We’ll start with this thread on Twitter. I urge you to read the whole thing; it distills the response I have to the modernes attempt to cheapen and undercut everything Western Civilization stands for into a hot red crystal of truth:
To: Governor Wilhelm Walz, Co-Governor, State of Minnesota
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Hungry For The Truth
Governor,
You tweeted this yesterday:
And yet your administration and the DFL majorities in the Legislature told us that Minnesota’s economy was doing better than ever, that “Bidenomics” was not a bitter joke whose self-induced inflation was no way no how hurting poor and working class people worse than the general population, and that the actions of this past session were going to reduce poverty by 30%.
If any of that were true, food banks wouldn’t be seeing unprecedented demand – would they?
“Public is to art as it is to rest rooms”
— PJ O’Rourke, I think.
Among the less overtly but more insidiously stupid things the DFL controlled legislature sent the state chasing after this past session was redesigning the state flag.
The initial submissions are in and range from the adequate to the sardonic to the vile.
The choice is such that some have suggested we, alone among states, need two, seasonal flags. Now. as a North Dakota native, the idea that Minnesota’s seasons are radical enough to warrant separate is worth a laugh or two…
…but I see a case for multiple flags.
In fact, I think it’s going to end up looking like this:
The flags of the four powers that are eventually going to be forced to move in and liberate Minnesota, and partition it untli it’s De-DFLified.
One of my great strengths is I’m a very loyal person. If you’re a colleague, a romantic partner or a friend, I’ll stick with you – sometimes to absurd lengths.
One of my great weaknesses is I’m a very loyal person. I’ve stuck with some friendships, and other relationships, that didn’t deserve it. If you’re a colleague, a romantic partner or a friend, I’ll take a lot of fairly pointless and demeaning abuse on what my inner critic thinks is “principle”, but is really more equal parts inertia, a childhood of not having a lot of close frieends, and excessive self-doubt (as noted by others).
A great example was the long-gone and utterly unlamented “Dog Gone”. She’d been a social acquaintance, even a friend of sorts, going back to the ’80s. She’d known my kids when they were babies. And when she turned up on the blog, a few years later, I figured “good – let’s see what happens”.
We all know how that turned out.
I mean, things started out OK.
And then, as the wheels slowly wobbled off, I figured “Dogs are gonna Dog”.
For a while, it devolved to the fact I just enjoyed watching the smart people in the comments curb-stomping her, week after week – although as her “technique” degenerated into “pooping and running”, that fun didn’t last long.
Finally, of course, she used her 20+ year old contact with my family to take a deeply bizarre and very personal swipe at me. Something so over the top, so biliously narcissistic that even I had enough.
That arc took about a decade.
Because loyalty is wasted on some people.
No, that’s not accurate. It’s more true to say I waste loyalty on some people.
I’m not going to say that changed me, particularly – “Dog Gone” wasn’t a close friend, and jettisoning that fairly peripheral relationship had no effect on my life or how I live it.
But it’s a bit of a cue that I have a tendency to misallocate loyalty.
Apropos not much.
More later in the week.
I had a long drive over the weekend. I spent it listening to Jordan Peterson.
I caught an excellent episode with Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation. It’s a sprawling 97 minute discussion of everything conservatism is, everything it should be, where it falls short, how to make up the difference…
Here’s the episode:
…and, toward the beginning, a concept I’ve been struggling to put my finger on.
The topic was the American university’s new obsession with “safety”, especially intellectual safety. A higher education is, as Peterson notes, supposed to upset one’s adolescent stupidity, and thereby teach you how to think critically about all your, and everyone’s, preconceptions.
Roberts pointed out that in the traditional University system – especially in Europe – the goals are:
Now, call me a dreamer, but that’s what I’ve always shot for on this blog, and in the comments.
We’ll come back to that.
I’ve had plenty of feedback about the disabled comment section. I do appreciate it. I miss having it turned on as well.
It’ll be back.
But in this past week, I’ve done a bunch of thinking.
As I pointed out last week, I’ve always treated “managing” the comments with a certain amount of idealism. Pragmatic idealism – I also barely have enough free time to read the comments, much less play manager – but idealism nonetheless.
I figured “we’re all adults”. I asked a bunch of adults, respectfully, to mind their manners and treat each other with the same basic respect.
It didn’t seem like that big an ask at the time. And for about 20 years, I was mostly right.
And, let’s be honest – this blog is more a personal exercise in self-discipline and thought-development than “citizen journalism”, to say nothing of a money-making venue. I’ve been amazed to have an audience for a couple of decades, now – and, yes, blessed. Much of what I genuinely like about my life, particularly my social life, springs from the connections this blog started for me.
I figured the input should match the output.
But there’s been more than enough output for me to make it worth making things work.
More tomorrow.
New York State christened the “least free” in the United States:
The report, conducted by the Cato Institute, showed that New York ranked last place among the 50 states for 2022 policies that impacted economic, social, and personal freedoms.
New York ranked 50th for economic freedom and scored at or near the bottom for debt and state and local taxation, government consumption, land use and labor policy.
“Heeeeeyyyyyy – the study is by the Cato Institute! They’re biased toward freedom!”
We live in a world where that can be seen as a pejorative.
As Don Surber notes, suddenly everyone’s an expert on Argentina.
We’ll come back to that.
Libertarian-Conservative Javier Milei crushed his center-left opponent, showing Argentina’s crushing dissatisfaction with over a decade of center-to-far-left politics.
Big Left is, predictably, unhappy:
“A radical libertarian and admirer of Donald Trump rode a wave of voter rage to win Argentina’s presidency on Sunday, crushing the political establishment and bringing the sharpest turn to the right in four decades of democracy in the country.
“Javier Milei, a 53-year-old far-right economist and former television pundit with no governing experience, claimed nearly 56% of the vote in a stunning upset over Sergio Massa, the center-left economy minister who has struggled to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis in two decades. Even before the official results had been announced Sunday night, Massa acknowledged defeat and congratulated Milei on his win.
“Trump also congratulated Milei. ‘I am very proud of you,’ Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. ‘You will turn your Country around and Make Argentina Great Again!’”
Don Surber’s response – “don’t anoint him yet, but the vote matters more than the candidate – isn’t wrong at all.
But he adds:
I don’t recall Argentina being great before but diplomacy requires a certain suspension of reality. It’s the 1970s chant of I’m OK, You’re OK updated for international relations. I’m Great Again, You’re Great Again.
Thing is, Argentina was, if not “great”, at least doing really, really well not that terribly long ago:
So what happened?
As Paul Johnson pointed out in Modern Times, socialism – in this case, populist socialism in the form of Juan and Eva Peron – happened. Argentina went from relative wealth to decay and authoritarianism, and all it got was a lousy musical.
Huh – a great political entity that got sucked into a vortex of authoritarianism, stagnancy and decay by leftists who just kept winning elections?
Huh. Weird.
I grew up Presbyterian – and remained in the church because I believe the Presbyterian Book of Workship puts less temporal BS between God and the Man who wants to study Him than any of the alternatives.
The Presbyterian Church and the people who work within it have been a huge influence on my life.
Of course, the biggest mainline group in the denomination, the Presbyterian Church USA, was swallowing the “progressive” line long almost as long as the Episcopals and Methodists. Their diversions into lefty politics and “social justice” are on record – and I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the PCUSA’s membership is on track to leave it extinct by 2050.
Given a choice between fighting and leavin, I left. I found a breakaway Presbyterian sect that focuses on faith, not progressive politics. It wasn’t easy, but I found one.
But others are fighting.
A friend of the blog emails:
Mitch,
I thought you might find this interesting. It’s an effort by orthodox Christians to retake rather than leave churches in historically progressive denominations. The following map is of congregations that are low on the progressive scale.
I came across it on a podcast.
And I’m reminded – picking up and leaving a church is like picking up and leaving a state; it works until the thing you’re getting away from decides not to stop coming after you.
Since I have the place to myself for the moment, I figured it’d be time to do a little intellectual spring cleaning. Call it “20-odd Theses”, if you want.
I don’t care what you put on your pizza. Pineapple? Shrimip? Kale? Put whatever you want on your pizza. And I’ll do the same. Keep your nose outta my food. I’ll do the same for you.
Same goes for hot dogs.
If you’re not a lawyer, the “Oxford Comma” is an affectation.
I, and to the extent it matters, this blog, stand for a few things I think are worth upsetting the apple cart for, above and beyond the above:
I support free speech. Not just the gauzy, “Question Authority” bumper sticker type that disappeared from every Subaru in Marcy-Holmes when Barack Obama was elected. The real thing – Communists standing on soapboxes, Nazis (pardon the redundancy) marching parades, Klansmen jabbering away freely – and all the good people confronting, refuting, and best of all mocking and taunting them back to the stone age. Because defending speech you agree with wouldn’t need a Constitutional amendment.
Human freedom and dignity, and the inalienable, unabridgable right to defend it.
The whole panoply of small-“l”l liberalsm (aka movement libertarian conservative) thought. You say it’s obsolete? Then so is my Christian faith. I’m not burying either of them for the sake of false polity, much less temporal swings in public mood.
Moral order. All humans are equal before just laws and God alone. Beneath that, it’s all about talent and merit.
The injunction to be kind to “love one another as God loves you” and to be charitable to oen’s fellow human is not a contradiction to the above.
Exploiting and swindling that sense of charity is a moral crime carried out by moral algae.
Christian Humanism, fundamentalist chanting points aside, is not a contradiction. Western civilization sprang from Judeo-Christian Humanism – applying the principles of both faiths to civil society. Not “theocracy” – but a society guided by generally-accepted principles drawn from that faith.
Truth is a virtue. Supporting truth is a calling. Upholding truth over lies is a mandate. Good and evil both exist, and being incisive, critical and honest about the differences is Right and Good vs, Wrong and Evil. Being honest about the differences is a colossal burden and supreme good.
On the subject of good and evil, truth versus lies? It’s a fact:
If you don’t believe all the above? I’m not going to say “unfriend me, go away, leave me alone”. I will in fact say “stick around, because I’m going to engage the sh*t out of you”. But it’s gonna be sporty.
Since the entire media will try to suppress it – here’s “The Fall of Minneapolis”, by Liz Collin and the Alphanews crew:
Watch it.
Pass it along.
I won’t give you any spoilers – you already know that Mayor Frey was a hapless stooge at best, a theatrical ninny at worst.
Chief Arradondo lied through his teeth. I always sensed this – the documentary shows us in black and white.
Walz? May he rot in hell.
Watch the whole thing. If you’re not outraged, you’re probably the enemy.
Back in the ’80s, the Twin Cities were plagued by a mass of Peace Creeps; a group of dolorous, white, upper-middle-class progressives who believed that if the US just disarmed, the Soviets – who, being the intellectual children of Stalin and the parents of Putin, would naturally join hands with the theretofore war-mongering West and march into a peaceful future, in spite of the West’s base intentions. Groups like the Anti-War Committee and Women Against Military Madness spent the eighties getting slavering, adoring media coverage; it was a warmup for the sort of intellectual tongue bath today’s media gives the likes of Greta Thunberg, Ilhan Omar or Hamas.
Of course, the groups were moral narcissists to think that Soviet or Red Chinese leadership were “just like us”; that people who routinely murdered or exiled or stuffed opponents into “psychiatric clinics” were anything like Western democracies (before Obama, anyway).
I used to wonder how long people like them would last in the systems they were holding up as their moral ideal?
There was no wondering, of course. This is how it turns out:
“The Pen is Mightier than the Sword” could only be written by someone who never had to bet their life on it.
The shocking part, at least to me, is not that he did it, or talked about it.
It’s that most “Progressive” voters don’t get what an authoritarian statement and action this is, or why that could possibly be a problem.
The good guy with the gun does in fact make a difference.
But according to the Crime Prevention Research Center, they make a much bigger difference than even I thought:
Evidence compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that the sources the media relied on undercounted the number of instances in which armed citizens have thwarted such attacks by an order of more than ten, saving untold numbers of lives. Of course, law-abiding citizens stopping these attacks are not rare. What is rare is national news coverage of those incidents. Although those many news stories about the Greenwood shooting also suggested that the defensive use of guns might endanger others, there is no evidence that these acts have harmed innocent victims.
Part of the problem is that the FBI is a little sluggish about counting episodes where the spree killer commits suicide after being confronted; the two events are not separate when they are inextricably linked.
But some of it is just plain bureaucratic dishonest. One fairly bald-faced example:
For example, the Bureau’s report about the Dec. 29, 2019 attack on the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, that left two men dead does not list this as an incident of “civic engagement.” Instead, the FBI lists this attack as being stopped by a security guard. A parishioner, who had volunteered to provide security during worship, fatally shot the perpetrator. That man, Jack Wilson, told Dr. John Lott that he was not a security professional. He said that 19 to 20 members of the congregation were armed that day, and they didn’t even keep track of who was carrying a concealed weapon.
Coverage of the actual episode right here. The FBI also treated this similar shooting as a “security guard” incident.
I mean, even more than the results themselves?
Then read the comments.
Otherwise, avoid both.
I stipulate this may be just this guy’s audience, but I don’t want 90% of these people reproducing, much less babysitting. .
Think back on all the financial corruption scandals in recent Minnesota history.
The non-profit scandals that edged a couple of Minneapolis DFLers out of office ten-ish years ago.
The DHS Daycare fraud case – involving hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Feeding our Future” – $250M at least, probably more like $500M.
What do they all have in common?
They all involve the cozy relationship between the DFL and the Nonprofit/Industrial Complex which, when manifested in policy, turns into the systematic transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the political class. It’s done over the table, via taxes, and under the table via graft paid to the Nonprofit/Industrial Complex.
And if the DFL accomplished anything in the State Legislature this past session, it was institutionalizing that stream at the state level.
Based on data gathered, [Minneapolis resident, attorney and plaintiff Zachary] Coppola alleges in the complaint that violence prevention contracts are “replete with apparent conflicts of interest.” In one case, Coppola found that the founder and sole employee of Cause and Effect, an organization that has received multiple violence prevention contract awards, is a city employee.
The complaint states that many of the violence prevention programs are also improperly using federal public funds. The complaint cites the example of One Family One Community, an organization that has received at least $175,000 in funds from the city. The organization operates a lobbyist association named the Community Housing Development Coalition, which lobbies the city on issues related to housing, public safety, transportation, and human services. In other words, the city is “paying a lobbyist to lobby the city,” the lawsuit says. Coppola states through the complaint that “not only is this a conflict of interest, but all federally funded violence prevention contracts expressly prohibit the use of funds for lobbying or political activities, so this use of federal funds is illegal,” he alleges.
Not mentioned in Coppola’s complaint, Crime Watch Minneapolis posted in September that Trahern Pollard, who is the founder of We Push for Peace, an organization that has received over $2 million in funds from the City of Minneapolis for “violence interrupter” activities, has formed a new LLC through which he is pursuing to acquire the embattled Merwin Liquors in north Minneapolis at the intersection of West Broadway and Lyndale avenues north. Pollard’s new venture, TXT LLC, seeks to acquire tobacco and liquor licenses to continue sales operations at Merwin Liquors, a move Crime Watch and others have implied is a clear conflict of interest to his city-funded violence interrupter activities as well as a possible indicator that money being doled out under the city’s Neighborhood Safety program isn’t being properly tracked or measured for accountability or measures of success.
I used to joke about Saint Paul being “Chicago on the Mississippi”, while Minneapolis was “Berkeley on the Prairie”.
I’m starting to think “A Cold New Jersey” is better.
…or ever: Ryan Winkler is right.
And the Minnesota Federation of Teachers has gone full Brownshirt.
Notice that the “Resolution” says nothing about the Hamas Charter’s call for the extermination of the Jews “from the river to the sea”.
Weird.
Also – BDS is not “peaceful”. It’s just an unarmed form of belligerency.
Tear these down, bitch.
(The above PDF loads kind of slowly. Small JPG below:
I don’t have a literal wall to paste ’em up on. Play the hand you’re dealt.
This past Sunday was the 34th anniversary of one of the highpoints of the entire history of Western Civilization.
Along with the signings of the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence, VE Day, and a short list of other highlights, the literal and figurative collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the fall of the Soviet Union, was a high point in history – a time I felt divinely privileged to have witnessed and, in my tiny way, participated in.
But when Francis Fukuyama extrapolated from the fall of the Wall that “history had ended”, I figured that one would have to have an incredibly expensive education to believe something so stupid.
I was right. Go figure. .
Jon is one of the reasons to stay on Twitter – a brilliant commentator.
But he’s got one part wrong.
The lessons weren’t forgotten. They were buried by a class in our society that rooted for the rulers on the east side of the old wall – and likely believe in their heart of hearts either that they just hadn’t tried real Marxism, or that they’d be the ones in the dachas rather than the gulags.
It was a controlled intellectual demotion.
Scene from a “mostly peaceful demonstration” in Dacca, Bangladesh on Veterans Day:
Nah. It’s New York.
I’ll work 60 hours a week for the Presidential and Congressional candidates who will build a wall, deport any miscreants with anything less than or including a Green Card, and make naturalization 100% contingent on loyalty to American small-l lliberal principles. .
Because ss Bari Weiss points.out, this isn’t just antisemitism:
When a nation built on small-l liberalism turns its back on small-l liberalism – especially that nation’s “elites” – what does that leave the nation?
The DFL wants to build a new monument to itself. .
Well, that’s not literally true. It’s a replacement for the State Office Building, on John Ireland and Constitution, southwest of the Capitol.
It’s currently slated to cost $730M. GIven government inflation and the inevitable cost overruns, I suspect the all-up cost will be $1 Billion if we’re lucky, $1.4 if we’re just another Minnesota government project.
But that’s not all:
Members of the House of Representatives will be able to wave to the adoring crowds from high above the state capitol grounds in St. Paul.
A project so wasteful and bloated that it’s been nominated for this year’s Golden Turkey award (vote here), the state’s lower chamber is moving ahead with a half-billion-dollar (with a “b”) project to construct a new office building for Minnesota’s 134 House members.
What is it with tinpot authoritarians and balconies?
Like Horse and Carriage, I tell ya.
Comments on this blog are temporarily turned off.
My friend, advice columnist and author Amy Alkon, has been chronicling the orgy of antisemitism bursting out in the Los Angeles area.
She filmed this encounter over the weekend:
Let’s take Judaism, Antisemitism and the Middle East out of this incident. Let’s say this was a domestic altercation. A man Two men use their physical bulk and subtly aggressive invasion of personal space to force a woman out of the way? That’d be considered abuse in court, and justification for a restraining order and, likely, loss of child custody if the woman really wanted to put her back into it, legally .
When I was working in bars, if I saw a man behaving like this around a woman, I’d have called the bouncers in. And there’s nothing those bouncers liked more than having a pretext to pummel guys who were threatening the ladies.
Big Left – maybe 5% of the population – is trying to intimidate the 55% that passively or actively disagree with them into submission.
And the subtle threat of violence implicit is there, in this “man’s” delivery and in Big Left’s approach to every issue today – be careful, or you’ll get Swatted/a visit from “Anti”-Fa/doxxed – is waiting out there for everyone – especially if you try to rally in response.
I’ll be interviewing Amy on my show this coming Saturday.
This blog has had a constant, self-imposed tension to it, at least to me.
Idealistic, Small-L Liberal Mitch is a free speech absolutist for reasons not the least of which being when people who find not only disagreeable but hateful are speaking in the open, then they’re doing less skulking through back alleys and plotting and scheming.
UX Pro Mitch sees the data, and knows there are four kinds of online forums:
I’ve been running this blog for almost 22 years, and installed the comment section over 20 years ago – and for that entire time, I’ve striven to keep things in the #1 category above; to keep a light hand on moderation, sticking to the ideal that the best defense against bad (or annoying, or dumb, or trolling) speech speech is more good speech.
Part of that is principle. Part of that is, honestly, I don’t have the time to be a heavier hand. I don’t make enough money off this blog to hire moderators, like Powerline or Hot Air. I do 90% of the writing between 5:30-7AM – and then I go to work. All day long and, given that the team I lead stretches from the Bay Area to Bangalore, sometimes into the wee hours of the late night. I don’t want to exert a heavy hand on the comments, because I can’t.
In all that time, I can list the number of people I’ve banned on two hands, and list most if not all of them by name. And as a very general rule I’ve only banned people for three reasons:
There’s been tension between order and chaos – but the de facto “gentlemen’s agreement” to speak freely and meet bad (or dumb) speech with more better smarter speech worked for a long time. There are some blazingly smart people here, and I have learned a hell of a lot from many of you. And there’ve been some unintended but salutary consequences; for example, the impetus to turn a couple of sarcastic posts about Twin Cities Ron Paulbots into a Dickensian serial, and then a book, came from several of you in the comments.
The “gentlemen’s agreement” worked for probably 19 of the past 20 years.
Because for most of that time, while I don’t have a lot of time to read what goes on in the comment section, when I did it was almost always fun.
But it’s not fun anymore. Worse than that, it’s not especially interesting.
My hands-off approach has stopped working. The comment section has gone from a #1 to a #3.
#2 isn’t really an option. Not only do I not want to be like Sally Jo Sorenson, manically (and, it seems to me, dreadfully insecurely) screening e v e r y single comment to keep things on track – I literally can not do that. There aren’t enough hours in the day to produce and police the blog, and everything else that needs doing.
But for all that, #4 is off the table. It matters too much to me for that. Between the show prep it provides, the zen-like self-discipline of getting up early and going this every weekday, the interactions that I do like and value, and maybe (who knows?) some “sunk costs fallacy”, this place is important to me.
But there are going to be changes.
In fact, they’ve happened.
Brass Tacks: I’ve shut down the comment section. It’ll stay shut down – not permanently, but for a bit. Maybe a day, maybe a year, most likely somewhere in between.
When it comes back, things will be different. Not radically so – but different.
More later.
This post originally appeared on November 11, 2007.
When I was a little kid, I remember going to see a parade on First Avenue in downtown Jamestown. One of the highlights for the five-year-old me was walking down by the Armory building (where, a decade or so hence, my first bands would play their first gigs) and watching the National Guard guys in their olive-drab uniforms getting their gear – trucks, jeeps and so on – read for one parade or another.I clutched my first book – a book of World War II airplanes that had been my dad’s when he was about my age – and looked on in awe as the guys, middle-aged pillars of the community, milled around waiting to roll out for the assembly area.
I walked up to one of them and showed him my book. He laughed. “I was in that war!”, he said, chuckling at the awe that must have stricken me.
On the arch above the armory entrance “Co. H 164th Infantry” was carved in stone first placed during the First World War. It’d seen Jamestown boys off to war in WWI, WWII and Korea.
One of the guys who’d left that armory in 1917 for France was Frank Newberry. He lived next door to us at the corner of 3rd Avenue and 8th Street SE in Jamestown; already 80ish when I was in elementary school. Photos of him in his uniform, with his cloth puttees and “tin hat”, hung around the house; his ’03 Springfield was in a case in his basement. He’d fought in H Company at Cantigny, Soission, St. Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne (I found much later, reading the unit’s history), the places where the US entered the modern world with all its horrors. He came home, married, raised a family, shot squirrels in his back yard with a .22 rifle, and, one day in probably the mid-’60’s, built a model of the WWII destroyer USS The Sullivans. He gave me the model when I was maybe six years old. I was thrilled – and I still am. The old model, still together, slightly the worse for wear after enduring three boys (my stepson, son and I), sits on my library shelf, across the room from me, as I write this.
———-
Of course, the WII veterans were everywhere. They didn’t talk much, that I recalled; I did my researching later. The North Dakota National Guard website narrates concisely:
1941 – The North Dakota National Guard’s 164th infantry Regiment and the 188th Field Artillery Regiment were mobilized for service in World War II. 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion formed from batteries F and H of the 188th Field Artillery Regiment. The 776th went on to spend more then 550 days in actual combat in Tunisia, Italy and Central Europe.
My high school civics teacher had been a member of the 776th, if memory serves. A few of the less-bright lights in my high school used to amuse themselves by popping blown-up paper bags or throwing fireworks nearby as he walked. In his fifties, he would still throw himself flat on the ground, if he was having a bad day, if the “bang” was loud enough. Later, of course, some of us learned why; the 776th’s 550 days in action included some of the bloodiest, ugliest fighting in US Army history; El Guettar, Salerno, the Rapido, the Volturno, Monte Cassino. Rumor had it that his tank destroyer had been the only survivor of his platoon in one ugly engagement. Nobody knew, and he never talked to any of us.
He passed away maybe ten years ago. On behalf of a couple of the ninth grade morons who didn’t know any better (and I’m happy to say I wasn’t one of them), I’m sorry.
———-
1942 – The 164th Infantry Regiment landed on Guadacanal to reinforce the First Marine Division at Henderson Airfield. The regiment became the first US Army unit to take offensive action against the Japanese during World War II.
Company H of the 164th, from Jamestown, was one of the regiment’s 12 infantry companies. In the dark days after Pearl Harbor, they were sent to the South Pacific, and in late 1942 they were shipped to the Solomon Islands to reinforce the first American offensive ground action of the war, the Marine invasion of Guadalcanal.
The Regiment was the first Army unit sent ashore to reinforce the beleaguered First Marine Division. The NDNG’s terse prose belies the desperation of the Regiment’s action on Guadalcanal; this online forum captures some of the story, first-hand, including pages of scanned diaries from the era.
On one of their first nights in the line, in late October, the 164th and the Marines were the target of a massive Banzai charge – at a place known to history as Bloody Nose Ridge and the banks of the Matanikau River. Green farm boys just two years off the prairie, they held off the attack, earning (by various accounts I’ve read over the years) the admiration of the grizzled Marines that’d been there for an eternity – two months months – already. The Fargo Forum’s story on the unit relates:
The infantry was also given the nickname “The 164th Marines” for their bitter fight against the Japanese in the Battle for Henderson Field and the Battle of the Matanikau on the island, and became the first U.S. Army unit to take offensive action during World War II.
A bunch of the old guys around town were vets of Guadalcanal. They never talked about it – not at all; other people who knew the story passed the story on to us. It was in the books; names of guys we knew from around town and the county popped up occasionally, attached to actions that we couldn’t picture from the grizzly fiftysomethings we knew.
———-
The Regiment fought on under MacArthur for the rest of the war:
1943 – The 164th Infantry spearheaded the Americal Division’s island hopping against the Japanese in the South Pacific. The 188th Field Artillery Regiment was split up into the 188th Field Artillery Group, the 188th Field Artillery Battalion, and the 957th Field Artillery Battalion.
Like Guadalcanal, the old vets of the 164th didn’t talk much about their time on Bougainville or in the Philippines, or on a brief stint of occupation duty in Japan after the war.
By the time the war was over, the 164th suffered 325 dead, and nearly 1,200 wounded out of about 3,000 men.
———-
The North Dakota Guard fought in Europe as well:
1944 – Members of the 188th and 957th Field Artillery Battalions landed on Utah Beach and participated in the Cherbourg Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge while driving onward to Germany.
Pete Schwab was a crusty old guy who ran “Pete’s Radiator Shop”, across from Radish Widmer’s house on Eight Street at First Avenue. He was a cranky but friendly old fellow who I remember bothering to try to find go-kart parts.
When I was in Junior High, on one of my patrols through the library, I found the unit history of the 957th Field Artillery – batteries of which had hailed from Valley City, Fargo and other parts of eastern North Dakota. I found a picture of “Pete Schwab” in the unit history; Pete the Radiator man, 30 years and a world of care younger, an ammo handler who’d won a commendation – Bronze Star, I think? – for action in France, where the battalion had beaten back a German tank breakthrough (155mm shells can be persuasive). The 957th fought through France, and fired in support of the 2nd Armored Division in the battle that put the cap on the Bulge, at Dinant and Celles, Belgium. They went on to help liberate the Nordhausen concentration camp, and ended the war in Bavaria.
And then…:
1945 – World War II ends with the surrender of Germany and Japan. North Dakota National Guard units are released from active duty and return home.
Where they built the city I grew up with freedoms I scarcely knew how to appreciate, thanks to the service they scarcely mentioned.
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The 164th served in Korea – more Jamestown boys shipped out, and most came home. The high school put up a large wooden Honor Roll that hung over the entrance to the Junior High for decades, listing all of the Jamestown High School boys that fought in World War II and Korea – with a number of stars highlighting the ones that died. As I got older and learned more about what the Roll meant, the number of stars on the Roll was daunting.
The 164th Infantry Regiment was disbanded during the ’50s. North Dakota’s National Guard was converted to Combat Engineers, for the most part. And Jamestown’s Armory – in the old building and then, in the late seventies, in the basement of the new Civic Center – was turned over to the new Jamestown company, Co. B of the 141st Engineer Battalion.
Many more guys from Jamestown served, of course. One of them was Fred Jansonius, one of my father’s star’s on the Speech Team. He enlisted in the Army, and was killed in the Tet Offensive, serving in the Ninth Infantry Division. JHS’ Speech award is named after him.
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Years passed. B/141st served in Iraq – and two more Jamestown boys died overseas, including Phil Brown, nephew of one of my high school friends and of my favorite Junior High teacher.
Many more served and came home, of course, including my high school classmate Joey Banister, who started as a private in B Company during high school, and was a Major on the Battalion’s staff by the time the battalion went to Iraq; not bad for ol’ knucklehead Joey. He was among many other Jamestown guys, many of them friends and classmates, who’ve served in one capacity or another in the war on terror.
And to them, today, the Jamestown guys and everyone else; though it seems not nearly enough, I send my thanks.
Let the record show that Poland was fighting the fight we currently face over 100 years ago…
…and is still a leader.
Happy 105th birthday, independent Poland!
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