A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Andrew Roberts’ “The Storm of War”

Few things interest this blogger more than WWII history.  It is the single most important event of the 100 years, and perhaps well beyond that.  Andrew Roberts is a fantastic historical writer from Great Britain and has penned an excellent new book, The Storm of War, for which he sat down with Peter Robinson and Uncommon Knowledge to discuss recently.

Here's the entire interview, but even if you only have time to watch part of it, watch some of it!

I also highly recommend Roberts' Napoleon and Wellington.  He is England's David McCullough.

4th of July: More Important Than We Know

"...And proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants." -Leviticus 25:10

For the overwhelming majority of human history, people have not been free.  Possessing any form of actual political, economic, and religious liberty is a relatively new concept.  The United States and her founders drew upon the best ideas and ideals mankind had pieced together.  Front-and-center were the Judeo-Christian teachings of Scripture.  Without the basic belief that all men are "created equal...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights", liberty is merely an existential creation of randomly-gathered proto-plasms who delude themselves into thinking one way of organizing a government/society is better than another.

So where does liberty come from?  How did it get here if things were so bad for so long?

Many Christians feel ashamed of being patriotic, or of embracing the notion that the United States of America, with all of her many faults, has been a blessing to the American people and to the world.  Some fear patriotic sentiments because they have been denigrated in popular culture.  Some because they have purchased the lie that many in academia and our public schools hold that America should spend much more of its time apologizing for its past sins than promoting its virtues to a world that could desperately use them.  And still others feel ashamed of shows of patriotism simply because they don't know their history, and have little idea of what it took to win, maintain, and enrich our freedom.

The 4th of July is my favorite holiday.  As a Christian, nothing can alter the importance I place upon the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but the 4th is not devoid of a spiritual component.  Hear the words of the document that started this great "little experiment in democracy" and tell me we shouldn't be on our hands and knees every day thanking the sweet Lord above that we were born when we were, and in the cultural heritage we were.

I even played you a clip of a bunch of liberals reading the thing! That's how confident I am in the timeless, penetrating words.Not even Whoopi Goldberg can ruin them!

Enjoy your holiday.  Enjoy your BBQ's.  Enjoy your friends and family.

Just remember that freedom isn't free, and that we didn't get here by mistake.  Certain ideas are better than others.  If you are a Believer, remember that God is truth, and it is truth that sets us all free.

150th Anniversary of “War Between the States”

A century and a half ago today, the nation split in two and began a 4-year bloody war that claimed the lives of more than 620,000 Americans.  In the history of the United States there are three definitive events: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WWII.  The one I know the least about is the one who anniversary it is today.  Thanks to Ken Burns and back spasms, I have had plenty of time the past week to lay on the floor with an ice pack and 8 hours of The Civil War DVR-ed on my TV.

In this clip above, Burns talks about the divisive nature of partisanship and uncompromising ideology.  This reminded me of an important column that Dennis Prager wrote about this time last year on the cultural divide in America today. In closing out his piece on the widening gap between Right and Left in our country, Prager states:

We need to acknowledge that we are in a non-violent civil war.

I write the words "civil war" with an ache in my heart. But we are in one.

Thank God this civil war is non-violent. But the fact is that the left and the rest of the country share almost no values. The American value system and the leftist value system are irreconcilable. If the left wins, America's values lose. If American values prevail, the left loses.

After Sunday's vote, for the first time in American history, one could no longer confidently believe that the American system will prevail. And if we don't fight for it, we don't deserve it.

It's an interesting point Dennis brings up, but more than anything today all I wanted to do was highlight the fact that this is an important day in our nation's history.  You would do well to get your paws on a copy of Burns' incredible documentary.  We would all do well to take a moment today and reflect on the sacrifices involved over the past 234 years to maintain this, "last, best hope for mankind."

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- 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.

God bless America.

George Washington and a Christmas Miracle

Most of us have seen the famous painting of General Washington and his troops crossing the Delaware River.  

But what many of us do not appreciate is the story surrounding that fateful day in 1776.  Editor of National Review, Rich Lowry, has in his latest column succinctly (and powerfully) recapped Washington's crossing and the miracle that kept a revolution alive at its dimmest moment.

British strategy depended on shattering American faith in the Continental Army and reconciling the rebellious colonies to the Crown. As the Americans fled to the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River, the British occupied New Jersey and offered an amnesty to anyone declaring his loyalty. They had thousands of takers, including one signer of the Declaration of Independence.

As David Hackett Fischer emphasizes in his classic Washington’s Crossing, the American revival began spontaneously. Low on supplies, occupying troops had to forage for food. The forage turned to plunder. That fueled a grassroots rising among “the rascal peasants,” in the words of a Hessian officer.

With New Jersey boiling and expiring enlistments about to reduce his army further, Washington decided on a scheme to cross the Delaware on Christmas and surprise the Hessian garrison in Trenton. “If the raid backfired,” Chernow writes, “the war was likely over and he would be captured and killed.”

Behind schedule, Washington’s main force of 2,400 started crossing the river that night. Yes, most of them were standing up in flat-bottomed boats. Yes, there were ice floes. It wasn’t until 4 a.m. that all the men were across the river. They had nine miles still to march to Trenton in a driving storm and no chance of making it before daybreak. Washington considered calling it off, but he had already come too far.

The story continues:

Arriving at Trenton at 8 a.m., his spirited troops seemed “to vie with the other in pressing forward,” he wrote afterward. They surprised the Hessians, not because they were sleeping off a Christmas bender. Harried in hostile New Jersey, the Hessians had exhausted themselves on constant alert. They didn’t expect an attack in such weather, though. The battle ended quickly — 22 Hessians killed, 83 seriously wounded, and 900 captured, to two American combat deaths.

“It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world,” British historian George Trevelyan wrote.

The American troops found 40 hogshead of rum in the town, which temporarily blunted their effectiveness. Washington followed up soon enough with another victory at Princeton. In the space of a few weeks, the Americans killed or captured as many as 3,000 of the enemy and irreversibly changed the dynamic of the war.

David Hackett Fischer sees in that resurgence after our fortunes were at their lowest a reassuring aspect of our national character in this season of discontent: We respond when pressed. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a great supporter of the American cause, wrote: “Our republics cannot exist long in prosperity. We require adversity and appear to possess most of the republican spirit when most depressed.”

May it still be so.

Merry Christmas.  God bless America.