RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/17/new-national-world-war-i-memorial-is-a-moving-tribute-to-bravery-sacrifice-and-the-indomitable-american-spirit/

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae’s immortal words of remembrance of all who fell in the Great War carried through a beautiful ceremony honoring the oft-forgotten war and America’s pivotal role. On Friday morning, politicians, historians, activists, military leaders, artists, and descendants virtually gathered to raise the American flag over the newly-erected World War I memorial in Washington DC.

As the last of the major 20th century US war veterans to receive a national memorial, those who served in WWI now have a powerful tribute to their sacrifice, bravery, and heroism. Hopefully, the monument will help return the Great War to public consciousness.

The monument is a peaceful place of reflection, erected in downtown Washington, D.C. within Pershing Park, which is named for John Pershing, General of the Armies who commanded America to victory in the Great War. The stone walls contain quotes from writings and poetry of WWI soldiers, and small fountains hide the city sounds.

The centerpiece of the memorial is a long statue featuring several war scenes leading into the other. The figures are near life-sized and each tableau has a sense of action, as well as fluidity between them, creating a palpable sense of immediacy to the images.

Joe Weishaar, the architect who designed the memorial, detailed his desire to center the monument on the stories of those who served. To supplement the beauty and remembrance of the physical structure, there is a multimedia aspect in the form of an app, which augments the experience by providing deeper learning to the attendees. The app can also be used outside the monument itself, allowing users to turn any area into a place of remembrance.

Actor and philanthropist Gary Sinise, best known for his Oscar-nominated turn as Lieutenant Dan in “Forrest Gump,” hosted the flag-raising from the office of his veteran service foundation. He opened the ceremony describing the American Soldiers, or doughboys as they were colloquially referred, in turning the tide of the war for the allied powers, overlaid with footage of the brave soldiers.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/04/18/the-courage-of-your-convictions-paul-revere-lexington-and-concord-n1440789

“Too many today reflexively reject anything that doesn’t fit in with the tribal narrative. But all sides could look at what happened in Lexington and Concord and draw inspiration and perhaps — just perhaps — begin to understand just a little bit about what America truly means.”

Two hundred and forty-six years ago this evening, a prominent Boston silversmith set out on a ride that would be immortalized by America’s finest poet. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was looking for a subject to write about that illustrated American virtues and concluded that Paul Revere’s ride on April 18, 1775, to alert Sam Adams and John Hancock that the British regulars were coming to arrest them in Lexington was a perfect allegory.

Longfellow wrote the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” in 1860 when no one was alive who remembered the actual events. And that was a good thing.  Longfellow took enormous liberties with the subject matter. But he wasn’t trying to achieve historical accuracy. Instead, Longfellow wanted to say something profound about the American character and the entire revolutionary generation: that they were willing to suffer and die for something greater than themselves.

Revere was a fairly wealthy man by standards of the time and could have done quite well for himself if he had stuck with the British during the Revolution. But he was a figure that would become quite common in America’s future. Revere was a man on the make and knew that if allowed the freedom to prosper, he could do better.

Revere became one of the first American industrialists and died a very wealthy man.

But most colonists were like the small group of militiamen who took positions on the green at Lexington the next day. They were simple folk — farmers, tradesmen, nary a wealthy man among them. They weren’t really sure why they were there except they knew they were standing up for what they understood their rights as free-born Englishmen to be. They were bitterly and tragically mistaken.

Imagine you were there. What side would you have been on?

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/19/remembering-the-patriot-with-the-most-thorough-understanding-of-liberty/

Today is patriot’s day, marking the Revolutionary War’s opening shots at Lexington and Concord. An excellent way to commemorate it is by remembering Samuel Adams, who Murray Rothbard called “the premier leader of the revolutionary movement,” as far more than a name on a beer bottle.

Adams helped organize the Committees of Correspondence, authored “The Rights of Colonists,” founded The Sons of Liberty, and was the principal organizer of the Boston Tea Party. The British government wanted him for treason a year before the Declaration of Independence. He inspired the battle cry “no taxation without representation,” signed the Declaration of Independence and was a representative to both Continental Congresses. Even Paul Revere’s famous ride was to warn Adams. 

Samuel Adams’ most important contribution to America’s cause, however, was that, in his cousin John Adams’ words, he had “the most thorough understanding of liberty,” which was the central spark in America’s creation. The threats liberty faces today, including a host of government actions that treat the trampling of liberty as non-issues, make recalling his ideas particularly important. 

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2015/04/03/buried-history-1943-passover-in-the-warsaw-ghetto-by-rita-kramer/

“What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world we buried in the ground….So the world may know all….We would [have been] the fathers, the teachers and educators of the future….But no, we shall certainly not live to see [the recovery of the archive], and so I write my last will. May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened…in the twentieth century….We may now die in peace. We fulfilled our mission. May history attest for us.” David Graber 19 year old.”

When families gather around the Seder table, many recall the dark Passover of 1943 and the climax of the months-long battle in which the small number of men and women remaining in the Warsaw Ghetto rose up against the Nazi murderers. They knew they were doomed but they were determined to go down fighting. We honor them as heroes.

There are many ways to be heroic. Because of tradition and circumstances Jews were not bred to be fighters. They were thinkers, readers, writers. And among the most heroic of those trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto was a historian named Emanuel Ringelblum, who determined to record life in the Ghetto in its reality, not as it might be misrepresented later in elegiac memorials or accusations of passivity by those who would not really know what it had been like.

In the interwar years Ringelblum had been one of the leading historians of Jewish life in Poland from the earliest times of settlement to the present, when a renaissance of learning and cultural creativity was taking place among the Jews of cities like Vilna, Lodz, and Warsaw. At the time, the greatest number of Jews anywhere in the world lived in Poland. And Warsaw, the largest Jewish community in Europe, was their intellectual center.