May 27, 2008
Rebuilding History On The Fly
Barack Obama has once again proven that, like most liberals, his knowledge of history (even his own family's) is tenuous at best. Of course, nothing will come of this because Obama remains the Magic Man for most of the media. What he says on the campaign trail matters for nothing because in the end he is for change, that magical word which causes the politically ignorant to come out of the woodwork. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, it's the joke only stupid people laugh at.
God help us if this man is elected in November. He is, at best, a socialist with Marxist tendencies. His Presidency will mark the beginning of the end of this nation as a superpower. Mark my words.
May 25, 2008
Matt's Today in History Episode 391- Memorial Day
Today is Memorial Day in the United States, the day we honor those who have given their lives while serving in our nation’s military. There will be a national moment of remembrance observed at 3PM Eastern Standard Time. Over the more than 140 years of its existence, the Memorial Day weekend has also come to represent the beginning of the summer season in the States.
Memorial Day began as Decoration Day in Waterloo, New York in 1866. A decoration day of sorts occurred in Charleston, South Carolina in May 1865 at the site of a former Confederate prison camp, but Waterloo is given most of the credit for creating the day as we now know it. The village was home to General John Murray, who in turn was a friend of General John Logan, the head of a veterans’ organization called the Grand Army of the Republic. Logan pushed for a national observance on May 30th, a date in which no battles took place during the recent Civil War. The day was originally intended to honor those who died during that conflict, but was soon extended to include those who have paid the ultimate price in all the nation’s wars. The term Decoration Day was used because cemeteries were generally adorned with flags and flowers to honor the fallen. Although the term Memorial Day first appeared in print in 1882, it did not come into common use until the time of the Second World War in the 1940’s.
In 1968, the US Congress moved Memorial Day from May 30th to the last Monday in May. This created a three-day weekend, something that critics of the change point to as one of the reasons the holiday seems to be losing its meaning to so many Americans.
History is full of stories of men and women who showed unbelievable courage under fire even though they invited their own deaths in the process. While we rightly recognize these heroes, it is also important to remember those whose names have been lost to history but whose sacrifices were no less honorable. As a result of the Civil War, nearly every American had lost a family member, friend or co-worker. During the Second World War, Americans again felt that ultimate sacrifice close at hand; as my father said of the neighborhood in which he grew up, “There were a lot of gold stars hanging in peoples’ windows.”
The past 60 years have seen the general public in the United States become increasingly distant from the military. Even with combat taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan as I write this, many Americans personally know no one serving in the military. Our armed forces are smaller as a percentage of the population than they have been since the end of the Revolutionary War and a draft has not existed for 35 years. Yet the ultimate sacrifice is made every day by men and women from every walk of American life whose names will only be remembered by those who loved them. While we can disagree about the merits of any war, those who give their lives during it do so, ultimately, for us and for generations not yet born.
In addition to the Americans who have died in service to our nation over the last 230 years, I ask that you also remember today those from around the world who have given all while fighting with us. Most of the nations of Europe and many other countries from around the globe have sacrificed not just to protect their own interests, but to ensure the continuance of our way of life. To them and their fallen go the thanks of a grateful nation.
May 21, 2008
No Truman No More
Take a moment and read this little gem from Joe Lieberman, the last man of principle in the Democratic Party before he left in 2006. I disagree with Senator Lieberman on just about every social issue I can think of, but I admire the hell out of him for his consistent support of this nation, regardless of public opinion. Such men make great nations, even when they disagree.
May 19, 2008
Scotty! I Need Warp Speed in Two Minutes or We're All Dead!
This is for you engineers out there:
And, of course, this is for all the people who manage them:
Tip of the hat to The Lovely Kelli, who brought you the Scottish pup.
May 18, 2008
Define Me
I am listening to the podcast of last night's Coast to Coast AM radio show, wherein Neil Howeis discussing the cycles of history and how American generations tended to act. Like so many people, he describes different generations in broad strokes, and it drives me crazy.
There are certainly societal trends present in every generation. However, these trends vary widely based on location, socio-economic status, race, sex, etc. I believe you could say "black men between 18 and 24 felt a need to actively stand for civil rights legislation in 1964" and be fairly corrent. However, to say "Baby Boomers were all about civil rights in the early 1960's" is wrong. Yes, there were plenty of rich, white people who got behind the movement, but there were also plenty of southern baby boomers who wanted nothing to do with it.
I believe defining generations began with the Boomers, but I could be wrong. What we see portrayed in the media today is that the average Boomer spent the 60's protesting this and that while attending college on mom and dad's dime. The people who were able to do this were a very small minority. Millions of the men and women who would later be classified as Boomers spent the 60's raising children, trying to make the house payment and put dinner on the table. Millions more went to Vietnam, not because they wanted to, but they understood the sacrifices necessary when your nation calls. To call even a quarter of Baby Boomers hippies does a disservice to the vast majority who weren't.
Each American generation has had to face a challenge of some sort. How we responded depends on many things, including the moral fabric of the society at the time and how strong the nation's sense of community was. The generation that fought World War II had lived through the Great Depression and so they understood common sacrifice. When the war came, helping to secure victory was almost always a given. My father, whose older brothers were in that war (dad's war would come later in Korea), said to me once, "No one imagined not going. You were called up and you went."
I guess it all goes back to our character as Americans: many of us like things all neatly stacked in a clearly-labeled box. But generations are messy, confusing things full of people who weren't average and who didn't follow trends. And that's a wonderful thing.
May 14, 2008
The Turn
I am changing. It started with my accident in January, after which I reached a new low of cynicism. Mostly, I became cynical about God and the Church. They're easy targets today; just listen to any TV or radio broadcast and you will see anyone religious cast as a whacko or a child molester. The smart people, the "brights" as they call themselves, know there is no God and that religion is, as Marx proclaimed, an opiate for the masses. In the early months of this year, I was moving towards that belief as well.
Then something happened---I had a second seizure. I asked my best friend Peter, who was on the phone with me when it occurred, if I said anything unusual. I also asked Kelli and my sister-in-law Erica, who drove us to the hospital. Erica said I was like a four-year old, but I didn't say anything strange. I asked them this question because after I regained my grasp on consciousness, I remembered two things----a terrible smell and a feeling of dread so strong that I could think of nothing else for three or four days.
I have since learned that many seizure victims experience these feelings as a result of the "lightning storm" going on in our heads. But the feeling was so real, so tangible, that if you told me I had gone somewhere terrible in those few minutes I was out, I would believe you. I went back to work a week later, but the strange feeling would not leave my mind.
For the past 15 years I have had a feeling of impending danger with regard to our society. I don't know if the oncoming disaster will be economic, or a natural disaster, or a devastating war. You may think I'm crazy, but I believe my feeling of dread was a manifestation of that time to come. It was the darkest thing I have ever felt. I can still recall it and it scares me.
It was about this time I began reflecting on my relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. My disillusion truly began in my Senior year during a meeting with Father Mike Hilderbrand, the guidance "counselor" at Providence High School in Clarksville. I told Father Mike of my intention to join the Navy after high school, a move that was unusual in a school where 95% of the graduates attend college. He said (this is a direct quote) that I would not like the "Mickey Mouse antics" that go on in the Navy. You mean the antics of history's greatest force afloat, the force that acts as this nation's first line of defense? Or do you mean the antics of thousands of young men and women who swear before God to uphold the Constitution with their lives if necessary, the same Constitution which allows men like Father Mike to practice their faith without persecution? I simply told this "counselor": "This meeting is over" and walked out. I never talked to him again. That was 20 years ago. I discovered recently that Fr. Mike's brother was a career naval officer. Bitterness or jealously, perhaps? Survey says--- YES.
I have seen Father Mike many times since 1988 and each time he has purposely avoided speaking to me despite my willingness to at least be civil. This man who has lived most of his adult life in a high school has the emotional maturity of a 10 year-old girl who's angry at her best friend. If this is the best the Catholic Church can produce, I reasoned, I'm not sure I want to be a part of it. I had the same thought when the sexual abuse scandal began rocking the Church some years later. Bishops moved priests from one parish to another instead of turning them over to civil authorities. Would they hide a bank robber? This crime is much worse, yet it was covered up by men who are supposed to lead by example and protect the most innocent. Even though I still went through the motions, my heart was leaving the Church.
Very recently, I had a revelation. It was not like a jolt of energy, but rather a crescendo of reason dropped on me from somewhere else. Put simply, the sins and follies of men are NOT the Catholic Church. Father Mike and child molesting priests do not represent the standards of the church. Nor do I. The Church as an entity is a set of beliefs and traditions passed down to us in an unbroken line from Saint Peter. Those bedrock beliefs and the celebration of the Mass and other traditions are an unmovable foundation nearly two thousand years old. Everything else is built on that. Any organization led by human beings will have flaws because we are prone to temptation and sin. The Roman Catholic Church is no exception; anyone with a grasp of European history can list many sadistic, cruel and evil acts done in the name of the Church.
But here is the important truth, the one that we must rely on in dark times: THE FOUNDATION REMAINS. Catholics have been given a beautiful gift, a faith passed down from one generation to the next, built on that rock that is the fundamental beliefs of Catholicism. That is what I should be concentrating on, not the actions of fools and men with emotional problems. My mom has a saying that expresses this another way: Jesus is still on the throne.
This post may shock those of you who talk to me regularly. I will not preach to you, or lecture you, or anything like that. My study is in my heart and there are many unanswered questions for which I need answers.