Friday, December 7, 2018

December 7th

Seventy-seven years ago Japan launched a surprise attack against a U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor. The next day U.S. Congress declared war against Japan. Speaking to a joint session, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the day of the attack "a date which will live in infamy."

Ethel C. Fenig at American Thinker reminds us again, because the date really is living on in infamy, that three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the U.S. and then the U.S. declared war against Germany and Italy. World War II had already been raging in Europe and elsewhere for over two years.

Taking a swipe at today's young Americans, Fenig lauds the service of George H.W.Bush who six months after the Pearl Harbor attack celebrated graduating from High School and his eighteenth birthday by enlisting in the U.S. Navy.

No wait. What?

That's a bit old for graduating High School. Isn't it?

What was he, held back?

Whatever.

Back to the story, Bush became an ensign and one of the youngest Naval aviators. Fenig takes another unnecessary swipe at today's youth.

It's haunting for Fenig that Bush was buried November 6th.
Bob Dole (R), now 95, who was severely injured during that same brutal war but also later led a productive life, struggled to stand in respect at Bush's casket. 
We know.  Dole was helped up from his wheelchair and saluted with his left hand. His right arm of no use due to the war she is writing about. A crooked salute, hardly recognizable as such but deeply respectful nonetheless. More respectful than Ethel Fenig is toward today's youth by characterizing them as the safe-place generation. Apparently Fenig it takes the U.S. to be at war so our young people can prove themselves to her.

Comments at American Thinker are equally respectful/disrespectful.

I must say, when the two Bushes initiated the two Iraq incursions, I was shocked how many young people eagerly volunteered. Didn't they know what they were getting into? Hadn't they been Boy Scouts? I dreaded Boy Scout campouts for their meanness. I only did them to keep up with my brother. Waking up on the ground and thinking "I could be home watching cartoons." And this was one serious-ass protracted campout of the worst kind imaginable. In a desert! For years! Under fire! They must not know. But they were proud to enlist. They truly believed they were protecting our country. And they were good at what they did. They were the best. The commenters everywhere repeat the phrase "the greatest generation" but I've seen with my own eyes truly great young men and women, the best trained, the best disciplined, the best educated, the most capable, the best equipped, the strongest, volunteer, not get drafted, to go and fight for their country. And now because of some university activities here and there the entire generation is disparaged. And all the things we complain about our young generation are things we put on them; an education that's easily 10X the cost of our education, then require that they have one, truly an odd form of slavery, and cost of housing that's out of reach. Then denigrate them for staying at home longer than we did, calling them lazy and snowflakes. No wonder their suicide rate is so high.

6 comments:

ricpic said...

December 7th.

The Dude said...

What's a month among friends, am I right?

ricpic said...

The phrase "A day that will live in infamy" is so powerful that I've often wondered whether it was the work of a speechwriter or FDR's own doing. Given that FDR was educated in an era when rhetoric was still taught it may very well have been his.

edutcher said...

November, huh?

Must be the world's greatest cough syrup.

the U.S. declared war against Germany and Italy.

Wrongaroonies.

Hitler declared war on us, but the Isolationists were still sufficiently strong in Congress
that Roosevelt felt the best he could do was ask that Congress recognized a state of war existed.

Chip Ahoy said...

Oh shit. Month fixed. ha ha ha. Thank you.

bagoh20 said...

Nobody is more guilty of disparaging this snowflake generation than myself, and that is truely unfair to many of them. Maybe we should look at the young as individuals. That's the American thing to do, and I will strive to be more American.

That said, so many of them are truely miseducated, but that's not their fault.