Using a ghost-writer today:

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

As I’ve noted in my “evergreen” broadcast on the Saturdays closest to the 4th, one can say most of the same things about the administrative state today as they did about George III in 1776.

I first wrote this piece in 2009.   I’ve updated it, bit by bit, on successive D-Day anniversaries.  I’m reprising it today:

It was sixty-seven years ago today that the Allies started taking Western Europe back from the Nazis.

The first, inevitable step was to get past the Westwall – perhaps the most immense set of fortifications ever built, with the intention of making the beaches from Denmark to the Spanish border a bloodbath for any troops trying to cross the beaches.

In places, it worked:

In some places, the troops had to overcome the near-impossible:

And yet by the end of the day, nine allied divisions were ashore, a toehold for a bridgehead that would eventually expand, ten months later, across Western Europe.

There were troops from the US, of course, on the two western beaches…

…and farther east, beaches with Brits…

…and Scots…

And in the middle, linking the two and meeting the worst resistance other than Omaha, the Canadians:

…along with troops-in-exile from elsewhere in occupied Europe; French commandos – some of whom had spent four years in exile, and who spent the next year belying the notion that the French were cowards…:

…and Norwegians, who’d been without a homeland for four years…

HNoMS Svenner – sunk by German gunfire off Sword Beach.

…and Poles, who’d been in exile for five years and would, in some cases, remain there for forty-five more:

The world may see nothing like it again.

So – thank a D-Day veteran.

Here’s President Reagan’s address to the survivors of the US 2nd Ranger Battalion, thirty years ago today…:

…who at this time seventy years ago, French Time, were still a day away from being relieved by the troops coming in from Omaha Beach.

This is a piece from 2020. It’s been slightly updated.

Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 114th birthday

I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m a conservative today – as long as this blog has been in existence.  His eight years were not perfect, and I don’t beatify my presidents, even if they’ve been out of office for over three decades.  His last term wasn’t as stellar as his first, and his last two years were very difficult.

Still and all, he was the greatest president of the second half of the 20th Century, and head, shoulders and ankles the best of my lifetime.

But in these difficult times, after two terms of a President who promoted  fear and malaise in the guise of “change” and “doing something”, and four years of another for whom “conservative principles” were a tactic to be slipped on and off like a power tie, it’s worth remembering Reagan’s example; when times seemed at their most dire, Reagan walked onto the scene with a smile and a vision, and a backbone of steel, and cleaned up the mess lefty by his failed predecessor – something our next president will need even more of in 2024.

And the most important part? He did it by unleashing something that many, then as now, thought was dead – the inner, optimistic, take-charge greatness of the American spirit – something that feels largely beaten into submission as this is (re)written, in 2021.

Oh, there are those who say “today’s GOP wouldn’t nominate Reagan!” – to which I used to respond with a contemptuous sigh, before telling the critic to listen to “A Time for Choosing”, and tell me who it more resembles; Arne Carlson, or Rand Paul?

In the Trump era party, where the GOP regards spending as just as inviolate as the Democrats do, and when the worst communists aren’t across the Oder river, but roaming our campuses?   It’s simultaneously possible that the GOP wouldn’t endorse him, and him (or an heir to his legacy) is exactly we need more than anything .

Reagan’s gone. But that spirit, the one he understood, almost alone among American politicans of his era, lives on in the American people. Half of it, anyway.

So Happy Reagan’s Birthday, everyone!

NOTE: While this blog encourages a raucous debate, this post is a hagiography zone. All comments deemed critical of Reagan will be expunged without ceremony. You’ve been warned.

You have the whole rest of the media to play about in; this post is gonna be gloriously one-note.

(This post was originally written in 2017, and has been slightly touched up for 2021). 

20% of young people believe, to one extent or another, that the Holocaust was a “myth”.

That sounds bad – and it is, but probably not for the reasons that jump out at you.

As Ilya Somin at Volokh points out, part of it is an artifact of the survey question: While 8% of Americans between 18 and 29 “strongly agree” that the Holocaust is just a scary story, 12% indicated they “tended to agree” that it was a myth – which, Somin points out, could many anything from strong doubts down to nit-picking the numbers.

He also points out something that might be even worse: some kids doubts may be due to ignorance:

A second relevant ambiguity is that the question doesn’t distinguish between people who know what the term “Holocaust” refers to and those who don’t. The latter may seem implausible. Who doesn’t know what “Holocaust” means. But much evidence shows widespread public ignorance of basic facts of history, science, politics, and even the basic structure of government. A majority of Americans can’t name the three branches of government, don’t know when the Civil War happened, and support mandatory labeling of food containing DNA (the latter probably because they don’t understand what DNA). And most surveys of political and historical knowledge find that it is inversely correlated with age; that is, younger people tend to know less than older ones. The latter phenomenon isn’t confined to the present generation of young people. Survey researchers found the same thing with previous generations when they were young.

“People in general are ignorant, and young people generally more so” is a pretty common, simple and accurate observation.

The real problem isn’t just ignorance of the Holocaust, so much as complete ignorance of all of Big State’s atrocities over the past century – the Great Leap Forward, the Gulag and the Holocaust:

The point here is not to suggest that ignorance about the Holocaust is unimportant, or that the Great Leap Forward and other similar communist atrocities were necessarily worse than the Holocaust…. I lost several relatives in the Holocaust myself, and have no desire to somehow downgrade its importance.

Rather, the point is that ignorance about the Holocaust is part of a broader pattern. Any solution to the problem probably cannot focus on the Holocaust alone, but must consider the broader issue of historical and political ignorance, as well. For reasons elaborated in my book, Democracy and Political Ignorance, increasing public knowledge of politics and history is likely to prove a much tougher challenge than some imagine it to be. In the meantime, public ignorance about the Holocaust, communist mass murders, and other historical events makes it more likely that we will fail to learn the lessons of these tragic events, and thus be at greater risk of repeating them.

Our society has had a couple of generations of not having to fight against nature or other humans for its very existence. I suspect that that fact alone has caused a degrading of the nation’s aggregate intelligence.

I support Ukraine.

No, not in that “I’m going tro put a flag on my social media profile and call everyone I disagree with a Putin-bot” way.

And not in the “let’s risk World War 3” over a squabble over an ethnically mixed border area (although it’s worth noting that many of those areas are only “ethnically mixed” because the Soviets deported the natives to SIberia and replaced them with Russians.

I was, in fact, supporting a free and independent Ukraine back when most Democrats were saying “The USSR is here for good, get over it, wingnut”.

Why?

Among other reasons, because Ukraine has within its living memory this episode, the Holodomor, whose formal memorial took place last weekend.

One reason is that the Holodomor has been buried from the beginning — and not just by its perpetrators. New York Times journalist Walter Duranty, a Soviet sympathizer based in Moscow during the 1920s and 1930s, infamously claimed that “there is no famine.” Worse, the Moscow bureau chief led a foreign press corps campaign to discredit Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist who reported the atrocities in March 1933. (Jones’ heroic attempt to reveal the genocide was depicted in the award-winning 2019 film Mr. Jones.) Despite his deceit, Duranty would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize, even though the Times later conceded that his articles were “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.” There continues to be a worldwide effort to revoke his unearned Pulitzer via an online petition initiated by the Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness campaign. (READ MORE: Mr. Jones: A True Story of the Holodomor)

Unsurprisingly, the atrocity was also suppressed by its perpetrators. For decades in the Soviet Union, any mention of the Holodomor was treated as Western propaganda, something the ruling Communist Party did not treat lightly. Not until the USSR adopted its policy of glasnost in the 1980s was public discussion of the famine possible. (This is a sobering reminder of the danger in allowing the state to determine what is true and false.)

The Holodomor was the worst of the atrocities visited on Ukraine – but far from the only one.

So I support Ukraine. With an endless blank check? No. But in defending its existence? Absolutely.

“But Ukrainians are Nazis”. WIthin living memory, Nazis were seen as liberators from the people who’d starved the 1/4 of the nation to death. The war changed that for most Ukrainians – but it’s not a huge reach that some of the less-bright in Ukraine see “Naziism” as an alternative to the retro-Stalinism across the border that murdered them before and is murdering them today.

“But Ukraine is corrupt”. And Russia isn’t?

Save the strawman responses. No, I don’t want World War 3, and yes there needs to be an off ramnp, and it doesn’t appear that that ramp leads to Sevastopol, much less the eastern border of Donbas.

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.

———-

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.

———-

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.

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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!

SCENE: Mitch Berg is dumping flashings from pick up truck at the county yard waste site. Bill Gunkel, former Republican who is now chairmain of the Inver Grove Heights chapter of “Former Republicans for Ron Paul”, pulls up next to him, towing a trailer full of leaves.

GUNKEL Merg!

BERG: Hey..

GUNKEL: Shut up. You eternal war people have really stepped in it with Ukraine.

BERG: Not sure I’ve actually stated an opinion about…

GUNKEL: You know that the Ukrainians are Nazis, right?

BERG: There are some peolple who identify as Nazis, that’s true. In a country of forty million people that was brutalized by the Commuists within living memory, you’re going to find people who equate “Nazi” with “anti-communist”.

GUNKEL: So you’re OK sending money to Nazis?

BERG: Not sure that I said anything of the sort…

GUNKEL: You’re OK supporting Nazis, at all?

BERG: Let’s accept the fact there is a small minority of Nazi symps in Ukrainian society.

GUNKEL: OK…?

BERG: How do you suppose it compares with the number of Stalinists in Russian society?

GUNKEL: Who?

BERG. Stalinists. Symps of Josef Stalin, most murderous dictator in European history.

GUNKEL: Never heard of him.

BERG: Huh.

GUNKEL: But was he a Nazi?

BERG: Uh…no…

GUNKEL: So – Ukraine, Nazis.

BERG: Right.

And SCENE