Historical Ignorance
What you don't know may reveal what you don't want to know...
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This is a riff on the Jerry Newcomb article of the same name in Townhall in May 2024
Usually, when something alarming happens, it raises red flags. But a few summers ago it was the raising of a flag (and not even a red one) that caused an alarm that triggered the ignorant to manufacture controversy out of whole cloth.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
Charles Darwin
It started when Justice Samuel Alito (actually his wife) flew an American flag upside down at his home—which the ignorant read as support for the January 6 protests years after the smoke cleared from that fracas. Later, the ignorant excoriated him for daring to fly a flag from the Revolutionary War. This flag is a field of white with an evergreen tree pointing to the sky, and a motto that states: “An Appeal to Heaven,” commonly known as the Pine Tree flag. Some ignorami used these flag flaps as a strategy to sideline Alito.
Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.
William Henry Beveridge
The New York Times (the “Newspaper of Record”) accused Alito of guilt by association—since a few of the protesters who descended on the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 carried that odious flag. CNN added the flag has “become a symbol for supporters of (then) former President Donald Trump.” NBC News reported that Senator Dick Durbin, (D-IL) wanted Alito to recuse himself on some cases because of the flags. Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) opined: “If that dude wants to fly his freak flag—it’s very strange.”
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
Derek Bok
What do we know about this flag? Joseph Reed of Washington’s staff proposed a flag with a white background with a tree in the middle bearing the motto, “An Appeal to Heaven.” This phrase comes out of the writings of John Locke, the 17th Century British political philosopher extensively quoted by the Founders. In Locke’s 1690 Second Treatise on Civil Government, Locke wrote:
And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment.
John Locke
Congress adopted the flag on 12 October 1775. Initially, the founders of this country had no other outside help. They declared themselves to be “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions.” The Declaration of Independence declares independence from England and declares dependence upon God.
Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.
Winston Churchill
It’s amazing that a banner flown by freedom-loving people of a desperate era appealing to God for help would become so controversial in the 21st Century. But maybe not surprising when you realize that perhaps the controversy is simply a cynical (and coordinated) strategy to marginalize not just an influential figure, but the founding principles of the Republic.
Steele’s Battalion: The Great War Diaries
Though we don’t think about it today, in 1917 the machine gun was called the “essence of infantry” and the “machine tool of death” because of the brutal damage it was doing to the armies of WWI. Steele’s Battalion is a story about a young man trying to master the use of the machine gun in massed fire, and stay alive doing it.
Coming Up…
How Not to Teach History
The Combat Arm Of Decision In Blue And Gray
And Finally...
On 22 March:
3259 BC: On this fifth day of the Creation, God creates the animals and birds, according to the Venerable Bede's De Temporibus ("On Time"), completed in 703 AD. The work explored the relationship between time and cosmology, considered an important tool for calculating the correct date of Easter.
1817: Braxton Bragg is born in Warrenton, North Carolina. Commanding the Confederate Army of Mississippi, later renamed the Army of Tennessee, from June 1862 until December 1863, Bragg’s friendship with Confederate President Jefferson Davis may have kept him in command longer than was good for the country.
And today is NATIONAL GOOF OFF DAY. Being late winter, with the snow and ice receding, it might just be a great day to just…goof off.