Today In History

“History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” ― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

1789 Ethan Allen dies

After fighting in the French and Indian War, Allen settled in what is now Vermont. At the outbreak of the American Revolution, he raised his force of Green Mountain Boys and Connecticut troops and helped capture the British fort at Ticonderoga, New York. Later, as a volunteer in General Philip Schuyler’s forces, he conducted a foolhardy attempt to take Montreal during which he was captured by the British and held prisoner until May 6, 1778. Congress conferred on Allen the rank of colonel with back pay, but he did not serve in the war after his release. Instead, he devoted his time to local affairs in Vermont, especially working for separate statehood from New York. 

1809 Abraham Lincoln is born

1912 Last emperor of China abdicates

1915 Lorne Greene is born 

The actor who played Ben Cartwright on the immensely popular television Western Bonanza, is born in Ontario, Canada.

1924 Rhapsody In Blue, by George Gershwin, performed for first time 

1934 Basketball great Bill Russell born

1941 Rommel in Africa

German General Erwin Rommel (the Desert Fox) arrived in Tripoli, Libya, with the newly formed Afrika Korps, to reinforce the beleaguered Italians’ position.

Adolf Hitler established the Afrika Korps for the explicit purpose of helping Benito Mussolini maintain territorial gains in North Africa. The British had been delivering devastating blows to the Italians; in three months they pushed the Italians out of Egypt while wounding or killing 20,000 Italian soldiers and taking another 130,000 prisoner.

When Hitler finally gave the go-ahead for an offensive against British positions in Egypt, General Erwin “The Desert Fox” Rommel’s forces were stopped dead in their tracks and then forced to retreat. In the famous battle of El Alamein, the British Eighth Army surprised the German commander with its brute resolve and pushed him and his Afrika Korps back across and out of North Africa.

1976 Actor Sal Mineo is killed in Hollywood

Many observers consider Mineo's greatest achievement was playing American film's first gay teenager in Rebel Without A Cause. Although no clear reference to homosexuality is ever made, the eroticism between Plato (played by Mineo) and Jimmy (played by James Dean) is palpable.

Mineo and Dean became fast friends off screen. Their obvious onscreen chemistry and Dean's known bisexuality, led many people to believe they had an affair while Rebel was being made.

On the night of February 12, 1976, Mineo returned home following a rehearsal for the play P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. After parking his blue Chevy Chevelle in the carport below his West Hollywood apartment, the 37-year-old actor was stabbed in the heart by a mugger who fled the scene. Police pursued all kinds of leads, but assumed the crime to be the result of some sort of “homosexual motivation.” Three years later, pizza deliveryman Lionel Ray Williams was convicted of the murder.

1972 Cambodians launch attack to retake Angkor Wat

About 6,000 Cambodian troops launch a major operation to wrestle the religious center of Angkor Wat from 4,000 North Vietnamese troops entrenched around the famous Buddhist temple complex, which had been seized in June 1970.

1973 Release of American POWs begins

The release of American prisoners of war began in Hanoi as part of the Paris peace settlement. The return of U.S. POWs began when North Vietnam released 142 prisoners at Hanoi’s Gia Lam Airport. Part of what was called Operation Homecoming, the first 20 POWs returned to a hero’s welcome at Travis Air Force Base. Operation Homecoming was completed on March 29, 1973, when the last of 591 U.S. prisoners were released and returned to the United States.

1986 Anatoly Scharansky released

After spending eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps, human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky is released via an amnesty deal was arranged by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan at a summit meeting three months earlier.

Scharansky was imprisoned for his campaign to win the right for Russian Jews, officially forbidden to practice Judaism, to emigrate from the USSR. Convicted of treason and agitation, Soviet authorities also labeled him an American spy. After his release, he immigrated to Israel, where he was given a hero’s welcome.

1999 President Clinton acquitted

The five-week impeachment trial of President William Jefferson Clinton comes to an end, with the Senate voting to acquit the president on both articles of impeachment: perjury and obstruction of justice.

2002 Milosevic goes on trial for war crimes

Slobodan Milosevic was the main defendant in the most important war crimes trial since the military tribunals of the Nazis at Nuremberg.

The former president of Yugoslavia was accused of being responsible for the war crimes and genocide that occurred during the bloody Balkan wars in the early 1990s.

The case, held at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, was the first attempt to prosecute war crimes since the end of World War II.

Milosevic faced three counts of crimes against humanity and one charge of violating the laws or customs of war. The most serious indictment against him related to genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Milosevic was accused of being behind the killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, including the infamous massacre of civilians at Srebrenica in 1995.

There were two charges of crimes against humanity relating to atrocities carried out in Kosovo in 1999 and in Croatia in 1991 and 1992. Serbian troops were described in court as committing acts of "almost medieval savagery and a calculated cruelty that went far beyond the bounds of legitimate warfare".

2008 GM reports record loss, offers buyouts to 74,000 workers

Waiting For The Hour: Abraham Lincoln Speaks To Obama

There is a photograph of President Barack Obama with Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ bust of Abraham Lincoln visible in the background.  Through the magic of Photoshop™ I reworked the photograph to bring Lincoln into full focus.

When he placed his hand upon Lincoln’s Bible on January 20, 2009 Barack Obama declared he was committed to celebrating American unity and the use of the historic Bible would provide a powerful connection to our “common past and common heritage.”

When Lincoln placed his hand upon this very same Bible 148 years earlier a Civil War threatened to destroy the country.  On Friday, 156 years later, President-elect Donald Trump will place his hand upon Lincoln’s Bible as he takes the Oath of Office.  He will assume the mantle of President of the United States at a time of great unrest at home and abroad.

Upon learning of Obama’s disgraceful commutation of Army Pfc. Manning, I wondered if the ghost of Lincoln ever spoke to him during his eight failed years as president.

“Mr. President, when I took the Oath of Office I was aware I followed greatly distinguished men who administered the Executive Branch of the Government through many perils and generally with great success.” 

“I concluded my Inaugural Address by affirming to those there assembled, ‘we are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.’” 

“I have watched from this shelf upon which you placed me eight years ago the menace of racial division inflicted by you.  Through the slipstream of time I witnessed the zenith of your campaign to become the 44th president by placing your hand upon my Bible and citing my words.  Your heady talk of emulating me gave way to cynicism and complacency.  The connection to me you so desperately sought to make was maddeningly out of reach.” 

“Those who will take your place at the 58th Presidential Inauguration have the difficult task made harder by you to mitigate the damage done to a great nation.  I believe they truly seek the illumination of my legacy.  Your failures will haunt you all the days of your life.” 

“I was heartbroken the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture omitted the enormous legacy and impact of Justice Clarence Thomas and chose instead to give you a large presence in the museum.  It must, therefore, be galling to know Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will swear in Mike Pence using the Bible that President Reagan used for both of his inaugurals.” 

“Racial discord will not be your only legacy I fear.  The American people to whom you are beholding have suffered greatly by your arrogance, fecklessness and intolerance of political opponents.  You have sought, at every turn, to take away Americans’ right to bear arms, your administration covered up the murder of four Americans in Benghazi and most egregiously you lied repeatedly about your ‘signature’ law that upended healthcare and you did nothing to end the persecution of Christians.” 

“The loathing for Israel you demonstrated sickened me.  I could enumerate a litany of failures and scandals besmirching your tenure as you faltered day after day destroying a nation built by great men and women.” 

“I stand firm in my belief that once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens you can never regain their respect and esteem.” 

“You should have heeded my words, ‘With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”  

“Your heart will be filled with sorrow knowing you were at the apex of history and squandered it.  It is a bitter agony for me.”

UPDATE 1:  Welcome readers of Adrienne’s Corner.  Thanks for the linky-love Miss A.

UPDATE 2:  Welcome readers of Diogenes’ Middle Finger who graciously linked to this post.

Abe Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Melania Trump Walk into a Bar...

...the bar of high standards. What do these three have in common? Together, I believe they illustrate the difference between plagiarism and allusion. With Melania, the Jayson Blair of presidential candidate's wives, it was clearly plagiarism. Not that it was that big of a deal. No one expected the equivalent of the Gettysburg Address from her. Many people think the unforced error of the kerfluffle which came when the plagiarism came out, with the initial denials from the Trump camp, were largely due to Trump being too cheap to hire a decent speechwriter for her, and the attempt at cover up was just pure Trump.

But I read something by Mike Rowe, of "Dirty Jobs" fame, and former opera singer:

I remember, in the wake of the Challenger disaster, Ronald Reagan gave a truly extraordinary speech. Every sentence was brilliant, but this part was unforgettable.

“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning, as they prepared for their journey, waved goodbye, and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”

I was 22 at the time, and I literally cried when I heard those words. I was truly touched. Later, I learned those words had been written for Reagan by Peggy Noonan. After that, I learned Peggy Noonan had lifted those words from a poem called “High Flight,” written by an airman who died in WWII named John McGee.

Did Ronald Reagan plagiarize Peggy Noonan? Did Peggy Noonan plagiarize John McGee?

Now I'm a little bit older than Mr. Rowe, I predate the 24 hour news cycle. In fact, I not only predate 24 hour news, but I predate 24 hour TV!

Back in the olden days, when there were only three networks, and cable was what you used to suspend bridges, TV stations didn't broadcast 24/7. Typically they ended their "broadcast day" around one or two in the morning. And typically, the station just before signing off the air, would play the National Anthem and a short video of a jet fighter flying, while a narrator recited the poem "High Flight". Having on more than one occasion stayed up past the end of the broadcast day, and because there was literally "nothing else on", people would watch and listen to the stirring words of Airman John McGee. For those of Ronald Reagan, Peggy Noonan and my generation (heady company!), the words of High Flight were totally familiar and totally appropriate for Reagan to allude to. Whippersnappers like Mike Rowe may not have known where the words came from, but there was no attempt at plagiarism there, or anything like it.

But people often attribute a quote to the person they heard it from first. Many people attribute the line to Robert Kennedy that he quoted from George Bernard Shaw:

You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”

A more famous attribution of a literary allusion to the wrong source comes from the aforementioned Gettysburg Address. It concludes:

...that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Lincoln was alluding to John Wycliffe's prologue to his Bible translation of 1384:

This Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.

Lincoln knew the source of the quote, as, no doubt, did the majority of those who heard it. No one rose up to yell that Lincoln had cribbed part of his speech. But his allusion to it immortalized those words, and today, people who never heard of Wycliffe (that's okay. Today's government schools the kids don't hear about anybody!), have heard his words echo through the years.

So we have one plagiarist, small potatoes in comparison to the plagiarisms of Teddy Kennedy, Joe Biden and even President Obama, and two well read presidents, able to make allusions to words well said by others. If we were to stack every literary or cultural allusion in the same boat as plagiarism, we need to get a bigger boat!*

You may quote me.

* Jaws (1975)

Art by John Cox. More at John Cox Art

If You Like Your Country Can You Keep It? Happy President’s Day

This nation is living in the twilight of its existence.  The world has grown darker during the reign of The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer.  Proof of this can be found in an excellent article written by Walter Russell Meade entitled. “Slaughter in the Cities, Ineffectual Mumbling in the White House.”

Another clarifying point was the preposterous recommendation of a handful of George Washington University political science professors who wanted to carve TWMDCO into Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

In furtherance of that absurdity, a Facebook page was created with the title of “Campaign to Put President Obama on Mount Rushmore”.  It has generated 834 likes since being put up in March of 2010.  Not exactly overwhelming.

Today, we remember the greatness—and it was greatness—of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln whose time in office preserved the freedoms we must never take for granted.

The presidential oath of office is required by Article 2, Section 1 of the United States Constitution:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

TWMDCO as an imperial president with little regard for the legislative process who is making a mockery of the separation of powers and what was once a well-ordered government.

In June 1985, speaking at an endowment fundraiser for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Ronald Reagan let his imagination take flight:

“And sometimes I want to say to those who are still in school, and who sometimes think that history is a dry thing that lives in a book:  Nothing is ever lost in that great house; some music plays on. I have been told that late at night when the clouds are still and the moon is high, you can just about hear the sound of certain memories brushing by. You can almost hear, if you listen close, the whir of a wheelchair rolling by and the sound of a voice calling out, ‘And another thing, Eleanor!’ Turn down a hall and you can hear the brisk strut of a fellow saying, ‘Bully! Absolutely ripping!’ Walk softly now and you’re drawn to the soft notes of a piano and a brilliant gathering in the East Room, where a crowd surrounds a bright young president who is full of hope and laughter. I don’t know if this is true…but it’s a story I’ve been told. And it’s not a bad one, because it reminds us that history is a living thing that never dies. A life given in service to one’s country is a living thing that never dies.”

Godfrey Hodgson notes in “The Myth of American Exceptionalism” that “Americans’ declining belief in our special virtue as a world power really is connected to our declining belief in our special virtue as a people. And the young are leading the way. A 2013 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that while almost two in three Americans over 65 call themselves 'extremely proud to be American,' among Americans under 30 it is fewer than two in five. According to a Pew study in 2011, Millennials were a whopping 40 points less likely than people 75 and older to call America 'the greatest country in the world.'”

Happy President’s Day America.  If you like your country can you keep it?

Will you make the effort to prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of other nations?  You cannot be a patriot and a sheep at the same time.