Author: bobreagan13

Today we look back hundred years. On this August 2, 1923, the 30th President of the United States Calvin Coolidge was sworn into office at 2:43 AM. He was sworn in by his father, a justice of the peace in Plymouth, Vermont. Coolidge succeeded Warren G. Harding, who had died while on a trip in California. The ceremony took place in Coolidge’s father’s farmhouse, where the room was illuminated only by kerosene lamps. In those days, long before the Internet and satellites, even rural telephone and electricity service did not exist. News of Harding’s demise had to be transmitted by telegraph to the village of Plymouth Notch and delivered by messenger to the house. It is a reminder of how far technology has brought this country, and the world, in the past century. Automobiles were not ubiquitous. Functional aircraft were barely 20 years old and scheduled airlines available for the general public, or even government officials, did not exist. Running water, and sewage were installed only in urban areas, and not all of them. Newspapers and other documents, duplicated by technology whose basis was over 500 years old, was the only mass media, although broadcast radio stations had been established in a few cities by 1923. Coolidge was elected in his own right in 1924 and served until March 4, 1929. He famously stated in a note that he did not “choose to run for president” in 1928. He was known as “silent Cal” and his presidency was probably the most low-key tenure seen in the 20th century. Lots of changes in 100 years.

On another note regarding technological achievements, and those that are proposed, it is reported that Italy has tentatively approved a suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina to connect Calabria (the toe of the boot) with Sicily. That bridge would have a 2-mile-long main span that would be the longest in the world. It would be, of course, subjected to high winds and seas around the 1,400 foot towers planted in the channel.

That Strait has been known to be treacherous because of the current and rocks on the Calabrian shore. Ancient myths related the story of Scylla and Charybdis who guarded the Strait were a peril to sailors. Scylla had been a beautiful sea nymph who was changed into a monster by Circe, the jealous suitor of a certain demigod in love with the nymph. She became a monster with six dog-heads on the end of snakelike appendages. She would snatch and devour sailors from their ships when they passed too close. Charybdis was a whirlpool that would sink a ship drawn into its vortex. Homer’s Odyssey related how Odysseus elected avoid Charybdis to save his entire ship at the cost of losing six sailors to Scylla’s maw. Aeneas avoided the peril by sailing around Sicily to Rome. Scylla and Charybdis have become a metaphor for difficult choices, along with the “Hobson’s choice” and “between a rock and a hard place.”

Perhaps the Italians should take twice about their bridge. The rock that Scylla became can be easily avoided these days, and modern watercraft used to ferry people and vehicles can resist the currents. The engineering and logistical problems might result in a bridge too far. Nevertheless, in the land that gave us Da Vinci, Marconi, and Fermi great feats of technology and engineering are possible.

Today, July 14 is observed in France, and elsewhere, as a holiday. Here in the United States we call it “Bastille Day” I understand in France they simply referred to as 14 July. Like so many other events in France, especially after the late 18th Century, the day has a checkered history there.

That day is popularly regarded as the onset of the French Revolution in which the monarchy of the old regime was overthrown and a republic established. Much like the Russian Revolution of 1917, however, this one quickly got out of hand. It began as a movement to establish a limited monarchy in which the people, here meaning the Third Estate which primarily were the bourgeois — middle-class merchant, tradesmen and artisans — would have the primary say in governance of the nation. Because of the power vacuum created, the movement deteriorated into the mob rule known as the Reign of Terror. King Louis XVI and his wife were executed along with numerous aristocrats and some of the senior clergy. After that Terror burned itself out, the subsequent governments frequently changed a number of times. For the next 150 years, France had a restored monarchy, two Empires, and five republics — they are in the Fifth Republic— as forms of government. Accordingly, any observance of the day the Bastille fell, brings forth different sentiments among the French.

Not so in America. Though we have had our share of tribulations and internal controversies, the Republic established here the same year the Bastille fell has survived its essential form. To the extent that it symbolizes liberty and the end of despotism, Bastille Day is one of our holidays too.

One aristocrat who survived, and took an important role in Revolution, and later French governments, was none other than Marquis the Lafayette, who earlier had supported and aided the American war of independence from Great Britain. Shortly after the Bastille fell, Lafayette obtained a one pound, three ounce wrought iron key to the demolished fortress. He entrusted the key to Thomas Paine, who played a part in both the American and French Revolutions. Paine brought the key to America and in the late summer of 1790 it was presented to the new President of the United States, George Washington. Upon leaving the Presidency in 1797, Washington brought the key to his home at Mount Vernon where the key to the Bastille remains displayed to this day.

“In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”
    — Justice Harry Blackmun, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) concurring and dissenting in part.

“There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.”
    — Justice John Marshall Harlan, Plessy v. Ferguson,(1896), dissenting

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
    — Chief Justice John Roberts, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007) 

The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, But It Bends Toward Justice.
    — Attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr, and others

This Independence Day will be celebrated as it has for the past 247 years, but it is especially significant this year. This is thanks to the United States Supreme Court for re-affirming several of the core principles of the Declaration of Independence as ensconced in law by our Constitution. This past week the Court re-affirmed our freedom of speech and expression, or more particularly, freedom not to speak or express a viewpoint; it ruled that the President of the United States is not a dictator who can give away tax money; that is, private property lawfully collected for public purposes; and, most momentously, ended a patently racist policy that had continued to exist despite the end of legal segregation and enactment of laws against racial discrimination.

There are many talking heads who say that we have “systemic” or “institutional” racism in this country. If one believes that, then he must agree that a truly “systemic” example of racism is the so-called affirmative action programs that many institutions of higher learning (and indeed government agencies and many private businesses) use in an attempt to remedy past discrimination on the basis of race. Programs that do currently penalize some individuals on the basis of their race or skin color do no favors to those such programs are supposed to help. Affirmative Action programs have existed for both virtue-signaling, and for political purposes. As the famous Watergate era informant said: “Follow the money.” There is a lot of money to be made in race-baiting.

In the ruling and opinion announced in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and a companion case Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina (June 29, 2023), the Supreme Court abolished the use of race as a basis for choosing who will be admitted to colleges and universities. This result affirmed the ideals of our Declaration of Independence and requirements of our Constitution.

In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts affirmed his earlier view quoted above, vindicated Justice Harlan, and repudiated Justice Blackmun. The majority opinion and the concurrences further repudiated the concept of collectivism based on an individual’s immutable physical properties.

Among the observations Chief Justice Roberts made in his majority opinion is that “Harvard’s admissions process rest on the pernicious stereotype that ‘a black student can usually bring something that a white student cannot offer.’ [citations omitted] UNC is much the same. It argues that race in itself ‘says something about who you are.” Roberts goes on to approvingly quote a 1995 opinion ‘One of the principal reasons race is treated as a forbidden classification is that it demeans the dignity and worth of a person to be judged by ancestry instead of by his or her own merit and essential qualities.’ But when a university admits students ‘on the basis of race, it engages in the offensive and demeaning assumption that [students] of a particular race, because of their race, think alike.’”

It should be obvious to anyone who keeps up with current events and reads/sees/hears media — especially outside their bubble — that such a stereotype is untrue. Justice Clarence Thomas is the prime example here. (His concurrence, albeit lengthy, is worth a read.) But economists like Thomas Sowell and the late Walter Williams, educators Ward Connerly and Marva Collins, and commentators Jason Riley and Shelby Steele when contrasted with the opinions of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibrim X. Kendi, certainly belie any notion that skin color is determinative of an individual’s ideas and attitudes.

Racism, properly defined, is anathema to a free society. Here it is worth quoting parts of a 1963 essay by Ayn Rand written in the middle of the civil rights movement of that era.

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

The Court’s opinion was specific to college admission and arguably not precedent for other contexts such as hiring in private industry. Nevertheless, the color-blind principle appears to be applicable there, particularly where a private firm receives government or state largesse, but that is a controversy and case for another time. But in this case, the arc has indeed bent toward justice. It is indeed a happy Independence Day

Note: the July 2, 2023 issue of The Wall Street Journal included the commentary “Is Your Company’s DEI Program Lawful” Austin, Texas lawyer Michael Toth concludes, in view of these Students for Fair Admissions cases’ application of Title VI, probably not. DEI will DIE — ignominiously.

It’s been over a quarter of a century since the Dallas Cowboys were in the Super Bowl — or even in an NFC Championship game. Why? Well, I’ll leave that to real sports fans and pundits, of which I am not.

Dallas, however, has a presence in this year’s Super Bowl LVII (57). The Kansas City Chiefs are in and may well win. Many of us will remember the Chiefs all too short sojourn here in 1960 – 1962 as the Dallas Texans in the fledgling American Football League (now the American Conference of the National Football League. Lamar Hunt, son of the legendary oilman H. L. Hunt, frustrated in efforts to land an NFL franchise for his city, helped start a rival league and formed his own team, the Texans. The NFL, at that time consisting of only 12 teams (most of which were in the Northeast), awakened and saw the expansion potential. Hunt’s rival oil baron Clint Murchison Jr obtained an expansion franchise for his Dallas Cowboys.

Although the Texans won the AFC championship in 1962, Hunt saw writing on the wall. At the time, Dallas’ fanbase could not support two professional football teams. One had to go. The Cowboys, though the team did not win a single game in its first season, was in the older, established league, and had outstripped the Texans for attendance. Hunt moved the team to Kansas City where he faced no rival for fans. Since the moniker “Texans” would have been absurd there, the team became the Chiefs.

Lanar Hunt died in 2006. But his family, most of whom live in Dallas, still owns the Chiefs, and his son Clark is the team’s Chief Executive Officer.

In a way, Dallas is in the Super Bowl this year.

For more, see: How The Dallas Texans Became The Kansas City Chiefs | Texas Standard

Though it has not been commemorated — or even noticed by most Americans — there is a steadily diminishing number among us that might regard January 27 of fifty years ago a day of infamy. On that day in 1973, the United States formally ended its involvement in the Vietnam War with an accord signed in Paris. Many regarded that end, and some still do, as an American military defeat — we turned tail and ran, the first time in history. While it took two years for the Communist North Vietnam to consolidate its victory and unify the country under its rule, it was inevitable once the U.S. ended its involvement.

Was it a defeat for America? Like so many things, it depends on the definition. Defeat in war implies surrender, occupation by the enemy, reparations, regime change, and other humiliations. France under Napoleon was defeated; Germany and Japan certainly were defeated in World War II. America suffered none of these catastrophes. In this country the domestic fury and civil strife over its military intervention to support the South Vietnam regime was quickly abated. America focused on its domestic issues for the rest of the decade. The only serious foreign scrape was the Desert One debacle when President Carter attempted to rescue the hostages from the U. S. Embassy in Iran, totally unrelated to the Vietnam situation.

Assessment of whether ending the U. S. involvement was a defeat depends on the context. The Vietnam War occurred in the middle of the Cold War. The raison d’etre for American involvement in Vietnam was to halt the spread of Soviet Communism that was seen to be a threat to world peace and freedom in the developing countries — the Third World, as it was termed. After World War II the USSR and its Comintern actively sought world domination — Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev famously declared “we will bury you” to the United States and its allies. Khrushchev appeared to be serious. Cuba — 90 miles from Florida — became a Soviet client state under Fidel Castro in 1959 and soon threatened the U. S. with intermediate-range missiles. Soviet sponsored aggression in the Third World, thinly disguised as “liberation” movements, was on the march. Eastern European nations, China, and North Korea were client states of the Soviets. A decade before American full-scale involvement in Vietnam, the United States, sanctioned by the United Nations, took the lead in the effort to stop Communist aggression in Korea. Though it became a stalemate, to the extent that intervention prevented the North Korean takeover of the South it was successful. Successive administrations in Washington believed a similar result in Vietnam was possible.

Nineteenth Century Prussian soldier and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote a treatise On War (Vom Kriege in German) in which he theorized war is “a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.” In other words, war is one means to achieve a political end. The North Vietnamese military commander Vo Nguyen Giap and his political leader Ho Chi Minh’s aim was unification of Vietnam under a Communist regime as a client of the Soviet Union. The United States and its allies’ policy was to curtail the global spread of Soviet influence.

After the American withdrawal, which was precipitated mostly by domestic politics, the South Vietnamese were not able to fend for themselves for long. Thus, Giap and Ho achieved their policy aims.

After the normalization of the United States’ diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the 1990s, the late Senator (and one-time Presidential candidate) John McCain met with General Giap. McCain, who had been a prisoner of war in the North, reportedly told Giap that the North and its Viet Cong guerilla allies never defeated the U. S. Military in battle. Giap agreed that was true, but irrelevant. In succinct words: “So what?”

Clausewitz’s theory works both ways. The overarching containment policy of the U.S. and the West in the 1980s was continued “with other means.” These means were the economic, cultural, and moral forces led by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the courage of Polish patriot Lech Walensa and many others. November 1989 saw the fall of the Berlin wall. Two years later the hammer and sickle was hauled down from the Kremlin signaling that the USSR was no more. Vo Nguyen Giap had won his battle, but Soviet Communism ultimately lost the global war. To the extent America might have lost in Vietnam, we may also respond “So what?”

Notes

— Clausewitz’s expanded view has been translated from the German as “that war is nothing more than a continuation of the political process by applying other means. By applying other means we simultaneously assert that the political process does not end with the conclusion of the war or is being transformed into something entirely different, but that it continues to exist and proceed in its essence, regardless of the means, it might make use of.” See On War, translated and edited by M. Howard and P. Paret, Princeton University Press (1984 ed.) Clausewitz’s views have not been unchallenged.
— After the Soviet Union collapsed, Dallas’s eccentric restauranteur Harvey Gough obtained a statue of Vladimir Lenin during a visit to Russia and placed it in front of his hamburger restaurant on Lovers Lane inscribed with the words “America Won” on its base.
— Full disclosure. This writer served in the United States Army during the height of the Vietnam war. The vagaries of military personnel assignment sent me to Korea and a stateside post, not Vietnam. In that sense, I am not a “Vietnam veteran” though I could have been.

If Elvis were still with us, he would be 88 years old today. I remember well the day his death was announced on the radio. He was only 42 at the time he died in his Memphis, Tennessee mansion known as Graceland. While having been through and to Memphis several times, I have never visited Graceland, which became and still is a tourist spot.

This past November, however, on our way to the Smoky Mountains in western North Carolina, we spent the night in Tupelo, Mississippi, the place where Elvis was born. The next day on our way out we visited Elvis’ birth home in Tupelo. That house, where his mother actually gave birth, is as modest as Graceland is reported to be opulent. Excluding the front porch, the Tupelo house exterior measurements are about 16 x 21 feet, the size of an average middle-class living room today. Modest though it was, Elvis’ father was unable to repay the loan, and it was foreclosed only a few years after he was born. The family lived in various places in Tupelo until they moved to Memphis when Elvis was 13. The rest, of course, is history.

Elvis’ house is in a park located at 306 Elvis Presley Drive. The park has a museum dedicated to Elvis’s memory, as well as the church building where the family attended and where he sang in the choir as a child.

Except as a pilgrimage by the dedicated Elvis fan (which I am not, particularly) the visit is probably not worth a special trip. But when passing through or otherwise being in Tupelo, it would be an interesting visit to show that humble beginnings in our country do not foreclose the possibility of fame and fortune. Also, during his career, especially at the beginning stages, his “cultural appropriation” of what was called Rhythm & Blues, or “race music” probably was instrumental in the civil rights movement that began in the 1950s.

Elvis Birthplace

Church

Note: During my high school years, I, and at least one of my readers, worked a part time job at the Circle Theater, a neighborhood cinema in Dallas (the building still exists, but hasn’t been a film venue for several decades). One of our tasks was to change the marquee when a new movie was to be showing. That required putting up a ladder and spelling the name of the show and star with individual 10″ letters on a lighted background above the theater entrance. When one of Elvis’ films was to be shown, I complained to the manager that there were not enough of the right letters in stock to spell the name of the film and “Elvis Presley” on both sides of the marquee. The manager said to just use “ELVIS” — there is no one around who will not know who he is. Of course, the manager was right – celebrity rules; then and now.

Thought it was worthwhile to pass this on.

Our next President? Perhaps.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in his second-term inaugural address, Jan. 3:

“It is often said that our federalist constitutional system—with 50 states able to pursue their own unique policies—represents a laboratory of democracy. Well, these last few years have witnessed a great test of governing philosophies as many jurisdictions pursued a much different path than we have pursued here in the state of Florida. The policies pursued by these states have sparked a mass exodus of productive Americans from these jurisdictions—with Florida serving as the most desired destination, a promised land of sanity.

“Many of these cities and states have embraced faddish ideology at the expense of enduring principles. They have harmed public safety by coddling criminals and attacking law enforcement. They have imposed unreasonable burdens on taxpayers to finance unfathomable levels of public spending. They have harmed education by subordinating the interests of students and parents to partisan interest groups. They have imposed medical authoritarianism in the guise of pandemic mandates and restrictions that lack a scientific basis.

“This bizarre, but prevalent, ideology that permeates these policy measures purports to act in the name of justice for the marginalized, but it frowns upon American institutions, it rejects merit and achievement, and it advocates identity essentialism.

“We reject this woke ideology. We seek normalcy, not philosophical lunacy! We will not allow reality, facts, and truth to become optional. We will never surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die!

“Now Florida’s success has been made more difficult by the floundering federal establishment in Washington, D.C.

“The federal government has gone on an inflationary spending binge that has left our nation weaker and our citizens poorer, it has enacted pandemic restrictions and mandates—based more on ideology and politics than on sound science—and this has eroded freedom and stunted commerce.

“It has recklessly facilitated open borders: making a mockery of the rule of law, allowing massive amounts of narcotics to infest our states, importing criminal aliens, and green-lighting the flow of millions of illegal aliens into our country, burdening communities and taxpayers throughout the land.

“It has imposed an energy policy that has crippled our nation’s domestic production, causing energy to cost more for our citizens and eroding our nation’s energy security, and, in the process, our national security.

“It wields its authority through a sprawling, unaccountable and out-of-touch bureaucracy that does not act on behalf of us, but instead looms over us and imposes its will upon us.

“The results of this have been predictably dismal. This has caused many to be pessimistic about the country’s future. Some say that failure is inevitable.

“Florida is proof positive that We the People are not destined for failure. Decline is a choice. Success is attainable. And freedom is worth fighting for.”

Appeared in the January 5, 2023, print edition of the Wall Street Journal ‘Notable & Quotable: Gov. Ron DeSantis’, and elsewhere.

By the way, today is also Christmas to our Eastern Orthodox Christian (Greek, Russian, Serbian, etc.) brothers and sisters.

Beginning with Thanksgiving every year, there are numerous parties and parades in anticipation of Christmas. Recently many, if not most, of them have been officially designated by the rather sterile “holiday” appellation. Nevertheless, it remains the reason for these events is the festivities traditionally surrounding the anticipation and celebration of Christmas Day.

The period beginning with Thanksgiving and extending through New Year’s Day, or for some, Twelfth Night, is often referred to generically as the holiday season. Christmas, its centerpiece, has its origin in the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, and thus gave the season its name. During this time, however, there occur the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah, which is not a major feast for Jews; and Kwanzaa, which is a recent innovation, ostensibly a sub-Saharan African tradition. Greek, Russian, and other Orthodox Christian denominations actually celebrate Christmas on January 7.

Now I have no trouble with honoring other traditions during this period, but the focus and the real reason there are such celebrations is Christmas, the commemoration of the birth of arguably the most influential man in history. The number of those who adhere to the Christian tradition, whether devout or nominal, exceeds that of every other.

The politically correct crowd seems to believe that terming the season and the parties and the parades as “Christmas” excludes and dishonors the other traditions. Erecting Christmas scenes such as the Nativity in public places is feared as endorsement of a particular religion by government. This notion is poppycock.

Christmas began as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ sometime in the early Christian era. No one knows for sure the day, or even the time of year when the Nativity actually occurred. Around the winter solstice in December is as good a time as any. Christianity took root primarily in Europe. The Western Hemisphere, Australia, and New Zealand after the 16th century became essentially a greater Europe. The European traditions, including those important to celebration of the Christian religion traveled with the European, primarily British, French, and Iberian settlers. Thus, the dominant culture in those areas included Christian practices and traditions. If it were not of this origin, it is doubtful there would be a “holiday” season as significant as it is.

Christmas has evolved into being as much a secular holiday as a religious one. Gift giving, trees, poinsettas, lights, holly berries, egg nog, and so forth are as much a part of the time as church services, creches, and Advent wreathes. Carols are the great crossover between the religious and secular. The great oratorios of Handel and Bach, as well as their less ambitious pieces, are enjoyed by the devout and irreligious alike.

Five years ago this past week there was an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News titled “This atheist loves Christmas, so stop the war on my favorite holiday.” In that column, Zachary Moore says “because I love Christmas so much … Squabbling over the public square diminishes my enjoyment of the season.” Moore goes on to propose that “Christmas [should] henceforth be treated as a secular holiday open to the interpretation and enjoyment of all. Christians are welcome to revel in its theological implications, while atheists and others may pick and choose whatever resonates with their own particular values. The Christmas tree in the square will be a malleable and inclusive symbol, able to support the weight of Magi, Menorah and Muhammad, as well as any other marginalized culture that would appreciate a little bit of fun in the darkness of winter (including we joyless atheists),” his parenthetical being a welcome tongue-in-cheek.

So, like this sensible unbeliever, let us all cut out the nonsense, politically correct or not. Christmas should not be a political or culture-war football, but for all a joyous time of some respite from the slings and arrows of daily life, whatever their religious or political persuasion.

I close with:

Craciun fericit

Wesolych Swiat

Linksmu Kaledu

Hyvää Joulua

Sretan Božic

Veselé Vánoce

Frohelich Weihnachten

Buon Natale

Joueux Noel

¡Feliz Navidad! (If you live in Texas and don’t know what this means, you reside in a cave.)

(In other words, Merry Christmas (to all and to all a good night.)

This is an updated version of an essay published five years ago.

In the American Heritage history of World War II, C. L. Sulzberger, New York Times columnist (and member of the family that owns that newspaper) wrote this.

“Remember him, for he saved all of you: pudgy and not very large but somehow massive and indomitable; baby faced, with snub-nosed, square chin, rheumy eyes on occasion given to tears: a thwarted actor’s taste for clothes that would have looked ridiculous on a less splendid man… .He fancied a painting, at which he was good, writing at which he was excellent, and oratory, at which he was magnificent….

“This was the man, bloodied at Omdurman [an 1898 battle in Sudan] and Cuba, among the Pathans and Boers, long before most of those he led were even born, who guided Britain to victory in World War II — and, one might add, who was the guiding spirit for the whole free world. For had Britain succumbed, as it had ever logical reason to do so in 1940, probably no successful coalition could have been formed.”

Sulzberger, of course, was lauding Winston Churchill, who was born on this day 148 years ago. Churchill took over as prime minister of Great Britain when Hitler’s Germany had run roughshod over all the opposition on the European continent and was threatening that island nation. In spite of a fierce air war, in which the Royal Air Force, inspired by Churchill’s indomitable spirit, managed to shoot down and destroy more than five times the number of warplanes it lost to Herman Goering’s Luftwaffe and effectively won the Battle of Britain. After it became clear that an amphibious invasion was not going to work, Hitler turned to terror bombing of England cities and what became known as the Blitz. Throughout all of this, and for the next four years, Churchill remained steadfast and defiant. His grit led Britain and its empire, along with American allies, to total victory over the Nazi state.

In hindsight, and most historians appear to agree, had Great Britain made peace with Hitler in 1940 when it seemed prudent to do so, Nazi Germany would have won, as it almost did anyway.

On this November 30, fifty-eight years after his death, it is appropriate to commemorate Winston Churchill’s birthday. He was the man of the 20th century. Where Hitler attempted to destroy Western Civilization, Churchill saved it.

Note: Churchill was Prime Minister from May 1940 until July 1945. After Germany surrendered in May 1945, he called an election, but his party was defeated. He again became PM in 1951 and was Queen Elizabeth’s first (of 17) Prime Minister when she succeeded to the throne the next year upon the death of her father King George VI.

Wednesday October 12 commemorates the day Christopher Columbus and his ships landed on an island in the Bahamas in the year 1492 thus discovering what came to be known as the Americas. (It is celebrated as a holiday on Monday, to give those who observe it a three-day weekend.)

In recent times this holiday, and Columbus himself, have been held in disrepute by some, all of whom are on the political left, as a celebration of imperialism and colonialism. This is but one of the attempts of virtue-signaling by leftists and their fellow-travelers in the Democratic Party in an attempt to coalesce a sufficient number of supposedly aggrieved groups to advance candidates who would support insane socialist schemes.

Columbus’s voyages were indeed the advent of exploration and colonial settlement whose effect was to spread Western Civilization throughout the world. On balance, this led to immense benefit, if not always to the then indigenous populations of the European colonies, certainly to their descendants.

This writer posted essays in years past, the most recent being critical of the Dallas City Council’s re-designation of Columbus Day as “Indigenous Peoples Day” as misplaced.

(This post will not belabor the previous essays. For those interested, follow the links at the end of this post.)

The 2021 essay mentioned Michael Musmanno, a U.S. Navy officer, lawyer, and jurist, who was instrumental during the 1930s in persuading the Franklin Roosevelt Administration to make Columbus Day a federal holiday so as to recognize the contributions of Italian-Americans. Musmanno was remarkably accomplished. He wrote numerous books and judicial opinions. In one book he argued that Columbus was the first European to discover the Americas, not the Vikings. He served in both World Wars and was a military governor in Italy after the Mussolini government surrendered. He also presided over one of the courts trying Nazi war crimes perpetrators in Nuremberg. Elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1951, Musmanno served there until his death in 1968. Both as a judge, politician, and private citizen, Musmanno was a colorful character, often quite the contrarian. He wrote a record number of dissenting opinions during his 17 years as a Justice on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Some much to the annoyance of his colleagues.

Musmanno was an intensely devout Christian. He attended Mount Saint Peter Catholic Church, founded by Italian immigrants near Pittsburgh, for most of his life. While he supported the First Amendment separation of church and state, he believed that public expression of religious beliefs should also be protected. The last of his many dissenting opinions was against overturning an attempted rape conviction in a case in which the court ruled that the trial judge instructed the jury improperly because the judge told the jury that they should decide the case on their consciences. Musmanno quoted from the record that the judge “particularly stated: ‘I’m not telling you what kind of verdict to bring in,’ and he then added, ‘but I’m telling you to stand up like men and women and do what you should do before your God to whom you will answer some day whether you answer to this court or not.’”

He wrote in his dissent “I was afraid it would come to this. It is becoming the fashion to make light of religious invocation. Books are being published asking whether God is dead. Well, God is not dead, and judges who criticize the invocation of Divine Assistance had better begin preparing a brief to use when they stand themselves at the Eternal Bar of Justice on Judgment Day.” Justice Musmanno, concluding his dissent, stated: “I am perfectly willing to take my chances with [the trial judge] at the gates of Saint Peter and answer on our ‘voir dire’ that we were always willing to invoke the name of the Lord in seeking counsel in rendering a grave decision on earth, which I believe the one in this case to be. — Miserere nobis Omnipotens Deus!” (Commonwealth v. Hilton, 432 Pa. 11 at 42 (1968)).

Justice Musmanno died the following day, October 12, 1968, Columbus Day, and presumably that voir dire took place.

Michael Musmanno was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. See his epitaph Here:
https://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/mamusman.htm

Prior Columbus Day posts.

Indigenous or Insane

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The 525th Columbus Day

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Celebrate Columbus Day

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Enormously Different

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