5 July 2020
These 4th of July extravaganzas are not what they used to be — which means they are absolutely spectacular!
I’ve experienced only a few memorable 4th of July celebrations in my life — in very contrasting regions. The ones in my home town of New Jersey were nearly non-existent, and those were the days of patriotic fervor in a state that has become an internment camp for the tri-state area.
The 4th in 1976 in Washington, D.C. was memorable beyond compare, even with the Moonies clogging up the streets, until the 4th of 2019 vastly exceeded those fantastic images.
The 4th in Roseville, California, with my two little tykes, when the sprinklers got turned on in the City Park, just before the fireworks display, in pitch black darkness — was perhaps the last of my most endearing souvenirs. Part of the rich endearment of that day was the freedom of movement: on the trip to Kaseberg Park, I’d sat in the short-bed of the 1962 Chevy Apache pickup truck, while my son and daughter were crammed into the cab with Dear Husband. He then pulled them in the little red wagon to the fireworks site.
That town-and-country red wagon was still made in America back then, and there was not the hideous patriotic divide between town and country that has developed since that time.
The Press, or Media, being what is has become in the U.S. of A, is no longer a necessary part of daily life. And it is a loss, one that the nation has been grieving for about 40 years. My dearly remembered Professor Willson of the George Washington University, an ivory tower that, as of this morning, still retains its glorious name (I don’t actually know this fact to be true; Dear Husband has to check the Headlines for me) — that wise Scotsman pretty much summed it up, all in one lecture in the 1970s:
He walked into the classroom, carrying a rolled-up issue of the New York Times, and he stood silently but menacingly in front of the lectern. He then slammed the pitiful piece of wood with the rolled-up shoddy newsprint and announced:
BORING! BORING! BORING!
He stomped out of the chamber of higher learning. That class was over! It was one of his better lectures.
The First Amendment, hugged by so many tin-pot fascists in this nation, when it works to their advantage, is as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That piece of history has pretty much been literally expunged from the public square — most of all by the duly elected “leaders”. There is nonetheless a very large silver lining in the dark clouds that the current propagators of Doom-and-Gloom must create for click-bait.
The First Amendment, in constitutional fact, does apply to the Governors and to the Mayors of America who, as an aggregate, must have missed those classes, or more likely, the Bill of Rights entirely went through one ear and out the other. There’s not much gray matter in between the auditory organs of those dolts.
Thomas Jefferson did write most of the Declaration of Independence. The composition of that magnificent work of rebellion and reasoning was accomplished through writing-by-committee, an activity that gave Mr. Jefferson a hissy fit, especially when certain portions of his writing were revised and edited by other Founding Fathers.
I can easily understand the feeling, since I have blatantly refused to work on any project where my writing, particularly my own thoughts, would be hacked up by inferior minds! I did not know of this juicy tidbit from American history, however, until I was home-schooling my children. My source material was a book I’d purchased, American Scripture, written by the late Pauline Meier.
What a resource that book is!
The making of the Declaration of Independence was a forging of independent and free wills during a time of consequential crisis. We are currently undergoing a similar process in this nation of restless souls, who are ready and willing to exercise their free wills. That book, American Scripture, taught me perhaps more than it taught to my children because they did not have to un-learn convenient myths or fill in the gaps that existed during the public education that I received. And my pre-university schooling was one of respect for the U.S., and for its constitution.
There are, however, always priorities to be made, and the pecking order of the preferences of each teacher. Furthermore, curriculum was much less freely constructed in those days by the instructors. I was, nonetheless, fortunate to have learned infinite wisdom from some very original thinkers in the classrooms of New Jersey.
A few of my most favorite quotes from one U.S. History teacher went something along the lines of:
“George Washington was the master of retreat.”
“The Continental Congress was always trying to get rid of Washington.”
“Washington would show up at the meetings of the Continental Congress, wearing his military uniform from the French and Indian War.”
Short, sweet, and accurate. I learned some writing skills from that teacher who also worked as an auto mechanic. In the classroom, during his lessons, his hands and forearms still bore the traces of motor oil.
We need teachers who know the mechanics of life, and of learning, and how to instill in young and impressionable minds the type of thinking that becomes learning for life. A mind is a very terrible thing to waste. It’s an even more terrible thing to lose.
From what I have observed during the past decades, not merely the past weeks, the minds of many children have been lost, forever. The intolerant idiot-revisionists took over the institutions of home and school, and more than a church to two, in ways that now show themselves as potty-mouthed spectacles on the streets, in the public parks, and, especially, in the Media. The obscenity of their language is matched only by the obscenity of their thoughts, and by their scatological treatment of history and the past.
There is a history to this present history, a trail of affluent apathy from adults who ought to have been in charge of their own progeny.
When I had to endure Life in the Suburbs, the majority of parents there cared not a whit about the smarmy but subversive “multi-cultural” dogma within the incorrect but Politically Correct curriculum, being inculcated by the latest crop of e-school grad schoolteachers, in the malleable minds of their children. When the Bus Schedule changed, however, the Mothers marched in droves upon the Principal’s Office!
Narcissists, out of control and on a bender of power lust, are horrifying sights for anyone to witness, publicly. I’ve seen them, privately. The desire to destroy is the only driver of such a crazed and evil individual, and you’d best get out of his or her way. The hunger for anarchy is a fire that feeds upon itself; and it will, one day, or night, cease to rage when the rage consumes enough of the Enablers who, in their infinite smugness and stupidity, believe they have so much to gain from the destruction of everything else but themselves.
We are witnessing history that cannot be re-written by the liars of the past. This history is being recorded for perpetuity, although inordinate effort is going into making the pictures lie. The social-justice-warriors, once again, mimic Commies. Stalin nearly perfected that Soviet art; the bloody despot would have loved Photoshop! The truth always wins out over air-brushed and staged images.
There are no gulags in the United States, unless you consider such enclaves of despair to be the major cities, imploding after decades of corruption and systematic contempt for the Individual. The commissars of today cannot vanish, at least not on the Internet. We True Americans do not memory-hole the past.
The morning after for those Elected Officials, power addicts on their boundless binge, will last long into the night. That night within those urban pits of lawlessness is a night brought about by people who hate liberty, hate America, hate others, hate even themselves. Let them have at each other. Eat-the-rich is now a cannibal feast.
The brown ink, as presently seen on the parchment of the founding documents of the United States of America, was originally black. In time, the color faded and changed to quite a different shade. In time, the color of cowardice in America will fade, but the memories of vile and violent injustice will stay with us, for a long time, hopefully like indelible ink. American scripture is written with the blood of patriots, also indelible, always unforgettable.
Yesterday, I plowed through translation of the middle portion of Chapter 74. It was a tearful experience for me. Lest anyone think that the fight for individual rights is strictly an American activity, I present these passages from THE DAWN/L’AUBE.
This scene takes place after Guillaume has informed Camille of the barbaric rounding-up of non-French Jews — men, women, and children, living in Paris and the surrounding areas, from 16-17 July 1942. A total of 12,884 Jews was confined in the Velodrome d’hiver in Paris, on the orders of the Nazis, and then deported to the death camps in Poland: first the parents and then, later, the children who had been torn away from their mothers.
The atrocity of the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup took place after 14 juillet, Bastille Day, because the Vichy authorities knew that the appearance of that evil would contradict the “reality” of benevolence they had worked so feverishly to manufacture. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was inconvenient to the Vichy men.
Guillaume looked at Camille menacingly. “There is now no way back for Vichy.”
“It may be that there was never a point of return for these traitors." Camille twisted the rag slowly, deliberately, tightly. “There is no turning back from that truth. The people of France who are aware of this evil, they cannot lie about it. Not now. Not ever.”
As these two French people nodded their heads to each other, they realized that the nation of France would never absolve itself of the sins of Vichy.
The die is cast, Guillaume thought. They were thrown from the very beginning of Vichy. The die was cast from the first drops of French blood that signed the armistice.
Guillaume regarda Camille de façon menaçante. -- Il y a maintenant aucun moyen de revenir en arrière pour Vichy.
— Il se peut qu’il n’était jamais un point de retour pour ces traîtres. Camille tordit le chiffon lentement délibérément, étroitement. Il y a aussi aucun détourner de cette vérité. Les gens de la France qui sont conscients de ce mal, ils ne peuvent mentir concernant cela. Pas maintenant. Pas jamais.
Tandis que ces deux Français firent oui de la tête à l’un l’autre, ils réalisaient que la nation de la France ne s’absoudrait jamais des péchés de Vichy.
Les dés sont jetés, Guillaume pensa. Ils étaient jetés dès le commencement même de Vichy. Le sort en était jeté des premières gouttes de sang français qui ont signé l’armistice.
An apology from an elected leader in France in 1995, during the era of public apologies from politicians that helped them win elections, did not right the wrong. Sometimes the wrong cannot be righted, but it can be confronted and, with the help of the Almighty, teach future citizens about the past of their homeland. The errors of the past only multiply in any nation that lies about itself to its citizens, and in any individual that cons himself about his own cowardice.
I have faith, though, that the French will rise to the occasion of avowing their iniquitous past. Confession is good for the soul, and the French, the true French, possess the kind of soul that made Charles de Gaulle a hero, on more than one occasion.
I even believe that the British newspapers might, one day, re-discover true news. As for America, real news is becoming a new tradition!