Christmas 1983

President Reagan, December 24, 1983

My fellow Americans:

Like so many of your homes, the White House is brimming with greens, colorful decorations, and a tree trimmed and ready for Christmas day. And when Nancy and I look out from our upstairs windows, we can see the National Christmas Tree standing in majestic beauty. Its lights fill the air with a spirit of love, hope, and joy from the heart of America.

I shared that spirit recently when a young girl named Amy Benham helped me light our national tree. Amy had said that the tree that lights up our country must be seen all the way to heaven. And she said that her wish was to help me turn on its lights. Well, Amy's wish came true. But the greatest gift was mine, because I saw her eyes light up with hope and joy just as brightly as the lights on our national tree. And I'm sure they were both seen all the way to heaven, and they made the angels sing.

Christmas is a time for children, and rightly so. We celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace who came as a babe in a manger. Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great teacher and philosopher. But to other millions of us, Jesus is much more. He is divine, living assurance that God so loved the world He gave us His only begotten Son so that by believing in Him and learning to love each other we could one day be together in paradise.

It's been said that all the kings who ever reigned, that all the parliaments that ever sat have not done as much to advance the cause of peace on Earth and good will to men as the man from Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth.

Christmas is also a time to remember the treasures of our own history. We remember one Christmas in particular, 1776, our first year as a nation. The Revolutionary War had been going badly. But George Washington's faith, courage, and leadership would turn the tide of history our way. On Christmas night he led a band of ragged soldiers across the Delaware River through driving snow to a victory that saved the cause of independence. It's said that their route of march was stained by bloody footprints, but their spirit never faltered and their will could not be crushed.

The image of George Washington kneeling in prayer in the snow is one of the most famous in American history. He personified a people who knew it was not enough to depend on their own courage and goodness; they must also seek help from God, their Father and Preserver.

In a few hours, families and friends across America will join together in caroling parties and Christmas Eve services. Together, we'll renew that spirit of faith, peace, and giving which has always marked the character of our people. In our moments of quiet reflection I know we will remember our fellow citizens who may be lonely and in need tonight.

``Is the Christmas spirit still alive?'' some ask. Well, you bet it is. Being Americans, we open our hearts to neighbors less fortunate. We try to protect them from hunger and cold. And we reach out in so many ways -- from toys-for-tots drives across the country, to good will by the Salvation Army, to American Red Cross efforts which provide food, shelter, and Christmas cheer from Atlanta to Seattle.

Churches are so generous it's impossible to keep track. One example: Reverend Bill Singles' Presbyterian Meeting House in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, is simultaneously sponsoring hot meals on wheels programs, making and delivering hundreds of sandwiches and box loads of clothes, while visiting local hospitals and sending postcards to shut-ins and religious dissidents abroad.

Let us remember the families who maintain a watch for their missing in action. And, yes, let us remember all those who are persecuted inside the Soviet bloc -- not because they commit a crime, but because they love God in their hearts and want the freedom to celebrate Hanukkah or worship the Christ Child.

And because faith for us is not an empty word, we invoke the power of prayer to spread the spirit of peace. We ask protection for our soldiers who are guarding peace tonight -- from frigid outposts in Alaska and the Korean demilitarized zone to the shores of Lebanon. One Lebanese mother told us that her little girl had only attended school 2 of the last 8 years. Now, she said, because of our presence there her daughter can live a normal life.

With patience and firmness we can help bring peace to that strife-torn region and make our own lives more secure. The Christmas spirit of peace, hope, and love is the spirit Americans carry with them all year round, everywhere we go. As long as we do, we need never be afraid, because trusting in God is the one sure answer to all the problems we face.

Till next week, thanks for listening, God bless you, and Merry Christmas.

Fake Washington, Fake Jefferson, Fake Henry

Many posts have discussed fake quotations from Lincoln, Jefferson, Tocqueville, and others.

John Fea at Current:

 Here is Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch:

MAGA pastor and self-proclaimed “prophet” Hank Kunneman held a special patriotic church service prior to Independence Day earlier this month, during which he read made-up a quote supposedly from Thomas Jefferson in an attempt to argue that America was founded as and must remain a Christian nation.

During the service, Kunneman flagrantly misrepresented the famous 1802 “separation of church and state” letter that Jefferson sent to the Danbury Baptists after being elected president.

After mistakenly claiming that this quote came from “an address” that Jefferson delivered to the Danbury Baptists, Kunneman then read a laughably false quote supposedly delivered by Jefferson.

“He said, ‘The First Amendment has created a wall of separation between church and state,’” Kunneman declared, while an image of false quote was projected on screen. “‘But that wall is one directional. It keeps the government from running the church, and it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government.’”

“Take that and choke,” Kunneman smugly proclaimed.

Read the rest here.

Watch the entire sermon here.

Some of you might notice that Kunneman also throws up on the screen a quote that he claims comes from George Washington’s Farewell Address: “Do not let anyone claim tribute of American patriotism, if they even attempt to remove religion from politics.” Read the farewell address here. Kunneman only got this quote half right. (The words after the comma are not Washington’s). Apparently Kunneman got this quote off the internet. He didn’t even bother to read the original document.

And that’s not all. Kunneman follows this up with the fake Patrick Henry quote that got Missouri senator Josh Hawley into trouble earlier this month.

The Peaceful Transfer of Power

 Liz Cheney in the 1/6 report:

At the heart of our Republic is the guarantee of the peaceful transfer of power. Members of Congress are reminded of this every day as we pass through the Capitol Rotunda. There, eight magnificent paintings detail theearliest days of our Republic. Four were painted by John Trumbull, including one depicting the moment in 1793 when George Washington resigned his commission, handing control of the Continental Army back to Congress. Trumbull called this, “one of the highest moral lessons ever given the world.” With this noble act, George Washington established the indispensable example of the peaceful transfer of power in our nation. 

Standing on the West Front of the Capitol in 1981, President Ronald Reagan described it this way: 

To a few of us here today, this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

Every President in our history has defended this orderly transfer of authority, except one. January 6, 2021 was the first time one American President refused his Constitutional duty to transfer power peacefully to the next.

George Washington and Mass Inoculation

Amy Lynn Filsinger,  & Raymond Dwek at the Library of Congress:

George Washington's military genius is undisputed. Yet American independence must be partially attributed to a strategy for which history has given the infamous general little credit: his controversial medical actions. Traditionally, the Battle of Saratoga is credited with tipping the revolutionary scales. Yet the health of the Continental regulars involved in battle was a product of the ambitious initiative Washington began earlier that year at Morristown, close on the heels of the victorious Battle of Princeton. Among the Continental regulars in the American Revolution, 90 percent of deaths were caused by disease, and Variola the small pox virus was the most vicious of them all. (Gabriel and Metz 1992, 107)

On the 6th of January 1777, George Washington wrote to Dr. William Shippen Jr., ordering him to inoculate all of the forces that came through Philadelphia. He explained that: "Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Army . . . we should have more to dread from it, than from the Sword of the Enemy." The urgency was real. Troops were scarce and encampments had turned into nomadic hospitals of festering disease, deterring further recruitment. Both Benedict Arnold and Benjamin Franklin, after surveying the havoc wreaked by Variola in the Canadian campaign, expressed fears that the virus would be the army's ultimate downfall. (Fenn 2001, 69)

At the time, the practice of infecting the individual with a less-deadly form of the disease was widespread throughout Europe. Most British troops were immune to Variola, giving them an enormous advantage against the vulnerable colonists. (Fenn 2001, 131) Conversely, the history of inoculation in America (beginning with the efforts of the Reverend Cotton Mather in 1720) was pocked by the fear of the contamination potential of the process. Such fears led the Continental Congress to issue a proclamation in 1776 prohibiting Surgeons of the Army to inoculate.

Washington suspected the only available recourse was inoculation, yet contagion risks aside, he knew that a mass inoculation put the entire army in a precarious position should the British hear of his plans. Moreover, Historians estimate that less than a quarter of the Continental Army had ever had the virus; inoculating the remaining three quarters and every new recruit must have seemed daunting. Yet the high prevalence of disease among the army regulars was a significant deterrent to desperately needed recruits, and a dramatic reform was needed to allay their fears.

Weighing the risks, on February 5th of 1777, Washington finally committed to the unpopular policy of mass inoculation by writing to inform Congress of his plan. Throughout February, Washington, with no precedent for the operation he was about to undertake, covertly communicated to his commanding officers orders to oversee mass inoculations of their troops in the model of Morristown and Philadelphia (Dr. Shippen's Hospital). At least eleven hospitals had been constructed by the year's end.

Variola raged throughout the war, devastating the Native American population and slaves who had chosen to fight for the British in exchange for freedom. Yet the isolated infections that sprung up among Continental regulars during the southern campaign failed to incapacitate a single regiment. With few surgeons, fewer medical supplies, and no experience, Washington conducted the first mass inoculation of an army at the height of a war that immeasurably transformed the international system. Defeating the British was impressive, but simultaneously taking on Variola was a risky stroke of genius.

References:

Fenn, Elizabeth. Pox Americana: the Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001. 370 p.

Gabriel, Richard, and Karen Metz. A History of Military Medicine. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. 2 v.

The People Rate the Presidents

 Matthew Smith at YouGov:

The respective excellence of US presidents is always being debated. Many academics have put together rankings over the years to demonstrate who they think is best, and in one famous case the features of one person’s top four have been carved into a mountain.

But how do the leaders of the nation rank in terms of public opinion? A new YouGov poll has asked Americans their view on the 45 men who have served as president to date.

Topping the list is Abraham Lincoln. Eight in ten Americans (80%) have a favorable view of the president who freed the slaves and won the Civil War, including 56% who have a “very favorable” view of him.

In a perhaps surprise second place – if going by combined very+somewhat favorable ratings – is John F. Kennedy, whom 73% of Americans have a favorable view opinion of. This puts him three points ahead of the more traditional runner-up George Washington (70%), who places third on this measure (although the scores are within the margin of error). It is worth noting that fewer people have a “very” favorable view of Kennedy: 35% to Washington’s 44%.

Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson complete the top five, both being seen favorably by 62% of Americans.

...

 There are only two presidents who are currently seen unfavorably by a majority of Americans: Richard Nixon (56%) and Donald Trump (54%). More Americans take a “very” negative view of Trump (47% to Nixon’s 34%), although he is also popular among a wider group: 39% like Donald Trump compared to 27% for Nixon.

A Republican Executive

 At AEI, Joseph M. Bessette and Gary J. Schmitt have a report titled "Crafting a Republican Executive: The Presidency and the Constitutional Convention." Key points:

• The Constitutional Convention of 1787 knew the young nation needed a strong executive that was still accountable to the general public. In short, the new executive was to be an unprecedented mix of monarchic-like vigor and republican restraint.
• The first major issue the Convention faced was what powers in addition to executing the nation’s laws could be given to the new executive. The office needed to be made both capable and accountable before those powers could be added. The second and related issue was how best to select the president to maintain the office’s independence and energy. The Convention ultimately settled on the Electoral College system as the best practical means to select a president.
• In the end, the authorities the delegates vested in the chief executive were as much a reflection of their confidence in the characteristics of the institution they crafted and its concomitant promotion of “presidential” behavior as it was trust in the personal characteristics of the men they expected would rise to the nation’s highest office.

From the report:

To make an obvious point, the delegates would hardly have committed themselves to making the president impeachable if they expected every president to be a Washington. Nor would they have required Senate approval to the appointment of high-ranking executive officials. In the end, the authorities the delegates vested in the chief executive were as much a reflection of their confidence in the characteristics of the institution they so carefully crafted and the ways that institution would promote “presidential” behavior as it was trust in the personal characteristics of the men they expected would rise to the nation’s highest office.

Indeed, it is remarkable how frank the delegates were in their discussions of the executive. Those concerned about creating too strong an office were not at all reluctant to speak of ignoble cabals and monarchic designs, while those who favored a powerful and energetic executive were quite open about the need to tie the president’s passions and interests to
his duties.

Rather than looking to Washington as the kind of man they expected typically to occupy the office, the delegates may have been thinking more of someone like New York Gov. George Clinton. By the summer of 1787, Clinton was serving in his 11th consecutive
year as governor. Among the state governors, only William Livingston of New Jersey had served longer (by one year), and no governor had become as powerful a political figure in his state. Although Clinton was not without talent, few would rank him with fellow
New Yorkers Hamilton or Jay, never mind with the likes of Washington. Operating under a constitution that gave him renewable three-year terms and vested the office with substantial independent powers, Clinton proved to be an effective and responsible governor.

The architects of the presidency hoped their Electoral College system would raise to the nation’s highest office men with a reputation for exemplary public service. As the delegates themselves implied, reputation was an approximation for real virtue. Men of the caliber of Washington were desired, but men like Clinton were more likely to fill the office.

The Crossing

 From the National Park Service:

On December 25, 1776, General George Washington and a small army of 2400 men crossed the Delaware River at McConkey's Ferry, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on their way to successfully attack a Hessian garrison of 1500 at Trenton, New Jersey. This march, at one of the lowest points of the American Revolution, gave the Patriots new hope after their failed effort to keep the British from occupying New York City. The close of 1776 found the cause of American independence from Great Britain staggering under a succession of defeats. In October, the Continental Congress had made provision for a long-term military force, but at the end of the year this establishment was on paper, not in the field where it was desperately needed. Washington, in his camp on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware, realized that he must strike a military blow to the enemy before his army melted away and he was determined to hit the Hessian garrison at Trenton. On the night of December 25, the American main force was ferried across the Delaware River by Colonel John Glover's Marblehead fishermen and in the bleak early morning hours assembled on the New Jersey shore for the march on Trenton, about 10 miles downstream. Surprise was complete, and within an hour and a half after the action opened the Hessians surrendered.

Thanksgiving and Constitutional Gratitude

 Yuval Levin and Adam J. White at National Review:

George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789, like so many other aspects of his presidency, set a precedent. Even if they were spurred by a congressional resolution, Washington’s words went far beyond Congress’s, offering the newly constituted people an example of what to be grateful for, and how to express that gratitude.

Washington went on to further exemplify constitutional gratitude at the end of his presidency, in his 1796 farewell address. There he expressed thanks not just to those who created the Constitution, but also to the Americans now tasked with sustaining it. They had entrusted Washington with the first presidency, and his farewell address is replete with statements of gratitude to Americans, of love for America, and of a profound sense of that with which he had been entrusted.

The man who had devoted his life first to the revolution, and then to the Constitution, left office not suggesting that the people were indebted to him, but the opposite: He offered “deep acknowledgement of that debt of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country,” he wrote, “for the many honors it has conferred upon me; still more for the steadfast confidence with which it has supported me; and for the opportunities I have thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment.” The presidency was not a prize that he had earned, but an “important trust” that soon would be committed to his successor.

Washington would not be the last president to speak in such terms, nor should these themes be the exclusive province of presidents. Statesmen in Congress can offer such examples, too. In Federalist No. 57, James Madison writes that members of Congress would be motivated by more than just ambition and self-interest; he also counted duty and gratitude among “the chords by which [those members] will be bound to fidelity and sympathy with the great mass of the people.”

Some more than others, of course, and if the likes of Washington and Lincoln are rare in the White House then they are rarer still on Capitol Hill. But when members of Congress, like presidents, are able to define their office not just in terms of power but also in terms of gratitude both to their fellow countrymen and to their forefathers, they help to perpetuate the Constitution that creates their offices; and they offer an example for the people whose own constitutional gratitude is indispensable for this perpetuation.

This Thanksgiving, when the nation is battered by a pandemic and fractured by political strife, we can hope that statesmen will step forward to exemplify constitutional gratitude. But more important, we can rediscover the sources of our own gratitude, for those who wrote the Constitution and those who perpetuated it — not just for our own sake, but for the sake of posterity.

Congress and Thanksgiving Day

From the National Archives:

On September 28, 1789, just before leaving for recess, the first Federal Congress passed a resolution asking that the President of the United States recommend to the nation a day of thanksgiving. A few days later, President George Washington issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a "Day of Publick Thanksgivin" - the first time Thanksgiving was celebrated under the new Constitution. Subsequent presidents issued Thanksgiving Proclamations, but the dates and even months of the celebrations varied. It wasn't until President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Proclamation that Thanksgiving was regularly commemorated each year on the last Thursday of November.

In 1939, however, the last Thursday in November fell on the last day of the month. Concerned that the shortened Christmas shopping season might dampen the economic recovery, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a Presidential Proclamation moving Thanksgiving to the second to last Thursday of November. As a result of the proclamation, 32 states issued similar proclamations while 16 states refused to accept the change and proclaimed Thanksgiving to be the last Thursday in November. For two years two days were celebrated as Thanksgiving - the President and part of the nation celebrated it on the second to last Thursday in November, while the rest of the country celebrated it the following week.

To end the confusion, Congress decided to set a fixed-date for the holiday. On October 6, 1941, the House passed a joint resolution declaring the last Thursday in November to be the legal Thanksgiving Day. The Senate, however, amended the resolution establishing the holiday as the fourth Thursday, which would take into account those years when November has five Thursdays. The House agreed to the amendment, and President Roosevelt signed the resolution on December 26, 1941, thus establishing the fourth Thursday in November as the Federal Thanksgiving Day holiday.

George Washington on Immigration

Many posts have discussed immigration to the United States.

From George Washington to Joshua Holmes, 2 December 1783

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent & respectable Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights & privileges, if by decency & propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.

From George Washington to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 28 May 1788

 I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong...

 Proclamation, 1 January 1795

[We] humbly and fervently to beseech the kind author of these blessings graciously to prolong them to us—to imprint on our hearts a deep and solemn sense of our obligations to him for them—to teach us rightly to estimate their immense value—to preserve us from the arrogance of prosperity and from hazarding the advantages we enjoy by delusive pursuits to dispose us to merit the continuance of his favors, by not abusing them, by our gratitude for them, and by a correspondent conduct as citizens and as men—to render this Country more and more a safe and propitious asylum for the unfortunate of other Countries..

Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation

Sam Wineburg at Zocalo Public Square:

George Washington issued what might be considered the first executive order. To commemorate the end of a bloody Revolutionary War, Washington set aside the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving and prayer. His 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation was short, a mere 456 words, punctuated by references—“Almighty God,” “the Lord and Ruler of Nations,” “the great and glorious Being,” “the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be”—to a Supreme Being.
...
Historians were not deaf to Washington’s religious references. While the clergy and the scientists saw them as evidence of Washington’s devotion, the historians stressed the president’s precision in crafting a vocabulary that would unite the dizzying array of Protestant denominations in post-revolutionary America without alienating the small but important groups of Catholics, Jews, and freethinkers dotting the American landscape. It was precisely because he understood that Americans did not believe the same thing that Washington was scrupulous in choosing words that would be acceptable to a wide spectrum of religious groups.

In his own time, Washington’s reluctance to show his doctrinal cards dismayed his Christian co-religionists. Members of the first Presbytery of the Eastward (comprised of Presbyterian churches in Massachusetts and New Hampshire) complained to the president that the Constitution failed to mention the cardinal tenets of Christian faith: “We should not have been alone in rejoicing to have seen some explicit acknowledgement of the only true God and Jesus Christ.” Washington dodged the criticism by assuring the Presbyterians that the “path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction.”

Similarly, a week before his 1789 proclamation, Washington responded to a letter from Reverend Samuel Langdon, the president of Harvard College from 1774-1780. Langdon had implored Washington to “let all men know that you are not ashamed to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Once again, instead of affirming Christian tenets, Washington wrote back offering thanks to the generic “Author of the Universe.”

The Cost of the American Revolution

Jay Cost at National Review:

On an absolute scale, the American Revolution was a relatively modest affair. However, judged in light of the tiny American economy of 1776–83, it was an enormous undertaking. As a percentage of GDP, the Revolutionary War cost the United States about as much as World War I did (and remember that, before the absolutely massive conflict of World War II, World War I was known as “the Great War”).

...
The war effort was the single greatest reason for the nationalist movement of the 1780s, which led in turn to the Constitution. The 1770s was characterized by a revolutionary fervor — informed by a simple, virtuous type of republicanism that rings through the Declaration of Independence. That was the ethos of Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Samuel Adams. But five years later, it was others — such as George Washington, Robert Morris, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton — who had to reckon with the prospect of a failed revolution. They had to deal with the impossible challenge of running a government completely unequipped for the task at hand. This is the origin of our Constitution, born first and foremost of the sacrifice of the Revolutionary soldiers.

Thanksgiving Proclamations

Richard Samuelson at Law and Liberty:

George Washington set the tone for the office in many ways, none more so than in his Thanksgiving Proclamation, given in October, 1789, seven months after he took the oath of office. Why have such a proclamation at all? Where in Article I, Section 8 (the section that lists the powers the people gave the federal government) is the power to proclaim a federal holiday? In 1791 James Madison would criticize Alexander Hamilton’s assertion that the U.S. government has the authority to create a national bank, for nowhere in the Constitution did the people give the federal government the right to create a bank or to create a corporation (an entity that had traditionally been regarded as a “person” in the eyes of the law). And fourteen years later, the Louisiana Purchase would tie President Jefferson in knots, for nowhere did the people give the U.S. government the right to acquire territory. Yet Madison lost the national bank argument in 1791 and by 1816 he had changed his mind about its constitutionality. Meanwhile, Jefferson didn’t stop the Senate from ratifying the Louisiana Purchase. In other words, he and Madison implicitly accepted that there are some powers that belong to government due to the nature of the thing, and when the people created the U.S. government they, of necessity, allowed it those powers without which no government can function.

The authority to proclaim a Thanksgiving might seem trivial to us—mere words, and an idle declaration. But it is, in fact, fraught with meaning, for the assumption of such authority highlights the degree to which a President is, by nature, much like a monarch—albeit an elected one. Similarly, it points us to the limits of secular nationalism.

Consider President Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation. He begins with the universal “duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.” But then he stops, as if he knew some might ask why the President is involved. Washington goes on, “Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me ‘to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a a form of government for their safety and happiness.’” Congress asked Washington to proclaim the day. An interesting request. Congress did not pass a law proclaiming a day of Thanksgiving. Such an act may, according to some constructions of the Constitution, have crossed over into an establishment of religion. Instead, they have merely asked the President to “recommend” such an observance to the people. But if it’s not a law, wherefore does the authority come from? It must adhere in the nature of the thing.

Purple Heart Day

A release from the Military Order of the Purple Heart of the U.S.A

Each year on August 7th, the nation pauses to remember and pay homage to the brave men and women who were either wounded on the battlefield or paid the ultimate sacrifice with their lives. As America’s oldest decoration, the Purple Heart is awarded to any member of the U.S. Armed Forces that has been wounded, died as a result of wounds received in battle, or those who died in captivity while a prisoner of war (POW). We now celebrate Purple Heart Day on the anniversary of its creation by General George Washington on August 7, 1782.

This year, many States, Counties, and Cities; sport and entertainment entities; colleges and universities, and other patriotic entities across the nation who have proclaimed themselves as Purple Heart communities, will raise the Purple Heart flag in recognition of the service and sacrifice of their local sons and daughters. In New York City, the Empire State Building will be lit in purple lights as a reminder to all Americans that there is a price for the freedoms we enjoy, and honor is due to those who gave their all in defense of those freedoms. In Norfolk, Virginia, the streets of the city will be filled with Purple Heart recipients as they gather to participate in the 2016 MOPH National Convention.

The organization now known as the "Military Order of the Purple Heart of the U.S.A. Inc.," (MOPH) was formed in 1932 for the protection and mutual interest of all combat wounded veterans and active duty men and women who have received the decoration. 

Jennifer Bendery reports at The Huffington Post:

Donald Trump was thrilled last week when a veteran at a Virginia rally gave him his Purple Heart. “I’ve always wanted to get a Purple Heart,” he said, dangling the medal typically awarded to soldiers wounded or killed while serving in battle. “This was much easier.”

That response didn’t sit right with Cameron Kerr, a Purple Heart recipient based in Virginia. As an Army veteran who lost his leg on the battleground in Afghanistan, Kerr was stunned to see Trump treating the prestigious award like a flashy new toy. He figured if Trump has really always wanted a Purple Heart, he should have to earn it “the old-fashioned way”: by going into a war zone.

So he’s raising money to help give Trump that chance.

“As with seemingly everything else in his life, Mr. Trump got [a Purple Heart] handed to him instead of earning it,” Kerr states on a GoFundMe page he launched Tuesday with the headline “Help Trump Get A Purple Heart.”

“I fully endorse his desire to earn one and would happily oblige his interest in doing so, by being one of the first to chip in to fly him to the conflict zone of his choosing,” Kerr wrote. “After all, you’re never too old to follow your dreams.”

Rand Paul's Fake Quotations

Many posts have discussed fake quotations. At Buzzfeed, Andrew Kaczynski and Megan Apper write an open letter to Senator Rand Paul about his use of fake quotations:

Just this week you released a new book, Our President &Their Prayers: Proclamation of Faith by America’s Leaders, with co-author James Robison who “compiled and edited” the text. It too is full of fake quotations.

If you Google the language of the “National Prayer of Peace,” which you attribute to Thomas Jefferson, the first result is a page from the Thomas Jefferson Foundation debunking the quotation.

When we called Harold Holzer — who’s written 50 books on Abraham Lincoln and is the one of country’s foremost Lincoln scholars — to ask about a Lincoln quotation in your book, he replied, “Oh, not this again.”

You wrote that Lincoln said, “I know there is a God, and that He hates the injustice of slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and a work for me, and I think He has, I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right, because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God.”

Holzer was clear.

“I hope Sen. Paul can find another Lincoln prayer to console him because Lincoln never uttered anything like this,” Holzer said. “It’s totally apocryphal. ‘Do unto others’ was more in Lincoln’s line. Not this.”

The quotation that leads off your chapter on George Washington — “let the world be filled with the knowledge of Thee and Thy Son, Jesus Christ” — is also fake. The source comes from a prayer book, The Daily Sacrifice, commonly attributed to Washington by evangelicals and conservative politicians, despite the fact it’s been routinely discredited by scholars.

The book does contain a real quotation from Reagan's 1983 Evil Empire speech.

And finally, that shrewdest of all observers of American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, put it eloquently after he had gone on a search for the secret of America's greatness and genius—and he said: "Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and the genius of America. . . . America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

But the real Reagan quotation includes a fake Tocqueville quotation.  As many posts have explained, the "America is good" line is totally bogus.

In Honor of the Late Yogi Berra: Fake Quotations on Social Media

The great Yogi Berra has passed.  As Ralph Keyes writes in The Quote Verifier, "it is safe to assume that most of the most popular sayings attributed to Yogi Berra are spurious."

Spurious quotations of other historical figures have been much in circulation on Facebook and Twitter.  A sampler:




From George Washington's Mount Vernon:

"This quote is partially accurate as the beginning section is taken from Washington's First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union. However, the quote is then manipulated into a differing context and the remaining text is inaccurate. Here is the actual text from Washington's speech:

`A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.'"





The "Positive Atheism" site lists this line on its list of "Phony James Madison Quotations"

But here is something he actually did say:

"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?"







Eoin O'Connor writes at The Christian Science Monitor:

"This line is probably the best summary of Gandhi's philosophy of satyagraha as you can get in 16 words. But there's no evidence that the Great Soul ever said this."

 As mentioned before, Populists 
concocted this one, and Lincoln's private aide called it a "bald, unblushing forgery."  Not only did Lincoln never say these words, they were at odds with his thinking, as Andrew Ferguson explained : "A corporate lawyer whose long and cunning labor on behalf of the railroads earned him a comfortable income, Lincoln was a vigorous champion of market capitalism, even when it drifted (as it tends to do) toward large  concentrations of wealth."







TOCQUEVILLE NEVER SAID ANY SUCH THING!

Venerating the Constitution

At AEI, James Ceaser writes:

The idea of a written constitution, if it was indeed an American discovery, is coupled in The Federalist with an equally important contribution that relates to the way in which people are to regard the document. The issue here is fundamental: What kind of thing is a written constitution? From a legal standpoint, as we have seen, a written constitution is higher law. But is it merely law, or does it perform a further function and have a different status? Is the Constitution something to be venerated—something that endows government with respect and contributes to its stability and endurance—and that provides a bond that connects the people to the nation?

Federalist 49 develops the doctrine of attaching the sentiment of reverence to the Constitution. As with the idea of a written constitution, many today can easily overlook the originality of this doctrine, so widely is it accepted today that the Constitution is supposed to be looked up to (a little bit, anyhow).

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Why did The Federalist create the doctrine of constitutional reverence? One set of arguments rested on practical considerations, though practical in the most expansive sense of the term. The experience of the leading figures in writing and promoting the Constitution led them to appreciate just how difficult it was to secure a happy outcome for this kind of venture. The odds of success, they concluded, would always be slim, and there were always grave risks in trying. Every attempt at remaking government creates instability and threatens to divide the nation.

These leaders were also aware of how favorable, relatively speaking, were the circumstances in their day for accomplishing their objective. The proposed constitution was being considered at a time when the people still had unusual confidence and trust in their leaders, most notably George Washington, and when there was a lingering unity of purpose stemming from the Revolution. A fact of still greater importance was one that The Federalist could not openly avow: that the main figures involved were persons of exceptional talents, rare devotion to the public good, and, in the case of a few, extensive knowledge of the science of politics. Chance or accident, though it did not take the place of reflection in the making of the Constitution, played a critical, perhaps decisive, role in its ratification.

Given these facts, the conclusion drawn was that it would be best to lock in the gain. Veneration of the Constitution was a means to assure its durability and avoid the temptations to engage in experiments of new-modeling the government. Durability would not exclude changes, which the Constitution allows for by the process of amendment. But amendment is not made easy, as this would defeat the objective of durability.

West's Familiar Misquotations

Many posts have discussed spurious quotations. The Palm Beach Post reports:

Former Rep. Allen West outlines his political philosophy, warrior code and experiences as a black conservative in a new book that’s peppered with quotations attributed to Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other famous figures.

Several of the quotes in West’s “Guardian of the Republic” — including one that’s also been used by President Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain — have a familiar ring from frequent repetition, but have been flagged by historians as erroneous.

“Thomas Jefferson said it first: ‘A government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it away,’” West writes.

The quotation doesn’t appear in Jefferson’s writings, according to researchers at the Charlottesville, Va.-based Thomas Jefferson Foundation. But variations of it have appeared on coffee mugs and T-shirts with Jefferson’s name and have ricocheted around the Internet enough that the foundation included it in a “Spurious Quotations” list of popular sayings misattributed to the Declaration of Independence drafter and third president.

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Obama (as a senator in 2005) and McCain (as a 2008 presidential candidate) are among those who have quoted George Washington as saying that “the willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by our nation.”

West includes that quote in his book. But the words aren’t Washington’s, according to Mary V. Thompson, a research historian with the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington.

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West’s book quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th century French observer of America, as saying democracy “can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result being that a democracy collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

Tocqueville did see danger in big government, but the quote in West’s book “certainly” is spurious, said Harvard historian Harvey Mansfield, who translated a 2000 edition of Tocqueville’s seminal “Democracy In America.”

During the 1996 campaign, H. Ross Perot attributed the line to Scottish historian Alexander Tytler.  But as I wrote at the time, Tytler didn't say it, either.

Disagreement and Deliberation

At Commentary, Peter Wehner makes a good point about deliberation and disagreement:

Over the weekend, while doing research for an essay, I re-read Catherine Drinker Bowen’s wonderful book Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention from May to September 1787. In it she quotes George Washington (a strong Federalist) on the value of the opposition.

“Upon the whole,” Washington wrote, “I doubt whether the opposition to the Constitution will not ultimately be productive of more good than evil; it has called forth, in its defence, abilities which would not perhaps have been otherwise exerted that have thrown new light upon the science of Government, they have given the rights of man a full and fair discussion, and explained them in so clear and forcible a manner, as cannot fail to make a lasting impression.”

Two centuries later the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin echoed these observations inan interview in which he was asked about critics of the Enlightenment (which Berlin was a great admirer of).

“I am interested in the views of the opposition because I think that understanding it can sharpen one’s own vision,” Berlin said. “Clever and gifted enemies often pinpoint fallacies or shallow analyses in the thought of the Enlightenment. I am more interested in critical attacks which lead to knowledge than simply in repeating and defending the commonplaces of and about the Enlightenment.”

I cite both Washington and Berlin because what they are saying doesn’t come naturally to most of us and, in fact, runs deeply against our grain. Many of us have settled views on politics, on philosophy, on theology; we’re far more interested in refuting our critics than learning from them. Our moral intuitions and dispositions, our experiences and intellectual vanity can prevent us from appreciating the “new light” that can be cast by those with whom we disagree.

Nelson Mandela and George Washington

George Washington was a great president not just because of what he did, but because of what he refrained from doing.  He did not assume dictatorial power, did not seek revenge against enemies, and did not attempt to hang on to office.  When his two terms were over, he simply went home.  At Commentary, Max Boot writes of other insurgents:

This is not, needless to say, the norm. Much more common are insurgents like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Mugabe, Kim Il Sung, and (fill in the blank) who, while posturing as freedom fighters battling an evil dictatorship, swiftly become dictators in turn as soon as they seize power. The exceptions to that rule are some of the greatest figures of modern history–the likes of George Washington, Michael Collins, David Ben-Gurion, and, most recently, Nelson Mandela.

I can remember growing up in the 1980s when there was widespread suspicion among conservatives in the U.S.–including many in the Reagan administration–that if the African National Congress were to take over, South Africa would be transformed into another dysfunctional dictatorship like the rest of the continent. That this did not come to pass was due to many reasons including F.W. de Klerk’s wisdom in giving up power without a fight.

But the largest part of the explanation for why South Africa is light years ahead of most African nations–why, for all its struggles with high unemployment, crime, corruption, and other woes, it is freer and more prosperous than most of its neighbors–is the character of Nelson Mandela. Had he turned out to be another Mugabe, there is every likelihood that South Africa would now be on the same road to ruin as Zimbabwe. But that did not happen because Mandela turned out to be, quite simply, a great man–someone who could spend 27 years in jail and emerge with no evident bitterness to make a deal with his jailers that allowed them to give up power peacefully and to avoid persecution.

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His example should dispel any illusions, so popular in the historical profession, that history is made by impersonal forces. Mandela’s example is a ringing endorsement of what is derisively known as the “great man school of history”–the notion that influential individuals make a huge difference in how events turn out. He certainly made a difference, and for the better. He will go down as one of the giants of the second half of the twentieth century along with Reagan, Thatcher, Deng Xiaoping, Lech Walesa, and Pope John Paul II.