Today, July 3, in 1863 was the date of Pickett’s Charge, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee ordered a desperate Napoleonic advance against the Union line at Gettysburg in what has come to be a cautionary tale in human bravery and military hubris. The same day marked the zenith of the career of George Armstrong Custer, the head-strong, dashing cavalry officer who would later achieve both martyrdom and infamy as the unwitting architect of the massacre known as Custer’s Last Stand.
I have vowed to do all I can, which admittedly isn’t much, to get the story of what I like to call Custer’s First Stand into our nation’s cultural memory. I wrote much of what you are reading now way back in 2011, and have not adequately fulfilled my pledge since, although I have mentioned “Yellow Hair” (as his Native American conquerors called him) periodically over the years. Many historians have opined that Custer may have saved the Union army from defeat at Gettysburg with his bold actions this day, and therefore may have saved the Union itself. That accomplishment is far more important than the blunder at Little Big Horn that defines Custer’s image and reputation.
Custer’s heroics on the decisive final day of the Battle of Gettysburg teach their own lessons, historical and ethical. Since the East Calvary Field battle has been thoroughly overshadowed by the tragedy of Pickett’s Charge, it is little known and seldom mentioned. That is wrong.
Tell your friends and families the story, which has never been portrayed on screen. It is a really good story.
If you know anyone from Minnesota or is unfortunate enough to have to live in that ethically-addled state today, pause in your appropriate contempt for the blight on the Republic the Land of Lakes has become in recent years. Express your gratitude for their state, whose brave soldiers in this day in 1863 may have quite literally saved the United States of America and made this 250th celebration possible.
I know, I know. Minnesota has gone completely nuts. It has an incompetent, silly, uber-woke governor; its Attorney General is an anti-white racist and probably a criminal, the Mayor of Minneapolis is an Ethics Villain, it has an anti-Semitic Congresswoman who has openly admitted that her first loyalty is to Somalia, its opposition to ICE operations represents more of a genuine insurrection than anything that occurred during the 2021 Capitol riot, and the state is in a tight race with California, Washington, Oregon, New York and Maryland for the booby-prize of “Most Embarrassing State .” But ’twas not always thus.
July 2 was the second day of the decisive Civil War battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the most complicated and wide-ranging day in the conflict. So much of desperate significance was going on at Seminary Ridge and Cemetery Ridge, on Little Round Top, the Peach Orchard, Devil’s Den and a half dozen other key features on the battle field that whether an instance of heroism was recorded or forgotten is as much a matter of chance as anything else. Even determining what was the turning point in the day’s conflict, which ultimately was won by the forces of the North, is an exercise in searching for order in chaos.
There is no question, however, that the First Minnesota Volunteer Regiment’s astonishing heroics stand out even among the many other examples of gallantry on that day. The battlefield monument to the First Minnesota is the largest erected to any Union regiment, and yet it has not guaranteed our cultural memory of the epic sacrifice those soldiers made. Other second day exploits, due to sometimes arbitrary choices made by historians and film makers, have taken up the limited space available in the public’s attention to the details of the Civil War.
This is a massive injustice. As the battle raged for Cemetery Ridge, crucial high ground occupied by Union forces but under siege by the Grays, General Winfield Hancock saw a serious breach in the Union line. He realize, in horror, that Wilcox’s Alabama Brigade was on the verge of breaking through, possible dooming Meade’s army to defeat. The attack had to be blunted and and its advance stalled until he could round up sufficient reinforcements to repel the rebels.
Hancock ordered the First Minnesota to charge the brigade and hold the position, even though its 262 men was outnumbered by a force of more than 1200. It wasn’t quite the hopeless odds face by the defenders of the Alamo, but the regiment’s prospects were grim enough.
Today is July 1, which is always treated across the United States as the gateway to a long weekend and the Fourth of July, and little more. This year, it is the run up to the 250th Anniversary of out nation’s founding. July 1 is also, however, the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the most important and most deadly battle of the many important and deadly conflicts in the American Civil War. The two American armies that clashed in the Pennsylvania town sustained more than 50,000 casualties on the Gettysburg battlefield, which may be the saddest and noblest place in America. It is also reputed to be the most haunted, which considering the number of souls lost between July 1 and 3 in 1863, shouldn’t surprise anyone.
[Digression: The Gettysburg Hotel is allegedly haunted, and the proprietors designate specific rooms as haunted. The rent for those rooms is less than the other rooms because, I was told when I called to inquire regarding reservations, “guests tend not to stay the whole night in those rooms.]
Our 250th celebration is an appropriate time to remember Gettysburg, because it is one of those landmark events in American history that could have so easily turned out differently, and if it had, we would never have made to the Centennial, never mind the 250th. The fact that the North prevailed was due to a confluence of random events, the essence of moral luck.
If you have not made at least one pilgrimage to the battlefield, you owe it to yourself, to your family, and to the memory of the combatants, to go. You need not swelter in July. Gettysburg is just as inspiring in the Spring or Fall.
I didn’t venture an opinion on whether President Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship would fly with the Supreme Court (I did post about Justice Jackson making a fool of herself during oral argument), but I would have been surprise if today’s decision had turned out differently than it did.
The Supreme Court ruled today that President Donald Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional. The ruling was announced just as I was preparing commentary on earlier decisions this week: that post will arrive later today.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the 6-3 ruling. “If Congress intended to limit American citizenship to the children of those domiciled in the United States, nothing in the succinct language of the Citizenship Clause conveyed that design,” Roberts wrote. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the result but dissented on the reasoning. Such concurring opinions are for professors and geeks, to be cited in law review articles and wild-hair judicial opinion dicta.
Justice Samuel Alito made some interesting points in his dissent about how birthright citizenship has very different, and potentially perilous implications today that never occurred to the Founders, writing,
“And beneath the bluster, Trump’s limited view of the American Revolution is very familiar… it reflects, like so much else about him, the mainstream culture of the Cold War era, when museums and films did indeed tell a relentlessly upbeat story of American accomplishment — in vivid contrast to the plodding drudgery of communism. The leftist radicals of the 1960s and 1970s dissented noisily from this cozy view, but the majority accepted it unquestioningly. Since then a more extreme view has taken root: those who see the revolution not as the start of an unfinished project but as a fixed source of authority, a 250-year-old set of final answers. But as the US blows out its birthday candles, does it still have the capacity it once had for political renewal, while retaining its founding principles? It is always easier to start revolutions than to end them. This is why so many Americans have believed theirs was superior to others: it had been brought to an elegant conclusion by the constitution of 1787. Americans, it seemed, had escaped the spirals of radicalism and authoritarianism that beset France, or Latin American republics….”
I’m going to take a bit of time off from having to fend off insults, protests and rationalizations from the alleged legal ethicists who are furious at me for raising this issue to point out why I couldn’t be less interested in a Brit’s critique of the U.S.
Althouse summed up one excellent reason concisely with her sole comment on the article: “That’s the London Times. The view from the losing side.” That losing side has seen its empire collapse, its culture overwhelmed and destroyed by unrestrained immigration, the right of free speech trampled, its women brutalized, and its economy disastrously mismanaged while the country stands as a cautionary tale regarding the false promise of socialism. Its Prime Minister just resigned, the sixth leader of the government since the beginning of 2016: a seventh will arrive before the year ends. Meanwhile, its revered royal family is riddled with scandals and embarrassments, for King Charles’ pedophile brother to the obnoxious expats grifting off of their titles in the U.S.
Where does this rotting country get off criticizing us?
Barack Obama may not be the Worst President Ever, but I am slowly reaching the conclusion that he is the Worst Former President Ever, though Bill Clinton and John Tyler are tough competition.
Incredibly, Obama said, during the opening of his library, “The founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise.” His case, which requires ignoring history and documentation, is the old leftist lie that they should have banned slavery and foreseen the women’s movement. So days before the United States marks its 250th anniversary, an ex-President, whose contribution to the United States, its politics and culture, were overwhelmingly negative, has the hindsight chutzpah to insult men who were wiser, smarter, and braver than he.
Does Obama know how wrong that Unethical Quote of the Month is? I’m guessing that he does. Obama thinks the public and especially the Democratic Part’s base are stupid and frames his rhetoric accordingly. Everyone who has studied the issue knows that insisting on banning slavery would have meant no Constitution at all, just as Jefferson had to strike an anti-slavery section from the Declaration for there to be a revolution. Most of the people O was addressing probably still think the Founders’ three-fifths compromise was an expression of racism, when it was designed to set the stage for slavery’s eventual elimination. As the late Gordon Wood explained here, the Founders had reason to believe that slavery was on the way out, and that it was not the metaphorical hill let democracy die on.
But enough of one of the three most over-rated U.S. Presidents and the only one who is still yapping (JFK and Woodrow Wilson are playing Trivial Pursuit in Hell).
Somebody should tell her—Remnick didn’t—that pretty much everyone in the nation who wasn’t in a coma during the Biden administration before the election—that’s almost four years of painful observation—had figured this out the second Biden announced his candidacy. Those few dense souls who hadn’t already recognized the obvious certainly saw the writing on the metaphorical wall when Joe descended into Authentic Frontier Gibberish during his debate with Donald Trump. And surely when the result of Joe’s egocentric and demented botch resulted in his party anointing the hopeless and hapless Kamala Harris, absolutely everyone with the possible exception of Harris herself knew that Joe had engineered a disaster, though not without the incompetence of many, many others paving the way.
Hillary also proclaimed that if Biden had decided to “pass the torch” and the Democratic Party had held a competitive Presidential primary, “whoever emerged from that contest — whether it was the Vice President, or a governor, or a senator or anybody else — would have beaten Donald Trump.”
For a long time, I have been sick of writing about Anti-Trump bias, anti-Trump hate, Trump Derangement and “Get Trump” indoctrination and propaganda the Axis media, I really have. After all, it has been more than a decade since the Post 2016 Election Ethics Train Wreck first jumped the rails. But these awful, unethical fanatic unethical people keep getting worse, lying, and saying increasingly crazy things. Among the worst of the worst, ex-CNN hack Jim Acosta, who CNN elevated to White House Correspondent during Trump’s first term, compared the court ordered erasure of the President’s name from the Kennedy Center to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He really did. These people don’t even realize how insane they sound to normal people. Wrote one wag on “X”: “I missed the time when people were SHOT DEAD trying to get into the Kennedy Center for 40 years.”
The Trump Outrage Du Jour yesterday was the Flag Day UFC cage match on the White House lawn. On PBS—BOY am I glad not a penny of my taxes go to that propaganda machine!—erudite professional intellectual David Brooks provided Exhibit A of the class snobbery that has always been the root of so much Trump hostility. Asked about the event, Brooks huffed,
“Well, I first thought of, like, who are the artists John F. Kennedy brought to the White House? It was like W.H. Auden, Robert Frost, Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein. And now we have got cage fighting. Don’t anybody say America’s in cultural decline!”
Got it. Because Brooks doesn’t enjoy the UFC, the White House hosting a popular sports event means America is in decline. I don’t care for either, but if I had an Uzi at my head and was forced to pick one, I’d take a UFC cage match over one of President Obama’s hip-hop artists he hosted when he was President. Funny, Brooks didn’t mention JFK’s preference for Robbins and Bernstein. Let’s see: Barack and Michelle feted Kendrick Lamar, Janelle Monáe: Common, Queen Latifah, Big Sean, and Chance the Rapper, among others.
You know who would have lovedthe cage match? Teddy Roosevelt. He was the first President I thought of when Trump’s spectacular was announced. Young Teddy was a boxer and a lieftime fan of “manly arts.” His most famous speech is titled “The Man in the Arena,” which I wrote about here.
Progressives don’t much care for Teddy, one of Trump’s favorite Presidents (and mine). They keep waxing poetic about Kennedy, who has a large mausoleum that holds cultural events for the rich glitterati of D. C. memorializing his largely negligible Presidency. Kennedy was also maintaining sexual affairs with the help of the Secret Service as he and Jackie posed as the ideal couple, but he pretended to be admirable well. And he went to Harvard.
Ann Althouse reports that, contrary to how the UFC event was reported as Trump celebrating himself (Flag Day is his birthday) didn’t have any birthday celebration vibe at all:
“The event was called UFC Freedom 250, and, true to that name, it turned out to be about the UFC and the United States of America. Three days before his birthday, Trump had said — quoted at USA Today — “You don’t have to wish me happy birthday because I’m not happy about that birthday that I’m having. That’s a number that I never thought really too much about. It’s not a number I like, but I’m here, nevertheless.” And at that huge event on the White House lawn on the evening of his birthday, last night, I don’t think there was even a passing mention of his birthday.”
Fact Don’t Matter, however. All that matters is to denigrate President Trump for anything and everything. What kind of nation has a news media that devotes itself to projecting hate on its elected leader? Answer: a very, very sick and confused one. Here is the current headline at Salon, the virulently leftist site:
Ethics Dunce Brianna Turner of the WNBA has announced that she refuses to wear the league’s special jerseys to celebrate the U.S.’s 250th Anniversary. “Whoever called for the WNBA all-star uniforms to have the USA 250 patch should have thought that through considering no WNBA players would have been free 250 years ago. The majority wouldn’t even have their freedom 100 years ago,” she tweeted.
This kind of intellectually flabby and historically dunder-headed calculation is typical of the sad victims of anti-USA hate, which is inflicted on them through devices and lies like the “1619 Project.” Hers is also the intellectually handicapped mindset that accepts the “reparations” propaganda: she is personally angry at ancient conditions that never affected her directly or personally.
Citizens who live in the United States of America derive many benefits therefrom. There is no professional women’s basketball in England, for example: Turner is a direct beneficiary of what happened 250 years ago this July. Without the second-rate basketball league that pays Brianna six figures, my guess is that her intellect would have her working at a diner or bouncing drunk and disorderly lesbians from gay bars rather than basketballs.
To be fair, there is no reason why Turner’s stupid historical observations on social media should have any more publicity than anyone else’s. Indeed, at least she isn’t a New York Times reporter posing as a historian or a DEI history professor or one of the anti-white racists elected to Congress. They and others like them make the same offensive statements about the nation they are so lucky to live in, but have sufficient credentials, however dubious, that many Americans take them seriously. You know. They are “experts.”
Come to think of it, I don’t know why what Brianna thinks about anything that doesn’t involve throwing a ball through a hoop is newsworthy. Why is Fox News, Newsweek, USA Today and other allegedly serious news sources reporting this? In fact, why am I writing about it? She’s not even a real celebrity outside of Las Vegas, which is where her team plays its inferior brand of basketball that any of the top 100 men’s college teams could trounce them in.
Never mind. She is a stupid and ignorant woman, and this is a wasted post and I wasted my time thinking about it.
But the all-anti-white–race-victim-propaganda all-the-time site “The Root’s” America-haters were impressed. It writes,
“Turner’s critique cuts straight to the core of an ongoing issue in professional sports, how many marketing campaigns prioritize shallow patriotism over historical reality. By forcing a league made up predominantly of Black and LGBTQ+ women to wear a blanket celebration of 1776, the league completely ignored the systemic chattel slavery and disenfranchisement that defined that era.”
Heard outside the Collin County Courthouse today, after Karmelo Anthony was found guilty of murder (because he was) from the rabble-rousing Black Panthers: “We got to tell our kids the truth that this is a racist ass country. We gotta tell them the truth.”
Of course it isn’t the truth, but many unethical people, teachers, politicians, activists and organizations have made great strides toward creating the illusion that the U.S. is racist, and the efforts have accelerated over the past decade. One of the villains was Barack Obama, whom I am convinced will eventually be recognized for the divisive, destructive, corrupt and devious President he was. Another was Black Lives Matter, which is hardly a startling revelation. Of course we had the lazy, fearful, enablers of BLM, all of the companies, non-profits, local governments and pandering institutions that groveled at BLM’s metaphorical feet, with solemn “in these difficult times” ads and open letters, banners, and nauseating virtue-signaling.
Perhaps as despicable as the worst of them— Ta-Nehisi Coates, Al Sharpton, Charles M. Blow, the Democratic National Committee, which declared that the only reason Kamala Harris wasn’t elected President is because U.S. voters are racists—were the New York Times and its fake historian Nikole Hannah-Jones’ dishonest “1619 Project,” which contrived the lie that the main purpose of the American Revolution was to preserve slavery. Naturally the pathetic Pulitzer Prize people rewarded the Times and its reporter for their libel.
Even though that false framing was debunked forcefully and repeatedly by real historians, U.S. schools have been teaching the “1619 Project” anyway. Gordon Wood died this week. He was a Professor of History emeritus at Brown University and author of the acclaimed book “The Radicalism of the American Revolution,” as well as “Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815.” Wood was recognized as one of the most eminent authorities on this nation’s founding, and in 2019, in his courtly, understated way, gave a lively interview explaining just how full of garbage the Times’ anti-American propaganda was. Revealing that Hannah-Jones’ “racist America” trope was hooey was politically incorrect in 2019, so Wood had to go all the way to the World Socialist Web Site to have his analysis published. (The Times, if it weren’t such a biased disgrace, would have interviewed him.)
Here is the whole interview. It doesn’t matter who the interviewer was, but the “A” signifies Prof. Wood’s replies. The result is long but fascinating; I learned a lot, and perhaps you will too.
