As we move away from the front of this poignant memorial to those who landed on Utah Beach that historic day and for many days to follow, we see one last striking site. In a classic example of the American spirit, a bench-style monument includes the names of cities that were yet to be liberated or conquered along with their distance from Utah Beach. We see one of particular note: Berlin 1100 km.
The grass-covered dunes rise gently behind and beside the museum building, hiding the panoramic view of the water that will open to us as we walk down the wide sandy path. A low sturdy sign confirms the location, Utah Beach. The beach is wide and flat, and the gray sky produces an almost monochromatic scene of gray-green, dunes, sand, surf, ocean. We look out to the water and strain to see what isn't there. We turn and look up to the top of the dunes. The view for the Germans, the view for the Americans. We imagine the scene over those days of the invasion, with the thousands of vessels, men, tanks, trucks, the death and destruction, and the triumph.
I have carried along with me an enlarged photo of Daddy taken during the war in his uniform so that--even though he couldn't be with us in person--he is in a sense here with us. James takes a picture of me holding the photo of Daddy as we stand on the beach with the flags flying high on the dunes behind us. He takes another one with the ocean in the background, showing not only where the 552nd landed on that D-Day+8 but where they came from.
We return to the building and tour this truly important museum, spending considerable time in the gift shop, choosing books and memorabilia to bring back to Daddy and other family members, as well as Haley's history class. When the museum store employee learns that my father was in the D-Day invasion (I have shown her the photograph I brought along), she asks me to wait and disappears for a few minutes, returning with a young man dressed in suit and tie. He questions me about Daddy's service in the war and then tells me that the citizens of Ste. Marie du Mont have a certificate and medal to present to any veteran who participated in the D-Day invasion.
I could not be more thrilled. The prospect of returning home with a physical expression of the gratitude of the French people to my dad for his service is very exciting. The certificate is completed with Daddy's name and pertinent information and given to me to carry home. The medal is to be shipped at a later date, and in fact arrives in Daddy's mail in Longview, Texas a few months later, a large and beautiful commemorative medal, honoring the participants of D-Day.
In the museum one item stands out above all the others. It is a hand-written note accompanied by a dry and fading bouquet of flowers, both of which have been left in memory of the fallen at Utah Beach. My French is rusty, but a close translation reads:
Our bouquet is modest, but it is made of the wildflowers that you
saw when you arrived on our French soil.
You gave your life for our liberty. Our daddy told us.
Thank you. Each time we can come back, we will bring flowers for
your monument.
It is from three children: Marian, 10 years old, Gerald, 9 years old; and Aurora, 6 years old. The date is hard to read but appears to be 6 Juen 1973. I struggle to control my weeping. A girl's dress made from red, white, and blue parachute cloth hanging nearby seems a fitting punctuation to the letter.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
"Social Justice...A Monumental Deception"
With the reinvigorated push for "social justice" by today's left, it seems apropos to take a second look at Balint Vazsonyi's chapter on the subject in his 1998 book America's 30 Years War. Because I could not begin to state it so well as Mr. Vazsonyi, I am using a long, direct quote, in fact, all of chapter seven of the book. In light of such a long quote, it is important to provide the full copyright information, viz., America's Thirty Years War, Who is Winning? Balint Vazsonyi, Regnery Publishing, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1998. The book is available at http://www.amazon.com for under $11. For the purposes of space, I will not indent the following direct quote.
America's 30 Years War, Chapter Seven, "Social Justice"
A Monumental Deception
The quotation marks in the title are used advisedly. The words themselves are among the most successful deceptions ever conceived. Ask a variety of people to define what "social justice" means, specifically, and you will get as many answers as people queried. Ask the same person at different times and you will get different responses. All "definitions" of social justice boil down to any of the following:
(1) somebody should have the power to determine what you can have, or
(2) somebody should have the power to determine what you cannot have, or
(3) somebody should have the power to determine what to take away from you in order to give it to others who receive it without any obligation to earn it.
If millions upon millions have been deluded into searching for "social justice," it is because "social justice" displays the irresistible charm of the temptress and the armament of the enraged avenger; because it adorns itself in intoxicating cliches and wears the insignia of the highest institutions of learning. Like a poisonous snake, it radiates brilliant colors. Like the poppies in The Wizard of Oz, it lulls the mind to sleep.
The easiest targets happen to be civilized people, who care about the fate of others. Americans, especially, are famous for their concern for fellow humans and support of worthy causes. They have fought two world wars to rescue western civilization, without any thought to material gain. Americans may be said to possess an uncommonly active "social" conscience. Actually, the word "conscience" does well enough alone. Why do we attach the word "social?"
Because, more than a century ago, advocates of socialism embarked on a campaign to inject the world "social" into every conceivable arena. Such a systematic perversion of the language had to have a purpose to plant the thought that "social" infuses everything with a positive content. If successful, it was bound to surround the word "socialism" with a positive aura. Conspiracy? No--a well-thought-out program, openly advocated and diligently implemented by its planners. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Friedrich Hayek in The Fatal Conceit (1988) lists over 160 nouns to which the adjective "social" has been attached with some frequency. Hayek traces the origins of the usage to German theorists and argues persuasively that "social," far from adding anything, in fact drains all nouns to which it is attached of content or meaning. Regardless, speakers of all political persuasions have taken to using the word with alarming frequency.
Why should a word, just because it became the obsession of certain German thinkers, pervade English, the language that has given us "common sense"? What would our conscience not prompt us to do that our "social" conscience would? Conscientious persons value life and possess a sense of duty. Conscientious persons believe in everyone's right to the pursuit of happiness, law or not. Conscience imposes an obligation to care about, and to work toward, the betterment of the human condition. What does "social" add to this list, other than a political slant?
A Process of Elimination
Advocates of social justice point to the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the disenfranchised. Advocates of social justice insist that, in order to demonstrate a social conscience, a person must resolve to eliminate poverty, eliminate suffering, and eliminate differences among people. The assumption is that society can and will reach a state in which all its members enjoy just the right quantity and proportion of attributes, possessions, and good fortune in relation to all other members, and to their own expectations.
Special attention must be focused upon the word "eliminate." As noted, the demand to "eliminate" has been with us since the French Revolution. It is a key word, because it is peculiar to the thinking of those who advocate social justice. What are the practical implications?
In order to eliminate poverty, agreement must be reached on terminology. Poor by what standard? Poor in Albania or Zaire is very different from poor in Switzerland or the United States. Poverty, then, is relative, and in relative terms, there will always be "poverty" as long as some people have more and others have less. Two possibilities arise. One is to establish the authority which will take possession of all goods and distribute them evenly among the populace. This would have to be a continuous process because the more gifted and more industrious will keep accumulating more than the others. The second option is to concede that it is all nonsense.
The elimination of suffering presumes even greater divine powers. The worst offenders propose to eliminate suffering through various government decrees and executive orders. These same people speculate about "the elimination of
differences," a truly disturbing phenomenon.
One possible answer may be an affliction peculiar to people who apply the word "social" with great frequency. I will refer to it as "Compartmentalized Brain Syndrome," or CBS for short. Sufferers from CBS have more or less the same information as the rest of us in the various compartments of the brain. But traffic between the compartments has broken down. No connection is made between two bits of data, even within the same subject matter, such as tax rates and tax revenues. The breakdown may be either temporary or permanent.
By way of illustration, a United States senator recently complained bitterly about the diminishing interest young people show in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The same senator fully endorses multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is code for the gradual elimination of all Western traditions. A person who fails to recognize the connection between declaring the Western canon irrelevant, and the decline in the appreciation of Bach's music is suffering from CBS
The same may be said of persons who speak of "the downtrodden," "the dispossessed," and "the disenfranchised" in today's America. Clearly, no law in the United States would ever create or permit any such thing. CBS sufferers nonetheless refuse to notice that people are different, and that differences of abilities, aspirations, family circumstances, and a variety of other factors will always produce a wide range of results. Alternatively, they view people in terms of conditions that existed in times past, as if slavery or segregation were still with us, or women's suffrage not yet adopted. Persons afflicted with CBS tend to hold a number of nonsensical opinions, and nonsense cannot be justified except perhaps through more nonsense.
State or Process
The ultimate nonsense is the search for social justice. This is not to insult the millions of highly respectable persons who have been deluded into adopting social justice as their goal. But the truth is, if subject to honest scrutiny, the very concept flies in the face of both reason and experience. Worse still is the presumptuous implication that, were social justice possible, certain persons are better able than others to judge what it is. (Incidentally, how does such an implication square with the doctrine that we are all the same?)
"Social justice" generally means that justice must prevail in the social sphere. But society is in constant flux; its state undergoes constant change. Thus, if a state of justice exists in a given minute, it is unlikely to exist in the next. There will be either more or less justice. How do we monitor performance? What are the measurements? Who judges the data? And, even more troubling, what of the choice between a static and a dynamic society? Most favor a dynamic society for obvious reasons. But a dynamic society produces variable states of social justice.
According to the only theory in existence, to attain a satisfactory state of social justice, social tensions--the source of dynamism--are to be eliminated (there is that word again!). Once that is achieved, society will of course be static. We have to work diligently, the prescription goes, to attain a state of being with no social tensions.
The state so characterized is known as "communism."
A Disconcerting Conclusion
Unwittingly, perhaps, in many cases, but persons who advocate social justice advocate communism. Taking social justice to its logical conclusion, nothing less will suffice. The howls of protests such a conclusion is likely to elicit confirm the many misconceptions associated with the word "communism." We need to relieve the word of the misleading connotations it has acquired along the way.
That is, when we say "communism," we see the Kremlin, Soviet tanks crushing twelve-year-olds, Castro puffing on a cigar, and Mao's Red Guards cutting off the limbs of the elderly with a knife. But none of that is the essence of communism. The essence of communism is social justice--the elimination of poverty, the elimination of suffering, the elimination of all differences that erect walls between people. The essence of communism is the global village in which everyone benefits equally within an interdependent and socially conscious world. The essence of communism is the rearing of children by the village. Even Hitler's version, which he called "national socialism," was intended to deliver great and lasting benefits to the masses, once a few million redundant people were, well, eliminated.
We need to rid ourselves of the images of starving North Koreans, of Rumanian orphans with AIDS, of multitudes in shabby and filthy clothes, of landscapes polluted beyond recognition. That is not what communism was designed to be. That is not what communism is going to be.
Once we reach the true state of communism, we are told, there will not be poverty. There will not be suffering. There will not be differences in the living standards of people. Children will never be hungry. There will not be bonuses for corporate executives. There will no longer be some with spacious homes and others homeless. There will no longer be some who cannot afford health care and others who have elective surgery. There will not be people who are disadvantage.
Nor will there be people who can do as they please.
There will be Social Justice.
If this does not correspond to the idea of social justice, what does? For there must be an end state, or the pursuit of "social" justice is nothing more than the excuse for a permanent state of "social"--warfare.
Prescription for War
Warfare, of course, was precisely the vision of the person who promised us the state of perfection he called communism. His name was Karl Marx, and he was the original sufferer from CBS. His economic theory, his reading of history, his political advice to the rest of the world for the remainder of time, all show a mind seriously afflicted by that disease. How else could an otherwise brilliant mind reduce the myriad differences among people to matters of class? How else could a brilliant mind look upon the exploding kaleidoscope of history and see only class warfare? How else could a brilliant mind write the two vast volumes of Das Kapital based on a single arbitrary and erroneous thesis of value?
Indeed, to adopt Marx's view means to join in social warfare. The behavior of social warriors brings to mind Dostoevski's description in Crime and Punishment of some strange new microbes. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible..."
Social warfare clearly undermines domestic tranquility. But the even greater evil is that it fuels discontent and induces a permanent state of hopelessness by setting unattainable goals. And unattained they shall remain, except of course in communism--if you believe the theory.
Perhaps some do.
But the rest of us need to face the fact that the Rule of Law and the Search for Social Justice cannot exist side-by-side because social justice requires that those who possess more of anything have it taken away from them. The Rule of Law will not permit that. It exists to guarantee conditions in which more people can have more liberty, more rights, more possessions. Prophets of social justice--communists, whether by that or any other name--focus on who should have less. Because they have nothing to give, they can only take away. First, they take away opportunity. Next, they take away possessions. In the end, they have to take away life itself.
Are two of the three taking hold already?
America's 30 Years War, Chapter Seven, "Social Justice"
A Monumental Deception
The quotation marks in the title are used advisedly. The words themselves are among the most successful deceptions ever conceived. Ask a variety of people to define what "social justice" means, specifically, and you will get as many answers as people queried. Ask the same person at different times and you will get different responses. All "definitions" of social justice boil down to any of the following:
(1) somebody should have the power to determine what you can have, or
(2) somebody should have the power to determine what you cannot have, or
(3) somebody should have the power to determine what to take away from you in order to give it to others who receive it without any obligation to earn it.
If millions upon millions have been deluded into searching for "social justice," it is because "social justice" displays the irresistible charm of the temptress and the armament of the enraged avenger; because it adorns itself in intoxicating cliches and wears the insignia of the highest institutions of learning. Like a poisonous snake, it radiates brilliant colors. Like the poppies in The Wizard of Oz, it lulls the mind to sleep.
The easiest targets happen to be civilized people, who care about the fate of others. Americans, especially, are famous for their concern for fellow humans and support of worthy causes. They have fought two world wars to rescue western civilization, without any thought to material gain. Americans may be said to possess an uncommonly active "social" conscience. Actually, the word "conscience" does well enough alone. Why do we attach the word "social?"
Because, more than a century ago, advocates of socialism embarked on a campaign to inject the world "social" into every conceivable arena. Such a systematic perversion of the language had to have a purpose to plant the thought that "social" infuses everything with a positive content. If successful, it was bound to surround the word "socialism" with a positive aura. Conspiracy? No--a well-thought-out program, openly advocated and diligently implemented by its planners. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Friedrich Hayek in The Fatal Conceit (1988) lists over 160 nouns to which the adjective "social" has been attached with some frequency. Hayek traces the origins of the usage to German theorists and argues persuasively that "social," far from adding anything, in fact drains all nouns to which it is attached of content or meaning. Regardless, speakers of all political persuasions have taken to using the word with alarming frequency.
Why should a word, just because it became the obsession of certain German thinkers, pervade English, the language that has given us "common sense"? What would our conscience not prompt us to do that our "social" conscience would? Conscientious persons value life and possess a sense of duty. Conscientious persons believe in everyone's right to the pursuit of happiness, law or not. Conscience imposes an obligation to care about, and to work toward, the betterment of the human condition. What does "social" add to this list, other than a political slant?
A Process of Elimination
Advocates of social justice point to the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the disenfranchised. Advocates of social justice insist that, in order to demonstrate a social conscience, a person must resolve to eliminate poverty, eliminate suffering, and eliminate differences among people. The assumption is that society can and will reach a state in which all its members enjoy just the right quantity and proportion of attributes, possessions, and good fortune in relation to all other members, and to their own expectations.
Special attention must be focused upon the word "eliminate." As noted, the demand to "eliminate" has been with us since the French Revolution. It is a key word, because it is peculiar to the thinking of those who advocate social justice. What are the practical implications?
In order to eliminate poverty, agreement must be reached on terminology. Poor by what standard? Poor in Albania or Zaire is very different from poor in Switzerland or the United States. Poverty, then, is relative, and in relative terms, there will always be "poverty" as long as some people have more and others have less. Two possibilities arise. One is to establish the authority which will take possession of all goods and distribute them evenly among the populace. This would have to be a continuous process because the more gifted and more industrious will keep accumulating more than the others. The second option is to concede that it is all nonsense.
The elimination of suffering presumes even greater divine powers. The worst offenders propose to eliminate suffering through various government decrees and executive orders. These same people speculate about "the elimination of
differences," a truly disturbing phenomenon.
One possible answer may be an affliction peculiar to people who apply the word "social" with great frequency. I will refer to it as "Compartmentalized Brain Syndrome," or CBS for short. Sufferers from CBS have more or less the same information as the rest of us in the various compartments of the brain. But traffic between the compartments has broken down. No connection is made between two bits of data, even within the same subject matter, such as tax rates and tax revenues. The breakdown may be either temporary or permanent.
By way of illustration, a United States senator recently complained bitterly about the diminishing interest young people show in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The same senator fully endorses multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is code for the gradual elimination of all Western traditions. A person who fails to recognize the connection between declaring the Western canon irrelevant, and the decline in the appreciation of Bach's music is suffering from CBS
The same may be said of persons who speak of "the downtrodden," "the dispossessed," and "the disenfranchised" in today's America. Clearly, no law in the United States would ever create or permit any such thing. CBS sufferers nonetheless refuse to notice that people are different, and that differences of abilities, aspirations, family circumstances, and a variety of other factors will always produce a wide range of results. Alternatively, they view people in terms of conditions that existed in times past, as if slavery or segregation were still with us, or women's suffrage not yet adopted. Persons afflicted with CBS tend to hold a number of nonsensical opinions, and nonsense cannot be justified except perhaps through more nonsense.
State or Process
The ultimate nonsense is the search for social justice. This is not to insult the millions of highly respectable persons who have been deluded into adopting social justice as their goal. But the truth is, if subject to honest scrutiny, the very concept flies in the face of both reason and experience. Worse still is the presumptuous implication that, were social justice possible, certain persons are better able than others to judge what it is. (Incidentally, how does such an implication square with the doctrine that we are all the same?)
"Social justice" generally means that justice must prevail in the social sphere. But society is in constant flux; its state undergoes constant change. Thus, if a state of justice exists in a given minute, it is unlikely to exist in the next. There will be either more or less justice. How do we monitor performance? What are the measurements? Who judges the data? And, even more troubling, what of the choice between a static and a dynamic society? Most favor a dynamic society for obvious reasons. But a dynamic society produces variable states of social justice.
According to the only theory in existence, to attain a satisfactory state of social justice, social tensions--the source of dynamism--are to be eliminated (there is that word again!). Once that is achieved, society will of course be static. We have to work diligently, the prescription goes, to attain a state of being with no social tensions.
The state so characterized is known as "communism."
A Disconcerting Conclusion
Unwittingly, perhaps, in many cases, but persons who advocate social justice advocate communism. Taking social justice to its logical conclusion, nothing less will suffice. The howls of protests such a conclusion is likely to elicit confirm the many misconceptions associated with the word "communism." We need to relieve the word of the misleading connotations it has acquired along the way.
That is, when we say "communism," we see the Kremlin, Soviet tanks crushing twelve-year-olds, Castro puffing on a cigar, and Mao's Red Guards cutting off the limbs of the elderly with a knife. But none of that is the essence of communism. The essence of communism is social justice--the elimination of poverty, the elimination of suffering, the elimination of all differences that erect walls between people. The essence of communism is the global village in which everyone benefits equally within an interdependent and socially conscious world. The essence of communism is the rearing of children by the village. Even Hitler's version, which he called "national socialism," was intended to deliver great and lasting benefits to the masses, once a few million redundant people were, well, eliminated.
We need to rid ourselves of the images of starving North Koreans, of Rumanian orphans with AIDS, of multitudes in shabby and filthy clothes, of landscapes polluted beyond recognition. That is not what communism was designed to be. That is not what communism is going to be.
Once we reach the true state of communism, we are told, there will not be poverty. There will not be suffering. There will not be differences in the living standards of people. Children will never be hungry. There will not be bonuses for corporate executives. There will no longer be some with spacious homes and others homeless. There will no longer be some who cannot afford health care and others who have elective surgery. There will not be people who are disadvantage.
Nor will there be people who can do as they please.
There will be Social Justice.
If this does not correspond to the idea of social justice, what does? For there must be an end state, or the pursuit of "social" justice is nothing more than the excuse for a permanent state of "social"--warfare.
Prescription for War
Warfare, of course, was precisely the vision of the person who promised us the state of perfection he called communism. His name was Karl Marx, and he was the original sufferer from CBS. His economic theory, his reading of history, his political advice to the rest of the world for the remainder of time, all show a mind seriously afflicted by that disease. How else could an otherwise brilliant mind reduce the myriad differences among people to matters of class? How else could a brilliant mind look upon the exploding kaleidoscope of history and see only class warfare? How else could a brilliant mind write the two vast volumes of Das Kapital based on a single arbitrary and erroneous thesis of value?
Indeed, to adopt Marx's view means to join in social warfare. The behavior of social warriors brings to mind Dostoevski's description in Crime and Punishment of some strange new microbes. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible..."
Social warfare clearly undermines domestic tranquility. But the even greater evil is that it fuels discontent and induces a permanent state of hopelessness by setting unattainable goals. And unattained they shall remain, except of course in communism--if you believe the theory.
Perhaps some do.
But the rest of us need to face the fact that the Rule of Law and the Search for Social Justice cannot exist side-by-side because social justice requires that those who possess more of anything have it taken away from them. The Rule of Law will not permit that. It exists to guarantee conditions in which more people can have more liberty, more rights, more possessions. Prophets of social justice--communists, whether by that or any other name--focus on who should have less. Because they have nothing to give, they can only take away. First, they take away opportunity. Next, they take away possessions. In the end, they have to take away life itself.
Are two of the three taking hold already?
Return to Normandy, Part 3
The gray stone steeple of a church in Vierville looms near the road ahead of us. Was this the landmark commanders sought through their binoculars from the ships? We pass tranquil pastures, centuries old farmhouses, barns with rusty red roofs, and the road sign directing us to Utah Beach and Ste. Mere-Eglise.
I can hardly believe my eyes. We have arrived at Ste. Marie du Mont, what the Allied Forces named Utah Beach, the place I have heard about all my life, the place where my dad and hundreds of thousands of Americans landed in one of the most historic events ever. I am awestruck. We begin slowly to take it all in: the flagstaffs, arrow straight, are lined up in front of the museum, like soldiers at attention, intended to represent each of the countries who participated as Allies. Today they are naked. The flags are not flying on these poles. Is it because of the blustery, wet weather? Early spring on the Normandy coast sends a chill through your bones.
To the right of the building is a German bunker which has been modified to provide public restrooms. We like the symbolism. We inspect an underground bunker near the parking lot and move toward the granite obelisk prominently placed in a direct line from the front doors of the museum. It memorializes the 4th Infantry Division, United States Army. Inscribed in a retaining wall is the date "6 JUIN 1944." The gate of a faded ocean blue Higgins boat hangs open over the wall. Peering into the floor of that boat evokes mental images that are best left undescribed. We walk past a tank and a few artillery pieces, toward the barbed wire and other German-placed obstacles which have been left as part of the historical site. The Stars and Stripes flies beside the French Tricolor near a monument to the 1st Engineer Special Brigade. A sign at the foot of the obelisk says in French, "to our Liberators, the community of Sainte Marie du Mont remembers."
A plaque in French at the door of another bunker commemorates the "valiant soldiers of the United States fallen for the liberation of France," and the memorials continue on the inside of the bunker:
This German fortification was captured
from the enemy 6 June 1944 and was used by the 1st Engineer
Special Brigade as the headquarters from which
to direct beach operations during the landing of American
forces on this beach.
On the walls of this emplacement
are inscribed in tender remembrance the names of our comrades who gave
their lives to insure freedom and justice throughout the world.
Above the names a familiar verse from the Gospel of John brings a lump to the throat.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Outside again we find memorials to the "heroic dead" of the 90th Infantry Division and "to the members of the United States Coast Guard who participated in the initial invasion of Normandy on D-Day, especially to those who gave their lives here..." and in closing,
The nations of the world shall long remember Normandy, the United States Armed Forces, their allies and the cost of freedom at this place.
The "Tough 'Ombres Combat Team" obelisk towers above all the others, "Utah Beach to Czechoslovakia."
In 5 campaigns and 318 days of battle, marked by great cost
of precious lives and extraordinary valor, the
Tough 'Ombres accomplished every mission, shoulder
to shoulder with American, French and other Allied
units. They liberated Europe and made a better world.
This beautiful and heart-wrenching monument with wreath and thirteen stars was erected by "the United States of America in humble tribute to its sons who lost their lives in the liberation of those beaches June 6, 1944.
I can hardly believe my eyes. We have arrived at Ste. Marie du Mont, what the Allied Forces named Utah Beach, the place I have heard about all my life, the place where my dad and hundreds of thousands of Americans landed in one of the most historic events ever. I am awestruck. We begin slowly to take it all in: the flagstaffs, arrow straight, are lined up in front of the museum, like soldiers at attention, intended to represent each of the countries who participated as Allies. Today they are naked. The flags are not flying on these poles. Is it because of the blustery, wet weather? Early spring on the Normandy coast sends a chill through your bones.
To the right of the building is a German bunker which has been modified to provide public restrooms. We like the symbolism. We inspect an underground bunker near the parking lot and move toward the granite obelisk prominently placed in a direct line from the front doors of the museum. It memorializes the 4th Infantry Division, United States Army. Inscribed in a retaining wall is the date "6 JUIN 1944." The gate of a faded ocean blue Higgins boat hangs open over the wall. Peering into the floor of that boat evokes mental images that are best left undescribed. We walk past a tank and a few artillery pieces, toward the barbed wire and other German-placed obstacles which have been left as part of the historical site. The Stars and Stripes flies beside the French Tricolor near a monument to the 1st Engineer Special Brigade. A sign at the foot of the obelisk says in French, "to our Liberators, the community of Sainte Marie du Mont remembers."
A plaque in French at the door of another bunker commemorates the "valiant soldiers of the United States fallen for the liberation of France," and the memorials continue on the inside of the bunker:
This German fortification was captured
from the enemy 6 June 1944 and was used by the 1st Engineer
Special Brigade as the headquarters from which
to direct beach operations during the landing of American
forces on this beach.
On the walls of this emplacement
are inscribed in tender remembrance the names of our comrades who gave
their lives to insure freedom and justice throughout the world.
Above the names a familiar verse from the Gospel of John brings a lump to the throat.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Outside again we find memorials to the "heroic dead" of the 90th Infantry Division and "to the members of the United States Coast Guard who participated in the initial invasion of Normandy on D-Day, especially to those who gave their lives here..." and in closing,
The nations of the world shall long remember Normandy, the United States Armed Forces, their allies and the cost of freedom at this place.
The "Tough 'Ombres Combat Team" obelisk towers above all the others, "Utah Beach to Czechoslovakia."
In 5 campaigns and 318 days of battle, marked by great cost
of precious lives and extraordinary valor, the
Tough 'Ombres accomplished every mission, shoulder
to shoulder with American, French and other Allied
units. They liberated Europe and made a better world.
This beautiful and heart-wrenching monument with wreath and thirteen stars was erected by "the United States of America in humble tribute to its sons who lost their lives in the liberation of those beaches June 6, 1944.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Return to Normandy 2001, Part 2
We've seen the photos of Caen--utter destruction. There are before and after photos, before the bombing of 1944 and after the bombing. More than 75% of all the buildings in Caen, 10,000 in all, were destroyed. Thankfully, the famed twin abbeys built by William the Conqueror and his queen Mathilda were spared the destruction much of the city suffered. We marvel in the light of the next day at the human spirit that would rebuild this city from the ashes and heaps of stone that our troops saw as they liberated the French people from the death grip of Hitler's Nazi war machine.
Caen lies on the banks of the Orne River, which was of strategic importance to the Allies. The success of the invasion required that bridges over the river and road and rail lines intersecting it come under the control of the invaders. As we cross the Orne, my thoughts turn to the men of the 552nd, and I wonder if the wet, green hills, the river filling its banks, the narrow street would look familiar to them today. Caen fades from view as we move northwest on the E-46 toward Bayeux (home of the famed Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings) and the historic beaches.
Enroute and near St. Lo we encounter France's magnificent memorial to General Eisenhower. Yes, I know, we usually refer to dignitaries by their highest achieved rank--in his case President--but this memorial clearly is to the General Eisenhower, not the President Eisenhower. It is striking, sited at the center of a traffic circle, backgrounded by a classic arch and a small but tall stand of dark green trees. The General towers above you, at least ten feet tall, in full uniform--Eisenhower jacket, of course--and posed as though he is overlooking the field of battle, hands on hips. Our hearts swell with pride as we stand beside this towering bronze image.
In St. Lo I am overwhelmed with thoughts about the 552nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion. Daddy has mentioned St. Lo many times. Did they drive their trucks on this very road? I can almost see the convoy, olive drab, splattered with mud, the gun barrels pointed menacingly skyward, poised for the deadly aim of the gunner. The sky is gray, and the wind is cold. I feel the cool drizzle on my face and think of the men in the boats that stormy June day.
The stone wall of an ancient castle set on a high rock bluff rises on our right in the midst of the commercial district of St. Lo. A vacant flagstaff stands in front of a monument at the base of the bluff. We stop to investigate. It is a memorial to les victimes of the bombardment on June 6, 1944. War medals in bas-relief flank a sword and a shield depicting a rearing stallion. We cross another river and continue to read about the boys who became men on a foreign shore in that month of June. The verdant countryside with its steep, rolling hills and pastures delineated by hedgerows begins to give way to a plateau with fewer trees. We are nearing the sea.
Caen lies on the banks of the Orne River, which was of strategic importance to the Allies. The success of the invasion required that bridges over the river and road and rail lines intersecting it come under the control of the invaders. As we cross the Orne, my thoughts turn to the men of the 552nd, and I wonder if the wet, green hills, the river filling its banks, the narrow street would look familiar to them today. Caen fades from view as we move northwest on the E-46 toward Bayeux (home of the famed Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings) and the historic beaches.
Enroute and near St. Lo we encounter France's magnificent memorial to General Eisenhower. Yes, I know, we usually refer to dignitaries by their highest achieved rank--in his case President--but this memorial clearly is to the General Eisenhower, not the President Eisenhower. It is striking, sited at the center of a traffic circle, backgrounded by a classic arch and a small but tall stand of dark green trees. The General towers above you, at least ten feet tall, in full uniform--Eisenhower jacket, of course--and posed as though he is overlooking the field of battle, hands on hips. Our hearts swell with pride as we stand beside this towering bronze image.
In St. Lo I am overwhelmed with thoughts about the 552nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion. Daddy has mentioned St. Lo many times. Did they drive their trucks on this very road? I can almost see the convoy, olive drab, splattered with mud, the gun barrels pointed menacingly skyward, poised for the deadly aim of the gunner. The sky is gray, and the wind is cold. I feel the cool drizzle on my face and think of the men in the boats that stormy June day.
The stone wall of an ancient castle set on a high rock bluff rises on our right in the midst of the commercial district of St. Lo. A vacant flagstaff stands in front of a monument at the base of the bluff. We stop to investigate. It is a memorial to les victimes of the bombardment on June 6, 1944. War medals in bas-relief flank a sword and a shield depicting a rearing stallion. We cross another river and continue to read about the boys who became men on a foreign shore in that month of June. The verdant countryside with its steep, rolling hills and pastures delineated by hedgerows begins to give way to a plateau with fewer trees. We are nearing the sea.
Return to Normandy 2001
With Memorial Day and the anniversary of D-Day fast approaching, I have chosen to serialize a memoir I wrote in 2002, which was previously published in The Flak, the newsletter of the 552nd AAA Battalion Association (that's anti-aircraft artillery, for those who might wonder). This is part one.
____________________________________________________________________
Return to Normandy 2001
Technically, we were not returning to Normandy. We had never been there but were going as proxies for my dad, since he was unable to return to France and the scene of the greatest invasion in the history of the world. My husband James, our then-seventeen year old daughter Haley, and I were making our way across the width of France from southeast to northwest, having begun our journey by car in Rome on the 4th of April.
It was after visiting the famed cathedral of Chartres and as we approached the large region of Normandy that I began to read aloud from Stephen Ambrose's D-Day, preparing us for what we would see when we reached the towns and villages hugging the windy shores of the Cotentin, that peninsular thrust of historic Norman coast chosen by the Allied powers who fully understood the necessity of deceiving the German high command about their planned invasion site.
We read about the naming of the beach sectors, about the carefully laid plans that would first drop the paratroopers behind enemy lines, next the Rangers to breach the beach and its defenses, then the engineers who would open up the lanes in to the seaside villages from the beaches for the troops to pour through. We learned of the special skirts made to float tanks, about the design and production of the Higgins boats, about the hundreds of thousands of troops bivouacked in English cities and hamlets. We knew from Daddy's reports that the 552nd had waited in Wallingford, near Oxford and the Thames River.
Stephen Ambrose's straight-forward account of the events leading up to and carrying through to the end of the D-Day invasion took us through a range of emotions, and at times the reading stopped abruptly when the words would not make it past the lump of emotion that welled up in the reader's throat. The vivid descriptions swept us back into that moment in history: the descriptions of boys and men who parachuted into flooded fields and didn't make it out; those who never got to shore because their loads were so heavy and the water so deep that they drowned when they debarked; those who never exited their Higgins boats at Omaha but were cut down by the slashing enfilade from the pre-sited German machine guns; those whose vessels collided with submerged mines; or took a German artillery round; or who, once making it to the shore, were cut down by one type of weapon or another.
At this point our story switches to the present tense, and we take you along with us. The beautiful French countryside skims alongside our car as we contemplate what we have read, thinking about what our countrymen did more than 65 years ago. The rain stopped before we left Chartres, but the sky is busy, and the wind is cold. In Brezolles swans glide on the smooth surface of a small lake in the center of town. Beautiful streams and rivers crisscross the pastoral scene, and the topography begins to change as we come into Normandy; we are climbing gently. Near Vimoutiers, just to the east of Falaise, namesake of the Falaise Gap battle, we encounter tall pine trees and logging, hills, and hedgerows. We learn from Ambrose that the hedgerows in today's France are not the same as the ones which proved to be the next deadly obstacle to our forces after they got off the beaches code-named Utah and Omaha. Today's hedgerows are much lower, not built up on dirt mounds like those in 1944 Normandy. Caen is our destination for the night, and it is growing dark.
(To Be Continued)
____________________________________________________________________
Return to Normandy 2001
Technically, we were not returning to Normandy. We had never been there but were going as proxies for my dad, since he was unable to return to France and the scene of the greatest invasion in the history of the world. My husband James, our then-seventeen year old daughter Haley, and I were making our way across the width of France from southeast to northwest, having begun our journey by car in Rome on the 4th of April.
It was after visiting the famed cathedral of Chartres and as we approached the large region of Normandy that I began to read aloud from Stephen Ambrose's D-Day, preparing us for what we would see when we reached the towns and villages hugging the windy shores of the Cotentin, that peninsular thrust of historic Norman coast chosen by the Allied powers who fully understood the necessity of deceiving the German high command about their planned invasion site.
We read about the naming of the beach sectors, about the carefully laid plans that would first drop the paratroopers behind enemy lines, next the Rangers to breach the beach and its defenses, then the engineers who would open up the lanes in to the seaside villages from the beaches for the troops to pour through. We learned of the special skirts made to float tanks, about the design and production of the Higgins boats, about the hundreds of thousands of troops bivouacked in English cities and hamlets. We knew from Daddy's reports that the 552nd had waited in Wallingford, near Oxford and the Thames River.
Stephen Ambrose's straight-forward account of the events leading up to and carrying through to the end of the D-Day invasion took us through a range of emotions, and at times the reading stopped abruptly when the words would not make it past the lump of emotion that welled up in the reader's throat. The vivid descriptions swept us back into that moment in history: the descriptions of boys and men who parachuted into flooded fields and didn't make it out; those who never got to shore because their loads were so heavy and the water so deep that they drowned when they debarked; those who never exited their Higgins boats at Omaha but were cut down by the slashing enfilade from the pre-sited German machine guns; those whose vessels collided with submerged mines; or took a German artillery round; or who, once making it to the shore, were cut down by one type of weapon or another.
At this point our story switches to the present tense, and we take you along with us. The beautiful French countryside skims alongside our car as we contemplate what we have read, thinking about what our countrymen did more than 65 years ago. The rain stopped before we left Chartres, but the sky is busy, and the wind is cold. In Brezolles swans glide on the smooth surface of a small lake in the center of town. Beautiful streams and rivers crisscross the pastoral scene, and the topography begins to change as we come into Normandy; we are climbing gently. Near Vimoutiers, just to the east of Falaise, namesake of the Falaise Gap battle, we encounter tall pine trees and logging, hills, and hedgerows. We learn from Ambrose that the hedgerows in today's France are not the same as the ones which proved to be the next deadly obstacle to our forces after they got off the beaches code-named Utah and Omaha. Today's hedgerows are much lower, not built up on dirt mounds like those in 1944 Normandy. Caen is our destination for the night, and it is growing dark.
(To Be Continued)
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Is Pakistan the most dangerous place on earth?
I don't know if Pakistan is the most dangerous place on earth, but it certainly has all the elements of a very dangerous place. It is a failed state (having areas within its borders which it does not control) with only minimal democratic structures, largely controlled by a bifurcated military and intelligence service, part of it loyal to an Islamist shari'a state and part of it loyal to---well, we can't be sure to whom the others are loyal.
It is no coincidence that many of the Islamist terrorists intercepted recently in the U.S. before they could complete their planned bombings have connections to Pakistan (Faisal Shahzad, the DC 5, Najibullah Zazi, to name a few). Jayshree Bajoria, writing in the May 6, 2010, online issue of Foreign Affairs quotes Ayesha Siddiqa (Newsline): "South Punjab (Pakistan) has become the hub of jihadism."
There is a long history of coups d'etat, assassinations, politically-motivated executions, and corruption in Pakistan. Large numbers of the citizenry, if not all, seem to be obsessed with taking the rest of Kashmir away from India, and the nation has repeatedly threatened its neighbor with nuclear war.
It has so poorly controlled the nuclear technology that its "national hero" A. Q. Khan, "father" of Pakistan's nuclear program, originally stole from his employers, that Khan, apparently, was free to spread this technology and materials to every rogue state on the planet and profit monetarily from it in the process. He was pardoned by Musharraf for this great crime against humanity. Talk about "chickens coming home to roost." We have yet to see the end result of this venality.
Pakistan's military government has for decades propped up the Islamist militants, using them to wage an insurgency in Kashmir and allowing them to gain political ascendancy in the as yet untamed western provinces bordering Afghanistan, where Pashtun tribal loyalties transcend borders and create problems not only for Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan, but the entire world in which mujahid trained in that region perpetrate their atrocities.
The populace of Pakistan is woefully undereducated, with an adult literacy rate as of the first decade of the 21st century of 55%. The economy, though somewhat improved thanks to several billion U. S. dollars and aid from some of or allies, leaves much to be desired. Radical mullahs are churning out young militants by the hundreds and thousands who have been inculcated with hatred and the culture of the shahid (holy martyr)in their single purpose madrasas. The world will be dealing with these othewise uneducated, to-be-pitied-and-feared individuals for a generation or more.
When people value hatred over tolerance (real tolerance,not the post-modern kind), revenge and blood feuds over forgiveness and moving on, ignorance over wisdom, and death over life, they become a dangerous lot. It is a sorry situation and a formula for disaster, examples of which have been far too prevalent since the world first began to see the products of this formula, starting even before September 11, 2001.
Pakistan needs a lot of help to overcome these huge obstacles. I pray the world has the wisdom, courage, tenacity, and brotherly love to help Pakistan progress to a state that works to improve the lives of its citizens rather than demean and destroy them. I am hopeful that there are enough Pakistanis who see the benefits of these values and will do what is necessary to achieve them. However, the signs are not encouraging.
It is no coincidence that many of the Islamist terrorists intercepted recently in the U.S. before they could complete their planned bombings have connections to Pakistan (Faisal Shahzad, the DC 5, Najibullah Zazi, to name a few). Jayshree Bajoria, writing in the May 6, 2010, online issue of Foreign Affairs quotes Ayesha Siddiqa (Newsline): "South Punjab (Pakistan) has become the hub of jihadism."
There is a long history of coups d'etat, assassinations, politically-motivated executions, and corruption in Pakistan. Large numbers of the citizenry, if not all, seem to be obsessed with taking the rest of Kashmir away from India, and the nation has repeatedly threatened its neighbor with nuclear war.
It has so poorly controlled the nuclear technology that its "national hero" A. Q. Khan, "father" of Pakistan's nuclear program, originally stole from his employers, that Khan, apparently, was free to spread this technology and materials to every rogue state on the planet and profit monetarily from it in the process. He was pardoned by Musharraf for this great crime against humanity. Talk about "chickens coming home to roost." We have yet to see the end result of this venality.
Pakistan's military government has for decades propped up the Islamist militants, using them to wage an insurgency in Kashmir and allowing them to gain political ascendancy in the as yet untamed western provinces bordering Afghanistan, where Pashtun tribal loyalties transcend borders and create problems not only for Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan, but the entire world in which mujahid trained in that region perpetrate their atrocities.
The populace of Pakistan is woefully undereducated, with an adult literacy rate as of the first decade of the 21st century of 55%. The economy, though somewhat improved thanks to several billion U. S. dollars and aid from some of or allies, leaves much to be desired. Radical mullahs are churning out young militants by the hundreds and thousands who have been inculcated with hatred and the culture of the shahid (holy martyr)in their single purpose madrasas. The world will be dealing with these othewise uneducated, to-be-pitied-and-feared individuals for a generation or more.
When people value hatred over tolerance (real tolerance,not the post-modern kind), revenge and blood feuds over forgiveness and moving on, ignorance over wisdom, and death over life, they become a dangerous lot. It is a sorry situation and a formula for disaster, examples of which have been far too prevalent since the world first began to see the products of this formula, starting even before September 11, 2001.
Pakistan needs a lot of help to overcome these huge obstacles. I pray the world has the wisdom, courage, tenacity, and brotherly love to help Pakistan progress to a state that works to improve the lives of its citizens rather than demean and destroy them. I am hopeful that there are enough Pakistanis who see the benefits of these values and will do what is necessary to achieve them. However, the signs are not encouraging.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Against All Gods
I'm excited about John Mark Reynolds and Phillip Johnson's new book Against All Gods: What's Right and Wrong About the New Atheism. I have studied under these two outstanding thinkers for more than a decade. If you would like to better understand why the atheists' arguments fail, this books should be an excellent resource. It will be an enjoyable read, too, because both of them are accomplished writers and speakers.
Dr. Reynolds founded and heads the Torrey Institute at Biola University, and Dr. Johnson is Jefferson E. Peyser Professor of Law, Emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley. (It's true, not everyone at Berkeley is a left-wing radical!)
Dr. Reynolds founded and heads the Torrey Institute at Biola University, and Dr. Johnson is Jefferson E. Peyser Professor of Law, Emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley. (It's true, not everyone at Berkeley is a left-wing radical!)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
