President Obama's semirenaming of this magnificent mountain (actually one of the most massive in the world, though its height above sea level would be negligible in the Himalayas) (my comments also consider, doubtfully,that the President has the authority to do this - one must be careful with someone as disdainful of the rule of law as he is) is a good example of his disregard, both in reasoning and in personal preference, for the positive aspects of America's history. I've participated in and followed mountain climbing and I've very often heard McKinley called Denali with no need for clarification. The name Denali has not been suppressed or shown any measure of disrespect. The President's action is an obvious poke at America for taking possession of Alaska. Ok, lets consider whether America deserves that( that it does, the President takes for granted).
The President ignores several salient facts: William McKinley was a Union combat veteran of the Civil War, which, aside from ending slavery, also traumatized McKinley. He sent American troops into the Spanish -American war with the greatest reluctance, only after intense public pressure, because he had been permanently scarred by what he saw on Civil War battlefields. He had, nevertheless, done his duty on those fields and the Civil War guaranteed a united and powerful country by the 20th century which was indispensable in resisting German, Japanese and Soviet imperialism. In the end the only force which prevented the entire world from going totalitarian in the 1900's was the power of the united United States .
Would Russia have denied or "reacquired" Alaska to or from a fragmented and conflict ridden North America, should McKinley and his Union compatriots have failed to reunite our country and would it have also taken Canada? Of course it would have; who could have stopped it pray? And what, I ask you, would have been the fate of Athabascans, Alaskan natives from whose language the name "Denali" is derived, once they were engulfed by the "North American SSR". It would have been wholly at the whims of comrades Dzerzhinsky and Stalin (ask the Crimean Tatars how that turned out for them). The treatment of the inhabitants of North America whom the Europeans and then Americans and Canadians encountered was execrable but both the U.S. and Canada have gone a long way toward owning up to their wrongs and trying to make up for them. Would the Soviets have been capable of such introspective regret? Probably not; when did they ever enact retrospective justice for the monstrous wrongs they did (aside from "rehabilitating" a few of their dead comrades in mass oppression) ? Bottom line for Alaska? The unshirted hell endured by McKinley and his fellows from 1861-1865 ensured that Alaska would not become subject to the tender mercies of the NKVD, the KGB and the inspired "Five Year Plans".
William McKinley eventually gave his life in service to his country, Mr. President, and his reputation doesn't deserve to be slurred.
It is understandable that our communist President would have wished for the ascendancy of the Soviets, for though they were part of the northern hemisphere which he loathes, they did support the "liberation movements" in Cuba, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Vietnam. Well, we see how those turned out, though he chooses not to see. Demosthenes
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Confederate Battle flag
I'm a Union Civil War reenactor (42d Pennsylvania -Bucktails) and glad to be one; I think it was best that the Union was preserved and slavery is absolutely indefensible. That said: though it is understandable that some people are offended by the Confederate battle flag and it is proper to make a democratic political effort to remove it from public property, or to defend its presence there, I very much doubt that that will settle the matter.
A maxim concerning the left is that while most people are willing to divert their attention from symbols which anger them, or to offer arguments to counter what those symbols signify, the left always seeks to ban them. In its enforcement of "political correctness" in many settings (eg. "universities") the left has proven its disdain for free expression. True, many conservatives have called for the removal of the flag from public property but they can be counted on to be, well, conservative about carrying this effort any further. Not so the American left, which orchestrates proposals to outlaw any display of the flag, to mandate destruction of Confederate monuments and to remove Confederate names from public and ,no doubt eventually, private property, by force of law if necessary. Of course if they get their way we can expect consequent efforts to similarly denigrate the U.S. flag and our nation's founders.
What is their motivation? Hate. The Confederate battle flag is for many decent people a symbol of a southern style, rural, blue collar, traditional, relaxed mode of living and a thumb in the eye to those who would interfere with the freedom to live such a life.. The left, which is dominated by overeducated east and west coast elitists, despises these people and has no misgivings about trying to order them about (try running that by Hank Williams Jr. though). Due to the Confederacy having resisted what it saw as an overreaching Federal government, the flag is also an obvious expression of serious and well founded present day concerns about incipient totalitarianism in the U.S. The twentieth century proved the left to be thoroughly totalitarian and it is natural that American leftists would see such concerns as a mortal threat.
Southerners have been the backbone of our military, which did by the way save the world three times in the twentieth century, for one hundred years. The south and the mountain west are the most patriotic regions in the U.S. even though the south was forced back into the Union, but lingering southern resentment over Yankee cultural intrusion should be given the same regard shown to the resentments borne by other once conquered peoples ( eg. Native Americans). Removal of Confederate names from bases such as Forts Lee, Jackson, Hood etc. would of course serve our very leftist President's intent to harm our military's morale and cohesion and to express his disdain for the very significant segment of the U.S. population which values the memory of the Confederacy ,but would be insensitive (lets see the left defend itself against that charge) to the memory of those Americans who fought resolutely for home and country in the south.
The President recently had our White House bathed in colors symbolizing a cultural and political development many Americans find deeply disturbing. He ought to display some recognition that the Confederate battle flag, though a historically undeniable symbol of a slave state which had to die and which did die, also today means some good things to some good people; he ought to call off the hounds, though I'm not holding my breath. Demosthenes
A maxim concerning the left is that while most people are willing to divert their attention from symbols which anger them, or to offer arguments to counter what those symbols signify, the left always seeks to ban them. In its enforcement of "political correctness" in many settings (eg. "universities") the left has proven its disdain for free expression. True, many conservatives have called for the removal of the flag from public property but they can be counted on to be, well, conservative about carrying this effort any further. Not so the American left, which orchestrates proposals to outlaw any display of the flag, to mandate destruction of Confederate monuments and to remove Confederate names from public and ,no doubt eventually, private property, by force of law if necessary. Of course if they get their way we can expect consequent efforts to similarly denigrate the U.S. flag and our nation's founders.
What is their motivation? Hate. The Confederate battle flag is for many decent people a symbol of a southern style, rural, blue collar, traditional, relaxed mode of living and a thumb in the eye to those who would interfere with the freedom to live such a life.. The left, which is dominated by overeducated east and west coast elitists, despises these people and has no misgivings about trying to order them about (try running that by Hank Williams Jr. though). Due to the Confederacy having resisted what it saw as an overreaching Federal government, the flag is also an obvious expression of serious and well founded present day concerns about incipient totalitarianism in the U.S. The twentieth century proved the left to be thoroughly totalitarian and it is natural that American leftists would see such concerns as a mortal threat.
Southerners have been the backbone of our military, which did by the way save the world three times in the twentieth century, for one hundred years. The south and the mountain west are the most patriotic regions in the U.S. even though the south was forced back into the Union, but lingering southern resentment over Yankee cultural intrusion should be given the same regard shown to the resentments borne by other once conquered peoples ( eg. Native Americans). Removal of Confederate names from bases such as Forts Lee, Jackson, Hood etc. would of course serve our very leftist President's intent to harm our military's morale and cohesion and to express his disdain for the very significant segment of the U.S. population which values the memory of the Confederacy ,but would be insensitive (lets see the left defend itself against that charge) to the memory of those Americans who fought resolutely for home and country in the south.
The President recently had our White House bathed in colors symbolizing a cultural and political development many Americans find deeply disturbing. He ought to display some recognition that the Confederate battle flag, though a historically undeniable symbol of a slave state which had to die and which did die, also today means some good things to some good people; he ought to call off the hounds, though I'm not holding my breath. Demosthenes
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