Mark Steyn: Recalling a Time When Setbacks Didn't Deter Us

The Chicago Sun-Times ^ | May 30, 2004 | Mark Steyn

[quidnunc]

Memorial Day in my corner of New Hampshire is always the same. A clutch of veterans from the Second World War to the Gulf march round the common, followed by the town band, and the scouts, and the fifth-graders. The band plays "Anchors Aweigh," "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," "God Bless America" and, in an alarming nod to modernity, Ray Stevens' "Everything Is Beautiful (In Its Own Way)" (Billboard No. 1, May 1970). One of the town's selectmen gives a short speech, so do a couple of representatives from state organizations, and then the fifth-graders recite the Gettsyburg Address and the Great War's great poetry. There's a brief prayer and a three-gun salute, exciting the dogs and babies. Wreaths are laid. And then the crowd wends slowly up the hill to the Legion hut for ice cream, and a few veterans wonder, as they always do, if anybody understands what they did, and why they did it.

Before the First World War, it was called Decoration Day — a day for going to the cemetery and "strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion." Some decorated the resting places of fallen family members; others adopted for a day the graves of those who died too young to leave any descendants.

I wish we still did that. Lincoln's "mystic chords of memory" are difficult to hear in the din of the modern world, and one of the best ways to do it is to stand before an old headstone, read the name, and wonder at the young life compressed into those brute dates: 1840-1862. 1843-1864.

-snip-

[Defiant]

Has anyone thought of asking the admin moderator to tell St. Quidnunc to stop posting Steyn columns?

[albertabound]

Many of us foreigners up here think like him, notwithstanding the anti-American propaganda that reeks from the Canadian liberal establishment like a day old beer fart.

[aculeus]

Playing by Gore-Kennedy rules, the Union would have lost the Civil War, the rebels the Revolutionary War, and the colonists the French and Indian Wars. There would, in other words, be no America. Even in its grief, my part of New Hampshire understood that 141 years ago. We should, too.

[watchin]

16. Religious builldings, schools, and hospitals are considered "Home Base" and safe, and we must yell "Ollly Olly Oxenfree" before uncovering our eyes in an enemy neighborhood.

Priceless

[GraceCoolidge]

I think at a minimum the Davis in a dress story was exaggerated... I think you are correct that it isn't accurate, though I cannot cite any specific sources on it either.

[xJones]

There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites -- from the deranged former vice president down -- want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.

"It's not just unbecoming, it's embarrassing."

And this is why America is not the great dreaded hyper-super-duper power. We can be brought down by hostile media and Democrats over one stupid jailhouse, even when immediately afterward an American was shown being beheaded. That is, beheaded, not just humiliated; beheaded by our enemies.

[badgerlandjim]

That pretty well nails it...

[Jack Black]

ping

[Congressman Billybob]

Time and again, Mark Steyn writes a piece that should be required reading for everyone who is, or pretends to be, or wants to be a leader of the United States. This is another one of those occasions.

Thank you for posting this on this day, as we are watching the dedication of the World War II Memorial. And I hope he does a magnificent job compared to his last major speech.

Congressman Billybob

Latest Article, "Why Bush's War College Speech Fell Flat"

[moodyskeptic]

Bush and Rove should commit this article to memory.
Steyn writes:
They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren't a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screwups worth re-examining, but they weren't a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else."

That man can craft a mean sentence.

[B4Ranch]

ping to a foreigner with a clear and patriotic mind who says it better than I can even think.

[moodyskeptic]

Good analysis. Are you in Marketing or PR?

[B4Ranch]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1144392/posts?

ping to a foreigner with a clear and patriotic mind who says it better than I can even think.

[tet68]

More than 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War -- or about 1.8 percent of the population. Today, if 1.8 percent of the population were killed in war, there would be 5.4 million graves to decorate on Decoration Day.

Think about this.

[Travis McGee]

Great reply. Maybe you can tune it up and post it as a vanity thread? It's worth it.

[Jeff Head]

There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites -- from the deranged former vice president down -- want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.

Amen and amen!

[Texas Eagle]

You think Iraq's a quagmire? Lincoln's ''new birth of freedom'' bogged down into a centurylong quagmire of segregation, denial of civil rights, lynchings. Does that mean the Civil War wasn't worth fighting?

Wow. That kinda says it all.

Put that in the "Snappy Comebacks to Stupid Things Liberals Say" handbook.

[nosofar]

"The Kerry/Fonda/Kennedy Doctrine" as written by John Kerry (with a little help from his friends):


You forgot 'No Military'

[nosofar]

"The ability of the media to create from thin air an anti-Bush and anti-war drumbeat is truly astounding. Goebels had nothing on these people."

This is one advantage of a capitalistic society. Increased efficiency.