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Me#1You#10
Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004
Posts: 6503
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 Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:16 am Post subject: "Too Much, Too Late" |
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From the "Wish I'd Said That" department...
| Quote: | Too Much, Too Late
Baby boomers heap insincere praise on the "greatest generation."
BY DAVID GELERNTER
Friday, June 4, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
My political credo is simple and many people share it: I am against phonies. A cultural establishment that (on the whole) doesn't give a damn about World War II or its veterans thinks it can undo a half-century of indifference verging on contempt by repeating a silly phrase ("the greatest generation") like a magic spell while deploying fulsome praise like carpet bombing.
<snip>
And today's endless ovation for World War II vets doesn't change the fact that this nation has behaved boorishly, with colossal disrespect. If we cared about that war, the men who won it and the ideas it suggests, we would teach our children (at least) four topics:
<snip>
• The attitude of American intellectuals. Before Pearl Harbor but long after the character of Hitlerism was clear--after the Nuremberg laws, the Kristallnacht pogrom, the establishment of Dachau and the Gestapo--American intellectuals tended to be dead against the U.S. joining Britain's war on Hitler.
Today's students learn (sometimes) about right-wing isolationists like Charles Lindbergh and the America Firsters. They are less likely to read documents like this, which appeared in Partisan Review (the U.S. intelligentsia's No. 1 favorite mag) in fall 1939, signed by John Dewey, William Carlos Williams, Meyer Schapiro and many more of the era's leading lights. "The last war showed only too clearly that we can have no faith in imperialist crusades to bring freedom to any people. Our entry into the war, under the slogan of 'Stop Hitler!' would actually result in the immediate introduction of totalitarianism over here. . . . The American masses can best help [the German people] by fighting at home to keep their own liberties." The intelligentsia acted on its convictions. "By one means or another," Diana Trilling later wrote of this period, "most of the intellectuals of our acquaintance evaded the draft."
The campaign is especially intense among members of the 1960s generation who once chose to treat all present and former soldiers like dirt and are willing at long last to risk some friendly words about World War II veterans, now that most are safely underground and guaranteed not to talk back, enjoy their celebrity or start acting like they own the joint. A quick glance at the famous Hemingway B.S. detector shows the needle pegged at Maximum, where it's been all week, from Memorial Day through the D-Day anniversary run-up.
Opinion Journal - cont'd |
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GenrXr
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 1720
Location: Houston
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| Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:07 am Post subject: |
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Damn, that is powerful.
_________________
"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy |
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DLI78
PO3
Joined: 10 Nov 2004
Posts: 273
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| Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 3:59 am Post subject: |
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Did any of you catch CBS News evening broadcast on June 6? They decided to highlight a "hero" from WW2, so they picked a dentist who served as a medic and is known in a small French town as the "hero" who saved a cow. Yup. A friggin cow.
Of all the heroic stuff they could have talked about, they picked a guy who landed in France after D-Day and who decided to sew up a wound in a cow, saving its life. The town's farmers thought he was a hero for saving the cow.
Over on CNN that night, Glenn Beck broadcast some of Reagan's speech at Normandy from years ago. Quite a difference, if you ask me.
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DLI 78
Army Linguist
1978-1986 |
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