Sunday's Quote: The wisdom of the past (and how it can impact our future)

Picture by Carl Mydans, c/o LIFE

In my lifetime, a scant 35 years, the United States has digressed from being the greatest creditor nation in the world to, as you have no doubt heard, the most prolific debtor nation in history.  So like it or not, perhaps the worst possible news is all but official: communist China is now the top dog (oh God I hope to be wrong about that).  And we only have ourselves, and more specifically, our so-called leaders, to blame.

Standard & Poor's federal credit relegation isn't necessarily a sign of the apocalypse by any means, but it could very well be an indicator of things to come.  A couple of notable Americans, born 131 years ago almost to the day, offer their astute insight into the palpable and growing concern among those of us who, for the first time, cannot speak about the future of our country with complete certainty:

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"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out . . . without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.  Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."
– H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), journalist, satirist and all-around critic

"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline.  There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster."
– Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), simply one of the most important military figures in our nation's history

On This Day in History

1543 – Outnumbered by nearly two-to-one, Ethiopian and Portuguese troops defeated the Adal Sultanate of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Wayna Daga in northern Ethiopia.  It was the final battle of the 14-year Ethiopian-Adal War, in which a potential Islamic conquest was quelled.  Some historians trace the present and longstanding hostility between Somalia and Ethiopia to this war.

1848 – Featuring a bunch of bad ideas regarding how capitalist societies would be replaced by socialism, and then eventually communism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the The Communist Manifesto.

1862 – The Battle of Valverde was fought near Fort Craig in the New Mexico Territory (present-day central New Mexico) between Confederate units from Texas and Arizona, and U.S. Army regulars and Union militia from northern New Mexico.  The South won.

1878 – The first telephone book was issued in New Haven, Connecticut.

1885 – The Washington Monument was dedicated in commemoration of our first President.  It remains both the world's tallest stone structure and the world's tallest obelisk, standing just over 555 feet.

1947 – Edwin Land demonstrates the Polaroid Land Camera, the first "instant camera," to a meeting of the Optical Society of America in New York City.

1948 – The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is founded by William France, Sr.

1952 – The British government, per Winston Churchill, abolished identity cards throughout the United Kingdom to "set the people free."  Remember that when the issue of a nation identity card is brought up by our government.

1953 – Francis Crick and James D. Watson co-discovered the structure of DNA, for which they both received the Nobel Prize nine years later.

1958 – Designed by British artist Gerald Holtom, the Peace Symbol [pictured] was commissioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, in protest against the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment.

1962 – David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York.  Once called "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years," Wallace was best known for his '96 novel Infinite Jest, which TIME magazine included in its "All-Time 100 Greatest Novels" list (from 1923-2006).  Having suffered from severe depression, he ended his own life in 2008.

1965 – Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little forty years earlier in Omaha, Nebraska) was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City by members of the Nation of Islam.  The movie about his life remains Spike Lee's magnum opus.

1979 – The bubbly and vivacious Jennifer Love Hewitt was born in Waco, Texas.  I think she's wonderful.

On This Day in History

1703 – In what is now Tokyo, Japan, 46 of the legendary Forty-seven Ronin committed ritual suicide (seppuku) as part of the samurai honor code (bushidō) for avenging their master's death.

1789 – George Washington was elected the first President of the United States.

1844 – Discovered by German Biblical scholar Constantin Tischendor, the Codex Sinaiticus -- ancient portions of both the Old and New Testaments -- was uncovered at St. Catherine's Monastery in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

1861 – Delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana convened in Montgomery, Alabama to form the Confederate States of America.

1902 – Charles Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan.  Having initially risen to prominence with his solo non-stop flight from Roosevelt Field in New York's Long Island to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France (May 20-21, 1927; nearly 3,600 miles), Lindbergh was named TIME magazine's first Man of the Year.  Later in life he also became a prize-winning author, explorer, environmentalist and inventor.  Few have ever accomplished so much in a lifetime.

1906 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer [pictured] was born in Breslau, Germany (present-day Wrocław, Poland).  A master theologian of the Evangelical Lutheran faith, Bonhoeffer became critical of the Church's general insensitivity to the needs of secular society as he witnessed social upheaval, a decline of traditional values and international financial crisis -- much like the events of today.

Opposed to circumventing Christ in "religiosity," Bonhoeffer's time at Abyssinian Baptist Church in the Harlem borough of New York City (where he taught Sunday School) inspired a world view that would ultimately lead him to establish the Confessing Church, which became one of the few opposing voices to the Nazification in Germany.  It also led to Bonhoeffer's two-year incarceration and eventual martyrdom at the Flossenbürg concentration camp, less than a month before the Nazi regime collapsed.

In short, his influence and the example he set by speaking and standing for Truth cannot be overstated.

1945 – "The Big Three" -- Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin -- open The Yalta Conference at the Livadia Palace in Crimea (present-day southern Ukraine) to discuss Europe's postwar reorganization.

2004 – Mark Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook," the forerunner to Facebook, from his dorm room at Harvard University.  Seven years later, Facebook.com boasts of 600 million users and only trails Google as the world's most visited website.

Sunday's Quote(s): Rhetoric vs. Substance

Obama and his protagonists have offered a bevy of poignant talking points since the President's State of the Union address last Tuesday.  So have his opponents:

"How do you leftists feel about this?  I know that you all hate Reagan, you have despised Reagan.  Even during the Reagan administration the number one objective of the left has been to revise Reagan history.  I mean all this talk about Reagan cutting taxes for the rich, didn't care about the poor, didn't care about AIDS, didn't care about the homeless.  Reagan was a cold-hearted, mean-spirited extremist.  And these are the people, the ones that have been saying it all these years.

"And now all of a sudden when their little guy gets in trouble, when Obama can't get any traction whatsoever, when he's lost the love, when he's lost all of this messianic stuff that attached itself to him, where do they go?  Do they go to JFK and try to draw analysis and comparison?  No.  They go to LBJ?  No.  They go to Jimmy Carter?  No.  They'd probably love to go to Marx.  They don't dare.  They go to Gorbachev?  No.  They go to Mao Tse-tung?  Only in private.  Who they gonna go to, Reagan, all to draw this illusion that their president, young guy, this man-child is moving to the center?
 

"In 1989 Reagan was warning us of exactly what we've got, and not just in Obama but the Democrat Party at large.  And yet here comes TIME Magazine and the rest of the Drive-By Media trying to tell us, and Obama himself trying to tell us that he's Reagan.  Out of all the presidents, as he prepared for this latest State of the Union debacle, of all the presidents, it was Reagan that he studied.  Well, we know what he really thinks about Reagan.  He's told us in his books: resentment, dislike.

"They think Reagan destroyed America.  They think Reagan set up this situation here where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the widening gap between rich and poor, the unfairness, the inequality.  Reagan was the epitome of heartlessness, had no compassion or whatever.  But this just goes to show that when Democrats need to look back to history, when this regime, when the media, the American left needs to look back to history to try to connect with the majority of people in this country, they have to go to one of the greatest Republican presidents of all time and try to pull it off."
-- Rush Limbaugh, responding to both the President's State of the Union address and the upcoming TIME magazine cover of Obama photoshopped with Ronald Reagan; January 27, 2011

Considering his "new" and "historic" status, it's interesting to see how often President Obama is compared to his predecessors.

"It's as if Obama is daring the voters -- and the Republicans -- to prove they really want smaller government.  He's manning the barricades for Obamacare and he's here with yet another spending -- excuse me, investment -- spree. ... Perhaps this is all to be expected from Democrats -- the party of government -- and from a president who from his very first address to Congress has boldly displayed his zeal to fundamentally transform the American social contract and place it on a 'New Foundation' (an Obama slogan that never took)."

-- from "Obama unbowed and undeterred" by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, per The Commercial Appeal; January 29, 2011

Just Thinking Out Loud: Judging a classic

Having initially committed to read through a select list of transcendent classics, I opted to challenge myself by starting with a book that resists definition.

Included on TIME's list (something they do well) of the 100 best English language novels from 1923 to present, Gravity's Rainbow is commonly regarded by a variety of know-it-alls as both Thomas Pynchon's magnum opus and as the greatest postmodern work of 20th century literature.  Yet having plowed through the first 100+ pages, it has become difficult to invest myself any further into the semi-apocalyptic adventures of Slothrop, Pirate, Roger Mexico and Jessica, among many others.

So what am I missing here?

Perhaps the famously reclusive Pynchon gets his kicks by making intellectual schlubs like me feel that sense of inferiority for which it seems he strives with every word he writes.  But the original criticisms of this largely celebrated work -- "turgid," "overwritten," "obscene," etc. -- appear valid as well.

The mention of such an iconoclast can become a divisive topic.  So much, in fact, that the Pulitzer board eventually overturned its own decision to award Pynchon their prize for fiction in 1974.  It wasn't the first time (it was the eighth such occurrence in nearly 60 years), but it remains the most prominent episode by which the impact of this book is most adequately conveyed.  And that, by all accounts, is exactly how Pynchon prefers it.

On This Day in History

70 AD – Climaxing the First Jewish-Roman War, forces under Roman Emperor Titus sack Jerusalem.  Judea would remain under Roman control for over 550 years until Jerusalem was captured by the Islamic Rashidun Caliphate in 637.

1504 – Michelangelo's 17-foot sculpture of David is unveiled outside the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence, Italy.  It has been located at the Accademia Gallery, also in Florence, since 1873.

1565 – Outnumbered by as much as five-to-one, the Knights Hospitaller -- a Christian military order similar to the Templars -- turned back the Islamic Ottoman Empire's attempted siege on Malta in southern Europe.

1863 – At the mouth of the Sabine River on the Texas-Louisiana border, a small Confederate force thwarted the Federal invasion of Texas at the Second Battle of Sabine Pass.

1892 – The original Pledge of Allegiance is first published in The Youth's Companion as part of the celebration of Columbus Day: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all."  The Pledge would be revised four times until finally settled upon by President Eisenhower in 1954.

1968 – The Beatles perform "Hey Jude" (pictured above) on The David Frost Show for their final performance on live television.

1975 – U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant [E-6] Leonard Matlovich appeared in uniform on the cover of Time magazine with the headline, "I Am A Homosexual."  Matlovich was later given a general discharge for his cover story.  He died of complications from HIV/AIDS on June 22, 1988.

On This Day in History: March 3, multiple years

Because history matters...

1776 -- The first amphibious landing of the Continental Marines, the forerunner to the United States Marine Corps, begins the Battle of Nassau.  The victors were led by Samuel Nicholas, the first officer commissioned in the United States Continental Marines, and by tradition the first Commandant of the Marine Corps.

1845 -- Florida is admitted as the 27th State.

1915 -- The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor of NASA, is founded.

1923 -- TIME magazine is published for the first time.

1924 -- The 1400-year-old Islamic caliphate (Muslim-centered theocracy) is abolished when Abdul Mejid II of the Ottoman Empire is deposed.

1931 -- The United States officially adopts The Star-Spangled Banner as our national anthem.

1938 -- Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia.  They've been a pain in the ass ever since.