WarSclerotic

We are losing America. Here are some reasons and possible solutions, Dan Miller’s Blog, June 19, 2017

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

The present and future ownership of America, and indeed her existence, are in serious dispute. Our nation is more divided than ever in my thus far seventy-six years of life. That augurs well neither for our future as a nation nor for those of us who want our country back. Asking “Pretty please, Kind Masters, may we have our country back?” won’t help. 

Robert Frost tried to read a poem he had written for JFK’s inauguration but was unable to do so. He had difficulties due to the bright sun and his age.

It was a cold and sunny day in 1961 and the 87 year old Frost could not read his poem,” Dedication”, that he wrote in honor of this special day for he was blinded by the bright sun. He fumpered on the podium because he could not see it and did not know it well. Richard Nixon came and held his top hat to block the sun for Mr.Frost who was extremely old and having problems. Instead, he recited from memory an oft requested poem, “The Gift Outright.”

I remember listening to Mr. Frost read The Gift Outright during an appearance at Yale, where I was an undergrad, back in 1959 or 196o. He had first recited it on December 5, 1941 — just two days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He recites it in this video:

The land was ours before we were the land’s
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she will become. [Emphasis added.]

I wonder what Mr. Frost would think of America today. Is the land still ours? To whom do the sanctuary cities belong? Their lawful inhabitants or illegal immigrants? La Raza (The Race) wants us to cede parts of our land to Mexico. Who would care? How about the people who live there lawfully. What about the Islamic caliphate, long desired by adherents to the “Religion of Peace?” For practical purposes, much of Europe is now part of the Caliphate. Many Americans believe that we should follow Frau Merkel’s shining example of unlimited Islamic migration and achieve the same multicultural glory.

Are we still possessed by “our land of living”? I doubt that those who approve of sanctuary cities, unlimited illegal immigration, non-deportation of aliens unlawfully present in America and those who find Sharia law and America’s slow but accelerating Islamisation acceptable are possessed by the land. They have rejected her.

America’s history is being taken from us

Political correctness apparently requires that we forget or revise our history. In a June 14th article Walter E. Williams observed,

George Orwell said, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

In the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, censorship, rewriting of history, and eliminating undesirable people became part of Soviets’ effort to ensure that the correct ideological and political spin was put on their history.

Deviation from official propaganda was punished by confinement in labor camps and execution.

Today there are efforts to rewrite history in the U.S., albeit the punishment is not so draconian as that in the Soviet Union.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu had a Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee monument removed last month. Former Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton wanted the statue of Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, as well as the graves of Forrest and his wife, removed from the city park.

In Richmond, Virginia, there have been calls for the removal of the Monument Avenue statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gens. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and J.E.B. Stuart.

It’s not only Confederate statues that have come under attack. Just by having the name of a Confederate, such as J.E.B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Virginia, brings up calls for a name change.

These history rewriters have enjoyed nearly total success in getting the Confederate flag removed from state capitol grounds and other public places.

Slavery is an undeniable fact of our history. The costly war fought to end it is also a part of the nation’s history. Neither will go away through cultural cleansing. [Emphasis added.]

Removing statues of Confederates and renaming buildings are just a small part of the true agenda of America’s leftists. [Emphasis added.]

Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and there’s a monument that bears his name—the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. George Washington also owned slaves, and there’s a monument to him, as well—the Washington Monument in Washington.

Will the people who call for removal of statues in New Orleans and Richmond also call for the removal of the Washington, D.C., monuments honoring slaveholders Jefferson and Washington?

On May 13th of this year, the Board of Friends of Nash Farm Battlefield issued the statement excerpted below:

The Board of the Friends of Nash Farm Battlefield, Inc. is sad to announce that the museum, located on Nash Farm Battlefield, which was funded and maintained by our group, will close effective June 1, 2017. The main reason is that the current District 2 Commissioner, Dee Clemmons, has requested that ALL Confederate flags be removed from the museum, in addition to the gift shop, in an effort not to offend anyone. For anyone who studies the American Civil War, or War Between the States, they realize there were two parties that fought in this war. We have always prided ourselves with being an unbiased museum that told the entire story of the battles that took place on this property, as well as being a voice of the people in Henry County and Georgia during this time. These stories were told mainly through primary sources, sometimes secondary, but never tertiary sources. To exclude any Confederate flag would mean the historical value has been taken from our exhibits, and a fair interpretation could not be presented to each guest. Confederate flags were on this hallowed ground, as were the Union flags. To remove either of them would be a dishonor.

That’s just a bit of what’s been happening. Love it or hate it, it’s important to remember our history — as it was, not as today’s revisionists would like us to remember it.

The Civil War was deadly but generally fought with honor on both sides. I hope we do not have another. If it is a war between the left and right, I foresee little honor on the left.

America is a divided nation

Victor Davis Hanson, a scholar of classical history and a keen observer of current society, asks a good question in Can a Divided America Survive? The answer seems to be “probably not.”

The United States is currently the world’s oldest democracy.

But America is no more immune from collapse than were some of history’s most stable and impressive consensual governments. Fifth-century Athens, Republican Rome, Renaissance Florence and Venice, and many of the elected governments of early 20th-century Western European states eventually destroyed themselves, went bankrupt or were overrun by invaders.

The United States is dividing as rarely before. Half the country, mostly liberal America, is concentrated in 146 of the nation’s more than 3,000 counties — in an area that collectively represents less than 10 percent of the U.S. land mass. The other half, the conservative Red states of the interior of America, is geographically, culturally, economically, politically and socially at odds with Blue-state America, which resides mostly on the two coasts. [Emphasis added.]

The two Americas watch different news. They read very different books, listen to different music and watch different television shows. Increasingly, they now live lives according to two widely different traditions.

Barack Obama was elected president after compiling the most left-wing voting record in the U.S. Senate. His antidote, Donald Trump, was elected largely on the premise that traditional Republicans were hardly conservative.[Emphasis added.]

Red America and Blue America are spiraling into divisions approaching those of 1860, or of the nihilistic hippie/straight divide of 1968. [Emphasis added.]

Currently, some 27 percent of all Californians were not born in the United States. More than 40 million foreign-born immigrants currently reside in the U.S. — the highest number in the nation’s history.

Yet widely unchecked immigration comes at a time when the country has lost confidence in its prior successful adherence to melting-pot assimilation and integration. The ultimate result is a fragmenting of society into tribal cliques that vie for power, careers and influence on the basis of ethnic solidarity rather than shared Americanness. [Emphasis added.]

History is not very kind to multicultural chaos — as opposed to a multiracial society united by a single national culture. The fates of Rwanda, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia should remind us of our present disastrous trajectory. [Emphasis added.]

Either the United States will return to a shared single language and allegiance to a common and singular culture, or it will eventually descend into clannish violence. [Emphasis added.]

Based on Mr. Hanson’s analysis, the answer seems to be that unless America ceases to be as grossly divided as she now is, she will be displaced by something far worse. Indeed, it seems already to be happening. How about this bit of theater?

Members of the audience stood and cheered when the make-believe President Trump was knifed to death. Then, a Bernie Sanders supporter shot two Republican congressmen and a law enforcement officer at a baseball practice session in Alexandria Virginia. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was nearly killed. Fortunately, his status has improved from “critical” to “serious,” and it now seems likely that after more surgery and months of rehabilitation he will be able to resume his congressional duties.

Does President Trump have anything to do with, or about, our current state of affairs?

Much of America’s current division and disharmony is wrongly blamed on President Trump. He has many opponents – the “deep state,” the Federal bureaucracy, Never Trumpers, many Democrats and the lamebrain media, the pro-Democrat bias of which is perhaps unprecedented. He needs to deal with them all, a truly Herculean task.

An article by Roger Kimball titled Trump vs, the Deep State offers some suggestions. Here is his conclusion, but please read the entire article:

The sociology of the Trump presidency—and the anti-Trump “resistance”—is an unwritten chapter in recent American history.  As I say, I suspect it will have to be filed chiefly under “Snobbery, examples of,” but that’s as may be.  This much I am convinced of: 1. Those who identify the “administrative state” (the “deep state,” etc.) as our chief political problem today are correct; 2. Donald Trump really is trying to unravel (“deconstruct,” “drain”)  Leviathan; 3. The right-leaning anti-Trump campaign is so virulent because, even if unwittingly, it is itself part of the overweening bureaucrat dispensation that is the enemy of freedom; 4. Trump will survive to the extent that he is able to follow the example of his hero Andrew Jackson and challenge his challengers by pushing through his agenda undistracted from the yapping of the PC chihuahuas.

I see President Trump as potentially a primary force in restoring at least some semblance of American unity with honor.

Here is a poem I learned when in 11th or 12th grade English class. I have been unable to find it on any search engine, so here it is as I still remember it. I may well have forgotten parts of it. If anyone can supply a link and more of the text, I will be grateful.

An Aristocrat’s Prayer

If thou lovest, reason scatter.
If thou threatenest, make it matter.
If thou swearest, make it hot.
If thou hittest miss him not.
Doest thou argue, do it boldly.
Dost thou punish, do it coldly.
In forgiving hold not back.
And of feasting have no lack.

It is not politically correct, does not yearn for non-confrontation and is unlike anything of which our current establishment leaders would approve. In no way does it resemble “Pretty please, Kind Masters, may we have our country back?” President Trump is unlike members of the establishment; that is one of the reasons we elected him as well as one of the reasons the establishment despises him. He is bold, brash, willing to take strong stands and yet is able sincerely — not as a mere pretense — to forgive his enemies when they warrant it. Neither a Clinton, Bush, Romney nor any other establishment figure would have the potential, or the guts, to do as he does and must do.