengers. The plane pitches back and forth.

The 9/11 Commission report never mentions the passengers actually succeeding in breaking into the cockpit:

At 9:57, the passenger assault began. Several passengers had terminated phone calls with loved ones in order to join the revolt. One of the callers ended her message as follows: “Everyone’s running up to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.”85

The cockpit voice recorder captured the sounds of the passenger assault muffled by the intervening cockpit door. Some family members who listened to the recording report that they can hear the voice of a loved one among the din. We cannot identify whose voices can be heard. But the assault was sustained.86

In response, Jarrah immediately began to roll the airplane to the left and right, attempting to knock the passengers off balance. At 9:58:57, Jarrah told another hijacker in the cockpit to block the door. Jarrah continued to roll the airplane sharply left and right, but the assault continued. At 9:59:52, Jarrah changed tactics and pitched the nose of the airplane up and down to disrupt the assault. The recorder captured the sounds of loud thumps, crashes, shouts, and breaking glasses and plates. At 10:00:03, Jarrah stabilized the airplane.87

Five seconds later, Jarrah asked, “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?” A hijacker responded, “No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.” The sounds of fighting continued outside the cockpit. Again, Jarrah pitched the nose of the aircraft up and down. At 10:00:26, a passenger in the background said, “In the cockpit. If we don’t we’ll die!” Sixteen seconds later, a passenger yelled, “Roll it!” Jarrah stopped the violent maneuvers at about 10:01:00 and said, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!” He then asked another hijacker in the cock-pit, “Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?” to which the other replied, “Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.”88

The passengers continued their assault and at 10:02:23, a hijacker said, “Pull it down! Pull it down!” The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them. The airplane headed down; the control wheel was turned hard to the right. The airplane rolled onto its back, and one of the hijackers began shouting “Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.” With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes’ flying time from Washington, D.C.89

They never gave up. They never surrendered.

If you get HBO, you might want to check out The Hamburg Cell which tells the story of some of the hijackers and gives a somewhat sympathetic portrayal of Jarrah, one of the hijackers of Flight 93. One thing the movie does - perhaps unintentionally - is show how radical Islam became so attractive to upper middle class Arabs like Jarrah who felt so out of place in western Europe going to school. The movie points out that the terrorists were not “victims” in any sense of the word but rather cold blooded killers who used religion to justify their murder.

Thinking about my poor attitude toward the study of history when I was in high school and college and then realizing how much I love the subject today, I marvel at the fact that it was a handful of books on the subject that caused me to change my mind and make the independent study of American history my most consistent avocation during the last 30 years.

Without a doubt, the one historian who opened my mind to the fascinating and sometimes maddening examination of America’s past more than any other was Bruce Catton. His trilogy of the Union’s Army of the Potomac culminating in the 1954 Pulitzer Prize winning A Stillness at Appomattox along with his other great trilogy A Centennial History of the Civil War (called the best short history of the Civil War ever written), displayed not only a careful and considered historian’s eye for important details but a writing style that brought history to life in a way that few historians have been able to do before or since.

One reviewer wrote ” If every historian wrote like Bruce Catton, no one would read fiction” - a sentiment that I agree with wholeheartedly. The man who succeeded him as editor of American Heritage magazine Oliver Jensen wrote of Catton, “There is a near-magic power of imagination in Catton’s work that seemed to project him physically into the battlefields, along the dusty roads and to the campfires of another age.”

And that is what drove my interest in history; this almost surreal ability of some historians to take the reader back in time, to bring to life long dead and forgotten heroes and not only show you how they lived but actually place the reader in the shoes of the giants in order to get a feel for why they made the decisions they did. If nothing else, good history is not the study of when or how or what; the best histories answer the question why and allows the reader then to draw their own conclusions about the characters and their times.

The fact that narrative histories like Catton’s are frowned on by the Academy largely because they are sometimes poorly or incompletely sourced as well as failing to illuminate history in a scholarly manner (most academic historians not favoring such a linear approach to the study of history) does nothing to lessen my enjoyment in reading them. And while I respect the academics for their tireless and learned contributions to our national narrative, I believe that at bottom, there is much to be said for viewing history as a storytelling experience. It makes America’s past seem more accessible, more available to we, the consumers of knowledge.

I’m sure each of us has their favorite historians. There are so many good ones (with both left and right “takes” on America’s past) that any list I attempt to compile here would be incomplete. But for myself, the inheritor of Bruce Catton’s mantle of favorite narrative historian has to go to David Hackett Fischer.

Fischer’s books on early America are brilliantly written labors of love. It is clear that Professor Fischer has a deep and abiding respect for our ancestors whose toil and sacrifice made the United States what it is today. Two of his books had a profound affect on me: Paul Revere’s Ride (1994) and Washington’s Crossing (2004), the latter winning the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for history.

I believe what Bruce Catton was as an historian to the Civil War, Fischer is to early America. With a prose style that is achingly beautiful and a storyteller’s ear for gleaning what would be of most interest to his audience, Fischer has an uncanny ability to draw the reader into the story so that at times, you feel as if you were either a fly on the wall (such as when Washington was holding one of his councils of war with his officers) or, in the case of Revere, riding on the back of his horse as he rode through the night sounding his immortal alarm.

In the March, 2006 on-line edition of The American Enterprise - the monthly publication of The American Enterprise Institute - TAE interviews the historian about a variety of subjects including, how growing up in Baltimore colored his appreciation of history:

A lot of history had happened around Baltimore. I had an aunt who was blind and in her 90s. She told a story to my cousins and my brother and me—it was a big sprawling family—about a July day when from her home on a farm north of Baltimore there was a sound like the wind in the trees. She went outside and there was no wind. She looked up the road and saw a line of wagons as far as she could see. They were the wounded from Gettysburg.

That was told to us when we were very small, and I think that’s the recipe for making a historian. It was the immediacy of those events—the sense that they were happening to us in some way.

Indeed, Catton tells a similar tale of what ignited his passion for history. Being much older (the historian was born in 1899), Catton can recall sitting in front of the general store of his rural Michigan home town and listening to the old veterans of the Civil War talk about their adventures. His quest to tell their story also brings to mind the labors of Stephen Ambrose whose series of books on the men who fought World War II were written with those aging veterans in mind.

Fischer pulls no punches regarding his disdain for some historians on the left who have taken to “moralizing” about America’s past:

I quoted in that book a British historian who said that what British readers want to know about Napoleon is whether he was a good or a bad man. People want that sort of simple answer to a complex question. These people you speak of were very complicated, and we are increasingly getting simple answers to complex judgments of people in the past.

Professor Fischer sees this attitude changing:

Yes, things are changing very rapidly in academe. I think it was partly a generational phenomenon. The generation that came of age in the 1960s is now approaching retirement in the universities, and their children and grandchildren are very different in the way they think about the world. The excesses of these movements always build in their own corrections.

Fischer speaks to the question of the changing nature of how we are looking at America’s founding:

During the 1970s and ’80s, the history sections moved to the back of the bookstore, and other disciplines in the universities cultivated non-historical or even anti-historical ways of thinking: They looked for timeless abstractions in the social sciences, or theoretical models in economics that transcended era and place. Then in the ’90s a sudden change appeared. Econometric history began to flourish. We got new historical movements in literature departments. My colleagues in literature are increasingly writing historically about their subjects. In philosophy, the history of ideas is what’s growing. The most rapidly expanding field in political science is called Politics in History.

I scratch my head about this. Why is it happening? Did people suddenly discover that history was happening to them, via the collapse of the Soviet Union? Or was it a revulsion against those timeless abstractions, those models like Marx and Freud, that didn’t seem to work very well as the world changed? Whatever it was, it’s a thought revolution of profound importance.

Then there’s the special case of the popularity of the Revolution and the early Republic. We’ve been through other periods of popularity of certain fields: World War II in the 1990s and the Civil War in the 1960s. They were driven by anniversaries. The Revolution and early Republic booms are not anniversary-connected.

In the interview, Fischer also reveals several aspects of his personal politics as well as some fascinating thoughts on America today as it relates to America of 300 years ago.

I have yet to read Professor Fischer’s newest effort Liberty and Freedom which deals with those concepts and what they’ve meant to America since her founding. If it is anything like his other works I’ve read, I’m sure to look forward to a few sleepless nights as I take another journey with a master storyteller whose writing whisks us back in time so that we can live the lives of our ancestors and see the world through their eyes.

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware River.

This is the story of what could be the greatest day of the greatest American who ever lived. It originally appeared in The American Thinker on February 22, 2005 and was the very first article I wrote for that fine publication. And since today George Washington would be 274 years old, I thought it appropriate to re-publish it.

I realize that most tributes to Washington were done on Monday which is commonly called “Presidents Day” but, as the article makes clear, is actually the lawful holiday for Washington’s birthday. My point is that our first President deserves to have the actual day of his birthday recognized rather than the closest Monday on which it falls. If any American deserves this singular honor, it is Washington. Quite simply, there would not be a United States of America without him. And even if there were, it would certainly be a much different place.

****************************************************

This article originally appeared in The American Thinker.

The year was 1783. While formal hostilities had virtually ceased between the Crown and the American colonies, peace talks continued to drag on in London. The Congress was broke and in serious debt even though the Articles of Confederation, which required individual states to contribute funds to the Congress, had been approved two years earlier.

The Continental Army was restless. Many of its officers hadn’t been paid in months. Promises made by Congress at the time of their enlistment regarding reimbursement for food and clothing, pensions, and a pledge to give the officers half pay for life were either not being honored or were rumored to be withdrawn. Petitions by groups of officers to Congress asking them to redress these and other grievances either went unanswered or were brushed aside.

As a result of these indignities, a cabal of officers headed up by Colonel Walter Stewart and Major John Armstrong, an aide to George Washington’s chief rival Horatio Gates, were making plans to march to Philadelphia at the head of their men to force Congress to deal with their demands. The implication was clear; if Congress would not address their concerns, the men would enforce their will at the point of a bayonet.

The plotters believed that General Washington would be forced by their actions to become a reluctant participant in a military coup against the government. They believed that by presenting a united front composed of the senior officers in the army, Washington would have no choice but to back them.

To that end, they scheduled a meeting on March 10 of all general and field officers. With the invitation to the meeting, a fiery letter was circulated calling on the soldiers not to disarm in peace and, if the war were to continue, to disband and leave the country to the tender mercies of the British Army.

Washington got wind of the meeting and was deeply troubled. He issued a General Order canceling the gathering and instead, called for another meeting on March 15 ” of representatives of all the regiments to decide how to attain the just and important object in view.” The next day, another letter was circulated by the plotters that implied by issuing the General Order, Washington agreed with their position.

With the army teetering on the edge of revolt and the future of the United States as a republic in the balance, Washington stood before the assembled officers and began to speak. He started by saying he sympathized with their plight, that he had written countless letters to Congress reminding them of their responsibilities to the soldiers, and begged the officers not to take any action that would “lessen the dignity and sully the glory you have hitherto maintained.”

At that point, Washington reached into his pocket and withdrew a letter from a Congressman outlining what the government would do to address the soldiers grievances. But something was wrong. Washington started reading the letter but stopped abruptly. Then, with a sense of the moment and flair for the dramatic not equaled until Ronald Reagan became President, Washington slowly reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a pair of spectacles. There were gasps in the room as most of the officers had never seen their beloved General display such a sign of physical weakness in public. As he put the glasses on, Washington said “Gentlemen, you’ll permit me to put on my spectacles, as I have grown not only old but almost blind in the service of my country.”

Witnesses say that the officers almost to a man began to weep. This powerful reminder of the nearly eight years of service together and their shared sacrifices and hardships won the day. The revolt died then and there.

It could be argued that this was the greatest day of the greatest American who ever lived. And the fact that we no longer officially celebrate Washington’s birthday on February 22 as a national holiday is a travesty that makes this and other deeds of George Washington seem like mere footnotes on the pages of history.

In fact, the third Monday in February is still designated as Washington’s Birthday, not “President’s Day” as it has come to be known. As Matthew Spaulding of the Heritage Foundation points out, several times, legislators have introduced legislation to direct all federal government entities to refer to the holiday as George Washington’s Birthday but to no avail. President Bush could issue an executive order to that effect but has failed to do so.

This doesn’t address the issue of celebrating February 22-no matter what day of the week it falls on-as a national holiday. The argument that no other American is so honored just doesn’t hold water. The fact is, there wouldn’t be any other Americans to honor if it weren’t for the character, the purposefulness, and the determination of George Washington.

For long stretches during the Revolution, Washington was the government; the only recognizable entity for people to rally around. Couple that with Washington’s superhuman efforts in molding and shaping the Presidency and then exhibiting the sublime understanding to step down after two terms to cement the foundation of the new republic to the rule of law and not of men, and you have a strong case to make an exception to the rule of honoring individual Americans.

Currently, Martin Luther King is the only individual American who is honored with his own holiday. And the Fourth of July and Veterans Day are the only federal holidays covered under the Monday Holiday Law passed in 1968 that are celebrated on the day of the week regardless of whether or not it falls on a Monday (Thanksgiving’s date changes yearly. Christmas and New Years day may be celebrated on either Friday or Monday depending on what day of the week they fall on in a given year). Designating February 22 as a national holiday to celebrate the life of someone called “the indispensable man” of the American founding by his outstanding biographer James Thomas Flexner would seem to be fitting and proper.

We owe so much to Washington that it seems almost trivial to deny him this singular honor.

Most of us who have an abiding interest in politics can point to an event, or an issue, or even a person that galvanized our souls and turned us on to both the entertaining theatrics and passionate, heartfelt by-play that makes the inner workings of our democracy such a marvelous spectator sport.

For me, it may surprise you to learn that it was not a Republican or a conservative that first piqued my interest in politics but rather a liberal Democrat. Hubert H. Humphrey was a smallish man but his energy, humor, quick wit, and sunny disposition made him seem larger than life.

The 1964 Democratic Convention was my first real introduction to politics as I came to know and love it. At the age of 10, I was already reading the great political columnist Mike Royko whose hilarious insights into the less than honest workings of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago political machine was the stuff of legend. But the convention that year would be my first lesson in politics as theater, a drama played out on a national stage with heroes, villains, and colorful personalities galore. Without a doubt, the most outsized personality on display during the convention was that of the Senator from Minnesota and putative Vice Presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey.

There was tremendous drama at that convention. Not in who was going to be the nominee but on the convention floor. Mississippi’s all-white delegation was having their credentials to be seated challenged by a rival delegation made up of both blacks and whites. It was the Old Guard against the New South and the issue of Mississippi’s credentials was roiling the entire convention. In American politics, there are times when it is too painful or divisive to talk about an issue directly. Instead, we surround the problem and obscure its true nature by dealing with the atmospherics of it in such a way that we can debate the issue without tearing ourselves apart.

Such was the situation with the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party as the insurgents called themselves. The overarching issue was voting rights for African Americans. But the convention chose to address it by debating which delegation had a right to sit on the floor.

In the end, a compromise was reached allowing for representatives from several rival Mississippi delegations to be seated. And in a historic decision that was to have unseen consequences, the national Democratic party committed itself to requiring all delegations be integrated for future party gatherings. The left would take this decision and in later years, make the Democratic party a vessel for identity politics by requiring specific percentages of not just African Americans, but women, homosexuals, and every other minority group who could wangle seats from the party’s leadership.

All that lay in the future. In 1964, with the death of President Kennedy still fresh in everyone’s mind and Viet Nam a barely discernible blip on the nation’s radar, the question to be answered following the credentials fight was who would President Johnson name as his running mate? Humphrey was the front runner but there were rumblings from the delegates who thought that either Bobby Kennedy or Sargent Shriver, Kennedy’s brother-in-law, should get the second spot.

Johnson, who could be cruel and vindictive, had decided on Humphrey weeks before the convention but left the Minnesota Senator dangling uncomfortably all week. He then called Humphrey into his presence and grilled the Senator unmercifully about his private life. Humphrey emerged from the meeting shaking with anger at the treatment Johnson had meted out but within hours was his old, sunny self backslapping his way from delegation to delegation and treating people to his own special brand of oratory.

Humphrey had earned the sobriquet “The Happy Warrior” thanks to one of the more principled and decent stands ever taken by an American politician. At the 1948 Democratic Convention, Humphrey, at that time the Mayor of Minneapolis, was instrumental in ramming through a civil rights plank in the party platform that caused Lester Maddux, Strom Thurmond, and other southerners to walk out of the convention. The “Dixiecrats” would run Thurmond for President that year but it is Humphrey who is remembered and honored. His speech in support of the plank, considered one of the greatest political speeches ever, was a clarion call for fairness and decency:

To those who say that this civil rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this, that the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”

Just three years prior to that speech, Humphrey had led the effort to unite the old Minnesota Farm-Labor party with the national Democrats to form the Democratic Farm Labor Party (DFL), one of the most active and influential state parties in American history. The impact of both the DFL’s policy positions and its personalities on the American political scene through the 1980’s was astonishing.

They were in the forefront of civil rights issues, the environment, arms control, food stamps, and a host of other social issues long before most national Democrats dared to talk about them. Except Hubert Humphrey who rarely needed an excuse to give a political speech. Humphrey loved the DFL with a passion and to his dying day sought to keep the party vibrantly engaged on issues important to liberal Democrats.

It was his acceptance speech at the 1964 convention that held me mesmerized and inspired my lifelong love of politics. To get an idea of what it was like think of Zell Miller’s speech at the Republican Convention last year and multiply the intensity by a factor of 10. Humphrey absolutely skewered Barry Goldwater. In a sing-song style that was both rousing and entertaining, Humphrey attacked Goldwater by ticking off a list of Great Society programs that moderate Republicans had voted for, always ending with the refrain “but not Senator Barry Goldwater!” After two or three examples, the entire convention picked up the refrain and would scream with one voice on cue “but not Senator Barry Goldwater” and roar with laughter and applause. It was electrifying. And it was great political theater.

But there was no malice in Humphrey’s words. Humphrey respected Goldwater and, in later years, developed a good working relationship with the Arizona Senator - as many old liberal Democrats did when their party kept moving ever leftwards, ever more defeatist on foreign policy issues especially with regards to the Soviet Union and Communism.

Humphrey was a gentleman, a patriot, a dedicated public servant, and great legislator. We may look upon many of his ideas today as wrong headed. But his advocacy for those less fortunate among us was heartfelt and genuine. If he failed to see the consequences of creating a welfare state, a culture of dependency, and other nightmares that have come about as a result of a government grown too large, it was not out of a desire for personal power. He was a humble man who was motivated to do good. If that be a sin, then would that there were 534 transgressors just like him in Congress today.

What would Humphrey think of his creation, the DFL today? Considering the fact that today’s incarnation of the party of Humphrey, Mondale, and Wellstone is asking its members to help deny American veterans of the Iraq war their rights guaranteed under the Constitution to free speech, I daresay that the Happy Warrior is weeping in his grave. Herre’s DFL Chairman Brian Melendez in an email message to members:

I’ve heard from many of you that you are disturbed by the misleading “Midwest Heroes” ads produced by Progress for America Voter Fund that are currently being run by KARE 11 and WCCO. The ads erroneously make a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorists attacks and suggest that the war in Iraq will prevent an attack by Al Queda in America.

[...]

Right now, our state is a testing ground for these ads. If Minnesota speaks out and says no to this ad, the entire country can thank us. What we do here, now, will have an enormous impact on the success or failure of this kind of swiftboating in 06.

The Progress for America ads feature soldiers and their families talking about the war in a personal way, asking Americans to continue to support the mission until it’s completed. The problem, according to Chairman Melendez, is that he and the DFL disagree with the sentiments expressed in the ad:

DFL Party Chairman Brian Melendez called a news conference to call the ad “un-American, untruthful and a lie.”

“Minnesota has a chance to take a stand against this misleading and untruthful propaganda,” he said. Referring to controversial ads that ran during the last presidential race, he said, “Minnesota TV stations should pull this ad and send a message that we will not tolerate this kind of ’swift-boating’ anymore.”

To call the opinions expressed by soldiers and their families propaganda is ridiculous on its face. If Mr. Melendez can prove that the people featured in the ad aren’t real or are not really expressing their true feelings, then he may have a case. But no one has stepped forward to offer any proof of that nor can they. It is simply a blatant attempt to silence a point of view the DFL doesn’t agree with, something Hubert Humphrey would have squelched before it got out of whatever committee meeting this idiotic idea was hatched.

John Hinderaker adds this:

So now soldiers who support the war they fought in are “un-American.” Unbelievable. And, by the way, does anyone have any idea what “Swiftboating” is supposed to mean? Is that when a veteran says something that liberals disagree with? Is it when a serviceman publicly describes events that he participated in and witnessed with his own eyes? I’m not sure just what the criteria are, but it seems clear that only veterans and servicemen can be guilty of the dreaded crime of “Swiftboating.”

Read the rest of the Powerline piece as John and the guys work over their favorite target, Nick Coleman, for his outrageous claims about the Progress for America ad.

Although a conservative, I always admired Hubert Humphrey and the DFL. They both represented what is best in American politics; strong, heartfelt principles, decency, and a concern for their communities and the country at large. You could strenuously disagree with their ideas. But you would be hard pressed to criticize their sincerity or their love of country.

Considering what the DFL has turned into in the last 10 years or so - a tired echo of the national Democratic party with little in the way of principle or original ideas - I would think that it would be unrecognizable to Senator Humphrey and the small band of reformers who, in the face of overwhelming opposition, stood up for the equality of the black man so many years ago and pricked the conscience of an entire nation.

UPDATE

Powerline has more today on the PFA ad issue.

And my friend Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker goes me one better on Humphrey - his parents were active in the DFL and they actually knew HHH. Tom gives some wonderful thoughts of his own on a man who I am discovering today inspired a whole helluva lot of conservatives to become interested in politics.

It may be that someday, historians will look back on the “Holy War Against Cartoons” as something of a turning point in the larger conflict between Muslims and the west. This is because at bottom, the controversy has now moved far beyond the original complaints of Muslims against the portrayal of their religious icons in what they consider to be a disrespectful manner and has entered the realm of what shooting wars are usually about - facilitating or preventing change.

The hysteria being whipped up by Muslim religious leaders against the west (and shamelessly exploited by Islamic political leaders) is a glimpse into the soul of Islam itself and how it is a cultural imperative for the guardians of that faith to prevent at all costs this supposed slur from going unanswered. To do so would allow a tiny crack in the wall that separates Islam from the modern world. And like the unbending dogmatic faiths that have ended up in history’s dustbin before, it has always been a tiny crack which proved to be the impetus for cataclysmic change, sweeping away the old order and bring on the new.

Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the wall of a church was much more than the act of a tortured conscience rebelling against the corruptive influence of absolute power by the Roman church over the individual. It was a harbinger of the modern world itself, a clarion call for the needs of an independent mind to triumph over the slavery imposed by history, by dogma, and by a tradition that made some men masters over others thanks to their selection by the Almighty as conduits through which ordinary people might achieve paradise. Luther’s complete rejection of this cultural bête noire started a revolution he neither sought nor, in the end, supported. But his simple act cracked open a door to a brave new world that led directly to a political revolution that created more secular nation-states in Europe that were independent of Rome.

Similarly, near the end of the 20th century, the leaders of Soviet Communism were desperately trying to maintain their total control of a restive populace by trying to limit contact with western values and ideas. Enter Mikail Gorbechev who mistakenly thought he could reform communism by importing a few western concepts about freedom. To Mr. Gorbechev’s amazement, his reform measures rather than tamping down dissent actually let loose a flood of discontents that eventually led to the destruction of the Soviet state as well as his own personal downfall. Gorbechev made the mistake of thinking that he could control the forces of change that, once unshackled, swept the dogmatic Soviet system away.

All it takes is a crack.

This idea has not been lost on the mullahs, the imams, and the holy men who have whipped their flocks into paroxysms of hate at European governments that dare to allow independent newspapers published in their countries to run the offending caricatures. Because for anyone to challenge the authentic word of Allah as it is revealed in the Koran is to invite questions. As history has shown, asking questions is the first step in the destruction of dogmatic faith. And since the enemy of dogma is independent thinking, once the human mind is free to inquire into one aspect of one’s faith, there is nothing to stop it from further enlightenment. For the religious tyrants who seek to control the thinking of their charges, there can be nothing worse.

There has been much debate as to whether or not Islam can co-exist with the idea of a secular society. Our experience in America would seem to answer that question in the affirmative. But America is very different than Europe both in its tolerance for religious differences and its sheer size that tends to allow small minorities to simply disappear into the vastness of its culture. Recent studies show that there may be only 3 million Muslims in America or about 1% of the total population. Compare that to the 7 million Muslims in France that make up more than 10% of its population. I daresay that if there were 30 million Muslims in America instead of 3 million, the influence of Islam on our secular society would be much greater. And our reaction to the current controversy would probably be very different as well.

Despite our protestations that we in the west are not at war with Islam but rather a “perversion” of the religion by radicals, the fact is our enemies have no such illusions. They correctly see the conflict as one between the modern world (as represented by Christianity and Judaism) and the world as it is revealed to them in the Koran. This is why there is so little outrage by the rest of Islam’s 1.3 billion adherents to the barbarities carried out in the name of Allah by the jihadists. While the overwhelming majority of Moslems may in fact fret over the image of Islam as it is presented to the world by the radicals, they nevertheless offer silent assent to their tactics and the war itself. No amount of obfuscation, no apologia can alter that basic fact; worldwide, Moslems are on the side of the jihadists and against the west.

What can be done? Can Islam “reform” in any meaningful way so that it can co-exist with societies whose members don’t buy into the Koran’s view of the world? The answer today has to be a resounding no. Unless and until Islam releases its stranglehold on the minds of its adherents, it will be a threat to the ideas embodied in western civilization that realizes that in order to free the soul, one must first free the mind.

UPDATE

Go immediately to Michelle Malkin’s site and see what the we’re up against. She has a series of outrageous photos of ordinary Muslims in full cry against the concept of free speech as it is practiced in the west

Jeff Goldstein:

Orientalism (in the sense Said envisioned it), in short, has become a convenient de facto intellectual totalitarianism—one that, when combined with our western history of guilt over colonial adventures, manifest destiny, imperialism, cultural hegemony, and our status as the world’s sole hyperpower, provides a powerful liberal (in the non-partisan sense) impulse for granting autonomy, and for promoting a soft cultural relativism.

Unsurprisingly, this whole philosophical movement—insofar as it was based first on essentialism and then, once the group could be defined down that way, to the excommunication of apostates to the official narrative of the essentialist who won the internal battle over defining the official ethnic and political narrative—was destined to end in a will to power. Which is what happens when universalism—even in its softest and most agreed upon form (for instance, it could simply be a contractual, contingent universalism, to satisfy the sensibilities of post modernists)—is discarded in favor of the notion that individualism (the base point at which human universalism as an ideal is at its strongest, the point that Bush has cleverly made over and over again in his speeches) is to be surrendered to collectivism (the point at which the will of the most powerful within the group is always ascendant, and where apostacy, which we might call disagreement, is a legitimate offense), comes to mimic a kind of individualism by united front: “The Arab Street.” “The Jihadist.” Etc. These are types taken as individuals.

I don’t like to be too gushy, but Goldstein is a treasure, a precious resource of clear, logical, and incisive thinking. Reading his entire critique, one is left with a soaring heart and joyous soul. He is Saint George doing battle with the dragons of deconstructionism and relativism. It is a tragedy that his is such a lonely voice for we need an army of Goldsteins to combat those whose prideful spite at the civilization that has nurtured them and given them so much should now go AWOL in her hour of need.