Yes indeed. Important post.
I noticed thirty five years ago that the battles of Lexington and Concord are no longer mentioned in the news.
I believe it is because it brings up the 2nd Amendment, which news papers don’t like to mention.
Yet, almost every criminal act on or around April 20 gets mentioned.
It bears mention (from an RKBA perspective) that Lexington & Concord were NOT the first time the Crown and the colonials had come to blows. The most notorious occurrence, of course, have been five years previous in the Boston Massacre. But before April of ‘75, cooler heads always had prevailed. So how is it that Lexington and Concord were the straws that broke the camel’s back, the incident that so provoked the Colonials that they were willing to take up open rebellion against George III?
Because this one started with an effort by the King of England to strip them of their ability to resist. Which to an 18th Century Englishman, was an unmistakable foretelling of the oppression yet to come.
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flags to April’s breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot hear ‘round the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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The third Monday of April is reserved as Patriot’s Day in much of Mew England. Attending K-8 school on Cape Cod, this was a date when the construction paper and crayons came out, while our teacher read the story of the battles.
It is fun to be nostalgic about the innocent pride that we were encouraged too take as New Englanders, but I am not delusional. This would NEVER happen today.
bump for later