On the occasion of Barack Obama’s acceptance of the honor, it is worth looking back to a little history. Theodore Roosevelt, the first sitting President awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, did not attend the ceremony, but sent a telegram. But TR gave a Nobel lecture in 1910 - two years after leaving office, four years after winning the prize for mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese War, and four years before the world was plunged into The Great War - and his observations on peace are worth recalling, even as he was (at the time) optimistic about the possibilities for then-nascent international institutions:
Let’s Not Celebrate July 4th
It's a matter of principle
It is well known that John Adams had imagined that July second would be the day that future generations of Americans would remember as their day of independence from England, the nation’s birthday, if you will. It was, after all, on the second that it was proclaimed “(T)hat these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
But it was two days later that those gathered in defiance to the King declared a “Declaration of Independency” thereby adopting the famed document that carefully delineated the natural rights by which they claimed independence followed by a list of grievances that would explain why they invoked those rights.
So what are we celebrating? Is it our birth as a nation or are we celebrating the document of Independence? Early celebrations were mixed and a bit confused on that point. Additionally, celebrations on July fourth weren’t that common for a time after the Revolution was over. At first, not many felt a need to celebrate something that had happened and was over. It was time to move on from war in many American’s eyes.
Brokaw Wonders What Israel Can ‘Learn’ From Buchenwald And ‘Their Treatment of Palestinians’
Is Tom Brokaw saying that the Jews are just like the Nazis?
The folks at Powerline realized the implications of an outrageous news clip featuring NBC’s Tom Brokaw conducting an interview with the president. Apparently, this hard news journalist thought he’d get deep and ask a pertinent question about Israel, the Palestinians, and just what it might be that the Jews can learn from Obama’s visit to Buchenwald and how they should treat Palestinians and stuff about Nazis or something.
Seriously, what sort of historical ignorance does it take for someone to ask what Jews can learn about Buchenwald when he has never visited the place before now, never had any intimate or even cultural connection to it, and wasn’t even alive when it was a Nazi terror to the Jewish world? I mean, is Brokaw insinuating that the Jews did not learn anything from their own “visit” to Buchenwald?
June 4th 1942 – Midway, the Forgotten Victory
An Anniversary That Needs More Recognition....
(I first published this essay in here two years ago - and republished it last year with a few upgrades. Since I’m now a Contributing Editor, it gets the Front Page (with a few more upgrades) this year. — Skan)
When early June rolls around each year, June 6th is accorded a great deal of reverence for the well-known events of the Normandy landings of 1944. On the decadal anniversary years, there are major ceremonies and there is extensive news coverage.
Sadly, an equally (at least) important anniversary on June 4th goes largely neglected. On June 4th 1942, an outnumbered American fleet won a staggering upset victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy in the waters near Midway Island. This battle was arguably the single most important military action by the United States during the entire 20th century.
Lives of the Founders
ISI Books has inaugurated a superb new historical series. Each volume is a slim, elegant, crisply-written study of what we might call the Lesser Founders. These are the men who built America but who, obscured by the towering giants of that age, haven’t been properly given their due. In comparison with Washington or Hamilton, few men measure up. But these Lesser Founders were impressive men in their own right, independent of mind, bold of action, mostly self-made, morally and philosophically serious, and they lived in fascinating times.
So far there have been studies of Luther Martin, “forgotten Founder, drunken prophet” according to Mr. Bill Kauffman’s subtitle; of the “incautious man,” Gouverneur Morris; and of that ablest of Washington’s lieutenants, Nathanael Greene.
These books belong in the library of any student of Amerca.
Today’s History Lesson: Lincoln’s Disagreement with Obamaism
Abraham Lincoln stood foursquare against Obama's socialist policies.
Barack Obama’s new way socialism is really just as no way as it’s always been. But, regardless of the central American spirit that Obamaism attempts to defeat, it is proclaimed that he is only interested in fixing America. So, because he is only here to help, Obama is deemed a savior by his acolytes.
Another of Obama’s false fronts is his claim to be “just like” Abraham Lincoln, a facade he wears with relish. The claim is, after all, a perfect cover for his essentially anti-American agenda. What could be more American than the fulfillment of Lincoln’s efforts to free the slaves but a black man being elected to the presidency? The mere fact of his election seems to affirm the better angels of our nature.
But, here I’d like to report a quote that tends to show that Lincoln would not have approved of a president Barack Obama. Not because Obama is a black man, but because he is a socialist.
An Intolerance for Southern Culture
The last discrimination allowable.
In July of 2008 a national hotel chain manager had a man arrested for displaying a Confederate flag in his hotel room window in Concord, North Carolina. It happened that Concord’s Wingate Inn had booked guests that had come to participate in the annual convention for an organization known as the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a group that celebrates family ties to that Confederate service of 145 years ago. To be sure the hotel manager knew full well that every guest would be displaying Confederate flags everywhere they went. On shirts, on book bags, on posters, on their cars these dozens of guests had Confederate flags on display. Little flags, medium sized flags, and big flags filled the hotel.
Yet hotel management called the cops on this one guy.
So, what happened? Why did this hotel manager imagine he had the right to force just this one guy, Basil D. Childress of Kentucky, to pull down his flag while ignoring all the others? Why were the police idiotic enough to actually arrest the non-violent and perfectly compliant hotel guest instead of telling the hotel manager that he was acting foolishly?
President Obama: Are You or Are You Not Going to Normandy for the 65th Anniversary of D-Day?
It\'s a simple question, and the answer should be a no-brainer. So why is your administration stirring up the hornet\'s nest by insisting on \"No Comment\" as its response?
During his incredibly successful [/snark] trip to Europe last week, President Obama rejected an invitation from French president Nicolas Sarkozy to visit Normandy, France — the site of the 1944 D-Day beach landing. The reason given by the Obama administration? They didn’t want to offend the Germans by having the U.S. president visit the site where over 4,400 allied soldiers died in the operation that made victory in Europe against the evil, inhuman Nazi German regime and its allies possible.
They didn’t want to offend the Germans. Amazing. Perhaps we should next cancel all July 4 celebrations out of fear of offending the British? Or perhaps we should cancel Easter out of fear of “offending” the Romans, or cancel all 9/11 remembrances out of fear of “offending” al Qaeda terrorists, or cancel Memorial and Veterans’ days out of fear of “offending” all and sundry who have had the misfortune of throwing themselves on American bayonets over the course of our nearly-223-year history.
Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Absolutely — until you push a little further, and learn anew just what absurdity really is, courtesy — again — of the Obama administration:
Mr Sarkozy’s most senior aide said Mr Obama had agreed to come back in June for the 65th anniversary of the June 6th 1944, D-Day landings. A White House spokesman declined to comment on whether Mr Obama would travel to France in June.
So far, innumerable media outlets have reported that Obama will, in fact, be joining Sarkozy in Normandy on the June 6 anniversary of D-Day — but every one is citing Sarkozy and other European sources, because the Obama administration, for whatever reason, is refusing to confirm or deny whether Obama intends to honor those fallen — and those saved — by the historic D-Day operation.
It’s a simple question; the answer should be a no-brainer, and this topic should be a nonissue. Unfortunately, the indecisive and tin-eared Obama White House is, with its usual confusion, discombobulation, and ineptitude, quickly turning what should have been far less than a molehill into one heck of a forbidding mountain.
L.A.Times Has a Problem with U.S. History
... and the problem is they don't know any of it.
The story in the L. A. Times was supposed to be a story of lighter fare, a less hectic sort of human interest story that is supposed to be interesting, but not earth shacking. It’s all about the trials and tribulations of the folks that re-create the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the dusty streets of Tombstone, Arizona.
Apparently a brash new sheriff is in town (really, I do mean the real local lawman) who has decided that the actors and reenactors that portray the original gunfight participants have gotten out of hand and need to be regulated out of existence, or at least scaled back.
The L.A. Times tale is supposed to be about the back and forth between the new laws written to quash their performances and the actors and reenactors involved. It should be a pretty simple set up, present a few paragraphs to set up the history involved and move into today’s conflagration.
And right off the bat, the L.A. Times can’t get history right.
Talking Down The Economy
Bradley Schiller calls shenanigans on the Obama Administration’s efforts to compare the current economic downturn to the Great Depression. And he brings in the factoids to back up his argument.
I have written this before, but it bears repeating: In December, 2000, George W. Bush accurately warned that the country was entering a recession. He was right, but he got attacked because he wasn’t Mr. Happy and Optimistic in his rhetoric. In the aftermath of 9/11, the former President told us that we would come through despite the calamity that had been inflicted on the country and urged us to continue our normal commercial activities by way of trying to maintain economic activity and prevent the country from falling into a deeper recession. For this, he was attacked for being excessively Mr. Happy and Optimistic. And no one batted an eyelash.
Now, Barack Obama is comparing our current recession to the Great Depression and completely getting away with it. There has been hardly any media pushback concerning his blatant misreading of history.
Think that effective and workable policies will emanate from this misreading of history?
Yeah, me neither.
