This Friday on Tucker Carlson’s show his final guests were James Fox, Director/Producer of a new UFO investigative documentary called &#8220;The Phenomenon,&#8221; and Christopher Mellon, former senior intelligence official for the Department of Defense. While discussing the film, Mr. Fox reveals that several times, not only were UFOs being tracked over our (and Russia&#8217;s) nuclear facilities, but they were interfering with launch protocols to the point where had the President called for a missile launch, they couldn&#8217;t have done it as they&#8217;d somehow been deactivated. Mr. Mellon discusses that metallic materials supposedly taken from UFO crash/landing sites had been engineered at the atomic level and were not found on Earth in any natural form&#8230;and no nation to our knowledge is even close to having such engineering capabilities.
So what thoughts should such claims, if true, provoke? What concerns? If the assertions in the investigative documentary are factual, we should all find this deeply disquieting.
Here is something to chew on. If you had a time machine and traveled around periods in history, what would you find? Let&#8217;s say you&#8217;re a French knight in 732, and, after fighting at the Battle of Tours, you step into the device with all your chainmail, armor, shield, and sword.  You pop out in 1415 to fight again at Agincourt.  What you might notice is that in seven centuries weaponry really hasn&#8217;t changed very much.  In fact, technology overall hasn&#8217;t advanced far, certainly not in any revolutionary way. One key reason for this lack of advancement is that, despite the reputation for constant warfare, the Medieval period was not a particularly violent time on a large nation-against-nation scale, albeit quite miserable, filthy, and plague-infested by our standards.
You, our brave knight, climb back into the time machine and step out in France again&#8230;this time approximately 300 years later in 1712 at Denain.  Although a strange and noisy projectile-hurling device called a musket is now in use, it’s primitive, inaccurate, and cumbersome. The weapons of choice on this battlefield are still of the bladed variety…bayonet, sword, pike, halberd, spontoon. Horses are still the main shock force and they are defended against by hedges of spear points in the form of bayonets and pikes. So even after a thousand years have passed from Tours, you’re still in the game.
After helping your future countrymen defeat the Austrians and Dutch, you hop back into the time machine once again and move forward another two centuries to 1916, wherein you emerge onto the Somme battlefield of World War One. But now things have changed dramatically. In fact, to your bewilderment, you feel as if you’re on the surface of another planet. Now what do you see? A world utterly transformed. Your armor and weapons are not only completely useless, but a hindrance. You are in a world of warbling artillery shells, rattling machine guns, rifles, steel helmets, clouds of mustard gas, armed flying machines, rumbling tanks, etc.
Terrified, you race back into your machine and are propelled forward yet again&#8230;this time barely 30 years later to 1945 and into the cockpit of a massive B-29 bomber 30,000 feet over Japan. From here, after getting over the shock of flying, to your incomprehensible horror, you witness a single 128&#8243;x28&#8243; apparatus vaporize an entire city right before your eyes. Should you be so bold as to travel forward just 75 years later into 2020 you will see a world awash in nuclear-tipped ICBMs, enormous submarines that can stay submerged and silent for months, supercarriers with flying machines screaming through the air 100 times faster than your trusty warhorse, radar, sonar, satellites, Kevlar, even more powerful tanks of all shapes, RPGs, night vision, drones, stealth aircraft, smart weapons, supercomputers, etc. You get the idea.
What&#8217;s the point? It is this: technology grows at an exponential rate (think Moore&#8217;s Law). It just needs a catalyst. As Oskar Schindler said, he was always missing one thing: &#8220;War.&#8221; The reason we went from the flimsy Wright Flyer in 1903 to the Mach 3 Lockheed SR-71 less than 60 years later, to satellites, space stations, and reusable rocketry today, indeed the ability to destroy our planet many times over (let alone bioweapons), is because, nothing drives technological innovation like war. And the 20th Century was by far the bloodiest and most violent in human history&#8230;so far. And the better at war you are (and perhaps more aggressive) the faster you develop new and improved stuff. Measure begets counter-measure begets counter-counter-measure spiraling onward and upward at a sinisterly accelerating rate.
So what would this say about an alien race, if they&#8217;ve in fact been dropping in on us, that is so technologically advanced that they have overcome the limitations of light speed itself, possibly taking advantage of curves, folds and intersections in space-time that they can traverse the unfathomable distance to come here? The distances of space are so vast they are difficult to comprehend. We can illustrate it this way. The nearest star to our Sun is Proxima Centauri; it’s 4.3 light years away. That’s around  25.25 trillion miles. Now, if we were to shrink the Sun all the way down to the size of a golf ball, Proxima Centauri would be roughly the diameter of a BB. To stay true to scale to match the space between them, if we stood in New York’s Central Park holding the golf ball, how far away would the person holding the Proxima Centauri BB have to stand to match the distance?  Green Bay, Wisconsin, or a little over 760 miles.
Furthermore, what would the aliens’ arrival here of all places say about their abilities to even locate us at all given our obscurity within the infinite expanse of the cosmos. A common illustration goes thusly: If our entire Solar System out to Neptune’s orbit, 5.6 billion miles diameter, was shrunk to the size of a quarter, the Milky Way galaxy would be the size of the contiguous United States…just to give you an idea of how hidden we truly are. And yet, somehow they have found us. So how advanced must they be?
In fact, the technology they would have to possess to get here would be so much farther ahead of our own that it is almost unfathomable. Maybe the best way to drive the point home is to compare us to a group of cave dwellers with clubs and primitive spear points being studied by a foreign power just over the horizon that fields F-22s, satellites, nuclear submarines, and ICBMs in its arsenal.
Call me a pessimist, but I have to think that a society so advanced, which implies a lot of experience at waging war if our own story is any guide, is a pretty hostile bunch. And yet we have sent our probes into the void with not only a &#8220;Hey there, we exist&#8221; message, but &#8220;Oh and here&#8217;s exactly how to find us.&#8221;  I guess the only consolation is that if they are so advanced, which implies civilizational longevity, and yet have survived without annihilating themselves, it&#8217;s a good sign. Maybe they got it out of their system already. After all, we&#8217;ve only had nukes for 75 years.  We&#8217;re just at the very beginning of the post-global-total-destruction-capability phase. Should we last, it may be because we&#8217;ve improved as a species, with our morality catching up to our technology.  Or, maybe, the aliens are merely the survivors (read: victors), in some planetary cage match. The Spartans of their system who, in the end, defeated their celestial Athenians and came out on top.
Either way, I&#8217;m thinking any serious close encounter with these guys would be more akin to Independence Day and War Of The Worlds than E.T. or Arrival.  With that in mind, perhaps inviting them over for a play date, like beckoning a sadistic child wearing Timberlands and carrying a magnifying glass to visit our little anthill, wasn&#8217;t such a good idea.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=">Of Another Time And Place</a>. 
More from Brad Schaeffer: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schaeffer-kamala-harris-makes-historically-illiterate-reference-to-lincoln-in-debate">Kamala Harris Makes Historically Illiterate Reference To Lincoln In Debate</a>
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

SCHAEFFER: ‘The Truth Is Out There,’ And, If Actually True, It Scares The Hell Out Of Me!

This Friday on Tucker Carlson’s show his final guests were James Fox, Director/Producer of a new UFO investigative documentary called &quot;The Phenomenon,&quot;

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Kamala Harris, history professor, held class tonight and gave V.P. Pence a lecture on how even a GOP icon like Lincoln would have been opposed to filling a Supreme Court vacancy in an election season. She said: &#8220;In 1864 a seat became open on the Supreme Court. Abraham Lincoln&#8217;s party was in charge of not only the White House but the Senate. But honest Abe said it&#8217;s not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision about who will be the next President of the United States, and then that person can select who will serve [on the Court].&#8221;
Well, what she was referring to was the October 12, 1864 death of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. Taney was a vehemently pro-slavery jurist — his Court decided in Dredd Scott that Blacks were not people and thus had no right to sue — whom Lincoln no doubt disdained. Contrary to Sen. Harris&#8217; version of history (that a junior staffer must have hastily Google searched, scribbled onto a sheaf of paper, and then placed in front of her under the label &#8220;zinger&#8221;), if anything, Lincoln was chomping at the bit to fill this Jacksonian Democrat&#8217;s seat with a Republican&#8230;especially with emancipation amendments to the Constitution on the horizon.
So why didn&#8217;t Honest Abe fill the seat before the November 1864 election? Simple. THE SENATE WASN&#8217;T IN SESSION.
The Senate wouldn&#8217;t be back until December 5, 27 days after Election Day. The very next day, December 6, 1864, a re-elected Lincoln submitted his nomination for Supreme Court Chief Justice to the lame-duck Republican Senate (which had maintained its majority)&#8230;his former Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. Chase was confirmed the very same day. That was just 56 days after Taney&#8217;s death. Pretty much in line with the Amy Coney Barrett timeline. Huh, go figure. Not a good example.
So no, Sen. Harris. It wasn&#8217;t principle which prevented honest Abe from jumping at the chance to erase the Taney Court&#8217;s tainted legacy, but rather the calendar. Unreal.
Also, to my knowledge, neither Lincoln nor his opponent, George McClellan, ever refused to answer again and again if they intended to pack the Court. They both respected the separation of powers too much, I guess. That a candidate from any party would refuse to answer such a question is positively terrifying to me. In a country in which proper U.S. History and even just basic civics were still taught, it would be enough to scare anyone. This is how banana republics are formed.
More from Brad Schaeffer: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schaeffer-why-we-must-teach-the-holocaust">Why We MUST Teach The Holocaust</a>
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=">Of Another Time And Place</a>. 
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

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SCHAEFFER: Kamala Harris Makes Historically Illiterate Reference To Lincoln In Debate

Abraham Lincoln

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Mike Pence

Kamala Harris, history professor, held class tonight and gave V.P. Pence a lecture on how even a GOP icon like Lincoln would have been opposed to filling

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A 50-state survey has revealed some disturbing results as it relates to Millennials’  and Generation Z’s knowledge of the Holocaust. Gideon Taylor, President of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), announced the release of the U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey. It is the first-ever 50-state survey on Holocaust knowledge among our nation’s youngest adult demographics. Among the survey’s findings, 63 percent of all national respondents do not know that six million Jews were murdered and 36 percent of those who were aware of the genocide thought the number was closer to “two million or fewer Jews” who perished. There were more than 40,000 camps and ghettos scattered across Europe during the Holocaust, and yet 48 percent of national survey respondents could not name a single one.
An even more disquieting survey response showed that even in heavily Jewish New York, nearly 20 percent of respondents believe that Jews actually caused the Holocaust.
“The results are both shocking and saddening and they underscore why we must act now while Holocaust survivors are still with us to voice their stories,” says Taylor. “We need to understand why we aren’t doing better in educating a younger generation about the Holocaust and the lessons of the past. This needs to serve as a wake-up call to us all, and as a road map of where government officials need to act.”
Taylor’s sentiments ring true. But anyone following the decay of the teaching of history in our public schools as well as the daily political discourse should not really be shocked by these findings. After all, people only know what they have been taught. And what they are being taught in this nation is that only certain groups have a right to grievance. Jews, due to their success, social cohesion, and out-sized contribution to all aspects of American life, in business, science, education, the arts, technology, etc. simply do not qualify.  In a way, the incredible resilience of the world’s Jewish population — a group that numbers barely 15 million, roughly the population of Istanbul, and saw six million slaughtered in barely four years — has disqualified them from entry into the club of the aggrieved. And so why teach their history?
In the United States, there is a grievance hierarchy if you will. And, it seems, the worse off the group, the more right to claim oppression they have.  As the popularity and attention of the Black Lives Matter group shows, at the apex of this grievance pyramid are African-Americans. No one denies that racism in the United States was pervasive, cruel, unjust, and an impediment to economic success. 250 years of slavery, followed by a century of Jim Crow imposed enormous barriers to success for African-Americans.
Throughout the 19th Century and even through the 1940s Asians too were on the receiving end of harsh racism and discrimination. And Americans didn’t even try to hide their disdain for “the yellow horde” as was a common racist phrase back in the day. We even imposed immigration restrictions with the not-so-subtly titled Chinese Exclusion Act. During World War II, over 100,000 Japanese-Americans were rounded up on the West Coast and shipped off to camps, solely for the crime of their racial background. They were removed from their homes, saw their businesses shuttered, and lived in Spartan conditions under armed guards…even as their sons were actually fighting, many with note-worthy courage and spirit, for the same country that imprisoned their loved-ones. This at the same time some of our top generals had German surnames like Eisenhower, Spaatz, and Krueger.
If Asians have suffered any victimology, however, it is that of their own success.  Along with Jews, they are the most prosperous and successful sub-group in the United States. So much so that Harvard University, a supposed bastion of left-wing “tolerance” and proponent of “diversity” has been caught red-handed discriminating against Asians in its admissions process.
But Jews and Asians, lacking any aggrieved entitlement, have been cast down the well into those whose dark histories of oppression do not matter.  Since they are successful, their past sufferings cannot be used as a crutch to explain any present underachievement.
This paradox of success might be one reason why our youngsters know so little about the Holocaust, yet so much about slavery. Once again, the culprit is public education. I recently spoke out against a “race-relations” class to be included in my town’s high school curriculum. I did so not because I am some sort of racist (duh!) but rather that the course was built upon the structure of Critical Race Theory. This is a fashionable new school of academic thought whose core assumption is that the United States is innately, systemically racist. From this we learn of the never-ending series of hurtles that face African-Americans. And yes, there are many. Anyone who watches the documentary Age Seven In America can see that from the outset many minority children trapped in impoverished, drug-addled and gang-banger neighborhoods have little chance. And this is a tragedy. But it is a tragedy brought about in large measure by the introduction of the pathogen of the Welfare State into the body of minority neighborhoods, effectively replacing a father in the home as provider and mentor with the government. An explosion of out-of-wedlock African-American births starting in the late 1960s followed; the economic and cultural debilitating pathologies of such a social upheaval are so well-documented as to be declared “settled science” to borrow a phrase.
And yet, the relationship between government assistance and enervated communities is not part of the new race relations class syllabus. And the role of personal responsibility and proper behavior is never mentioned in the lesson plans that only present reading material from far-left activist/authors (no Thomas Sowell or Larry Elder to be found). The driving thesis of the course is that, basically, everything is someone else’s fault….victimhood. Primarily at the hands of the white heterosexual male.
There is no mention of the fact that a black child today has a 72 percent chance of being born to a single mother, whereas an Asian has an 18 percent chance.  No mention of the fact that two-parent black households are less likely to live below the poverty line than single-parent white households. Add to this the 1619 Project, which is not history but a re-written far-left narrative that would make Orwell blush, and one can see why there is no time for less consequential matters like the industrialized mass murder of six million men, women, and children and brutal physical and emotional abuse of millions more, solely based on their ethnicity/religion. Not when they are doing just fine now.
The disconcerting numbers in the Holocaust survey serve as an indictment of the entire American education system. I will go further and say they represent a crime against our youth. Lying by omission is just as insidious — albeit politically effective — as outright fabrication.
The simple fact is this: The Holocaust happened. The mind-boggling breadth and scope of mass murder is matched only by its unimaginable cruelty. It was, quite simply, one of the most important events to ever happen in the entire story of mankind. I mean ever. Places like Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belsen, Sobobor, Dachau, and tens of thousands of others are not just names, or historical asterisks. They are dark mirrors held up to ourselves…and they demonstrate our inherent capacity to inflict unimaginable cruelty upon others when the additive of industrial ingenuity is mixed with the base alloy of hatred and prejudice.
The Holocaust must be remembered.  How else can we honor those millions of innocent lives snuffed out, those millions of potentials wasted, if we do not learn from their suffering? And how can we learn that which is never taught to us.
The frightening thing about history is how easily it can be erased. As the sadistic SS commandant in the film Schindler’s List so glibly said of the 600 year-old thriving Jewish community in Krakow, “By this evening those six centuries are a rumor. They never happened. Today is history.”
Teaching our children so little about the Holocaust is educational malpractice writ large. But what can be done?  It seems that if classes on slavery, necessary and proper as they certainly are, should be part of any history curriculum, so too should the Holocaust. We have no choice. Otherwise we are doomed to repeat the very crimes too few today even know happened.
One only need to recall the 1942 Wannsee Conference (something I have no doubt few know even occurred) wherein the “Final Solution,” the euphemism for the industrialized mass-murder of Europe’s Jews was hashed out in chillingly antiseptic detail, to understand what he meant when C.S. Lewis observed: “The greatest evil…is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.”
This is why we must teach the Holocaust. Not because it is important to a small segment of the world’s population. We teach the Holocaust because it is the story of us. It serves as a warning of what we are capable of when hatred, superstition, and cold ambivalence are given free rein in the hearts of men. That entire generations are going through life not even aware such a monstrous crime occurred, just three-quarters of a century ago, is frightening in its implications. (That any U.S. president today can be compared to Adolf Hitler shows just how corrosive this ignorance of the past can be.)  Our education system has failed a generation. It is time to teach history again. The classroom is not a venue to force grievance and a disdain for their own great nation upon captive and impressionable minds.  In telling such an important and shameful chapter as the Holocaust, we remind the next generation that no people are immune from its evil machinations.  Fore-warned is fore-armed. Otherwise why study the past at all?
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=">Of Another Time And Place</a>. 
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Holocaust Memorial

SCHAEFFER: Why We MUST Teach The Holocaust

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Nazi Germany

World War II

A 50-state survey has revealed some disturbing results as it relates to Millennials’  and Generation Z’s knowledge of the Holocaust. Gideon Taylor,

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I find myself drawn to this date, September 17, for many reasons.  Most Americans — at least those who were taught that our history did not begin in 1963 — know the dates July 4, December 7, and, of course September 11.  One great day, one infamous day, and one stunning day.  But what of today?  September 17?  Ring a bell with anyone?  Probably not.
And yet it is one of the most significant dates in U.S. history, not just for the events that occurred on this square in the calendar, but also for what it means and could teach us about our country.  It is a reminder of our greatness, and our flaws, and the lengths we, as no other so powerful and influential nation in history, are willing to go to correct those flaws.
On September 17, 1787, the most consequential document since Magna Carta was adopted by a hastily organized group of civic leaders in the fledgling United States whose aim was to rectify the inherent flaws in the Articles of Confederation…a governmental system that was too weak to serve as a workable model for a nation on the cusp of expansion as were the newly freed former British Colonies. Behind closed doors, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and others less well-known but brilliant and successful in their own lives, did something dramatic. Indeed revolutionary. They tossed the entire Articles into the trash bin, rolled up their sleeves, and created a new form of government that has served us well, albeit imperfectly, for 233 years.
The new U.S. Constitution, adopted on this day, was an astounding political achievement.  And it represented a shift to accepting the role of a centralized power in a workable model of federalism that has seen a constant give-and-take between the power of the states and the federal government.  Some saw the Constitution as too authoritarian. Thomas Jefferson, who was abroad during the Convention, was dissatisfied with its dearth of enumerated protections for civil liberties. Hence a Bill of Rights, proposed by the Virginian George Mason and Massachusetts man Elbridge Gerry, and later drafted by Madison, was to be a stipulation for ratifying the document. The glossing over of the essential rights Jefferson has so eloquently laid before a different Congress eleven years earlier in his Declaration of Independence was the first of what some historians call a blunder in the convention process that would be rectified through compromise.
But on one issue there would be no such resolution, only delay and passing on the problem to the next generation…slavery. Codified in the Constitution as the infamous 3/5 Compromise, wherein an enslaved human being was to be considered 3/5 of a person for electoral counting purposes, human chattel would have a devastating effect on the nation and lead it, ultimately, to civil war.
Which brings us to the second great event to take place on this date, this time in 1862 near an unassuming creek in western Maryland called the Antietam. September 17, 1862 would turn out to be, in fact, the bloodiest single day in our history…it remains so to this day. In one of those eerie coincidences of history, the great battle would take place 75 years to the day of the flawed Constitution’s adoption. Indeed, the men in Union blue and Confederate gray who stood in line facing each other with rifles leveled at the breasts of their fellow countrymen were on this battlefield precisely to decide the issue left unresolved in the Constitutional Convention, which many of their grandparents and even parents remembered.
Antietam was a battle unlike any other in our history. A twelve-hour buzz saw of death, destruction, horrific wounds, shattered bodies, and ruined lives.  When the hot September sun finally set upon the devastated battlefield, more than 23,000 Americans had fallen…twice as many casualties suffered by the Allies on D-Day and the equivalent of Iwo Jima, only in one day rather than 36.
But from the suffering and misery of that terrible day, President Lincoln, who had been watching closely the progress of the Union army in their quest to defeat the rebels for reasons more than just military expediency, found hope. All summer he had wanted to announce his Emancipation Proclamation that would declare all slaves in rebellious territories “henceforth and forever free.”  (Those slaves in loyal border states would have to wait to be freed by Constitutional amendment as Lincoln did not believe he had the power to make such a unilateral and, in his mind, unconstitutional declaration, despite its obvious moral clarity. The Confederate states, however, having willingly rejected the Constitution when they seceded, were under no such protection.) Lincoln was ready to announce the Emancipation Proclamation as early as June 1862, but his Secretary of State William Seward dissuaded him, arguing that the timing was not right.  In early summer, the Union armies were being pummeled in the field by the army of the gifted rebel general, and son of a celebrated Revolutionary, Robert E. Lee. To announce emancipation now, Seward argued, might be perceived as an act of desperation, or as the secretary so bluntly put it, “the last shriek on the retreat.” So Lincoln patiently shelved his proclamation and waited for a Union victory to give it teeth. That date came on September 17, 1862.
Though a tactical draw (and some argue a day that should have ended the Civil War but for the bungling of the Union Army commander Gen. McClellan) Antietam did serve to bloody Lee’s army enough to drive the invading rebels out of Maryland and end their string of victories.  Just a week later, the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was announced on September 22; it would go into effect on January 1, 1863. The proclamation was the most important document since the Constitution itself, and it showed that Americans were willing to shed oceans of blood to free their fellow countrymen and women of color and right the wrong inflicted upon the latter at the nation’s founding.
So what can we as Americans learn from these two dates, 75 years apart?  First, that, like all nations, the United States is imperfect. Anything built by mere mortals is, despite even the loftiest of reputations, the purest of motives, and the most powerful of intellects. (Jefferson sardonically referred to the Framers as “demigods.”) But the Constitutional Convention is not something to be scorned and ridiculed, but rather studied, as fair-minded individuals viewing the people of the past through the lens of the more enlightened (in some respects) present should do.
Second, it shows that we are a nation that accepts our historical failings and speak openly and honestly about them. This is in stark contrast to many nations who to this day refuse to come to grips with troubling aspects of their past. (See Japanese World War II textbooks, or consider the Turks’ amnesia with respect to Armenia. Not to mention the British who seem to be too busy casting moral aspersions on their American cousins to ponder their own atrocities during the Sepoy Rebellion, the Zulu and Boer Wars, just to name a few.)
Most importantly though, September 17 represents that fabled “arc of the moral universe” being bent, by force if necessary, in the direction of justice. The Constitution was drafted by 55 white men, yes. We are pejoratively reminded of this non-stop in our daily discourse. And, indeed, women and people of color were excluded from the process, and this is never right, albeit the sign of the times across the globe, not just in Philadelphia. But if this is to be criticized, then those same critics must also embrace those 12,500 white boys who fought for the Union at Antietam. We must then celebrate those brave soldiers who either gave their lives or fell with horrible, agonizing and life-changing wounds to address the imperfections of their predecessors, right the wrongs of their founding document, and, through their blood and pain and sorrow,  remake our nation in a way that was more in line with its founding principles.
In the end over 2 million men — among them over 100,000 free black men — fought to end the stain of slavery in this country; 350,000 of them died in the process. A century later their descendants would march again, together, this time not on the field of battle but rather peacefully filing down a country road on the way to Montgomery, or congregating en masse in the shadow of the memorial to the man who restored to over 3 million Americans their God-given rights as intrinsically free people. They were the worthy successors to those brave men who gave their lives on the fields of Antietam that marked the way.
Those who disparage the Framers are ignorant. If you want to know what America really means at its core, seek out the counsel of the one million legal immigrants from across the globe who line up to enter our nation every year seeking a better life — who know our true goodness and decency as a nation, and a free people. Perhaps they are capable of looking past the obvious flaws of our founding, and the moral dubiousness of the views of those mortal men who crafted our governmental framework, and they see the rows upon rows of tombstones of young men who fell at such places as Antietam on that same day 75 years later to change that reality.
To these two camps, September 17 represents different visions of our nation. I think I’ll go with the immigrants’ view.  The men who died on our bloodiest day made their new lives here possible. They took a fundamentally workable government and made it more inclusive. And they did so by sacrificing far more than planting a fashionable virtue-signaling sign or joining a hashtag campaign. They put their lives on the line to make this a better nation. And they succeeded.
More from Brad Schaeffer: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schaeffer-united-states-exceptional-ask-japanese-brad-schaeffer">The United States IS Exceptional. Ask The Japanese.</a>
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=">Of Another Time And Place</a>. 
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Lincoln Memorial.

September 17: An Important Date That Shows Us Who We Really Are

American Civil War

Constitution

Slavery

I find myself drawn to this date, September 17, for many reasons.  Most Americans — at least those who were taught that our history did not begin in 1963

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The New York Times, as part of their on-going effort to show that they have completely abandoned journalism for advocacy, ran the transcript of President Trump&#8217;s RNC Convention speech. But their in-house photographer Doug Mills  was allowed to add a little caption underneath his photo. &#8220;Giving a speech in turns self-congratulatory and alarmist, the president said that if given the chance, Joe Biden would be &#8216;the destroyer of American greatness.&#8217;” Interesting choice of words for a mere photo that should speak for itself.  “Self-congratulatory”? “Alarmist”? This is not a presentation of facts, rather this is opinion. And it is one of the many examples of how obsessively anti-Trump bias seeps into the non-editorial sections of once great and trustworthy newspapers.
Considering the source, one should not be surprised at Mills’ choice of words. The &#8220;self-congratulatory&#8221; label especially is in line with the media narrative that Trump is a &#8220;narcissist. I’ll save everyone the suspense: he is. The Donald would have admitted it himself years ago, when he was still the toast of the media/entertainment circles who so despise him now, well before being elevated to the loftiest office on the planet by doing it his way.
I’m not excusing his arrogance, but, at least knowing myself, I must say I’d be pretty hard-pressed to not like what I see in the mirror after my first run at public office resulted in being elected President of the United States while defeating the-well organized and over-capitalized Bush and Clinton family machines in the process, not to mention experienced and able Republican hopefuls.
So, yes. Donald Trump is a narcissist. But he is not the first narcissist to sit in the Oval Office. In fact, the man he replaced was perhaps even more so&#8230;although he kept it cloaked in a veil of cool and protected by a Praetorian Guard media.
To illustrate the point, here&#8217;s some contrasting analysis. You can draw your own conclusions. Let&#8217;s compare their two re-election bid convention speeches. Obama’s in 2012 vs. Trump’s just last week. If one does a deep dive into the transcripts some interesting and revealing findings emerge. Here is some data.
Obama’s 2012 acceptance speech ran around 4,600 words, whereas Trump’s was longer at roughly 6,700.
What is interesting is the number of times the first person singular, each President’s references to himself, was used. For example, even though Trump’s speech had 2,100 more words in the text, Obama used the word “I” 59 times, compared to Trump’s 46 times. And he used the word “me” nine times compared to Trump’s three. So Trump’s speech was 45 percent longer, yet it was Obama who seemed enamored with himself, deploying the first-person singular 68 times to Trump’s 49. I omit the word “my” as both men used this word in the context of “my wife,” “my children,” “my grandfather,” “my brother,” so that may be forgiven. But the prevalence of “I” and “me” is telling.
As I said, Trump is indeed a narcissist. After all, who would enter the rough-and-tumble arena of national politics for the first time, facing a viciously hostile media and skilled, well-organized and funded, and take-no-prisoners opponents, with an inferiority complex? Paul Begala once described politics as “show business for ugly people” and there is indeed an element of celebrity to being on the political stage as it has never existed before given this is such a media-driven pursuit. It tends to attract the egotistical. But just because one has a high opinion of himself doesn’t necessarily mean he is unaware or dismissive of his role as a public servant. And this is where I find the language of each man’s last signature speech particularly revealing.
Consider their usage of the first person plural, which is an inclusive reference to not just the self but the group. Looking again at the two speeches, Trump uses the term “we” 140 times to Obama’s 80. He uses “us” 11 times to Obama’s 15. So given the comparative lengths of each speech, they both try to be inclusive in their language, which one would expect from those seeking to be the President for all the people.
But what struck me was the ratio of self to group. Obama mentions the group only 27 more times than he refers to himself. Whereas Trump refers to the first person plural a whopping 102 more times than he does the singular. In short, Obama includes the people in his speech only 39 percent more than he does himself in the exclusive. Trump, on the other hand, refers to the people 208 percent more than he does himself.
I began taking note of these presidential first person references after the astute Stanford classical historian Victor Davis Hanson pointed out that one of Trump&#8217;s appealing characteristics (yes, he does have some) is that he is indeed inclusive in his language when speaking. Said Hanson: “He has a strange way that nobody detected, except the people who voted for him, of conveying empathy. He says ‘our’…‘Our vets’, ‘our workers’ ‘our farmers’.  I can’t imagine [this from] Mitt Romney or John McCain, who were supposed to be far more empathetic.” And Trump often phrases policy agendas as what &#8220;we&#8221; plan to do. And how it is up to &#8220;us.&#8221; Beyond empathy, it shows a respect for the fact that he sits in &#8220;the People&#8217;s House&#8221; (a phrase he also used in his speech) in a way I think can only come from his being an outsider and not a seasoned Beltway or machine party man.
I bring up Obama not because of any obsession with him. (Allowing politicians to rent space free-of-charge in one’s head is the hobby of the hard Left these days.) Rather, I do so because Barack Obama was, along with Trump, the most self-centered president in my lifetime. However, unlike Trump, his vanity was masked, protected, and even encouraged by a shamelessly fawning media class. But the data shows who is the narcissist&#8230;at least where these most important speeches are concerned.
Although a mere two speeches obviously do not represent their entire public record, they are the most similar in their occasion, their importance, their meaning, and ultimately their insight into the minds of the men delivering them. One man is an admitted egotist. The other a closeted one.  For Obama, such “self-congratulatory” language, to coin the NY Times photographer-turned-opinion columnist, is par for the course. During a ninety-minute town hall address in Germany in 2017, the Washington Times reported that, according to Grabien News analysis, the former-president Obama referenced himself an eye-popping 467 times. The story noted he “used just the word ‘I’ more than 300 times &#8220;with dozens more references to &#8216;me&#8217; and &#8216;my&#8217; among the myriad ways a person can refer to himself.&#8221;
Obama, the darling of a media that relentlessly accuses Trump of egotism, has never shrunk from making whatever occasion in which he participates ultimately about himself. Example: I have stood at the Berlin Wall just after its collapse. It was a surreal experience. At the time I was there it was still up in many places and the deleterious impact of communist oppression was evident in the contrast between the bright, vibrant streets of West Berlin, and the dark, gloomy world I entered when I passed under the Brandenburg Gate into the East. It really brought home to me the triumph of the ordinary Berliners, people leading difficult lives, under the jackboot of an authoritarian regime, who at a crucial moment in history said enough was enough and, at great personal risk, defied their Soviet-sponsored puppet overlords and tore the Wall down. That is what November 9, 1989 was all about.
And yet, in 2009, in a video address to the people of Berlin to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Wall’s collapse, Obama somehow managed to spin the occasion to make it also about his favorite subject. “Few would have seen on that day that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg, and their American ally led by a man of African descent.” Er, no, Mr. President, they wouldn’t have. Because they weren’t thinking of you or the pigment of any future American president. In fact, their story had nothing to do with you at all. They were more concerned about whether the ranks of East German troops with guns lowered at the crowd were going to open fire and massacre them or not. As Mark Steyn would ask: “Is all of human history just a colorful backdrop for the Barack Obama biopic?”
Trump, a Queens native, entered the White House with no such pretense other than his own inflated ego that was, at least, based on a tangible, demonstrable record of achievement — billionaire, real estate mogul, best-selling author, top-rated television producer and star. But in the end, as his speeches reveal, as do his actions, he views himself as one of many. Not The One. An elite, yes, but without being elitist. As such, one could never imagine a Donald Trump saying to the people of Berlin, “Who could have foreseen, when you were defying the Russian military machine and risking your lives and those of your family just to aspire to a life that the West took for granted, that a builder from Queens and reality show TV star would one day be the President of the United States.” Not even The Donald would view such a sublime anniversary as anything but a day that belonged to the people who made the history. Perhaps herein lies the difference, and the key to Obama’s many uses of “I” versus Trump’s affinity for “we.”
Such self-centeredness as displayed by Obama and others of his class is emblematic of a deep strain of elitism within the halls of power in the United States, on both sides of the aisle, albeit more brazenly arrogant and off-putting on the Left. Nancy Pelosi’s blatant flaunting of the very same Covid lockdown rules she has vociferously advocated, despite the damage being visited upon small businesses in her district, is a prime illustration of this insular mentality wherein the self matters first among all things.  It is the conceit of the hyper-educated, overly-credentialed, and fabulously wealthy. And as their power and influence grows hand-in-hand with the metastasizing expansion of the power of the federal government and coastal technocracy, such elitism will only fester and grow.
Obama, a Harvard man who, when you strip away the veneer of cool and smooth, really accomplished very little of any substance before being wafted upward by those assuring him he was the smartest man in the room until he came to believe it, is the epitome of this cult of the smarter-than-thou self.  And the contrast between their “I” mentality, and Trump’s “we” goes a long way to explaining the surprise results, at least to the “I” crowd of the 2016 election. But as is so often the case with the elitist Left, they are adept at accusing others of the very sins they routinely commit themselves, and without a shred of embarrassment over the irony, hypocrisy, and outright mendacity of their moral dissonance.
More from Brad Schaeffer: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schaeffer-united-states-exceptional-ask-japanese-brad-schaeffer">The United States IS Exceptional. Ask The Japanese.</a>
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=">Of Another Time And Place</a>. 
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

President Obama Meets With President-Elect Donald Trump In The Oval Office Of White House

SCHAEFFER: Donald Trump: The Second Most Arrogant President Since 2008

Barack Obama

Donald Trump

The New York Times, as part of their on-going effort to show that they have completely abandoned journalism for advocacy, ran the transcript of President

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Several years ago, when then-U.S. President Barack Obama was asked his thoughts on the notion of American exceptionalism, his reply was tepid: &#8220;I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.&#8221; In other words, America&#8217;s greatness is not so much an empirical fact, but rather a debatable construct based upon one&#8217;s perspective. Most nations have aspects about them that should make their citizens proud. Yet the formal Japanese surrender ceremony held on September 2, 1945 on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri should serve as a reminder that, perhaps, the president understated the true greatness of the nation he led.
To understand just what a momentous occasion this was, we must first remember the context of this sublime gathering in Tokyo Bay. Japan had been among the cruelest of conquerors, butchering millions while justifying their rampage of gore with the premise that they were a chosen people, whose emperor was a living god and that the Japanese islands were formed by golden drops from the point of a heavenly being&#8217;s sword. Indeed, as historian Victor Davis Hanson has pointed out, the war in the Pacific could be summed up as Japanese soldiers killing Asian civilians, be they among the 200,000 slaughtered Chinese in the Rape of Nanking in 1938, the over 100,000 Filipinos murdered in Manila in 1945, or the Japan’s countless victims in between.
But on this day, with their navy reduced to shipwrecks, their major cities but charred-frame skeletons, over one million civilian and military dead and as many homeless, and even the myth of the emperor&#8217;s divinity exposed by his own admission, the Japanese stood before the American and Allied leviathans as the most annihilated and vanquished of nations.
So it was under the shadows of the enemy&#8217;s massive fleet anchored in the harbor of their burned-out capital, and an awesome display of a thousand enemy warplanes winging overhead, that the demoralized Japanese delegates were ferried out to their conqueror&#8217;s prize battleship to accept whatever fate awaited them at the hands of the victorious Allies and their Supreme Allied Commander, five-star Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Standing on the deck of the Missouri, the Japanese representatives in their top-hats and tails presented the polar opposite image of the fierce Samurai whom they had tried to emulate at the expense of the rest of Asia they once brutalized under the jackboot of the Rising Sun. Now they steeled themselves for the worst — the full wrath of a bloodthirsty foe determined to exact a satisfying vengeance for all they had done.
But when MacArthur stepped to the microphone, the magnanimity and eloquence of this American warrior who had so utterly defeated them on the battlefields of the Pacific stunned the Japanese delegates—and many of the Allies as well.
&#8220;It is my earnest hope,&#8221; the general said, &#8220;and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past — a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice.&#8221;
After the formal surrender was signed, MacArthur then proceeded to unveil his intentions for the devastated Japanese. He saw in the Japanese people a potential to be pacified, re-built, re-energized, and ultimately welcomed into the family of nations in a post-war world. &#8220;The energy of the Japanese race,” he proposed, “if properly directed, will enable expansion vertically rather than horizontally. If the talents of the race are turned into constructive channels, the country can lift itself from its present deplorable state into a position of dignity.&#8221;
Standing on the deck of the American battleship, with hundreds of pairs of hostile eyes boring into him and his fellow delegates, one Japanese diplomat, Toshikazu Kase, listened in stunned silence as MacArthur spoke for the Allied nations and reflected later on the extraordinary event: &#8220;Here is the victor announcing the verdict to the prostrate enemy. He can impose a humiliating penalty if he so desires. And yet he pleads for freedom, tolerance and justice. For me, who expected the worst humiliation, this was a complete surprise. I was thrilled beyond words, spellbound, thunderstruck.&#8221;
One cannot imagine MacArthur&#8217;s healing words, and through him those of the American people, coming from a victorious Hitler, Stalin, or, of course, Tojo. When relaying the details of the ceremony to Emperor Hirohito, Kase understood just how lucky they were to have been defeated by the Americans: &#8220;I raised the question whether it would have been possible for us, had we been victorious, to embrace the vanquished with a similar magnanimity. Clearly, it would have been different.&#8221;
Hating America and yearning for its decline is a favorite pastime across much of the globe. But, as Tony Blair once observed, “[Anti-Americanism] is a foolish indulgence. For all their faults, and all nations have them, the US are a force for good; they have liberal and democratic traditions of which any nation can be proud. I sometimes think it is a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jan/07/foreignpolicy.speeches" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jan/07/foreignpolicy.speeches&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1566599239397000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHKFJHNAp6UOG9kCaAquX9fDamGig">good</a> rule of thumb to ask of a country: are people trying to get into it or out of it? It&#8217;s not a bad guide to what sort of country it is.”
Perhaps never in our history was America&#8217;s being a “force for good” so fully realized than in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, in which we&#8217;d finally ended the most destructive and lethal war in human history, and then set about rebuilding rather than enslaving our enemies. If our triumph over Imperial Japan teaches us anything, it is that the United States is unique among nations; our capacity for waging ruthless war against our enemies is only surpassed by our willingness to embrace and empower those same antagonists when the war is won. It should also serve as a reminder to those who surreptitiously yearn for American decline, that their world without a powerful United States would be a far more dangerous and ugly place than their short memories can possibly fathom … and far from exceptional.
More from Brad Schaeffer: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schaeffer-most-dangerous-pathogen-is-fear">The Most Dangerous Pathogen Is Fear, And We’ve Allowed It To Destroy Us</a>
Brad Schaeffer is the author of the WW2 Novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630">Of Another Time And Place</a> [Post Hill/Simon &amp; Schuster, 2018]
A version of this article was previously published in August 2019.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Lt Admiral Helfrich Signs Japanese Surrender

SCHAEFFER: The United States IS Exceptional. Ask The Japanese.

Japan

Several years ago, when then-U.S. President Barack Obama was asked his thoughts on the notion of American exceptionalism, his reply was tepid: &quot;I believe

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In 1960 Rod Serling wrote an episode for his Twilight Zone series called “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.” The story is about an idyllic American street in any suburban neighborhood. Children ride their bikes while neighbors go about their peaceful lives. Then a mysterious object warbles overhead and crashes into the nearby hills. Although a curiosity, all just assume it&#8217;s a meteor.  Suddenly the power on the street goes out, lawn mowers stop functioning, cars won’t turn over. The residents gather in the street to discuss the situation. Tommy, a boy with an overactive imagination, warns everyone that this might be an alien invasion. He further claims the aliens may have infiltrated one of their own into their midst, surreptitiously living among them while gathering intelligence. Initially, the adults dismiss Tommy’s fanciful notions.
Then a car starts on its own.
The gathering looks suspiciously at the owner. Why does his car run but nobody else’s? Maybe Tommy’s right. The man always was “an oddball” they say. But then someone recalls another neighbor likes to play with a ham radio. Could he be the alien spy, communicating with the invaders? And so it goes. Suspicion descends into paranoia and soon neighbors confront neighbors, accusations fly, and guns come out. Then the lights start to go on and off in each house, cars up and down the block start up, lawn mower engines come to life. All hell breaks loose and the good people of Maple Street deteriorate into a paranoid, rampaging mob, abandoning all reason and common sense.
The episode concludes with two aliens up on the hillside by their craft overlooking the chaos and destruction they’ve triggered. They marvel at how easy it is to manipulate the people of this planet by playing on their fears and tapping into their paranoia.
Serling presented it as a morality play to lay bare the irrationality and ugliness of prejudice, but I think there’s another message, more relevant to today.
What prompted me to recall this particular episode was a blurb that ran in the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8635095/China-partygoers-cram-Wuhan-water-park.html">Daily Mail</a>. It featured a water park in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the virus that has so decimated not just lives but global economies. The accompanying photo was of a crushing horde frolicking shoulder-to-shoulder in the water. They wore no masks, and indeed practiced the opposite of social distancing. Apparently they were unconcerned about the mysterious disease that has so many in our own country whipped up into a Maple Street-like frenzy.
Later, as I sat at a red light, I glanced over to the car in the lane next to me. Even though the young driver was alone in her vehicle and the windows were rolled up, she wore a mask. The contrast between the Wuhan swimmers and this driver was stark, and it presented a grim conclusion: we have utterly surrendered to our fears.
That fear has now spread like a pathogen of its own into our daily lives. We willingly surrender liberties while being subjected to the judgments of those whose visceral anxiety over the virus is so burned into their emotional make-up they will turn on, sometimes violently, anyone who doesn’t wear a mask in public.
I cannot help but question what those people swimming en masse without worry in the very heart of the outbreak know that we don’t?  It’s tempting to see a parallel between the CCP’s manipulations, setting loose their virus on an unsuspecting world, and Serling’s aliens who find it so easy to transform a prosperous and peaceful, but very fragile, Maple Street into a dystopian nightmare.
I see it when I ride the train into New York City. While disembarking at Penn Station, the voice on the intercom says: “Thank you for riding New Jersey Transit, and have a safe day.” Not have a nice or pleasant day. But a safe day. Is this what we have become? A nation of people for whom avoiding risk trumps all other ambitions?  How did we become so risk-averse a society?
There are many tributaries feeding into our river of fear.  
First there is, of course, the media. Danger sells. “If it bleeds it leads.” The more danger the media places before us, the better the ratings…but also the greater our fears, which are often misplaced.  A 2016 Vox survey found that 69 percent of Americans believed there was more crime in the USA than two decades before. But according to FBI statistics by 2016 crime had actually plummeted, with the violent crime rate being only half the 1995 level. So why the disconnect between perception and reality? On news websites, crime stories consistently garner the most online hits, so media outlets will post more crime stories in a vicious feedback loop. This creates what some psychologists call “mean world syndrome.” The more engaged with media the subjects, the more dangerous they believe the world to be.
And Covid-19 is the ultimate lead-in story. Giddy reporters travel far and wide to bring us those pockets of outbreaks and death. They’ll cover with much hand-wringing excitement the arrival of a hospital ship in New York Harbor to deal with the expected deluge of virus patients…but will ignore the empty holds and the vessel’s quiet departure, unneeded and unused. Nor will they remind you how many deaths have been in elder care facilities…places where the target audience rarely sets foot. And we eagerly await the next monster in our closet. As Elon Musk astutely put it: “It&#8217;s almost like people really wanted a panic.”
Then there is the fact that death is a relative stranger to us. Before antibiotics and vaccines, you rarely found someone who hadn’t experienced the loss of a loved one, either from disease, childbirth, or accident. Today we live in the age of competent medicine, advanced dentistry, rapid response EMTs, first-rate ICUs and ERs. So for us death up close and personal is not nearly so commonplace. And thus the obscure  notion of death is more mysterious and frightening. 
We are also narcissists.  Starting with “everyone is a winner” and carrying us into the age of the selfie. No matter how it impacts society as a whole, if it saves one life — especially mine — it is worth anyone else’s sacrifice.
We’ve also become less religious and thus more reflexively fearful of death. I can only speak with authority on the Christian mindset: we view this life as a stepping stone to God’s eternal Kingdom, weighing our brief earthly existence against the grander scale of the everlasting. Death to us is not the terrifying void it is for the atheist. According to Pew, some 3% of Americans describe themselves as atheist. Another 4% agnostic; 23% have no religious affiliation. That’s some 16 million non-believers and another 73 million who are indifferent to religion. This is a lot of Americans for whom life is the end all and be all.
Now we face a virus we are told is killing us by the tens of thousands. And that’s all that we need to know. Inject this imagery of terror into an already fearful populace for whom having a “safe” day is paramount, and you get a country highly susceptible to manipulation.
We haven’t always been this way. 
Each summer like clockwork for 40 years a different virus once prowled our streets. And when the wave of infections receded, we knew that some 30,000 people, mostly children, would either be dead or disabled for the rest of their lives. We didn’t have to extrapolate from woefully incomplete data fed into deficient models to predict what would happen when the infections started. We knew. 30,000 every year for four decades (90,000 if you adjust for today’s population). This was life in the age of polio from roughly 1916 until the Salk vaccine in 1955.
So let’s ask ourselves. Would those who are in charge of managing our response to Covid-19 today, Doctors Fauci and Brix, et. al., the tyrannical governors and oppressive mayors, have effectively shut down the country every summer for forty years, and forced tens of millions into joblessness and despair, until a vaccine was finally developed? What kind of country would we have been? At what point does “saving lives” no longer supersede the needs of society as a whole?  For our grandparents, they understood that life, though precious, is not the absolute arbiter of socio-economic policy.
We are now over half a year into this pandemic panic. We have seen tens of millions thrown into unemployment and business after business close their doors for good. Our cities are aflame, no doubt in part due to the simmering frustration months of lock-downs incubated. Our civic activities and artistic outlets have been denied us, our national pastimes like pro and college sports have been upended.
Most disconcerting, our children are suffering rates of depression never seen before due in part to the social isolation resulting from draconian lock-downs ostensibly to protect them from a disease that’s less a threat to them than the flu. The CDC tells us that 25% of young adults surveyed in June have contemplated suicide. And what do they have to look forward to? Consider the debt load placed before them. We have added $6 trillion to the national debt in the form of lifelines tossed to those in destitution courtesy not of a war, or a natural disaster, or a routine trough in the economic cycle, but rather a government-imposed immolation of the American way of life upon the altar of fear of…well, as FDR said, fear itself.
While the CCP pursues its ambitions to make this the Chinese Century, we have Karens scurrying around shouting “wear your damned mask!” and people avoiding each other out in the open air. We have millions languishing in despair and many livelihoods and dreams destroyed. We have cities that will be hard pressed to recover, if they ever do, after the mass-exodus to the safety of suburbia and disinfected home offices runs its course. And we have made this a far less cohesive, united, and functioning society.
Indeed the monsters have come back to Maple Street, and as Rod Serling showed us 50 years ago, they are still our own apprehensions.
Brad Schaeffer is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630">Of Another Time And Place</a> (Post Hill/Simon &amp; Schuster, 2018).
More from Brad Schaeffer: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schaeffer-why-people-of-faith-can-support-trump">Why People Of Faith Can Support Trump</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Coronavirus COVID-19 and USA map with Flag

SCHAEFFER: The Most Dangerous Pathogen Is Fear, And We’ve Allowed It To Destroy Us

China

Coronavirus

COVID-19

In 1960 Rod Serling wrote an episode for his Twilight Zone series called “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.” The story is about an idyllic American

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President Trump, showing his particular gift for Churchillian eloquence, recently declared that if elected, Joe Biden would be “against the Bible” and “hurt God.” The mainstream media and Biden campaign (but I repeat myself) pounced. Biden’s puppeteers immediately typed up a response and sent out a statement expressing the presumptive Democrat nominee’s outrage: “Like so many people, my faith has been the bedrock foundation of my life: it’s provided me comfort in moments of loss and tragedy, it’s kept me grounded and humbled in times of triumph and joy.”
Far be it for me to question any man’s faith. But as one who claims to support even late-term abortion (which even most of those in the pro-abortion camp find morally repugnant) and touts his 100% rating from NARAL, it is difficult to square Biden’s new-found leftist, secular leanings with his professed Roman Catholicism.
Still, we all know that Donald Trump is no St. Augustine himself. And this is indeed true when it comes to the President’s personal adventures in infidelity and multiple-marriage. But also, as with so much of Trump the man, versus Trump the administrator, his policies lean much more pro-religious than Joe Biden’s. One can question his motives as purely political as opposed to a true expression of Trump’s inner values…whatever they may be. But the nature of the political process is balancing one’s own convictions with those of the people who elected him or her to office. Bill Clinton, whatever his core beliefs in the power of government were, read the verdict of the electoral backlash to “Hillarycare” in the 1994 midterm that handed the GOP control of the House for the first time in four decades, and by his 1996 State of the Union Speech was proudly declaring that “the era of Big Government is over!” That’s how it works. Call it triangulation if you like, to use the Dick Morris term. I call it responsive governance. And in the case of Donald Trump, he owes much to the religious of this country who, despite their reservations over the candidate who in 2016 seemed more like a carnival barker than truly spiritual man, pulled the lever for him and got him over the finish line to the Oval Office.
The reason they voted for him was simple enough: they felt anything had to be better where looking out for people of faith was concerned than the Democrats who’d held the reins of power for eight years.
Still, not all Christians have been so forgiving of the President’s personal peccadillos.  Christianity Today editor Mark Galli back in December prompted a flurry of often-heated discussions by offering that true Christians who support the morally challenged Manhattan business mogul and showman are selling their souls. Speaking out in favor of impeachment, he wrote:
<blockquote>“Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?”</blockquote>
There is some fallacious reasoning on display here. Men whom we might consider “immoral” by our modern standards have often performed incredible acts of goodness to advance the human condition. Students of the remarkable events in North America from 1775 to 1797 must constantly grapple with the notion that three of our most revered and important Founding Fathers, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, engaged in the heinous practice of slavery. Yet this does not compel us to abandon the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence or toss out the Constitution. Slavery was a far more wicked crime against God and humanity than a mean-spirited tweet. And for his many readers who no doubt believe it to be mass infanticide, for Mr. Galli to place abortion on the same moral plane as insulting Rosie O’Donnell or being on one’s third marriage is prima facie ludicrous.
There is an old expression that “no man is a hero to his valet.” And this goes for heads of state as much as any revered position. The White House is not a chapel. Over the years it has been occupied by slave-holders, drinkers, philanderers, gamblers, racists, boors, even sexual predators. But it has only been with the advent of unfettered information overwhelming the ramparts of a once-protective press — one that hid FDR’s paralysis for years and ignored his keeping a mistress, or protected the secret of JFK’s serial infidelities — that the seedier underside of the mere mortals who temporarily reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have become gruel for public consumption. To look to the Oval Office for spiritual fulfilment is a fool’s errand. Such quests for inspiration from a politician reached embarrassing levels of bizarre, almost cult-like adulation with Barack Obama.
Certainly character should matter, to a point. Otherwise the reminders by Mussolini’s supporters that the trains always ran on time should have sufficed. But in President Trump’s case, in this time in our history, when Christianity is under siege all over the world, the faithful must weigh results over ostracizing the morally deficient man. Why? Because the president whom Mr. Galli wished to remove from office has been the best friend Christians and Jews, religious and non-religious alike, have had in the White House in my lifetime.
And therein lies the answer that baffles those primarily on the Left for whom Christianity and fervent belief in God is either a perplexing unknown or something to be caricatured and attacked as primitive and anti-science (that one of the most respected planetary observatories is run by the Vatican seems to escape the critics). The key to understanding why Christians and religious Jews support Trump can be found in why they were in his camp in 2016.
On June 3, 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama accepted the Democrat Party’s nomination for President of the United States and bombastically declared, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal.” However the metaphorical tides behaved elsewhere, by January 20, 2017 many of the nearly nine-in-10 Americans who believe in God felt like they’d been blasted by a tsunami after eight years of President Obama’s hostility toward religion.
To say that President Trump is an unknown when it comes to his personal relationship with God, if any, is an understatement. Yet eight in 10 self-identified white, born-again or evangelical Christians voted for Trump in 2016, while just 16 percent voted for Hillary Clinton.
But why? To understand why religious voters set aside their reservations and pulled the lever for Trump, and why they most likely will again in 2020, all one need do is review the record of the previous administration vis-à-vis religious institutions as well as what the current Democratic Party represents.
Fifty-five percent of those who attend church or synagogue once a week voted for Trump, whereas 62 percent who never attend religious services voted for Clinton. Consider: In 2016, of those who label themselves Democrats, the largest single block of voters are what the Pew Center calls “nones” — those who have no affiliation with any organized religion. They are 28 percent of the party, up from 19 percent just in the last ten years. In the GOP, evangelicals make up 38 percent, up one percent in ten years.
Why is this significant? Because the party in which faith has largely eroded has also become the base camp of the secular-progressive movement. The simple fact is that in the culture wars, this side represents the aggressors.
Religious conservatives understand there will never be a perfect world; only Heaven can be Heaven. The same goes for presidents. But with no faith, indeed no God, the Left is frantically driven to try to make a paradise of this earth. It’s a Dante-esque torture for them, as the carrot on the stick of a terrestrial Utopia can never be tasted.
And so theirs is a never-ending crusade. One in which they proffer a false premise — that original sin can somehow be eradicated not with spiritual redemption, but rather through passing the right laws and initiating correct policies, either by legislative process, or, should that fail, enacting them through activist courts. And no better ally have they had in the White House than Barack Obama.
The administration Trump dethroned represented for the faithful one of the most formidable progressive antagonists in the post-modern age.  On the day Trump took the oath of office, people of faith could look back on a previous eight years of edicts, laws, and court rulings that back up this assertion. HHS mandates supported by the administration showed uncompromising dismissal of religious values, compelling Catholic hospitals to engage in family planning practices and provide services that contradicted their core beliefs in the sanctity of human life in-utero.
Pittsburgh’s bishop, David Zubik, likened the mandates to “a slap to the face.” He declared: “The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, ‘To hell with you.’” White Catholics also supported Trump over Clinton by 60 percent to 37 percent.
But it wasn’t just Catholics who found themselves on the receiving end of what they perceived as a secular-progressive assault on Divinely inspired moral constructs they consider vital to a cohesive society. The list of the previous administration’s hostile positions toward religion in favor of leftist activism is long. From initial abandonment of The Defense of Marriage Act and overt support of Obergefell (the same-sex marriage ruling), to opposition to the Conscience Protection Act, to secularist edicts aimed at privately held businesses, to the Little Sisters of the Poor battle — the administration presented an overarching dismissal of the Judeo-Christian values that have formed the historical and cultural bedrock of our republic.
When Donald Trump placed his hand on the Bible while standing on the Capitol steps, the faithful did not look up and see one of their own per se; but they did see a President who does not disdain them. Evangelicals, Catholics, and the many other Christian and religious Jewish denominations that felt so put upon by the Left finally found some relief in the form of a President who leans toward the authority of the states to decide the matters of culture and life.
Evangelicals understand that such true federalism could have far-reaching implications re: how the courts view Roe v. Wade and other lightning-rod decisions in the culture wars. They also understand that to achieve their aim of, to paraphrase William Buckley, standing athwart the relentless progressivism and shouting Stop! they must have a like-minded judiciary. They see that as of this writing 203 federal judges are Trump appointees, from Supreme Court Associates Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on down. And they lean toward interpreting the Constitution (which people of faith feel is on their side of the moral divide) rather than engaging in activist legislation to subvert original intent. And with another four years, who knows how much more re-configuring of the federal bench might be in the offing?
As such some 200 evangelicals actually came out against Mr. Galli’s piece. They did so because they remember what the pre-Trump atmosphere was for people of faith, and they have no desire to return to it. After eight years of torrential assaults on values that the faithful hold dear, Trump’s promise of relief was enough to prompt an Election Day coalescing around the man who is now the 45th president of the United States, warts and all.
As a Christian, I accept that all people are flawed.  If not, then there’d be no need for a Messiah and redemption. But I also understand that sometimes the best policies have come from deeply flawed men. Conversely, sometimes the most horrific results stem from initiatives enacted with the noblest intent. As Henry Adams once lamented, “It’s always the good men who do the most harm in the world.”
And this is where, though his words were spoken in typically ineloquent Trumpspeak, the President’s concerns over what a Biden presidency might mean for religious liberty are quite profound. Biden was, after all, the Obama Administration’s Vice-President. And if he wishes to cloak himself in the robe of Obama’s aura and appeal, Biden must own the policies of that administration as well…policies that were quite hostile towards religion, except the only religion the Left holds dear: secular-progressivism.
The continuing, if underreported, riots have ripped the mask off of the militant wing of the Democrat Party…a wing that now wields disproportionate power and influence within its smoke-filled back rooms. Such control, should the election go their way in November, will be all the more prevalent with a president in the throes of obvious cognitive decline as is Biden. In their new president the far-left that now dominates the Democratic Party will have a useful conduit through which to force a mind-bogglingly radical and ultimately destructive agenda. One that includes resuming their war on religious institutions and stamping out any vestiges of faith in all public spaces from schools to town squares.
Sometimes there are more important and immediate concerns than moral litmus tests.  As far as Donald Trump and the culture wars go, for those who still believe in a higher power than themselves, higher even than the almighty government, this is, perhaps, just such a moment.
Brad Schaeffer is the author of the WW2 Novel  <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630">Of Another Time And Place</a> (Post Hill/Simon &amp; Schuster, 2018).
A version of this article was previously published in December 2019. 
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Donald Trump Holds Campaign Rally In Anaheim, CA

SCHAEFFER: Why People Of Faith Can Support Trump

Christianity

President Trump, showing his particular gift for Churchillian eloquence, recently declared that if elected, Joe Biden would be “against the Bible” and

SCHAEFFER: Why People Of Faith Can Support Trump | The Daily Wire

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A bill sponsored by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) has passed the House and is currently in the Senate for committee review and an eventual vote. H.R. 7608 is entitled the “State, Foreign Operations, Agriculture, Rural Development, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act.”
The bill provides fiscal year 2021 appropriations for the Department of State, Department of Agriculture, the EPA, various foreign relations initiatives, and related programs. It is the “related programs” that has those who care about American history concerned. If one peruses the 772-page bill, they will find buried way down in the middle somewhere Sec. 442. It reads as follows:
<blockquote>REMOVAL OF COMMEMORATIVE CONFEDERATE WORKS
Notwithstanding any other provision of law or policy to the contrary, within 180 days of enactment of this Act, the National Park Service shall remove from display all physical Confederate commemorative works, such as statues, monuments, sculptures, memorials, and plaques, as defined by NPS, Management Policies 2006.</blockquote>
On the surface, this appears to be just an implementation of the drive to remove Confederate monuments and memorials from the public square. The mantra from the activists in favor of moving out these homages to the Confederacy has been that they should be moved to museums as they are a part of history.
Unfortunately, where Confederate monuments are concerned, there is no solution which would seem to satisfy all. And for those on the far-left, for whom it is always about the next crusade as they continue to march toward that unreachable mirage of a terrestrial Utopia, even allowing monuments to those who fought, and suffered, and died in battle where the combat actually took place is just too much. And H.R. 7608 is a manifestation of this vision of an American landscape wiped clean of any vestiges of one-half of the most consequential and cataclysmic event in U.S. History.
There are some twenty-five Civil War battlefields or related historical sites that would be subjected to the axe of H.R. 7608. That is because hallowed grounds like Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Vicksburg, Manassas, Petersburg, etc., are under the auspices of the National Park Service. If this bill is passed, as it now reads and can be interpreted, within six months of its passage every monument to Confederate participants on the very locations of some of the biggest and bloodiest battles in American history would be removed.
One can make a reasonable argument for taking down Confederate statues from the public square. After all, should African Americans on their way to work or just strolling the streets be forced to do so in the shadow of those who fought for an upstart nation that, had it been victorious, would have kept their race in chains?
But once removed, what are we to do with these monuments? Some have argued, as stated earlier, that they should be relegated to museums where they lose the aura of celebration and instead become tools for learning and remembering our past. There are, however, real logistical issues here. Even if a museum wanted them, it is not easy to store many tons of brass and stone.
It would seem, then, that the battlefields are the most logical refuge for these orphans of our past. Those who venture to Gettysburg, Antietam, or Shiloh do so precisely to learn about the fighting that took place there, and what it meant to American history. And it is, quite simply, impossible to give an accurate and full account of these engagements without telling the story of the men on both sides of the lines, both individual commanders, and the many units from so many states who did combat.
How can one, for example, possibly understand the story of Gettysburg without delving into the mind of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee? He was the man whose decisions, more than any others’, shaped the nature and ultimate outcome of the three-day bloodbath. It was Lee who invaded Pennsylvania, Lee who gave the nod to his generals to attack the Union Army outside of Gettysburg that first fateful morning, and it was Lee who then stayed to fight what would shape up to be the first major Confederate defeat of the war. And no better way can one understand the mind of Lee, to see what he saw, than to stand beneath his monument on Seminary Ridge, astride his horse Traveler, and gaze with him across the mile-wide open field toward that Union line where he sent so many of his soldiers to their dooms. The equestrian statue of the rebel leader is powerful in its sense of longing and regret. One can almost hear him as his battered and bloody survivors stream past him having had their grand assault violently repulsed saying to his men, “This has been all my fault.” Lose Lee and you lose the very essence of the Battle Of Gettysburg. The same can be said for his commanding officers, each with their own part to play in the drama. It is so with every battle of the war. Take away Albert Sydney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard, and you lose Shiloh. Banish Stonewell Jackson and James Longstreet to the ether, and 2nd Manassas just ceases to be.
And furthermore, how can one recount a true narrative of these battles while the voices of those men in the rank and file who fought for the South are muted and their visages erased? The story of these historic places is one of men, often in their teens, scared out of their wits, covered in grime and dust, and the caked blood of their comrades who’d already fallen all around them, who engaged in some of the most brutal and up close and personal modes of warfare one can imagine. Their emotions and experiences at those moments of terror knew no politics. A survivor of Antietam later recalled that at one point the action was so severe, his senses so overloaded, that the landscape appeared to briefly turn red. One imagines that during combat so intense, no Southerner loading, ramming, and firing as the balls whizzed all around him, was thinking of the larger question of slavery or free navigation of the Mississippi. As one Union private, David Thompson, 9th New York Volunteers, wrote after walking the still-smoldering Antietam battlefield after the bloodiest day in American history had ended:
<blockquote>All around lay the Confederate dead…clad in “butternut”&#8230;As I looked down on the poor, pinched faces…all enmity died out. There was no “secession” in those rigid forms, nor in those fixed eyes staring at the sky. Clearly it was not their war.</blockquote>
The fact is the Civil War did happen. And some 300,000 Southern men died fighting for their cause, even if it was, as Ulysses Grant said, “one of the worst for which people have ever fought. And one for which there was the least excuse.” But that doesn’t diminish the very real suffering of the Confederates who fought over these blood-soaked grounds. And even if one doesn’t wish to give those men at Gettysburg, who lined up and stared across an open field to the other side where they saw a solid line of blue with artillery lined hub-to-hub up on Cemetery Ridge just waiting for them, any credit at all for their feat, at least allow their story, on that place, to be told in toto to weave the complete tapestry of this great human tragedy that affected so many on all sides. And still does.
Speaking on behalf of Gettysburg in particular, Les Fowler, president of the Association of Licensed Battlefield Guides, has made a plea to the Senate to modify this bill to preserve the battlefields as they are. “We urge the U.S. Senate to strip out this provision that would destroy the unequaled collection of monuments, Union and Confederate, that set Gettysburg apart as the great battlefield park and top visitor destinations…The monuments representing all of the soldiers who fought here are a crucial component of interpreting these sacred grounds.”
Another veteran battlefield guide, Deb Novotny, makes a broader appeal. “The monuments serve as tools for us to tell the story not only of this battle but of the struggle of our nation to heal itself after the war.”
Some 75,000 Confederate troops engaged the Union Army at Gettysburg. That salient fact of history cannot be avoided or discarded. How does one go about erasing their memories from a place like this? If there remain any places in the country where it is contextually fitting to remember them, while acknowledging the moral bankruptcy of the broader notion for which they took up arms, it is on the fields where they fought and strove and perished.
It is said that the ghosts of soldiers, Confederate and Union alike, walk the now quiet fields of battle, unable to find peace with their violent deaths on the receiving end of enemy bullets, bayonets, shell fragments or solid shot that cut their lives short. They are a part of these places.
The cause of the Confederacy should be remembered for what it was: a new nation dedicated to the proposition that the black man was inferior to the white man and, as Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said: “slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.” But the battlefields, where those twisted notions went to die, and where all sides of those particular isolated events must be heard to gain a true understanding of what happened there, should not be the place to make such a symbolic rejection to what is an obviously revolting raison d’etat. The battlefield belongs to the soldiers who fought there. And it belongs to all who wish to travel to these grounds and hear all the voices from the past tell us what they saw and did there. History is not always pleasant. But it must be remembered. Otherwise we are living in a land of make-believe. That is not the country I want us to be.
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Cannon at Gettysburg

SCHAEFFER: Civil War Battlefields: The Left’s Next Target In The War On History

American History

Leftism

A bill sponsored by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) has passed the House and is currently in the Senate for committee review and an eventual vote. H.R. 7608 is

SCHAEFFER: Civil War Battlefields: The Left’s Next Target In The War On History | The Daily Wire

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A week of celebrations of Civil Rights icon Rep. John Lewis were recently held across two states and the nation’s capital, and were attended and viewed by many thousands. A decent man gone home to his God, having left the world a better place than that into which he was born in those trying times of racial inequality and Jim Crow. But John Lewis was not the only decent American to pass away recently. Unlike the revered Congressman, these many other decent and beloved people were permitted no such closure ceremonies…
It was hard not to be moved and impressed by the outpouring of farewells for Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), the Civil Rights era icon and Congressman who passed away on July 17 at age 80 after suffering pancreatic cancer.  His memorial service, held in Georgia, was the culmination of a six-day celebration of his life.  Along with family and friends, Lewis’ funeral was attended by three former Presidents, world dignitaries, and 50 members of Congress; they included House  Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), prospective Biden running-mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA),  Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC).
The formal remembrance took place at the Ebenezer Baptist Church after which John Lewis was laid to rest at the South View Cemetery.  A week of celebrations of the bona fide Civil Rights hero across two states and the nation’s capital, and attended by many thousands, was over.  A decent man gone home to his God, having left the world a better place than that into which he was born in those trying times of racial inequality and Jim Crow.
But John Lewis was not the only decent American to pass away recently.  Indeed, tens of thousands have also died over the past few months.  And they were just as important to their loved ones, friends, and admirers as Mr. Lewis was to his.  But unlike Mr. Lewis, they were permitted no such closure ceremonies…let alone a week of memorials attended by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/28/politics/john-lewis-capitol-lying-in-state/index.html">thousands</a>.  This is due to the draconian dictates of state and federal officials that prohibit large gatherings, such as the very ones we saw for Mr. Lewis (let alone the riots and protests).  Many were not even permitted to visit their dying loved ones in hospital, so great has been the fear of this virus that kills less than one percent of those infected, as estimated by <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html">the CDC</a>.
Maybe these unsung tens of thousands did not live lives as consequential as did John Lewis, but for those who cared about them, whose lives were touched by those lost to all sorts of killers from old age, to cancer, to heart disease/strokes, car accidents, and, yes, Covid-19, the loss is just as real, just as important, and just as worthy of remembrance and celebration.  But apparently they don’t matter nearly as much.  At least not to those who make and enforce the laws.  To wit, those in power.
If you or I lived in Washington D.C. and were to travel to Georgia, upon our return, by law, we would be required to self-quarantine for fourteen days.  This measure has been instituted by Mayor Muriel Bowser, who forcefully offers: “Our message remains the same: stay home.  Staying at home is the best way to flatten the curve and protect yourself, your family, and our entire community from COVID-19.”  The law applies to anyone not engaged in “essential” travel, government functions, or working at “essential” businesses.  Nor can D.C. citizens take part in any recreational activities not allowed by the Mayor’s Office.
Furthermore, anyone who willfully violates the stay-at-home order may be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, subject to <a href="https://coronavirus.dc.gov/maskorder">$1,000</a> fines.  Wow.  So Mayor Bowser is serious about clamping down on this disease, no matter who it inconveniences…or how many funerals it prohibits.
As Georgia is one of the states deemed “high-risk”, it would stand to reason then that the bevy of Congresspersons returning from their colleague’s funeral in Atlanta would have had to comply and immediately go into quarantine for two weeks.  After all, although I am not a virologist, I think it is safe to say that a virus doesn’t know whether it is floating around a Congressman’s funeral, the seat of a bus, a coffee shop, a hair salon, or a restaurant.  But apparently Mayor Bowser must know something we don’t about science because upon their return from Georgia, that hot-bed of plague and infestation so deemed by D.C.’s own mayor, the 50 members of Congress were exempt from the quarantine protocols because &#8220;government activity is essential.&#8221;
Susan Castillo, Press Secretary for Mayor Bowser, explained: “Government activity is essential, and the Capitol of the United States is exempt from the Mayor’s Order.”  When asked by a journalist if attending Lewis’ funeral constituted “government activity,” Castillo said yes.  When further pressed if attendees at non-government funerals in high-risk areas would have to quarantine upon returning to D.C., Castillo again answered: “Yes.”
Got that?  And you thought we were a nation where, as the Democrats have repeated ad nauseum re: Bad Orange Man “no one is above the law.”
I recently attended a funeral for a man whose life was so decent and honorable, and who was so well-loved and respected by family, friends, and co-workers, that he could have easily filled to overflowing the viewing room.  Instead only eight — eight — were allowed to attend what passed for a wake.  And then for only two hours.  Later, when we arrived at the cemetery, only three cars with that magic eight number were even permitted on the grounds.  His own siblings, beloved grandchildren, friends for over a half-century, and those who came to pay their respects were not even privy to the brief prayer offered by a priest in the presence of just his two adult children and wife of over 60 years before his casket was unceremoniously whisked inside the sepulcher by a cemetery staff anxious they not break any laws and suffer the consequences.  The tiny group was left standing awkwardly in the carport of an empty mausoleum driveway.
That was it.  That was a good person’s final send-off.  No doubt there are literally tens of thousands of similar stories out there.  Too bad.  But hey, whatterya gonna do?  After all, there’s only room for 535 in Congress.
I am not saying John Lewis’ tribute was undeserved.  He was a truly brave man — a term I do not use lightly. In 1965, he was literally clubbed nearly to death by Alabama state troopers while peacefully (in the real sense of the word) marching for the sublime cause of racial equality, justice, and equal representation under the law.  And he was only 23 at the time; heck, at that age I was still grappling with such important matters as whether to be a Cubs or White Sox fan.  Mr. Lewis’ legacy is not in doubt.  The point is that everyone matters to God in Heaven and to someone on this Earth.  Thusly, everyone deserves to be sent off into the next life in the proper fashion that adheres to their faith and as per their wishes and those of their next of kin.
But such is not the case for any but the chosen few.  Consider the mere eight mourners allowed to view my loved one.  Now contrast that with the crowds gathered for Mr. Lewis from Alabama to D.C. to Georgia.  One could see that, despite “social distancing protocols,” other than a few chairs scattered here and there in the most controlled and intimate settings throughout the week, that there was no such thing.  One can pull up photos of Mr. Lewis’ fraternity brothers standing by his flag-draped coffin at Troy University standing shoulder-to-shoulder, some without masks, some wearing them, and of the latter at least one wearing it improperly.  Meanwhile, upon the passing of lesser mortals throughout the nation no such farewells of any kind are permitted.
This tale of two funerals — one for the powerful insiders for whom the term “public service” is an oxymoron, and one for the average Joe or Jane — is but an illustration of the larger issues raised in this pandemic without end…at least until Trump is defeated.  The arbitrary nature of so many restrictions were exposed quite clearly in a May ruling by <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/27/americans_dont_get_ruled_143306.html">Illinois Judge Michael McHaney</a> who blocked Illinois Governor Pritzker’s stay-at-home orders.
<blockquote>Since the inception of this insanity, the following regulations, rules or consequences have occurred: I won&#8217;t get COVID if I get an abortion, but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy. Selling pot is essential, but selling goods and services at a family owned business is not. Pot wasn&#8217;t even legal and pot dispensaries didn&#8217;t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential, but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.
A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will. We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are cancelled. Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will. If I go to Walmart, I won&#8217;t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will. Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.</blockquote>
Then McHaney gets to the heart of the matter.
<blockquote>When laws do not apply to those who make them, people are not being governed, they are being ruled.  Make no mistake, these executive orders are not laws. They are royal decrees.  Illinois citizens are not being governed.  They are being ruled.  The last time I checked, Illinois citizens are American citizens.  And Americans don’t get ruled.</blockquote>
The judge speaks for the people of Illinois, but the broader principle applies to every American who has been deprived final moments with cherished loved ones while politicians are treated to pomp and circumstance and public gatherings. This is an experiment in the limits of raw power being carried out by ruthless people for whom unbridled power is the end in and of itself, not the means to making this a better country.
Two days after returning from the Lewis funeral, a mask-less Nancy Pelosi was out in public speaking with reporters on Capitol Hill.  Quarantine for thee, not for me.  And as with so much of what has happened to this country over the course of this Coronavirus outbreak, the flaunting of protocols to accommodate one Congressman’s funeral, and then applying exemptions to government officials and those connected to them so they may engage in conduct that would have the average American fined and even arrested, has laid bare the schism and the myth of America. The simple fact is there are two sets of laws, two sets of dictates, even two sets of standards of behavior laid down by those in power today.  The average American is being told he/she must obey the law or be nakedly exposed to the wrath of a government led by the small-minded and the cynical who have somehow been allowed to wield far too much power where Civil Liberties are concerned.  But then there are those on the inside for whom terms like “social distancing” and “mandatory self-quarantining” are cute notions, but not intended for them.  Such an obvious double-standard will sow the seeds of resentment for years to come.
More from Brad Schaeffer: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schaeffer-the-truth-about-the-black-lives-matter-organization">The Truth About The Black Lives Matter Organization</a>
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader and writer whose articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, National Review, Celeb Magazine, Zerohedge, Frumforum, and other news outlets.  He is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel Of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630">Another Time And Place</a> (Post Hill/Simon &amp; Schuster, 2018).

Nancy Pelosi

SCHAEFFER: Quarantine For Thee, Not For Me

John Lewis

A week of celebrations of Civil Rights icon Rep. John Lewis were recently held across two states and the nation’s capital, and were attended and viewed by

SCHAEFFER: Quarantine For Thee, Not For Me | The Daily Wire

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At present, no organization has more sway in the United States, not just in shaping opinion, but changing behaviors and lives, than Black Lives Matter. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 62% of likely voters now have a “favorable” opinion of BLM. This is almost a reverse of opinion only six months ago.
It is both fascinating and troubling to see this transformation. Fascinating in that, like so many political movements, its emergence usually is the reaction to some larger underlying shift in the national order that the existing parties have failed to address. The Republican Party, for example, was spawned from the growing abolitionist sentiment in the country — one the Southern Democrats vehemently resisted to the point of taking up arms.
But unlike the nascent GOP, Black Lives Matter, the organization that has co-opted the self-evident slogan, is based not just on deception, but outright, demonstrable lies. And even more troubling still is the willingness with which the American people, gutted of any proper historical understanding for generations by failed education, the activist media, and cowardly politicians of both mainstream parties are willing to carry water for this mendacious group.
Consider the genesis of the Black Lives Matter organization itself. On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old African-American Trayvon Martin was intercepted by George Zimmerman, a man of mixed race, who was the neighborhood watch coordinator for his community. An altercation occurred, Zimmerman claimed Martin attacked him and in the scuffle Zimmerman fatally shot the boy.  A tragedy all around, no doubt. Zimmerman was acquitted; he was found to have indeed acted in self-defense. Bowing to national public outcry a federal investigation was launched as well — and it reached the same conclusion. But that did not matter. By then Trayvon Martin had become a household name — a martyr, a symbol of a false narrative laced in fallacious inductive reasoning that it was “open season” on young blacks by non-blacks. The 2013 acquittal inspired a Facebook posting that included the phrase “black lives matter” and the “Movement for Black Lives,” which eventually fell under the catch-all banner “Black Lives Matter,” was born.
The movement was spurred on by the shooting of Michael Brown by police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. It was widely reported that Wilson shot Brown while the man was helpless, with his hands raised in the air, and pleading “Don’t shoot!” That narrative took hold and spread like wildfire, and soon a terrible untruth began to spread among both the black community as well as white guilt-ridden leftists who are always happy to cheer them on from behind the walls of their all-white enclaves. The storyline went that Brown’s death was emblematic of a widespread problem that black people have confronted for years: brutality and injustice at the hands of systemically racist police. Soon even NFL players got into the act, many striding onto the field with their hands up in a gesture of solidarity.
Once again, the shooter was acquitted. But unlike the Martin case, where some doubts will always linger, the matter of Brown’s demise was a clear case of police self-defense. The Brown as sainted victim narrative was a lie. Brown was six-foot-five, 285 pounds. Al Sharpton, C.E.O. of Race Hustlers, Inc., eulogized him as a “gentle giant.”  His family said he didn’t have a violent bone in his body. This would come as a surprise to the store owner trying to prevent Brown from stealing a box of cigars the night he died. When confronted, the stoned (as the autopsy showed) Brown can be seen on surveillance video grabbing the diminutive store owner and slamming him into a shelf.
While walking down the middle of the street soon after, Brown was intercepted by Officer Wilson who pulled up next to him in his squad car. The “gentle giant” then proceeded to reach into the cruiser for Wilson’s gun. Wilson shot him in the hand and then pursued on foot. Brown then turned around and charged the policeman who shot the NFL linebacker-sized man coming straight at him, killing him. More than a half-dozen black onlookers witnessed the episode. Despite enormous pressure to affirm the lie, they agreed Brown never put his hands up, and never said “Don’t Shoot.” An <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf">FBI investigation</a> and a Grand Jury each affirmed Officer Wilson’s story. No matter. Benjamin Crump, the Brown (and Martin) family lawyer declared “family and supporters will not be persuaded by the autopsy report or eye-witness statements.” A lawyer really said that. Is it any wonder then that Ferguson erupted in riots based on a lie? President Barack Obama could have dampened the rioters’ anger by making an address supporting the Ferguson police who did no wrong here. Instead he framed the incident as part of wider fears of being guilty of “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-lives-matter-releases-policy-agenda-n620966">walking while black</a>.” Healer indeed.
BLM now had its cause…any black man shot by police under any circumstance. It also had its villain: the nation’s 800,000 law enforcement officers. Other incidents followed. In Baltimore in 2015 Freddie Gray was arrested for carrying a knife. He suffered injuries while being transported in the van to central booking, fell into a coma, and died days later.  He was heard by witnesses banging the sides of the van and the officers had to restrain him with cuffs and leg shackles. Once again, the arresting officers were <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-officials-decline-prosecution-death-freddie-gray">cleared by an Obama Justice Department investigation</a>. Again, it did not matter and five days of violence and looting in Baltimore followed in protest of systemic police racism. So what if the arresting officers were black, the Baltimore City Council was almost all black, and the mayor was black?
In 2016 the BLM organization released a 24-page mission statement entitled “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-lives-matter-releases-policy-agenda-n620966">A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands For Black Power, Freedom and Justice</a>.” Lurking within its many pages, graphics and diagrams one can find its policy goals. Some are generalities like “End the war on black people.” (Given that the vast majority of <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls">homicides among black people</a> are carried out by other black people, I’m not exactly sure for whom this message is intended.) But some demands are more substantive, and worrisome:
<ul>
<li>Reparations for past and continuing harms. (This includes property as well as cash).</li>
<li>A reconstruction of the economy to ensure our communities have collective ownership, not merely access.</li>
<li>Independent black political power and black self-determination in all areas of society. (As in re-segregation?)</li>
</ul>
And today, of course, this list also includes the very dangerous #DefundThePolice demand.
Martin, Brown, Gray. Although useful, none could be the face of such a movement given the murky circumstances of their deaths. Then came George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin. Anyone who has seen that video should agree that Floyd is a victim of police brutality. It is one thing to draw a gun and open fire in the heat of the moment, where a split-second hesitation could either prevent a tragedy if the target is benign, or send you into the next life if he means you harm.  But for over eight minutes, in full view of bystanders and fellow officers who criminally did not intervene, and for all the amateur videographers to get the evidence, Chauvin kneeled on the man’s neck well after he was no longer a threat, despite Floyd’s begging him to stop uttering the now ubiquitous rallying cry “I can’t breathe.” This was murder. Suddenly all the wokeness, the simmering neo-Marxism, the nihilism, and the racism that feeds the BLM movement exploded onto the streets. Enter like clockwork Al Sharpton, to give the man’s eulogy as our city streets burned. In George Floyd, BLM finally had a beatified face to go with the charges of police “open season” on blacks.
This is an inflammatory accusation. And worse, easily debunked with hard data. In fact, the numbers show that widespread, systemic police brutality against blacks, especially unarmed blacks, is a myth. Nevertheless, it is one that BLM, both political parties, the media, even the public seem more than willing to accept — or if they do not accept it, are unwilling to confront the lie.
But here are the facts. And, as John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things.”
In a recent <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-systemic-police-racism-11591119883">Wall Street Journal op-ed</a>, Heather Mac Donald, author of The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe, sums up the data that is readily available to the curious:
<blockquote>In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans make up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015&#8230;In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.</blockquote>
So, there it is. The cause of the utter chaos in our streets. One-tenth of one percent of blacks murdered in the USA last year. Black lives matter, yes, but apparently some matter a lot more than others. Otherwise we’d know the names of all 7,407 black homicide victims, not just those with political expediency. But we don’t. To paraphrase an old cynical saying attributed to many figures from Erich LeMarque to Josef Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, 7,407 a statistic.”
Still, do these numbers mean the Minneapolis police department, or many others no doubt, is not in need of reform? Of course not. Chauvin had a history of violence both as a cop and his second job as a bouncer, and never should have been on the force. And he should do hard time. However, demanding police reform is a far cry from removing the police altogether. But this, through defunding, is precisely what the Black Lives Matter organization wants.
So how is it, with such a prima facie dangerous agenda, that this organization has become so strong? How has such a radical message become, on the surface at least, mainstream? Because a mob, when uncontested, becomes just more brazen. There is no concerted push-back. Politicians are cowering. The mainstream media, already slightly to the left of Che Guevara, gleefully push the narrative, as sowing racial disharmony has been for decades a technique the Democrat Party uses to retain power. And since the media is now but an arm of that Democrat Party, this serves both interests well. Taking a step further, BLM, too, is now an extension of that political party. So a cynical and nationally destructive symbiosis has emerged.
Why do I equate BLM with the Democrat Party?  Because they are, literally, cyber-linked. Go to the Black Lives Matter website homepage and click “Donate.” That takes one to an organization called <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019">ActBlue</a>, a registered 501 c3 non-profit Political Action Committee. So donations to BLM will go into ActBlue. Now, under terms and conditions, there is a fine print section which states that ActBlue adheres to Campaign Finance laws.
Question: If a donation goes to a cause to ostensibly support a social movement why are  the recipients of said funds required to comply with Campaign Finance restrictions?
Answer: Because the top 10 “causes” of Act Blue were either Democratic candidates (Bernie and Biden being first at over $300 million) or Democratic political committees.
It is said that movements for social justice, religion, and political reform — and this is all three rolled into one — start off as a cause, then become a business, and finally a racket. BLM has reached the racket stage.
So where, then, are the “law &amp; order” Republicans in all this? Remember them? The voices of the great “silent majority”? They are doing what they do best. Offering conservative lip service to their constituents while protecting the established order, and their corporate donors, as much as any Democrat. Democrans and Republicrats. All have bent the knee to the BLM organization that is now a multi-billion dollar political fund-raising machine. Although Democrats still do it best. When my governor, Phil Murphy, who banned  graduation ceremonies, public funeral services, and even haircuts for fear of COVID outbreaks, came to our town’s recent BLM protest and spoke before a packed crowd of 1,500 people for whom “social distancing” was a quaint notion, I saw first-hand just what shameless pandering for political points looks like. The image of Murphy, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, taking a knee for “equality” and “social justice” was one until recently only the Onion or Babylon Bee could concoct. But we are down the rabbit hole now. And as such both parties acquiesce to the lie that is tearing our country apart.
Sadly, no group will suffer more for our leaders’ complete abdication of responsibility than the very black lives all involved profess to hold sacred.  In New York City, once lauded under GOP mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg as “America’s safest big city,” homicides are <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr0706/nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-june-2020">up 23%</a> from the first six months of 2019. In the last week of June and first week in July, <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-homicides-data-tracker-htmlstory.html">Chicago’s murders</a> were up 39% compared to the same 2019 weeks. One week in May in <a href="http://www.lapdonline.org/statistical_data">Los Angeles</a> saw murders up an astounding 250%. Atlanta, Washington D.C., New Orleans and others have seen similar surges in violent crime.
Adding to the agony, more and more victims are children. In Brooklyn over the July 4th weekend a <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/family-of-1-year-old-killed-in-brooklyn-drive-by-shooting-to-say-final-goodbye/2535445/">one-year-old boy</a> was killed by gunfire while resting in his stroller as his family picnicked. He was one of six children, all black, to die in a hail of bullets that weekend. In fact, most of the neighborhoods where the deadly violence has escalated, and those destroyed through arson, vandalism and looting, are minority neighborhoods. Clearly the lives of the 7,000+ black people murdered each year do not matter to these activists. What matters now is that the police have been compelled to all but abandon those who need their protections far more than the left-wing elitist interests feeding the BLM machine.
Brad Schaeffer’s is a commodities trader and author.  His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, National Review, and others. His acclaimed World War Two novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630">Of Another Time And Place </a>[Post Hill/Simon &amp; Schuster, 2018] is available for purchase or kindle/audible download.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

BLM Fist

SCHAEFFER: The Truth About The Black Lives Matter Organization

Black Lives Matter

Defund The Police

Law Enforcement

Race

At present, no organization has more sway in the United States, not just in shaping opinion, but changing behaviors and lives, than Black Lives Matter. A

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Radical movements never end at the original demands.
Let’s harken back to a simpler, more innocent and yet paradoxically more emotionally resilient time, shall we?  Particularly the Fall of, say, 1988.  Imagine a fine autumn day on the great plains of Illinois. The sun blares down through the azure dome of the wide Midwestern sky to warm the faces of  75,000 fans crowded into the University of Illinois Memorial Stadium. (Yes, back then we filled the place.) A sea of orange and blue shimmers in the stands and the roar “I-L-L!  echoes from one side of the stadium, followed by the obligatory response of “I-N-I!” from the other.   Colorful pennants orbit the arena, swirling and snapping in the warm breeze.
It’s halftime during another Big Ten football Saturday at Urbana-Champaign and a celebrated ritual dating back to 1926 begins again. The Marching Illini band parts with military precision, clearing a path for a lone figure who seems to just materialize in the end zone and strut proudly to the center of the field.  He is barefoot, clad in buckskin and leather tassels, his face painted bright orange and blue, and he wears an impressive headdress of eagle feathers.
Chief Illiniwek bows to the throng of admirers as the calling of “Chieeeef!” fills the stands.  Our beloved mascot then dances to Native American music.  He skims across the field as he twists and turns and gyrates. It’s quite a feat of athleticism in fact. Then he suddenly leaps, touches his toes in an aerial split, and lands, bare feet together on the turf.  He stands and raises his arms up like a bishop bestowing a benediction, as the band belts out the Illinois anthem and we all join arm in arm and sway back and forth while singing: “Hail to the orange. Hail to the blue.  Hail Alma Mater ever so true. We love no other so let our motto be: ‘Victory Illinois…Var-si-ty!”  There is no mockery here. We feel no emotion but respect for and communion with the Native American tribe whose namesake we at the U of I adopted as our own.
I recount this little snippet of my youth because it ties into a larger movement building momentum for quite some time; it’s one that seeks to upend national tradition and even identity. A college in the heartland losing its mascot to p.c. sensibilities is just one of countless outbreaks of this spreading disease. And the latest, and most powerful wave of social justice fanaticism has injected the drive to stamp out so many vestiges of our national identity with “woke” steroids. It’s become obvious by now that the pretext of the BLM “police reform” has served as cover for the larger forces of bitterness, divisiveness, hyper-sensitivity, and outright nihilism rampaging through our country with impunity. One wonders how is it that what were, ostensibly, protests against specific acts of police brutality has now expanded into a movement to wipe out every memory and tradition and historical figure before Rosa Parks?  When exactly did expressing outrage over an obvious murder of one man by one cop morph into a crusade to upend the entire American experience root and stem and replant it in this new woke Year Zero?
Those of us who went to the University of Illinois back in the day might have seen this coming. Mascots, and the “offense” they give to select groups of self-appointed aggrieved, have been the canary in the coal mine for some time. That story I told you? No more. Chief Illiniwek and the halftime ritual that was one of the traditions that actually sold me on my alma mater? Gone. Buh-bye, Chief.
In fact, this college football season – if it happens at all – will mark the thirteenth year of the Chief’s banishment from our campus by the NCAA for being a mascot “hostile and abusive” to Native American sensibilities. (His last official performance took place in February 2007 at a home basketball game.)
How did this come to pass? It’s interesting and relevant to today in that it is a revealing microcosm of the greater movement of wiping out monuments and memories occurring nation-wide.  And how quickly, frighteningly so, attitudes can shift and lurch suddenly and violently leftwards almost overnight.
Apparently those who took it upon themselves to speak for an Indian nation long vanished found Chief Illinwek’s very existence so traumatizing, so insulting, that they forced the NCAA to coerce my school into killing this 80-year tradition or be banned from hosting any post-season activities.  So the political correctness wave that would eventually build to a tsunami washed over my school, sweeping away a most cherished tradition when it receded.  Courtesy of those who took it upon themselves to feel offense on behalf of others.
Nor did the leaders of this anti-Chief movement, like those tearing down statues today (more on that in a moment), have any grasp of the history of the very people for whom they assumed the mantel of feeling offense. Forget that the tribes of the Illinois confederacy were wiped out or displaced by the end of the eighteenth century by more powerful Native American enemies. Were any of the student protesters driving the movement to eradicate the Chief even descended from the Illini? Not to my knowledge. But, as we have learned from so many wealthy progressives who live in sheltered, often racially homogenous leafy neighborhoods far removed from the disastrous consequences of their own enlightened attitudes being translated into policy imposed on others, one’s direct standing on an issue matters little when there’s a p.c. crusade afoot.
The speed of the change in attitude was quite breathtaking where Chief Illinwek was concerned.  For decades the closest living descendants of the confederacy, the Peoria, who were relocated to Oklahoma in the nineteenth century apparently never had an issue with the Chief for over seven decades. As late as 1995, Don Giles, then Chief of the Peoria Tribe, said, “We’re proud that the University of Illinois…is drawing on that background of our having been there. And what more honor could they pay us?” But just five short years later, in 2000, the tribe’s position radically changed after the new chief, Ron Froman, met with several Native American student groups at the U of I. Froman apparently just needed to be told that he was offended, and even offered this historically dubious viewpoint: &#8220;I don’t think [the Chief’s creation] was to honor us, because, hell, they ran our butts out of Illinois.”  That the Illini were wiped out by rival tribes which included the Sauk, Fox, Sioux, Chippewa, Ottawa, Cherokee and others well before any white men could “run their butts out of Illinois” matters little when there’s a opportunity to manufacture synthetic outrage to help the indignation industry churn out its favorite product: identity politics.
We are seeing that same radical shift in attitude now, with monuments being torn down all over the nation. Mascots aside, the movement really  started off with the drive to banish Confederate memorials from the public square. This is a legitimate beef in my view. I cannot imagine being an African-American in 2020 having to every day pass by bronze or stone celebrations of the men who, had their side won the Civil War, would have happily overseen my continued enslavement. Indeed, men who fought to win independence for a new nation that referred to itself as “The Slave-Holding Confederacy” and made no bones about the fact that its government, as its Vice-President shamelessly declared, was “based upon this great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”  So, sure, I totally get that.
But, as with so many movements, it never ends at the original demands. The first question that would be asked by the masked marauders after they banished every mascot and tore down every last Confederate statue would be, “alright, who’s next?” This is because for many of them, the idea of “offense” is but a pretext to exercise their nihilistic impulses. It’s not mascots or the Southern Confederacy they hate per se. It’s the United States itself, our laws, our system of government, our mercantilism, our national pride, our civil rights, our traditions and history, our very essence.  We know this because we already know the answer to “who’s next?” Everyone! As the leader of the murderous Red Legs proclaimed in The Outlaw Josey Wales: “Doin’ right ain’t got no end.”  (This wholly un-self-aware line elicited a mocking belly laugh from the wise old Granny listening from her porch.  As it should have.)
And as we have learned, the mob’s zealous sense of moral supremacy is only matched by their shameful ignorance of the country that someone, or some institution, has taught them to hate so much.
The woke crowd is so militant in their anarchism that goes far beyond just protesting police brutality, or even “systemic racism” that they are literally upending or defacing statues of anyone who chose to be born before 1965.  And I do mean anyone. Consider this. In Boston, a monument to the 54th Massachusetts, the first African-American Union regiment armed and sent into battle in the Civil War, men who literally fought to preserve their own freedom, was recently defaced.  One might argue “yeah well they were only allowed to be led by white officers so it’s still a symbol of systemic—” Yawn! What these historical ignoramuses do not consider is that the white officers who volunteered to lead these men of color, from the idealistic Col. Robert Gould Shaw, son of a wealthy Bostonian who could have pulled the right strings to keep his son as far away from the front as possible, down to the company commanders all knew full well that if captured on the battlefield, the Confederates would not extend them the courtesy of prisoner status. Rather, the Confederate government had made it very clear in written proclamations that any white Union officer caught leading black troops would be considered leading a slave revolt, and summarily executed. Other than carrying the regimental flag, there was probably no more dangerous duty in the Civil War than being a white Union officer  leading black troops in combat. And they knew it. Yet they stayed, despite offers of transfers if they so chose. How many of the masked men who attack statues in the dead of night could have mustered even one iota of such courage or conviction to the cause of advancing racial justice?
Not to be outdone by their laughably foolish compatriots, another woke mob actually vandalized a monument to, ready for this one?&#8230;Frederick Douglass! Did any of these vandalizing buffoons even know who Douglass was? And why not? In their entire drift through our K-through-college graduate education system did they never learn of this extraordinary man who went from being a run-away slave to becoming the national face of abolition in the North? A man who met with presidents, governors, congressmen, and tirelessly, passionately lobbied for equal rights for his black brothers and sisters.  Indeed, the first black man to receive a vote for President at a major political party convention (Republican).  This man was, in fact, the absolutely antithetical embodiment of racism, then as well as now. They are like the peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who, when presented with the evidence that the woman they’d captured was not a witch, nevertheless screamed, “Burn her anyway!” Yeah. Actually a part of me hopes that those fools who attacked the memory of Mr. Douglass had no idea who he was. Ignorance can be fixed with a few updated history texts and curricula. But if they did know him, and decided to burn him anyway then something much more seismic and existentially threatening to the very fabric of this nation is afoot. And it must be taken seriously.
Two generations of unrelenting and unchallenged leftist indoctrination in our schools, our universities, our media, our culture, have culminated in the scenes of brave African-American freedom fighters and a famous run-away-slave-turned-vocal abolitionist being attacked by people who claim to do so in their minority group’s name. There is something so unbelievable in this that one would think these stories ripped out of Babylon Bee or The Onion. If only.
Again, those in my college experienced the first red and itching lesions of the woke psoriasis now spreading across the body of this great nation back when The Chief became persona non grata…for giving offense to those no longer even here.
But not all is lost. Common sense does still sprout up here and there. Fortunately for the students of Florida State University, their Indian symbol, Chief Osceola, was allowed to live by the NCAA. Why? Because (get this now) the Seminole Tribe of Florida, who are still alive and well,  find nothing offensive about him. Who could have imagined that?
This does not mean that sensibilities, if wide-spread and reasonable, should be ignored. As I said, I do believe Confederate monuments fall under this category making them worthy of public re-examination and removal if it is so voted. And even where Native-Americans are concerned, are there some monikers that may be insulting?  Is the term “redskin” the equivalent of deeply offensive “darkie” in the eyes of Native-Americans?   After all, is it not often the Indian yin to the white man’s “paleface” yang? Polls are ambiguous, and one can find any to support the notion that it is or is not.  But in the realm of re-naming the Washington football team, especially one that represents our nation’s capital and thus all Americans in a way, maybe a compromise ought to be reached. My suggestion is to rename the team the Washington Red Tails, in honor of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black World War II fighter group who brazenly painted the tails of their aircraft scarlet to announce their presence before serving up a helping of pain stew to Hitler’s Luftwaffe. Not only does it honor a group that all Americans admire, but it even keeps the “Red” in the name. At least we can talk about it without burning down FedEx Field. 
That would be a rational approach. Indeed it would be a way to both honor our past, and celebrate our more diverse present. But rationality is the farthest thing from the mob’s mind. At first I would have called those who feel moral imperative to deface and destroy that which they do not understand, and do not care to, but just know that it offends them somehow, cry-babies. But that doesn’t give this new wave of social upheaval enough import, for it is much more of a threat to our national fiber than that. Any student of far-left or far-right revolutions, two sides of the same coin, whether they originated in Munich, Petrograd, or Beijing, knows the pattern.  The similarities in tactics and rhetoric between the fascism/communism of old, and the masked thuggery of today are eerie: public denunciations, cancelling out those they brand as enemies of the movement and ruining their lives, weaponizing the law in an uneven application to punish political adversaries, street violence, total disregard for the rule of law in order to achieve a new cultural Utopia. And those who have actually read a history book, which I can say with 99% confidence does not include the members of the woke mob, know that this pattern never ends well.  Nazism begat the Holocaust. Stalinism the Gulag.  Maoism the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. Throw in the Khmer Rouge for good measure and you have some pretty in-your-face lessons coming at you. But that is neither here nor there. There’s work to be done. A country to be erased and redrawn in the image of the many ‘isms’ that make up a faculty lounge lexicon.
So what was the canary in the coal mine of my university losing its mascot? What did Chief Illiniwek’s eradication portend? It showed that we have unleashed a wave of criminally uneducated, un-challenged children upon this land whose ignorance is matched only by their sense of absolute righteousness in their cause. And worse, those of us who managed to break free of the event horizon of the education and cultural indoctrination black hole are nevertheless left with a wariness to tread lightly and leave no offending footprints should someone, somewhere, with time on their hands and a Twitter mob at the ready, come a-calling. How can this but stifle healthy debate–which is the life-blood of a free people.
I may be labeled as racist for even expressing in an open forum these sentiments, but I’ll just call you an anti-German/Irish bigot and be on my way. Oh, and perhaps I’ll petition to ban any future airing of The Godfather for using the offensive term “Kraut-Mick.” Too bad if it’s your favorite movie. I have feelings to consider.
When I first pondered the Chief’s demise in 2007, I thought that maybe I was reading too much into what was then a novel p.c. wave. But now I know better. I see the anarchy across the land with its totalitarian proclivities as the demise of this nation should this dialogue-crippling and balkanizing movement continue. Thirteen years ago it targeted a venerated tradition at an island of learning in a sea of corn and soybeans that was doing no harm to anyone–save those who seek to re-create this country in their own narrow and paradoxically intolerant image. Now the dam has burst. And the wave has come to wash us all away.  But even in my last drowning breath I will defiantly cry out: LONG LIVE THE CHIEF!  And if this offends you, well, as Dennis Leary says: “Life’s tough.  Wear a helmet.”
Brad Schaeffer&#8217;s is a commodities trader and author.  His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, National Review, and others. His acclaimed World War Two novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630">Of Another Time And Place </a>[Post Hill/Simon &amp; Schuster, 2018] is available for purchase or kindle/audible download.
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The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Houston Cougars v Illinois Fighting Illini

SCHAEFFER: Chief Canary Of The Coal Mine

Political Correctness

Radical movements never end at the original demands. Let’s harken back to a simpler, more innocent and yet paradoxically more emotionally resilient time,

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On Sept. 6, 1492, when Christopher Columbus’ flagship, the Santa Maria, with the smaller vessels Niña and Pinta in its wake, set sail from the Canary Islands in search of new lands, he embarked on a mission of discovery that the historian George Bancroft declared “the most memorable maritime enterprise in the history of the world.”  In this and his three subsequent expeditions over the course of a decade, he relentlessly explored and charted the Caribbean islands and on his final and, in many ways most daring, voyage in 1502, the mainland isthmus of Central America — setting the stage for the world-changing discoveries of Balboa and Magellan, who would soon follow his path. The importance of Columbus’ expeditions is not that he was “the first” European to set foot in the New World. Scholars agree that title most likely goes to the Norwegian explorer Leif Erikson who, while en route to Greenland from his home in Iceland sometime around A.D. 1001-1002, strayed off-course and instead landed on modern-day Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, where evidence of Viking settlements have been found. But the Norse, whatever their prowess as sailors, did not last as colonists and thus North America, and the Pacific Ocean beyond, remained unknown to Europeans for the next five hundred years. It would take the hazardous voyages of the Italian seaman Columbus and his crew, backed by the treasure of the Spanish court, to open up the New World and launch a decisive age, the effects of which are still shaping the modern world.
This image of the intrepid captain courageously braving the great unknown is, of course, not the way Columbus is often portrayed today. Instead, we see his statues being torn down by mobs for whom any moral purity begins with today’s sensibilities, as if this is some American version of Pol Pot’s Year Zero.  Columbus’ memorials have been vandalized, beheaded, and burned, much as superstitious villagers in the 13th century might have treated their local witch after a nasty wave of the smallpox. The ignorance on display is the same. One wonders how many of the masked nihilists in their obnoxious self-righteousness that only the unlearned can possess could even tell you the name of one of Columbus’ vessels, let alone the year in which he first set sail. (Something any first grader in my class could have told you.)
This is not to place Columbus on a pedestal higher than the height of the statue in the eponymous New York City circle. Clearly, the man was no saint and it does a service to history to humanize him…but he was no demon either. But that has not stopped our education system from utterly gutting this man’s reputation and presenting the entrails for ritual immolation upon the altar of P.C. wokeness. In my lifetime, just over a half-of-a-century, Columbus, the man for whom an entire country is named, has gone from being viewed as a noble explorer to a personification of the destruction of the indigenous Americans by Europeans bent on conquest, plunder, ecocide, and genocide. Now, he may not have been the most talented administrator as his brief stint running Hispaniola shows. But the picture that has been redrawn of him as a lascivious plunderer and murderer, one worthy of beheading in effigy, is off-sides. Russell Means, the late Native American activist, went so far as to attach the dreaded “H” word to him. “Columbus,” he seethed, “makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent.” Ouch! But such criminally ignorant histrionics bespeak more of emotional revisionism than they do a grounding in the historical record.
I&#8217;ve often wondered what is at the heart of this assault on Christopher Columbus’ memory for this was truly a man whose impact makes him one of the most important figures in history. I have a hunch that the drive to reshape him in an ugly light has to do as much with the context of his voyage as with its aftermath. And yet it is this very context that makes his voyages so immeasurably important to the very survival of the West itself. The oft-told story is that Columbus was seeking an all-water trade route to Asia. And that is true. But this prompts the question: why was an all-water route so vitally important in the first place? What forces were at work in the world to prompt this man to risk his reputation and even his life to sail into uncharted seas again and again in search of something that may or may not have existed?
In 1453, when Columbus was still a toddler, the Ottoman Turk armies under Mohammed II conquered the city-fortress of Constantinople, and extinguished the last vestiges of a Byzantine Empire that had lasted for a millennium. Despite – or perhaps because of – the courage of the last Emperor Constantine XI, who died in the breach of his city’s walls, the behavior of the Turks in the city was savage, even by the standards of the time. But more than just the calamitous loss of a city as the last expression of the West in Asia Minor, the closing of this gateway effectively cut Europe off from any direct access to Asia. Muslims now controlled all overland trade routes to the East, threatening all what was then called Christendom. Thus a new direct route was needed by necessity in order for trade to Asia to be safe from the Mohammedans who were busy washing the blood of thousands of innocents from their swords with the water of the Marmara Sea.
And so, in 1492, Columbus was on a mission to re-establish the West’s place as a global trader around the world. The Spanish Court, themselves having just defeated the last of the Muslim invaders at Granada that same year, were eager to do an end-run around their Eastern rivals. One wonders how much different the world would be today if the explorers from across the Atlantic who discovered the New World flew the crescent of Mohammed rather than the cross of Jesus, and with it carried the Western values that would shape the two continents. One certainly can guess that the protesters we see today in the streets of our cities, protected (to a point) by our Bill of Rights, courtesy of a Western legal and cultural inheritance, would not be so free to be so vocal — most certainly not the women — had a different brand of conquistadors who prostrated themselves before a different god laid claim to the New World.
I imagine that the progressive Left, with its unfriendly, often suicidally hostile view of Western culture, values, and traditions, would prefer we not be reminded by Columbus’ voyage that out of the undeniable violence and cruelties in his wake, as with the birth of so many great nations, a freer and more just world did, in fact, emerge over time; one that saw unprecedented advancements not just of technological and economic growth, but advancements in human dignity and civil rights. Especially courtesy of the most consequential nation to emerge as a direct result of Columbus’ voyages: the United States. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that “all men are created equal.” The Emancipation Proclamation declared North America’s slaves were “henceforth and forever free.” And the Civil Rights movement a century later would see that real attempts to live out those lofty and morally superior ideals to any other potential colonizers’ should be matters of fact and law and not just noble aspirations.  No, for the nihilists attempting to justify their rampage, better to paint the unwashed Western bearded fiend in armor as the aggressor, the destroyer of the fantasy Eden that was pre-European America. This keeps the focus squarely where it belongs: on the sins of the West as represented in this preying man.
Actually, Columbus was not so much a preying man, as a praying man. And thus do we have another motivation for Columbus’ voyage that the education system has all but erased from the story. That is that Columbus was deeply religious, and he saw the New World as a place where more than just fortunes could be made. In describing his discovery to King Ferdinand of Spain, Columbus portrayed himself as a devout and sincere Christian who rejoiced in the souls that would be saved in this new land: “Let Christ rejoice on earth, as he rejoices in heaven, when he foresees coming to salvation so many souls of people hitherto lost.” Many of the islands Columbus discovered he named in homage to his Christian faith such as Trinidad (trinity), San Salvador (holy savior), Dominica (Sunday/“The Lord’s Day”), La Navidad (nativity/Christmas), Santa Cruz/St. Croix (holy cross), San Pedro (Saint Peter) and a host of others.
His sense of religious duty was very much apparent and so from its absolute beginning our nation’s narrative is one of a religiously rooted foundation. This is an uncomfortable idea for those whose religion seems to be secular wokeness, and thus must be stamped out. George Orwell said who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past, and thus is it imperative for progressives to try and play down or even eliminate any reference to the role of religion in the genesis of this American “city upon a hill.” Again, this is part of the new Year Zero in America.
From academia, to pop culture, to media, the flow of information, the gateways to knowledge, are often manned by those who view our civilization in an unfavorable light and are blatantly contentious towards many expressions of our Judeo-Christian heritage. I do not deny their sincere empathy toward the indigenous people, many of whom suffered terribly at the hands of the conquistadors and colonists who followed in Columbus’ wake. But this tells only half the tale. As renowned author and law professor Dr. John Edsmoe points out, I do not lament the spread of Western civilization as reflected in “contributions to art, music, architecture, ethics, liberty, law, government, a Constitution that has served as a model across the world, an economic system that has produced the greatest good for the greatest number and the highest level of prosperity the world has ever known, and a spirit of ingenuity and achievement that led to unparalleled medical and technological advances.”
Still, if one wishes to see the memory of this incredibly brave and dedicated explorer and his world-changing voyage torn down, there are ways within the system of discourse and laws brought to the New World by Columbus’ descendants to achieve this. But the roving gangs prefer the Stalinist/Maoist approach: erase the man, like a one-time party insider now out-of-favor and deleted from old group photos. And if they in the process wish to demean Columbus in such a way as to unfairly paint him with the crimes of the conquistadors who followed and as a profiteer and racist, well, it’s a free country, isn’t it?  I guess the reaction to this viewpoint will tell me.
As for me, I will continue to honor this man, warts and all, who braved the uncharted realm not just for profit alone, but to spread the Gospel he fervently believed in as Truth, and Western traditions that have served us so well in the five-and-a-quarter centuries since he first set sail into the true unknown. To me, Columbus represents capitalism, Western exceptionalism, and faith in a higher power than ourselves. Indeed, he represents the best of us in some ways. Conversely, this man represents the worst of several worlds to certain segments of the nihilist, atheist mindset that have wormed their insidious way into the ranks of those who tell the story of who we were, and who we are, in the hopes of changing us into the secular grievance-driven and tribalist society that they believe we ought to be. They say to judge a man by his enemies as well as his friends. Given what I have seen of those who violently and with no regard for the law or even decency take Columbus to task without any sense of historical context, as well as their disdainful view of the values and traditions I hold dear, I will side with the man from Genoa and take on all comers.
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader and writer whose articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, National Review, Celeb Magazine, Zerohedge, Frumforum, and other news outlets.  He is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel Of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630">Another Time And Place</a> (Post Hill/Simon &amp; Schuster, 2018).
More from Brad Schaeffer: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/schaeffer-united-states-exceptional-ask-japanese-brad-schaeffer">The United States IS Exceptional. Ask The Japanese.</a>
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Columbus Statue

SCHAEFFER: Christopher Columbus Deserves To Be Celebrated

Christopher Columbus

On Sept. 6, 1492, when Christopher Columbus’ flagship, the Santa Maria, with the smaller vessels Niña and Pinta in its wake, set sail from the Canary

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Along with packing the Supreme Court (as FDR wanted to do when an annoyingly independent judiciary was throwing up Constitutional roadblocks to his New Deal) there has been an even more disturbing idea re: upending American governance today. Having seen Al Gore in 2000 and then Hillary Clinton in 2016 win the popular vote, yet lose the electoral vote, there is a growing cry to eliminate the Electoral College altogether. Fourteen states have already joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which in effect would give their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the popular vote. The logic on the surface seems not ludicrous from both a practical and philosophical standpoint. The advocates for its abolition claim it’s an outdated mechanism from an era when communications were difficult, and it was easier to send electors in the people’s stead. Philosophically, we are an Athens-inspired democracy, they say, and as such it should be one person-one vote.
Yet the Framers greatly distrusted the Athenian model, one which they knew had a dark side, as demonstrated by the trial and execution of Socrates. They wanted power diffused and layered. Although they surely aimed to form a government that, as Hamilton wrote in Federalist 68, reflected “the sense of the people,” they did not trust the whims of a purely popular vote they feared could degenerate into mob rule. Hamilton even went so far as to proclaim to Jefferson, “Your people, sir, is nothing but a great beast.” Few in the new nation carried Hamilton’s overtly snobbish and monarchical urges, but the mindset, insult to you and me aside, is there for all to see.
So why is this idea of abolishing the Electoral College gaining traction? Certainly the Democrats’ understandable frustrations of losing two elections they feel was theirs is the catalyst (although, one doubts if Bush or Trump had won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote if these same descendants of Pericles would be so vociferous). But more to the heart of it, the blame for why such a radical idea is given consideration at all falls on our school system. The American classroom has almost completely jettisoned the teaching of any U.S. history that didn’t begin in the Progressive movement’s Year Zero of the Kennedy assassination in 1963 (ask any credentialed college student ‘Who was Patrick Henry?’ or ‘What’s Guadalcanal?’ and you’ll see what I mean.) As such they were never taught the mindset behind the framing of our Constitution and how separation and diffusion of power, not just of the central government but also of what has been called &#8220;the tyranny of the majority&#8221; was essential to creating a system that not only worked for the thirteen original states but was, to use a business term, &#8220;scalable.&#8221;
What I mean is this. Studies and methodologies vary but overall of the ten most prosperous nations, seven have populations of less than 18 million. One, Australia, has 25 million, and another, Canada, has 37 million. Then there is the United States, population 320 million. How is it that we are the only nation in this coveted group with so many people. India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Russia, etc. are nowhere to be found here. Much of the reason can be traced back to 1787 when the men who crafted our government gave us, as Franklin so famously told a citizen while adding a warning that seems relevant today, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The key to the nation’s success has been federalism. Put simply, we are not the United STATE. We are the United STATES. That ‘S’ makes all the difference. We are really a layered collection of fifty laboratories in which each state may pursue policies it deems best suited for its culture, geography, business environment, demographics, etc. In short, with a nation of so many people and 3.7 million square miles whose geography varies from the midwestern plains, to the Rocky Mountains, two coasts, five Great Lakes, swamps, deserts, forests, arid and wet climes, teeming metropolises, and sparsely populated farmland and small towns, and so on, one-size-fits-all governance breaks down.
The Electoral College is the most vivid reflection of this truth. And the most important line of defense against the creeping central state and coastal metropolitan hegemony. Majority rule works fine in local elections. Even my fellow New Jersey folks are similar enough that majority rule in state elections is viable. Yes, my town may not be Atlantic City, but there is enough common sinew to bind us – I no doubt have passed a croupier or two as we all tool along the same Garden State Parkway on our way to the shore.
But what common cause does a Montana bison rancher have with a North Carolina minister, or an Alaska fisherman with a West Virginia coal miner, other than a more over-arching sense of American-ness? For such reasons the Framers in their wisdom gave us a system that spreads out the influence of one region over another in a way that majority rule never can. Should, for example, five students in Manhattan dictate policy, both fiscal and social, to that same fisherman, coal miner, rancher or minister, with the latter four powerless to veto them? Surely the Framers thought no.
It’s interesting to note that in 2016 Donald Trump won 3,084 counties, Hillary Clinton 57. Yet Clinton won the popular vote by approximately 1.5 million. As an illustration, in the five counties that encompass New York City, she received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. Therefore these five counties alone, which comprise just 319 square miles, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular vote of the entire country. This is what centralized power in dense population centers the Framers sought to disperse looks like.
Oppressive government from on high is not the only threat to a working republic. The Electoral College is a source of stability and proper representation. It gives those in the smaller states, especially in the heartland, a say in their own destiny, and with it a sense of citizenry. They are active participants, and at times great influencers, in the nation’s decisions, and not just the flotsam and jetsam floating wherever the irresistible tides as dictated by California, New York, Florida, or Texas propels them. After all, if the mechanics of the nation in which you live is to simply cater like rural serfs to several urban pockets of that country far removed from your own parochial interests and beliefs, and if you know that you will never have a voice, then why stay in this nation at all? Those pushing for majority rule at the expense of the very foundations of an electoral system that has served us as well as any can when applied to so large and diverse a country as ours are unwittingly sowing the seeds of disunion. If any of them had been taught anything about our history besides slavery, Indian genocide, and Viet Nam, they would understand the fire they are playing with. The last time secession was tried it didn’t go so well. And 3,084 counties is a lot of land to lose, regardless of population.
Or maybe they do understand, and for them it’s just about cynically changing the rules to aid in the accumulation of raw power, come what may, in a world where they know they’ll be far removed from the ramifications of their seismic machinations. If that’s the case then there will soon be no reason for a good portion of the United States – the United STATE – to stay in the republic at all. If you want to know what that leads to, visit the Antietam battlefield.
A version of this piece was first published in July 2019. 
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Brad Schaeffer is an historian, author, musician, and trader. His eclectic body of writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, and a variety of well-read blogs and news outlets. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630">Of Another Time and Place</a> is his first novel, which takes place in World War II Germany and the deadly skies over the Western Front. You can order his book on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630">Amazon</a> or <a href="http://Barnes &amp; Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/of-another-time-and-place-brad-schaeffer/1128170819?ean=9781682616635">Barnes &amp; Noble</a>..
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2016 Election Night

SCHAEFFER: Why The Electoral College Is Vital

Electoral College

Along with packing the Supreme Court (as FDR wanted to do when an annoyingly independent judiciary was throwing up Constitutional roadblocks to his New

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Controversies over both Kurita’s and Halsey’s conduct during the battle are the topics of military round-tables to this day.  It seems that with the passage of time their actions are being treated in a fairer reflection.  Kurita didn’t just “turn tail and skedaddle” as had been the popular narrative.  As we have seen it was more complicated than that. But perhaps a further explanation for Kurita’s failure might have to do with the overall Japanese military mindset at that time.  So geared toward the offensive, they seemed flummoxed when suddenly the tables were turned and they found themselves under merciless assaults, be they from Halsey’s marauding aircraft laying waste to the Sho-Go2 plan to Taffy 3’s ferocious destroyer and jeep carriers and combined Taffy air attacks.
MacArthur, the Allied general who understood the Japanese better than any other, told his officers once: “Never let the Jap attack you. When the Japanese soldier has a co-ordinated plan of attack he works smoothly.”  On the other hand, he added, “When he is attacked—when he doesn’t know what’s coming—it is not the same.”  Then they were vulnerable because of their very rigidity.  Their inability to imagine defeat made them often incapable of coping with setbacks.  He compared it to a clenched fist which, once it seizes something and closes, can never re-open.  Such a closed fist, he said, “is useless when the fighting turns to catch-as-catch-can wrestling.”
Halsey has his own critics.  Yet “Bull’s run” was certainly in line with Nimitz’s directive to destroy a major part of the Japanese fleet if given the opportunity, and not so reckless when one considers what he knew of the condition of Center Force at the time.   In fact, the phrase “The World Wonders” was most likely not from Nimitz at all.  It was standard practice to add nonsensical phrases as padding before and after messages to throw off Japanese listening in. The full message read:
<blockquote>TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVETY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS”</blockquote>
The GG and RR meant the beginning and the end of the actual message. Unfortunately in this case the phrase seemed to make sense so it was kept on and handed to Halsey.  (One theory is that the radioman probably chose that random phrase in reference to Tennyson’s poem The Charge Of The Light Brigade as October 25 was the anniversary of the Battle of Balaclava, and in it is the line “All the world wondered.&#8221;  Who knows?)
If anyone should have been sore with Halsey it was MacArthur.  After all, it was his landings that were placed in jeopardy.  Yet the general remained a firm supporter of his favorite Navy man.  When after the battle at dinner some of MacArthur’s staff were harshly criticizing Halsey for his actions, MacArthur slammed a balled fist on the table and said: “That’s enough!  Leave the Bull alone!  He’s still a fighting admiral in my book.”
Final Thoughts
Why isn’t Leyte as well-known to the American public today as other Pacific battles such as Midway, Guadalcanal or Iwo Jima?  It’s difficult to say. Perhaps because by then large fights, both in the Pacific and Europe, were the norm, and the public was getting used to victories so it seemed less…dramatic. (Little did they know how close MacArthur’s landings came to disaster).  Perhaps war-weariness had set in.  It could be a by-product of the American public and media caring more about what went on in Europe than the Pacific.  Maybe it was just too complex and chaotic, as naval battles tend to be. They knew that something enormous happened out there, and that the U.S. Navy won big, but that was about it.   Also Hollywood seems more enamored with these other actions and so have cast Leyte into the bin of obscurity.  This is a shame.  It deserves better.   If we can (and should) celebrate the brave Spartans at Thermopylae, then forces like Taffy 3 deserve their own media homages.  Perhaps one day.
As for today, a new generation cannot be expected to know something their education system has never taught them.  It is imperative, indeed our duty as Americans, to make sure battles like Leyte Gulf are never forgotten for they serve to remind our children, and ourselves, of just what kind of country we were, and still can be.  It’s hard for us to imagine today, with our highly professional and efficient military machine, that the American armed forces during the Second World War were made up of mostly citizen-soldiers blended with a small cadre of professionals.  And yet what emerged to take on the Axis powers on three continents and four oceans was a military that was the equal to any in the world.  How could this be?
I think it has to do with believing in your cause, and thus being willing to give the last full measure for it.  This sublime devotion to something higher than the self was present on the fields of Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, Belleau Woods, Normandy, and in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.  In the aft turret of the shattered Samuel B. Roberts, for example, Gunner’s Mate 1stClass Paul Karr was found dying of agonizing intestinal wounds as he manned the five-inch gun which scored many hits on the Chokai.  His last act was to beg for help loading just one more round into the breach.
Totalitarian states have always underestimated democracies’ willingness to fight.  Japan was no different.  In the face of staggering odds, the U.S. Navy was victorious because the American sailors and pilots fought with a demoniacal fury that stunned the Japanese who no doubt believed, as Yamamoto had, that Americans were good at building things, but as a people were soft and decadent.  Clearly this was not the case.  Like their German counterparts, the Japanese, in the end, never quite understood their American foes…not until it was too late to save their navy from the bottom of the sea, their soldiers from dying in mass graves across the Pacific,  and their cities from utter annihilation.
If anything, we should teach World War II because we can learn something from the experiences of the Japanese and Germans who had the misfortune to face our grandfathers in battle.  The spirits of men like David McClintock, Earnest Evans, Ziggy Sprague, Jesse Oldendorf, David McCampbell, Bull Halsey, and the tens of thousands of intrepid seaman and fliers who made the stunning victory possible still dwell within our national character…if we let them.
It’s up to you and me to keep the faith.
Brad Schaeffer is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J1VJB12/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1">Of Another Time And Place</a>.

USA flag on green background

SCHAEFFER: The Battle Of Leyte Gulf: CONCLUSION – Controversies, Confusions, and Final Thoughts

Controversies over both Kurita’s and Halsey’s conduct during the battle are the topics of military round-tables to this day.  It seems that with the

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The Battle of Leyte Gulf was one of the most ferocious, knock-down-drag-em-out engagements of the Second World War.   With the combatants ranging from tiny submarines and CVEs to the largest battleships and fleet carriers afloat as well as clouds of aircraft, the many engagements of October 23-26, 1944 combined to make up the largest naval battle in history, in terms of tonnage, scope, and personnel involved.  Roughly 280 ships of all types were engaged in some manner along with over 1,000 warplanes, surpassing Jutland; and unlike Jutland, which had been inconclusive, Leyte Gulf was a decisive American victory.   There were probably more vessels engaged at Salamis in 480 B.C.  However, considering an ancient Greek Trireme only displaced 70 tons whereas a U.S. Iowa-class battleship displaced 45,000 (Yamato-class 72,000) one can see why the superlative claims re: Leyte Gulf are justified.  Regardless, it was an enormous fight on the high seas, the likes of which will never be seen again.
When the mopping up and follow-up operations were over, at the cost of one light carrier, two escort carriers, two destroyers and one destroyer escort and 3,000 men, the U.S. Third and Seventh Fleets had erased one fleet carrier, three light carriers, three battleships, 10 cruisers, and 11 destroyers from the Imperial Navy’s order of battle.  Not to mention the loss of 15,000 brave Japanese officers, seamen, and pilots and over 300 aircraft of all types to add to the hundreds downed on the pre-invasion sweeps.  Japan’s carrier arm, which had seemed invincible just two and a half years before, had ceased to exist.  And her last ace in the hole, her powerful surface fleet, was smashed against the torpedoes and big guns of Olderndorf’s fleet in the Surigao Strait and then, most incredibly, Ziggy Sprague’s plucky little jeep carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts of Taffy 3 and the merciless Wildcats and Avengers of Thomas Sprague’s entire task group.
As a denouement, Kumano was eventually hunted down and discovered at Santa Cruz.  On November 20, attack planes from the Ticonderoga hit her with five torpedoes and four bombs and her long ordeal that began with the blast to her bow from the Johnston the month before was finally over, as were the lives of 500 of her crew.
The Japanese government dealt with the catastrophe in typical totalitarian fashion: as with the Formosa air battles they lied about it to the public. On October 26, Radio Tokyo broadcast that: “Japanese forces now have complete air and sea superiority on and around Leyte.”  But the Japanese High Command knew better.  Sho-Go had been a gamble that ended in an ignominious defeat which guaranteed that the Philippines would fall to the Americans. Navy Minister Yonai Misumasa told his captors after the war: “When you took the Philippines that was the end of our resources.”  Leyte was secured by late December, 1944.  The Americans suffered 15,000 casualties whereas the 45,000 Japanese defenders were wiped out.  Luzon was invaded in January 1945 and after a brilliant campaign of maneuver and parry was captured by March, although some Japanese held out in the mountains until August.  35,000 Americans were casualties, 8,500 dead.  Over 205,000 Japanese were KIA and another 5,000 POWs.  Considering the size of the battles, MacArthur’s casualties had been relatively light as he predicted…especially when compared to ETO campaigns of similar scale, such as Anzio, Normandy, the Hurtgen Forest and The Bulge.  Nimitz would lose more taking Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  But clearly the war was entering into an even more savage phase as the Japanese grew more desperate.
Sadly, MacArthur’s reconquest of the Philippines would be far bloodier for the people of the archipelago caught in the middle of the fighting than he ever imagined, as he underestimated the fanaticism and savagery of the cornered Japanese.  Once it became clear that MacArthur had outmaneuvered him and was poised to enter Manila, Gen. Yamashita declared it an open city, but 30,000 Japanese sailors remained to destroy port facilities.  They got drunk, turned violent, and instead decided to fight to the death for the Philippine capital while going on a blood-thirsty rampage against the civilian population to rival the Rape of Nanking.  For the first time in the Pacific War a major urban battle ensued. By the time the street-by-street, house-by-house fighting was over, most of Manila was aflame and in ruins, and over 100,000 innocent Filipinos had been murdered in cold blood by their enraged occupiers.  Of all the Allied cities in the Second World War, only Warsaw suffered more destruction.  After the war, an enraged MacArthur would charge the blameless Yamashita with a war crime over the sacking of the city, and in one of the American general’s darkest moments saw him hang for it.
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As the American B-29s began to burn out one city after another while her amphibious juggernaut continued to move closer to Japan, taking Iwo Jima in the Bonin Islands in February 1945 and then landing on Okinawa in the Ryukyus, just 250 miles from the home islands, on April 1, 1945, desperation replaced strategy and elaborate planning.  The Kamikazes first unleashed at Leyte grew in scope until one hundred plus-strong waves sortied out to hurl themselves at the U.S. Navy.  The death and destruction they caused was far worse than any inflicted by Japan’s mighty battleships.  And as for the mightiest battleship of them all, the Yamato would also die by suicide.  With only enough fuel to make it to Okinawa, she was sent on a mission to beach herself as an unsinkable gun emplacement and do as much damage as she could to the American landings until destroyed.  Instead she was intercepted by U.S. carrier planes on April 7, 1945 and hit by no fewer than 11 torpedoes and six bombs.  She rolled over and blew up in a spectacular explosion, joining her sister ship Musashiat the bottom of the Pacific with over 3,000 of her crew.
Although the formal Japanese surrender would not take place until September 2, 1945, the ultimate outcome of the war was decided at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.  Up to then, the Japanese leadership had hoped that even if it didn’t destroy the Americans, a punishing blow might compel them to come to the table and negotiate a settlement of hostilities on far more favorable terms than the “Unconditional Surrender” Roosevelt impetuously demanded of the Axis powers.  During October, 1944, in the waters off the Philippines, those hopes were dashed.  And Japan’s fate was sealed.
Brad Schaeffer is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J1VJB12/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1">Of Another Time And Place.</a>
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War Crimes Trials in the Philippines.

SCHAEFFER: The Battle Of Leyte Gulf: Part 13 – Aftermath

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was one of the most ferocious, knock-down-drag-em-out engagements of the Second World War.   With the combatants ranging from

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At the same time Kurita’s ships were just appearing over Taffy 3’s rainswept horizon, 400 nautical miles to the northeast a brilliant dawn was breaking over the waters of Cape Engaño.  It promised a clear day and good visibility.  Which for the Japanese carrier force, now empty of all but a few CAP aircraft, meant the day of reckoning was upon them.  Adm. Ozawa had no delusions.  “I expected the complete destruction of my fleet,” he later told U.S. interrogators.  “But if Kurita’s mission was carried out that was all I wished.”  By now the pursuing American fleet was barely 100 miles to the southwest.  At 0530 the Zuikaku went to battle stations.  The first American scout planes were spotted at 0713.  Ozawa knew this meant soon the attack would begin. At 0745 he ordered the fleet to prepare for air attacks.
The first wave of 80 blue U.S. Navy warplanes, led by the cigarette-smoking Dave McCampbell, arrived overhead at 0817.  The call went out. “Tally-ho…Carriers!”  What few remaining fighter interceptors Ozawa had left were quickly sent flaming into the sea.  His only defense would be anti-aircraft and maneuver.  At 0827 his batteries opened fire. American fliers recorded that the anti-aircraft was both heavy and disturbingly accurate.  The battleships were firing star shells from their main batteries and rockets came up at them as well as the usual small and medium caliber machine gun and cannon fire.  Avenger pilot Robert Barnes declared it “The most intense I’d ever seen. All ships were firing everything they had…Every ship you flew by was shooting at you.”  Lexington Avenger crewman John Underwood described the enemy gunfire as “awesome.”  Somehow, only eleven U.S. planes were knocked down this day.  It seems as if God had created the Battle of Leyte Gulf just to demonstrate once and for all the supremacy of air power in the modern naval age.
Over the next seven hours Ozawa and his task force would endure one attack after another, amounting to 527 sorties in five waves.  The first vessel to join Davey Jones’ locker was the destroyer Akitsuki when she rolled over at 0857.  Light cruiser Tama was hit with a torpedo but survived.  Light carrier Chitose was not so lucky.  Fliers from Essex sent her to the bottom with 900 hands, including her captain.  Light carrier Zuiho was also hit and dead in the water but excellent damage control soon had her running again.  The light carrier Chiyoda was crippled by Helldivers from Lexington and Franklin.  Then Ozawa’s flagship carrier Zuikaku was descended upon by forty Helldiver and ten Avengers.  Several 500-pound bombs and a torpedo ripped into her.  Although still alive, her radar was out, and Ozawa’s staff recommended he transfer his flag to the cruiser Oyodo.  Ozawa at first refused, saying he expected to lose his ships and so would go down with the carrier.  Eventually he was persuaded to come to his senses and made the transfer in between the second and third attack.
It was a fortunate move.  The third wave was over 200 aircraft and it overwhelmed Ozawa’s shrinking task force.  Zuikaku was pounced on by planes from Lexington and doomed.  She sank at 1615 that afternoon with 842 of her crew.  Light carrier Zuiho too was set upon by strike planes also flying off Lexington, as well as San Jacinto and Franklin.  She went under at 1515 with 215 crew, but 750 managed to get off the ship before she foundered.
The attacks would last until evening.  The already crippled light carrier Chiyoda was shelled to pieces when a force of pursuing U.S. surface ships caught up to her at 1615;  she slipped beneath the waves a half hour later with all hands. The last Japanese casualty was the destroyer Hatsuzuki, hit by a barrage from U.S. cruisers as the sun set and eventually sinking by 2100.  By the time night fell and Mitscher’s pilots and sailors were finished with the day’s work they would sink one carrier, three light carriers and two destroyers while crippling another light carrier and cruiser.  Especially satisfying to the Americans was sinking the Zuikaku, making Pearl Harbor’s revenge complete.
Cape Engaño had been another one-sided victory for the U.S. Navy.  But this battle was never intended to be anything but a shooting gallery for the Americans.  And the Decoy Force had lured Task Force 38 over some 400 nautical miles away from San Bernardino Strait.  Of all the Sho-Go1 commanders, one could say that Ozawa Jisaburo was the only one who successfully carried out his assignment.  It could have been worse for his now strung-out survivors limping back to Japan, but the last two waves were reduced in size…that was because Bull Halsey was steaming back toward Leyte with Task Force 34 and TG-38.2 in response to Kinkaid’s and finally Nimitz’s calls for help.
Even though the morning reports coming in from Mitscher’s attack planes were announcing what should have been a satisfying result, the mood in New Jersey’s plot room was dour. Due to a backlog of radio messages that were sent out in order received rather than by urgency, Halsey didn’t get the first transmission until over an hour after Kinkaid’s first message went out. But once they started coming in it was clear that something pretty serious was happening off San Bernardino Strait.  Kinkaid’s steady stream of ever more insistent pleas made clear that he was being attacked by the very force Halsey had written off the day before.  It was hard to believe.  Not until Nimitz’s “THE WORLD WONDERS” message was handed to him does it seem to have really sunk in that the Bull had been snookered.  The message may have insulted Halsey’s sensibilities—he cursed and threw his hat on the deck in a rage when he read it—but it got results.  He had no choice but to act.  At 1052 he ordered Lee to take Task Force 34 and Adm. Gerald Bogan’s TG-38.2 to head for Leyte.  They were on their way by 1115.  Halsey sulked in his cabin as his New Jersey sailed with the cavalry that would arrive by morning and too late to do any good but hear the tales of Oldendorf’s great surface battle and the ferocious Taffys and their miraculous stand against the giants.
Brad Schaeffer is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J1VJB12/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1">Of Another Time And Place.</a>
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U.S.S. New Jersey

SCHAEFFER: The Battle Of Leyte Gulf: Part 12 – Destruction Of The Decoy Force

At the same time Kurita’s ships were just appearing over Taffy 3’s rainswept horizon, 400 nautical miles to the northeast a brilliant dawn was breaking

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Even as the damage to Taffy 3 mounted, the Japanese Goliath had failed to make quick work of the American David.  Quite the opposite.  The American destroyers and aircraft attacked with such vigor to the point of suicidal aggressiveness that Kurita’s warships found themselves twisting and turning to engage the tin cans while taking violent evasive action to skirt torpedoes.   As mentioned before, to avoid Hoel’s torpedoes Yamato had maneuvered in such a way as to be out of the fight, effectively blinding Kurita to the action.
Zooming Wildcats and Avengers now numbering over 200 aircraft from three Taffys crisscrossed the sky like angry bees, shooting, bombing, and rocketing every ship that passed through their gunsights. It must have been an incredible scene. A chaotic battle spread out over miles…a seascape panorama filled with plumes of oily black smoke climbing up into the humid air as the rains fall here and there, multi-colored geysers splashing high into the sky, aircraft twisting, turning, diving, ships pitching and rolling and reeling as their guns blaze, small caliber rounds making long splashes as if flaying the sea with a giant whip, all with the deafening roar of a desperate battle added.
As the morning wore on aircraft in numbers ranging from single planes to groups of 20 or more were launching, attacking, landing on whatever platform was available, refueling and rearming and launching again.  Many took off with no bombs just to buzz the enemy for effect.   In typical ad hoc American style, the CVE Manila Bay of Taffy 2 would eventually service 11 squadrons not assigned to her, and at one point her deck was occupied by aircraft from four different jeep carriers at once.  As the battle rolled on, the air attacks would become more coordinated and deadly, and play a vital role in the outcome of the action while showing that even little CVE’s could project disproportionate power against the largest and most heavily armed and armored surface ships afloat.
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The time was a little after 0900 and the battle was two hours old.  Kurita had been awake for 72 hours and was exhausted.  Although his battleships were not seriously damaged, the Battle off Samar had already cost him the heavy cruisers Chokai, Chikuma, and Suzuya sunk outright or soon scuttled, and three more damaged, Kumano being the worst with her lost bow courtesy of the Johnston.   And the air attacks were only getting worse.  When word came of U.S. aircraft landing aboard Leyte, Kurita took that as a prelude to their launching devastating attacks on his weakened flotilla. In actuality it was just Sprague getting them off what he thought were soon-to-be sunk carriers.  And due to confusion over what he was up against, out of contact with his fleet, and the unbelievable aggressiveness of the enemy, Kurita had lost tactical control of the battle.  He did eventually learn through signals from Ozawa that Halsey had sailed off, but this still had to be a major fleet confronting him.   The ferocity of the determined, concentrated attack from Taffy 3 and the losses they inflicted, plus the swarms of U.S. naval aircraft overhead, seemed to confirm this belief.
Furthermore, radio interceptors on land and in Ozawa’s fleet were picking up Kinkaid’s repeated calls for help and forwarding them to Yamato. Kurita believed they meant Halsey was already steaming towards the area, possibly moving to block his only escape through the San Bernardino Strait.  Also, and many historians overlook this factor when assessing Kurita’s decisions, due to the chasing and maneuvering at battle speeds, many of his ships were running low on precious fuel.  Kurita was starting to fear they may get into Leyte Gulf only to run out of gas before they could get out!  At 0915 Kurita ordered a withdraw to the north to take a breath and regroup.
Then came word that another carrier fleet was closing in from the north.  Kurita sailed that direction to investigate.  As it turned out it was a false report whose mysterious origin has never been clarified.  Whether an American ruse (doubtful) or more likely a mistake on the part of an incompetent radio team who never admitted their error, it served to further confuse the Japanese, while eating up time.  And then came word over the radio of the disaster at the Surigao strait. All alone and exposed, never really understanding the miniscule size of the fleet opposing him off Samar, Kurita decided it was time to save his fleet and make it back through the San Bernardino Strait before Halsey’s fast carriers got the range.
Against all odds, the Lilliputians had beat back Japan’s most powerful surface fleet assembled since Midway.  One can only imagine the feelings of relief and pride when Ziggy Sprague heard one of his sailors cry out: “Dammit, boys, they’re getting away!”
But Taffy 3’s ordeal wasn’t yet over.  Later that morning, the first organized unit of Kamikaze attack planes made their debut appearance of the war.  Launched from airbases on Luzon, they did as much damage to the jeep carriers as did the battlewagons’ shells.  Every CVE except Fanshaw Bay was damaged.  St. Lo, just renamed in honor of the men fighting at Normandy, was hit and sunk, killing 143…the first of many victims of Japan’s “Divine Wind” attacks that would just grow more numerous and desperate as the war progressed. In a fitting illustration of the three-dimensional nature of the battle, four of St. Lo’s pilots found themselves orphaned and landed on one of the newly hacked-out landing strips at Dulag on Leyte.  The fliers were promptly handed carbines and assigned a foxhole from which they would help repel a Japanese infantry attack.
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“I had expected to be swimming,” confided Ziggy Sprague after the Battle off Samar.  Instead he and his brave Taffy 3 seamen stood at their stations and watched, first in disbelief, then relief, then jubilation as the Japanese vessels, many leaking oil and belching smoke from their wounds, disappeared back over the horizon from whence they’d so suddenly appeared that same morning.  For many, though, the ordeal was just beginning.   Over the next several days, more than 1,000 exhausted Taffy survivors, and many Japanese as well, some suffering burns and open wounds, others covered in oil, all dehydrated, would have to endure the terrors and anxieties of bobbing in a shark-infested ocean before being rescued.  Some never were.  Such was the price of war.
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Brad Schaeffer is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J1VJB12/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1">Of Another Time And Place.</a>
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Japanese Suicide Plane Plummets Into Sea

SCHAEFFER: The Battle Of Leyte Gulf: Part 11 – Kurita Calls It Quits

Even as the damage to Taffy 3 mounted, the Japanese Goliath had failed to make quick work of the American David.  Quite the opposite.  The American

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Two of Taffy 3’s destroyers, Hoel and Heerman, moved in to shield the withdrawing carriers with smoke.  But the third Fletcher-class vessel, Johnston, skippered by Lt. Cmdr. Earnest E. Evans, faced with enemy ships whose gun turrets weighed more than his entire destroyer, didn’t bother to wait for orders; he turned his ship around and at flank speed charged straight at the Japanese behemoths.
Evans, who was three-fourths Cherokee and nicknamed “Chief,&#8221; knew his ten torpedoes offered the best chance to do serious damage. This meant he had to close the distance to within five miles…but that almost at point-blank range of the enemy’s big guns.  He went in anyway.  It was, as historian Jonathan Parshall called it, “an act of bravery that almost beggars the imagination.”  Inspired by Evans’ example. Ziggy Sprague then ordered Hoel and Heermann to join the already charging Johnston with the command “Small boys, attack!” Amidst a deluge of screaming shells coming at him, Lt. Cmdr. Evans ordered his crew to chase splashes in a gamble the enemy gunners wouldn’t target the same spot twice while the destroyer plowed ahead to close the range.
Having somehow survived its suicide run in, the Johnston  launched a spread of ten torpedoes at the cruiser Kumano and then peeled off to open the range while making smoke.  At least two fish slammed into the target, tearing the bow right off the Japanese warship.  Amazingly, first blood had been drawn by the Americans.  The heavy cruiser Suzuya slid beside the wounded Kumano to assist.  She made an easy target and was soon set upon by an Avenger whose torpedo took out one of her propellers.  Later up to 30 bombers would come down on her as she tried to escape at reduced speed. A near-miss detonated one of her torpedoes and she eventually sank at 1322 that day.  Cmdr. Evans’ little tin can was responsible for taking two heavy cruisers out of the fight.
The Johnston’s brazen attack, and the damage she inflicted, further convinced Kurita that he was up against a force of fleet carriers and heavy warships.  No way a mere destroyer would be so bold or take out a capital ship like that.   At 0730, Johnston’s luck ran out.  As if swatting away a pesky fly, the battleship Kongo hit the fleeing tin can with three 14-inch shells, followed by three 6.1-inch shells from Yamato.  Although the damage from Kongo’s big guns was severe, one would expect a salvo of such power to blow a destroyer to pieces.  But luck was on Taffy 3’s side as the Japanese gunners were making a mistake. They were firing armor-piercing rather than high explosive rounds from their main guns.
Essential armament when engaging thickly armored battleships and cruisers, the shells were often passing right through the smaller, thin-skinned American vessels before exploding, paradoxically inflicting less damage than would be expected.  The Yamato’s smaller caliber secondary guns by contrast made a complete slaughterhouse of the Johnston’s bridge and splinters scythed down many on deck. Capt. Evans was severely wounded. Although badly damaged, she wasn’t blown apart and so the Johnston still had some fight left in her even as Yamato was dutifully recording the sinking of a “cruiser.”
At 0730 Hoel was next to be pummeled, also taken under fire by Kongo’s main batteries. Hoel, taking several hits, managed to launch half her torpedoes at Yamato before racing for the cover of another rain squall.  She didn’t make it.  After firing her spread the destroyer was blasted with high caliber shells and disabled. At 0855  Hoel rolled over and sank; only 80 of her 235 crew survived.  Her skipper, Cmdr. Leon Kintberger, would lament: &#8220;Fully cognizant of the inevitable result of engaging such vastly superior forces, these men performed their assigned duties coolly and efficiently until their ship was shot from under them.&#8221;  She was the first American ship to go under.  But her torpedoes, even though missing Yamato, had a profound impact on the tactical situation.  The superbattleship’s skipper, Adm. Ugaki (to whom Kurita had turned over the helm), turned away from Hoel’s torpedoes rather than toward them to make a smaller target.  By the time the threat passed, Yamato, and thus Kurita, had steamed so far away from the action that Kurita couldn’t discern what was happening.  Yamato launched a float plane to try and see what was what, but with predictable results in a sky filled with U.S. Wildcats.  It was shot down in minutes, so Kurita had to wait for Yamato to come about and catch up with the rest of Center Force, adding to the chaos.
Following the Hoel, the Heermann made her own torpedo run at the Haruna while exchanging gunfire with Chikuma.  Heermann’s skipper, Cmdr. Amos Hathaway, turned to his officer of the deck, Lt. “Buck” Newsome, and said: “Buck, we need a bugler to sound the charge!” There’s dispute as to whether his fish found their marks, but no doubt the destroyer caused consternation among the Japanese while drawing fire away from the jeep carriers.  She continued to engage one heavy ship after another like a mongoose tormenting a pride of flailing lions.   Heermann also proved to be a lucky ship.  Despite being targeted by many enemy guns from all sides, Hathaway’s violent maneuvering avoided hits; he was awarded the Navy Cross for his cool under fire.
Amazingly, the little 1,250-ton escort destroyer Samuel B. Roberts now joined the fray.  With only two five-inch guns and three torpedoes, her skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Robert Copeland, announced to the crew: “This will be a fight against overwhelming odds, from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.” Under cover of smoke and rain, she headed straight for the cruiser Chokai. As she passed the mangled Johnston limping back from her attack on the Kumano, sailors aboard the Roberts saw Lt. Cmdr. Evans on Johnston’s bridge directing damage control.  The wounded Evans turned and saluted the Roberts as she went in.  The Roberts let loose three torpedoes, one of which blew a hole in Chokai. For the next hour, this tiny vessel designed for anti-submarine duty, not for exchanging broadsides with cruisers and battleships 10 to 30 times her size, expended over 600 rounds of five-inch shells, setting the cruiser Chikuma’s bridge afire.  The Roberts was so close in among the enemy that  several of the Japanese ships’ main batteries couldn’t depress their aim low enough to hit her and their shells passed overhead.  But then Kongo got the range and blasted this little destroyer escort with 14-inch shells, sending her to the bottom with 90 of her brave crew.  Copeland survived and was also awarded the Navy Cross for his incredible actions that day.  And the Roberts would thence forth be remembered in Navy lore as “the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship.”
By now the rest of the destroyer escorts, Dennis, John C. Butler, and Raymond, were in the fight launching torpedoes and firing at any Japanese ship they saw no matter how big, while the little jeep carriers were sailing southeast as fast as their underpowered engines could take them.  Ziggy Sprague figured that if Taffy 3 was in the Japanese sights then at least he could lure them away from the beaches and buy time for whatever warships were on the way either from Kinkaid or Halsey.  Fearing the worst, he’d ordered his aircraft should make for the fresh land bases on Leyte or the CVEs of the other Taffys.
Moving out from the squall they were well within range of Kurita’s heavy guns and were taking hits.  At 0750 the CVEs Kalinin Bay and White Plains were smashed by shells.  By 0810 the burning Gambier Bay was dead in the water and foundering.   (The Nagato’s log recorded the sinking of an “Independence-class light carrier.&#8221;)   When Kurita’s destroyers raced in to make a torpedo run, once again the mauled but still defiant Johnston moved out front to engage with the two five-inch guns she had left and fought so hard she threw off their aim, sparing the jeep carriers. But this was it for Johnston and her brave crew.  She was torn apart by a fusillade of large-caliber shells fired from five surrounding enemy ships and at 0945 Evans gave the order to abandon ship.  At 1010 the Johnston went under, taking 186 of her crew to the bottom.  Although he went over the rail with his men, Evans, possibly succumbing to his wounds while in the shark-infested waters, was never seen again; he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
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Throughout the chaotic morning, Kinkaid had been sending urgent messages to Halsey requesting immediate support.  One message shortly after 0800, sent in plain language, read: &#8220;My situation is critical. Fast battleships and support by air strikes may be able to keep enemy from destroying CVES and entering Leyte.&#8221;   Then at 0822, Kinkaid radioed: &#8220;Fast Battleships are Urgently Needed Immediately at Leyte Gulf&#8221;.  Another at 0905 pleaded: “Need Fast Battleships and Air Support.”  Then at 1005: “Who is guarding San Bernardino Strait?”   Meanwhile, at Pearl Harbor 3,000 miles away, Nimitz, reading these same distress calls with growing concern, sent out his own message whose acerbic tone would sting Halsey to the core: “Where is, repeat where is Task Force Thirty-Four?  The world wonders.”  Fuming at the terse rebuke, Halsey ordered his fast battleships and some carriers to disengage from Ozawa’s force and head for Leyte, although by then he was so out of position there was no way he could get there in time to help.  Taffy 3, indeed all of TG 77.4, and the beaches of Leyte, were on their own for now.
Brad Schaeffer is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J1VJB12/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1">Of Another Time And Place.</a>
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Nimitz

SCHAEFFER: The Battle Of Leyte Gulf: Part 10 – ‘Charge Of The Tin Cans’

Two of Taffy 3’s destroyers, Hoel and Heerman, moved in to shield the withdrawing carriers with smoke.  But the third Fletcher-class vessel, Johnston,

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Between 1941 and 1945, the United States built 78 escort carriers.  These vessels, known as “jeep carriers,” were designed for, as the designation suggests, escorting convoys and supporting landing zones by providing air cover.  Several variants were built but a typical escort carrier displaced 7,800 tons, was a little over 500 feet long, 65 feet wide, and had a top speed of just 18 knots.  It could accommodate up to 28 aircraft.  Unlike Halsey’s fleet and light carriers, the escorts had no armor below decks.  Their designation was CVE, which the crews quipped stood for “Combustible, Vulnerable, Expendable.”  The 18 jeep carriers in Adm. Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet, all concentrated in Thomas Sprague’s TG-77.4, were armed with 235 older model F4F Wildcat fighters and 143 Avenger torpedo bombers…about the strength of one of Halsey’s carrier groups.  TG-77.4 was further subdivided into three groups call signed “Taffy.&#8221;   Taffy 3, 2, and 1 were arrayed north-to-south respectively in the waters outside the gulf some 10-20 miles apart and equidistant to the island land battle they supported.
At dawn on October 25, 1944, with a stiff morning breeze and wisps of rain as the only disturbance on deck, the sailors and airmen of Taffy 3’s jeep carriers went about their routine preparations to support the Army land forces fighting on Leyte.  If they expected to see any ships at all other than their own, it would have been elements of Task Force 34 which was supposedly out there guarding the San Bernardino Strait.  This all changed when at 0647 some twenty miles to the north, Ens. Bill Brooks flying an Avenger of the CVE St.Loon anti-submarine patrol suddenly beheld a sight that took is breath away.  He quickly reported back to the fleet what he saw: a substantial force of enemy warships was steaming down the east coast of Samar and closing fast on Taffy 3.  At first his report was greeted with incredulity until he insisted: “I can see the biggest meatball flag on the biggest battleship I ever saw!”
With Oldendorf’s battleships and cruisers giving chase to the enemy fleet to the south, Adm. Sprague’s task group was hopelessly out-gunned.   Taffy 3 that was about to bear the brunt of Kurita’s attack only had six jeep carriers, three destroyers and four smaller destroyer escorts.  None of them mounted more than five-inch guns, whereas Yamato with her nine 18.1-inchers carried the heaviest armament ever put to sea.  In fact, Yamato displaced more tonnage than all of Taffy 3’s ships combined! And she was one of several battleships and cruisers just twenty miles away.  It was a mismatch of mythic proportions.
Almost simultaneous with the scout plane’s report, the lookouts on Taffy 3’s jeep carriers spied the unmistakable pagoda-like masts of Japanese warships on the horizon.  Commanding Taffy 3 was Rear Adm. Clifton “Ziggy” Sprague (no relation to the task group commander) aboard his flagship CVE Fanshaw Bay.   Sprague reacted with complete presence of mind.  He immediately ordered his carriers to scramble all their aircraft and head east for the cover of a nearby rain squall.  Every ship was to make smoke to obscure the carriers.
Meanwhile Kurita ordered Center Force to “Close And Attack Enemy Carriers!”  without forming a cohesive line of battle, compelling them to steam pell-mell for the Americans.  Although he would later be criticized for this rash command, one can understand Kurita’s decision here.  It is tempting now, with the omniscience of the historian, to discount the fog of battle.  No one in Center Force had ever confronted jeep carriers before.  As far as Kurita or anyone else could tell from 20 miles out, the flat tops were the only kind they knew, which were the large and fast fleet and light carriers.  So that was what they had to be.
And therefore, going by scale, he mistook the destroyers for battleships and destroyer escorts for cruisers.  Had Kurita paused to move his ships into line, those fast carriers (so he thought) which were capable of over 30 knots, a full 12 knots faster than the CVEs he’d never seen, and very far out could have just gunned it and slid away. Still, amidst the consternation, the odds were heavily in Center Force’s favor.  At just before 0700, at a range of 19 miles, the big guns of Yamato opened up on Taffy 3.  The rest of Kurita’s warships followed suit, as announced by the sinister howl of large-caliber projectiles ripping through the air.
 The incoming shells hitting the water followed by enormous geysers marched ever closer to the fleeing jeep carriers.  The Japanese shells were loaded with dye packs making splashes of many colors, pink, red, purple, blue, green and yellow so each ship could identify where its rounds were falling.  This prompted one seaman aboard the CVE White Plains to exclaim “They’re shooting at us in technicolor!”  One round, possibly from Yamato, just missed the jeep carrier, but the concussion of the blast damaged her enough to make thick black smoke prompting the Japanese to think they’d sunk her, granting her a reprieve.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, Ziggy Sprague sent out an urgent plea for help.  Task group commander Thomas Sprague ordered Taffys 1 and 2 to join Taffy 3 in launching aircraft.  As there were no Japanese fighters to contend with, the American fliers in their Wildcats and Avengers, armed for whatever missions they’d been assigned that day, furiously engaged the enemy ships, dropping bombs, depth charges, torpedoes, firing rockets, and strafing top-side.  The only thing for Taffy 3’s jeep carriers to do now was make a run for the squall at flank speed.  By 0715 the carriers were under the cloudburst and, for the moment, enjoying a stay of execution as the Japanese optics couldn’t see through the rain. (Only Yamatohad radar range-finding).  But they had to keep moving, and once out from under the rain they would be easy prey.  Ziggy Sprague fully expected to see Taffy 3 obliterated.
And then something happened that defies the imagination.
Brad Schaeffer is the author of the acclaimed World War II novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J1VJB12/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1">Of Another Time And Place.</a>
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Screen Shot 2020-02-26 at 9.56.51 PM

SCHAEFFER: The Battle Of Leyte Gulf: Part 9 – ‘The Biggest Battleship I Ever Saw!’

Between 1941 and 1945, the United States built 78 escort carriers.  These vessels, known as “jeep carriers,” were designed for, as the designation

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