RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/explaining-the-greatness-of-the-founders/

Founding-era historian Gordon Wood identifies some important sources of the Founders’ genius.

EXCERPT:

Through their noble yet accessible commitments, the Founders not only distinguished themselves from their predecessors and English contemporaries. They also provided a template, whatever its imperfections, that stands out to us today. It is a template of which many — most — modern leaders fall short. We are fortunate, then, that the Founders possessed sufficient virtue to have “accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society.”

Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. 

Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. 

Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured.

 Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War. 

They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. 

What kind of men were they? 

Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists.

Eleven were merchants. 

Nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated. 

But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/07/d-day-at-80-how-the-allies-won-at-normandy-and-changed-history/?utm_source=r

They knew what was worth fighting and dying for

Zero hundred hours, Tuesday, June 6, 1944

British and American airborne troops, flown in on more than 1,000 aircraft, began to land in occupied Normandy in order to secure key objectives before the landings by sea. Elite Pathfinder units arrived first, marking out the terrain. “The first Skytrains appeared,” one observer later recalled, “silhouetted like groups of scudding bats.” German flak hit the planes “like large hailstones on a tin roof” as the paratroopers trod floors slippery with vomit and readied themselves before jumping down and down, thousands of feet, sometimes through cloud and fog. They were weighed down by up to 80 pounds of weapons, ammunition, and supplies. They knew that when they reached the ground, there would be merciless opposition — some of those whose parachutes got caught in trees were burned alive by flamethrower. They fought in fields and hedgerows lit only by the moon and by tracer fire.

What men they were. How can we not, reading of their actions that extraordinary day, hold our manhood cheap when we contemplate what they attempted, and achieved. It makes us wonder how we would have fared had it been our generation that had to liberate Europe from Nazism. “Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier,” said Dr. Johnson, “or not having been at sea.” To contemplate the experiences of the men who fought on D-Day 80 years ago this month is to appreciate the true nature of what we, sometimes all too glibly, call “the Greatest Generation.”

0215

Part of the vast invasion fleet of more than 6,800 vessels was spotted by the Germans in Cherbourg, but the Germans were already fighting Allied airborne troops and could not react to the threat of the largest seaborne assault in history as it sailed toward Normandy. One German noncommissioned officer said the ships looked like “a gigantic town on the sea.” The defenses at Cherbourg were so powerful that the Allied planners had to choose five beaches on which to land, in what was to be the greatest campaign of the western war.

Unlike the strategy of any other military operation in the 20th century, this one depended for success on a single day’s fighting. If what the planners described as a “satisfactory foothold” had not been gained by nightfall, it very likely wouldn’t be gained at all. It was therefore a desperate, war-defining risk that justified the commitment of no fewer than ten Army divisions, going ashore in two great waves.

British prime minister Winston Churchill fully recognized the dangers. In the fifth volume of his history of the Second World War, he wrote about the demands for an early “second front” in western Europe:

The Channel tides have a play of more than twenty feet, with corresponding scours along the beaches. The weather is always uncertain, and winds and gales may whip up in a few hours irresistible forces against frail human structures. The fools or knaves who had chalked “Second Front Now” on our walls for the past two years had not had their minds burdened by such problems. I had long pondered upon them. 

An overhasty return to the Continent, before the battle of the Atlantic was won and complete air superiority gained, could have resulted in disaster. As Churchill recalled telling Joseph Stalin at the Kremlin in August 1942 when he demanded an immediate second front, “War was war but not folly, and it would be folly to invite a disaster which would help nobody.”

“If the Germans decided to bring their maximum forces to the beachheads,” estimated the historian Sir Martin Gilbert, “the Allied armies could have been defeated on the shore.” There had already been a long history of failed or faulty amphibious operations in both world wars — Gallipoli, Dakar, Dieppe, Salerno, and Anzio among them. Landing troops on hostile shores against determined enemy resistance is the hardest of all military maneuvers.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

“I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my Country can inspire: since there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

CHANUKAH- DECEMBER 7-15

1. According to Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben Gurion: Chanukah commemorates “the struggle of the Maccabees, which was one of the most dramatic clashes of civilizations in human history, not merely a political-military struggle against foreign oppression…. Unlike many peoples, the meager Jewish people did not assimilate.  The Jewish people prevailed, won, sustained and enhanced their independence and unique civilization…. It was the spirit of the people, rather than the failed spirit of the establishment, which enabled the Hasmoneans to overcome one of the most magnificent spiritual, political and military challenges in Jewish history….” (Uniqueness and Destiny, pp 20-22, David Ben Gurion, IDF Publishing, 1953).

2. A Jewish national liberation holiday.  Chanukah (evening of December 7 – December 15, 2023) is the only Jewish holiday that commemorates an ancient national liberation struggle in the Land of Israel, unlike the national liberation holidays, Passover, Sukkot/Tabernacles and Shavu’ot/Pentecost, which commemorate the liberation from slavery in Egypt to independence in the land of Israel, and unlike Purim, which commemorates liberation from a Persian attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.

3. Chanukah and the Land of Israel.  When ordered by Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Seleucid region to end the Jewish “occupation” of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Gaza, Gezer and Akron, Shimon the Maccabee responded: “We have not occupied a foreign land…. We have liberated the land of our forefathers from foreign occupation (Book of Maccabees A: 15:33).”

Chanukah highlights the centrality of the Land of Israel in the formation of Jewish history, religion, culture and language. The mountain ridges of Judea and Southern Samaria (the West Bank) were the platform for the Maccabean military battles: Mitzpah (the burial site of the Prophet Samuel, overlooking Jerusalem), Beth El (the site of the Ark of the Covenant and Judah the Maccabee’s initial headquarters), Beth Horon (Judah’s victory over Seron), Hadashah (Judah’s victory over Nicanor), Beth Zur (Judah’s victory over Lysias), Ma’aleh Levona (Judah’s victory over Apolonius), Adora’yim (a Maccabean fortress), Eleazar (named after Mattityahu’s youngest Maccabee son), Beit Zachariya (Judah’s first defeat), Ba’al Hatzor (where Judah was defeated and killed), Te’qoah, Mikhmash and Gophnah (bases of Shimon and Yonatan), the Judean Desert, etc.

4. Historical context  Chanukah is narrated in the four Books of the Maccabees, The Scroll of Antiochus and The Wars of the Jews.

In 323 BCE, following the death of Alexander the Great (Alexander III) who held Judaism in high esteem, the Greek Empire was split into three independent and rival mini-empires: Greece, Seleucid/Syria and Ptolemaic/Egypt.

In 175 BCE, the Seleucid/Syrian Emperor Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes claimed the Land of Israel. He suspected that the Jews were allies of his Ptolemaic/Egyptian enemy.  The Seleucid emperor was known for eccentric behavior, hence his name, Epiphanes, which means “divine manifestation.”  He aimed to exterminate Judaism and convert Jews to Hellenism. In 169 BCE, he devastated Jerusalem, attempting to decimate the Jewish population, and outlaw the practice of Judaism.

In 166/7 BCE, a Jewish rebellion was led by the non-establishment Hasmonean (Maccabee) family from the rural town of Modi’in, half-way between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean.  The rebellion was headed by Mattityahu, the priest, and his five sons, Yochanan, Judah, Shimon, Yonatan and Eleazar, who fought the Seleucid occupier and restored Jewish independence.  The Hasmonean dynasty was replete with external and internal wars and lasted until 37 BCE, when Herod the Great (a proxy of Rome) defeated Antigonus II Mattathias.

5. The reputation of Jews as superb warriors was reaffirmed by the success of the Maccabees on the battlefield. In fact, they were frequently hired as mercenaries by Egypt, Syria, Carthage, Rome and other global and regional powers.

6. The significance of Chanukah. Chanukah celebrates the Maccabean-led national liberation by conducting in-house family education and lighting candles for 8 days in commemoration of the re-inauguration of Jerusalem’s Jewish Temple and its Menorah (candelabra).

The Hebrew words Chanukah (חנוכה), inauguration (חנוכ) and education ((חנוך possess the same root.

7. As was prophesized by the Prophet Hagai in 520 BCE, the re-inauguration of the Temple took place on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev, which is the month of miracles, such as the post-flood appearance of Noah’s rainbow, the completion of the construction of the Holy Ark by Moses, the laying of the foundations of the Second Temple by Nehemiah, etc.

In 1777, Chanukah candles were lit during the most critical battle at Valley Forge, which solidified the victory of George Washington’s Continental Army over the British monarchy.

The 25th Hebrew word in Genesis is “light,” and the 25th stop during the Exodus was Hashmona (the same Hebrew spelling as Hasmonean-Maccabees).

The first day of Chanukah is celebrated when daylight hours are equal to darkness hours – and when moonlight is hardly noticed – ushering in brighter days.

8. Chanukah highlights the defeat of darkness, disbelief, forgetfulness and pessimism by the spirit of light, faith, commemoration and optimism.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/11/isaiah-berlin-and-the-meaning-of-life/

Excerpt:An amusing vignette about Churchill and  Isaiah Berlin, from a very long article on Isaiah Berlin.

What to do? As it turned out, the Second World War ensured the question was deferred while Isaiah Berlin spent the next five years working for the British Information Service and Foreign Office in Washington and elsewhere, building up a vast network of useful contacts and a reputation as an incisive researcher and commentator on political, diplomatic and economic issues.

So prominent did his reputation become that he was honored with an invitation to lunch at Downing Street with the Churchills, along with the Commander of the Imperial General Staff and other dignitaries. At the table, the Prime Minister eagerly sought out the views of his special guest on various complex political matters, including the likelihood of Roosevelt being re-elected for a fourth term, but the answers he received seemed not particularly well-informed. He then asked Mr Berlin what he felt was the most important thing he had ever written. “White Christmas,” was the reply. Churchill, perplexed, gave up and turned to someone else. It was only later that he was told that through a mix-up it was the composer Irving Berlin who had been invited to enjoy lunch and Churchill’s company. Ironically, when the story of “the Irving–Winston–Isaiah affair” got out, it further enhanced Isaiah’s reputation, and he found that even more doors in the corridors of power and influence were now open to him.