Category: history

Pearl Harbor Day

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolved.”   –Yamamoto

December 7–“a day which will live in infamy,” said President Franklin Roosevelt–well, here it is, and no one seems to have noticed.

This is Pearl Harbor Day. On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy launched a sneak attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, while peace negotiations were being held in Washington. The attack wiped out America’s Pacific Fleet battleships and  crippled our nation’s self-defense.

It also brought utter catastrophe to Japan, as Admiral Yamamoto foretold it would. Not only were his warnings unheeded: he was ordered to lead the attack.

On this day a few years ago, I was teaching at a public high school in the suburbs. When I noticed that Pearl Harbor was not mentioned by anyone else in the school, I told the college prep class what had happened on that day in 1941.

“My father and his friends, when they heard the news, all went down to the recruitment offices to try to sign up, but the military wouldn’t take them because they were too young. But they all went back when they were old enough to serve.”

The students stared at me as if I had a swarm of black beetles crawling all over my face.

“Why did your father and his friends do that?” a student asked me–genuinely perplexed that anyone should wish to defend his country in a time of war, after a ruthless sneak attack during peace negotiations. “Yeah–why?” echoed another.

When I finally found words, all I could say was, “This is truly amazing. For the first time in recorded history, the immense resources of the state–in this case, the school, the teachers, the materials, the insurance, all the costs of education–have been used to convince a whole generation that the state is not worthy of its loyalty. Not worth fighting for. Not worth defending. Do you think this experiment can possibly have a good result?”

I doubted my words had any impact. But several months later, one of the girls in the class came up to me in the hall and told me, “I can’t stop thinking about what you said to us, that day, Pearl Harbor Day.” So I like to think maybe I did a little bit of good.

Funny, isn’t it? Throughout their time in school, America’s children are taught that America sucks, it’s the source of all the world’s problems, it needs its karma leveled, yatta-yatta… and at the same time, the same teachers labor to instill in their students a reflexive obedience to any and all decrees of the state, a desire for the state to have more and more power over their lives, and a longing for a super-state to lord it over all the earth.

Father in Heaven, hear our prayers, and deliver us out of the hands of these ungodly rulers.

The Father of Tall Tales

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I have been reading Herodotus–called by Cicero “the Father of History,” and by other ancient commentators “the Father of Lies.” I don’t know which side to come down on, but one thing’s for sure: Herodotus was definitely the Father of Tall Tales. Davy Crockett was a mere exaggerator, compared to him.

Herodotus’ Histories, written sometime around 450 B.C., is one of the most entertaining books in the world. Boy, could that old man spin yarns! The book is supposed to be about the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, but Herodotus crams it full of stories about anything and everything you could imagine.

Here we find the giant ants of India, as big as foxes, and the flying serpents of Arabia, not to mention griffins that guard huge stores of gold, the first circumnavigation of Africa by a Phoenician sailor–a story which Herodotus himself was unable to believe because it only makes sense if you consider the world to be a globe with an Equator–and a treasury of historical curiosities, from the character and riches of Croesus to the homicidal madness of Cambyses, son of Cyrus the Great. Open the book at random, and on any page you’ll find either an eye-popping marvel or a desperate adventure.

Warning: once you start reading Herodotus, you’ll find it very hard to stop. And I defy you to read it only once. I come back to it again and again, every few years.

If we had a cottage by the bay, and a stretch of rainy winter nights too cold for fishing, my wife and I agree that nothing would suit us better than to have old Herodotus visit for a time and treat us to several dozen hours of his tales.

No fantasy writer who ever lived was able to top Herodotus for flights of the imagination.

Dems: The Party of ‘No Religion’

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William Jennings Bryan–if he were alive today, they’d kick him out of the Democrat Party.

Not enough attention has been paid to this news story.

Did you know that, according to the Pew Research Center, the most numerous religious affiliation within the Democrat Party is “No Religion” at all? ( http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/davidbadash/for_first_time_those_who_have_no_religion_are_largest_group_in_democratic_party ).

Pew defined “No Religion” as atheists, agnostics, and drips who describe themselves as merely “spiritual.” So this “No Religion” group accounts for 28% of Democrats. Roman Catholics are the runners-up with 21%.

I don’t know why I’m surprised. After all, this is the party that booed God at its national convention, that’s head-over-heels in love with abortion, and enthusiastically allied to Organized Sodomy. But still–well, Al Smith or William Jennings Bryan would certainly be unable to understand what came over their beloved Democratic Party.

So, the next time some self-righteous individual proclaims to you that “there’s no difference” between the two national parties, please treat them to this information. The Republican rank-and-file are overwhelmingly Christian, even if their party’s leaders are skunks and weasels.

Meanwhile, I’m gonna sit here and shake my head.

How did it ever come to this?

Hooray! ‘Gay Caveman’ Discovered!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Why are Fred and Barney sitting together in the car? Science has the answer!

Scientists have been breaking their butts and their hearts, trying to find the “gay gene” (“It’s gotta be there! It’s just gotta!”), and just not getting anywhere–despite their perpetual willingness to say or do anything, to get the results they want.

But now they’ve got something almost as good: the archaeological remains of some poor devil who is being billed as the world’s oldest sodomite ( http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/archaeologists-unearth-5000-year-old-third-gender-caveman ).

Some thousands of years ago, it seems, this guy got buried as a woman instead of a man. Obviously that means he was “gay.” Maybe even a “transvestite” (you get double points if you discover that). It can’t possibly mean he was buried this way to shame or curse him, or as a token of the community’s low esteem. The fact is, nobody knows what it means.

We have a comment, however, from Prof. Stephen “Tiffany” Hormad, chair-being of the Dept. of Gender Studies at Bilgewater University. He is sure he knows exactly what it means.

“It goes to show you that human beings were originally all Gay or Lesbian,” said Dr. Hormad, “and heterosexuality didn’t come along until much, much later in history, as a result of Income Inequality and Global Warming.”

“Happily,” he added, “we are returning to that original condition. And it’s about time, too.”

World’s Oldest Writing–and We Can’t Read It

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Here it is–the world’s oldest writing… that we know about, so far. See if you can decode the secret message.

I hope you don’t mind taking a little break from watching our secular pin-head civilization destroy itself.

When was writing invented? Back when they used to teach such things in school, we were told that the ancient Sumerians invented writing, possibly as long ago as 4,000 B.C. Egyptian hieroglyphics came along shortly afterward.

In 1993, archaeologists in northern Greece dredged up a piece of wood from the bottom of a lake. The wood was carved all over with writing. Preserved in the oxygen-free environment under a layer of mud, the artifact was carbon-dated to circa 5,200 B.C. ( http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-writings-ancient-places-europe/dispilio-tablet-oldest-known-written-text-00913 )

Did you know that? I didn’t, and I try to keep close track of such things. This piece of wood, now called the Dispilio Tablet, is far and away the oldest known sample of writing. But of course we have no idea what it says. An unknown language written in an unknown script cannot be deciphered, as the saying goes. But we might have a slim chance of someday cracking the code, if the unknown language of the Dispilio Tablet is related to ancient Greek. For the time being, though, we have no way of reading it.

Funny things are going on in prehistory, these days. There’s the Potbelly Hill site in Turkey, where a vast, sophisticated temple complex, complete with nicely-executed sculpture in the round, was apparently in operation around 10,000 B.C (see http://leeduigon.com/2013/01/10/an-archeological-enigma-potbelly-hill/ ). And now the advent of writing has been pushed back over a thousand years.

If this keeps up, we’re going to run out of room in history for primitive, know-nothing cavemen.

Although we can always find their like in some of our more expensive public schools.