A new statue of an overweight black woman placed in Times Square in New York City is inspiring a lot of reactions online, especially since it&#8217;s being compared to Michelangelo’s “David.” 
Times Square Arts recently erected the statue by artist Thomas J Price, which is called &#8220;Grounded in the Stars,&#8221; as a temporary display in the tourist-heavy area of Manhattan. There will also be a “Man Series” of billboards displayed in the area.
The Times Square website <a href="https://www.timessquarenyc.org/tsq-arts-projects/grounded-in-the-stars">says</a> of the piece: &#8220;Price’s multi-channel presentation on the screens and sculptural installation on the plaza below forms a two-part takeover in Times Square that foregrounds the intrinsic value of the individual and amplifies traditionally marginalized bodies on a monumental scale.&#8221;
The website notes that the statue depicts “a fictionalized character” who was “constructed from images, observations, and open calls spanning between Los Angeles and London.” 
“The young woman depicted in Grounded in the Stars carries familiar qualities, from her stance and countenance to her everyday clothing,” it says, noting that her “stance is a subtle nod to Michelangelo’s David.”
The site also says, “the woman in Grounded in the Stars cuts a stark contrast to the pedestaled permanent monuments — both white, both men — which bookend Duffy Square, while embodying a quiet gravity and grandeur.”
Social media users have had overwhelmingly negative reactions to the statue.
“They tear down statues of American heroes and replace them with statues of random obese black women. That’s because the Left has no historical heroes. Everyone who was born before approximately 2005 is inherently problematic,” Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh <a href="https://x.com/mattwalshblog/status/1920116456454328758?s=43&amp;t=BDz6oekueqrSVJ50bM62xw">wrote</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
They tear down statues of American heroes and replace them with statues of random obese black women. That’s because the Left has no historical heroes. Everyone who was born before approximately 2005 is inherently problematic.
<a href="https://t.co/ypjxG1p2ZU">pic.twitter.com/ypjxG1p2ZU</a>
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1920116456454328758?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“In 2021, NYC removed a statue of Thomas Jefferson from City Hall due to ‘racism.’ The city has now erected a huge statue of a rotund woman in Times Square,” conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey <a href="https://x.com/conservmillen/status/1920201578516263221">wrote</a>. 
“So, we’re taking down monuments to people who accomplished some of [the] greatest feats in human history, from which we are all still benefitting (sic), and instead honoring random people who have zero notable contributions. Doomed,” she added.
“Statues aren’t just art. they’re markers of who we are and what we stand for. But the Left doesn’t want heroes, they want a blank slate to push their woke agenda,” another commenter <a href="https://x.com/OneXOneY/status/1920118030673072397">added</a>.

Grounded in the Stars

New NYC Statue Of Overweight Black Woman Touted As ‘Contrast’ To Monuments Of White Men

New NYC Statue Of Overweight Black Woman Touted As 'Contrast' To Statues Of White Men

General

History

Manhattan

New York

New York City

Race

Statues

Times Square

U.S.

My Old Home

The Battle Of Luzon, Part 4: Victory And Aftermath

American General

Douglas MacArthur

Japan

Pacific Ocean

Philippines

U.S. Army

U.S. Military

U.S. Navy

World War II

To truly appreciate the tragedy that unfolded in Manila in 1945, one must consider that up until then the city had been nicknamed “The Pearl of the Orient.” Historian James Scott offers: “In the four decades leading up to World War II, Manila developed into a small slice of America in Asia, home not only to thousands of U.S. service members, but employees of companies like General Electric, Del Monte, and B.F. Goodrich. The city boasted a great quality of life, with department stores and social clubs, golf courses and swimming pools, all in a tropical setting, and at a fraction of the cost of living in the United States.”
Then in December 1941, the Japanese came.
Filthy, ragged, half-starved U.S. prisoners were paraded through the streets of Manila after their 1942 surrender. The sight of their more physically imposing former protectors being ignominiously herded along by diminutive Japanese soldiers was disillusioning. “Filipinos stood and watched in an agony of embarrassment,” recalled Manila journalist Nick Joaquin. “These were the God blessed Americans, supposedly invincible. Now here they were: mighty giants being herded rudely by little Jap soldiers. We would never recover from that loss of innocence.”
For the unlucky POWs, however, their three-year nightmare of criminally sadistic captivity was just beginning. 3,700 U.S. civilians were also caught up in the invasion; they would languish in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp, where they desperately ate dogs, cats, pigeons, rats, insects, anything to survive. On the eve of their liberation, the civilian prisoners starved to death at a rate of three to four per day. (MacArthur’s Philippine guerilla network informed him of this, hence his relentless drive to keep moving).
Believing their new Filipino subjects to be an inferior race, the Emperor’s troops had no qualms about looting food supplies and stores, while stealing vital farm equipment which left fields to rot. By the third year of Japanese occupation — with the exception of Japan’s puppet Filipino government officials and collaborators — starvation was rampant, killing some 500 civilians per day. Hordes of beggars roamed the streets; some went so far as to dig up graves to rob jewelry, watches, anything that could be bartered for a fistful of rice. Parents unable to feed their children might abandon or even sell them. (U.S. intelligence reported that by 1944, it cost less to buy a Filipino child than a hog).
<div id="attachment_856933" style="width: 719px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856933" class="wp-image-856933 " src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/SC-202168-710x576.jpeg" alt="General MacArthur visits the ruins of the Manila hotel that was his pre-war home on Luzon, 23 February 1945. He is accompanied by Colonel James Corbett and two infantrymen, one armed with an M1 rifle. Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="709" height="575" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/SC-202168-710x576.jpeg 710w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/SC-202168-300x243.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/SC-202168.jpeg 740w" sizes="(max-width: 709px) 100vw, 709px" />General MacArthur visits the ruins of the Manila hotel that was his pre-war home on Luzon, 23 February 1945. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
On February 3, 1945, U.S. troops entered the capital. But they did not find an open city. Instead they faced a fortified urban center they would have to take block-by-block, street-by-street, even house-by-house. This came as a rude shock to their five-star commander. Having thoroughly outmaneuvered his enemy, MacArthur expected there to be few if any Japanese left in the area. Other than its sprawling port facilities, which could be demolished before evacuation to deny them to the Americans, the city held no strategic value, as MacArthur himself concluded in 1941 when he abandoned Manila for the more defensible jungle terrain of Bataan, declaring it an open city. Therefore, the notion that Yamashita, a first-rate commander, would choose to defend Manila perplexed him — and then, as the destruction and carnage mounted, infuriate him. But MacArthur’s assumptions had been correct; the Tiger of Malaya had no intention of fighting for the Philippine capital. 
Yamashita, however, was dealing with a problem that plagued the Japanese High Command throughout the war. That was the intense rivalry, even downright disdain, between the Imperial Army and Navy top brass. In the case of Manila, while Yamashita pulled most of his army troops out of the city before it was surrounded, some 20,000 Japanese sailors under the command of Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi remained behind to destroy Manila’s harbor.
Although still technically under Yamashita’s command, Iwabuchi and his men didn’t see it that way. They vowed to make a stand, spending the weeks prior to the enemy’s arrival throwing up hasty fortifications, sowing landmines, constructing pillboxes and tank traps. When the Americans approached, the Japanese in the besieged capital opted to get drunk and fight to the death. 
And the atrocities began.
<div id="attachment_856963" style="width: 717px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856963" class="wp-image-856963 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-273406-707x576.jpeg" alt="Liberation of Manila, 1945. Stretcher party brings out a wounded U.S. soldier, following an attack by U.S. troops to liberate Filipino prisoners in the walled city, 23 February 1945. Note wrecked buildings. Catalog #: 80-G-273406. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="707" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-273406-707x576.jpeg 707w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-273406-300x244.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-273406-768x626.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-273406.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 707px) 100vw, 707px" />Stretcher party brings out a wounded U.S. soldier, following an attack by U.S. troops to liberate Filipino prisoners in the walled city, 23 February 1945. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
In a mid-February letter to his wife, Gen. Eichelberger wrote with grim understatement, “I hear the big parade has been called off.” In fact, it would have been impossible to march down any Manila street as no thoroughfare would be free of debris and corpses, mostly civilians. By the time the last shot was fired, the Pearl of the Orient would be reduced to a smoldering heap of rubble, whose gutters ran red with the blood of innocents.
It is impossible to adequately describe the horrors the Filipinos endured. Men were bound and shot, bayoneted or mutilated en masse, while patients were strapped to hospital beds before the buildings were set ablaze. Females of every age were brutally gang-raped before being systematically murdered. Babies were tossed in the air and skewered on bayonets by sadistic Japanese who smeared the children’s eyeballs on walls like jelly.
Filipina survivor Carmen Guerrero Nakpil remembered: “It was like a scene from hell. We were running like rats. I saw my classmates dragged through the streets to be raped by the Japanese in the Bayview Hotel. I saw my neighbors cut down by sniper bullets. The killing was terrible.”
<div id="attachment_856917" style="width: 708px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856917" class="size-large wp-image-856917" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3139974-698x576.jpg" alt="20th March 1945: American soldiers watching as refugees pick their way through the debris of North Manila, after safely arriving in the American held part of the city while fighting continues elsewhere. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)" width="698" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3139974-698x576.jpg 698w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3139974-300x248.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3139974-768x634.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3139974.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 698px) 100vw, 698px" />20th March 1945: American soldiers watching as refugees pick their way through the debris of North Manila, after safely arriving in the American held part of the city while fighting continues elsewhere. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)</div>
When the Japanese burst into the LaSalle chapel, Jose and Juanita Carlos were hiding in the cellar with their children. Jose was dragged off and killed. Then they came back for the rest of the family. Sixteen-year-old Dionisia was bayoneted until unconscious. When she came too she looked for her family. She found her mother and nine-year-old sister and six-year-old brother bayoneted to death, and her nineteen-year-old sister shot dead.
Although it has been claimed that it was a spontaneous eruption of violence against the Filipinos upon whom rogue Imperial troops took out their rage for siding with the Americans (and fear as death closed in), captured Japanese records show that, as with Nanking, the massacre was officially sanctioned, even encouraged. One order went so far as to give explicit instructions on how to commit mass murder: “When Filipinos are to be killed, they must be gathered into one place and disposed of with the consideration that ammunition and manpower must not be used to excess. Because the disposal of dead bodies is a troublesome task, they should be gathered into houses which are scheduled to be burned or demolished. They should also be thrown into the river.”
And yet, throughout the carnage of what has been called the “Pacific Stalingrad”, courageous Filipinos risked their lives braving sniper fire and shell bursts to fill canteens and bring ammunition and food to the Americans hunkered down in the wreckage.
<div id="attachment_856915" style="width: 736px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856915" class="size-large wp-image-856915" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3241992-726x576.jpg" alt="February 1945: A Filipino guerrilla fighting Japanese forces of occupation in Manila. Lacking a tripod for his machine-gun, he has tied the weapon to a fire hydrant. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)" width="726" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3241992-726x576.jpg 726w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3241992-300x238.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3241992-768x609.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3241992.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 726px) 100vw, 726px" />February 1945: A Filipino guerrilla fighting Japanese forces of occupation in Manila. Lacking a tripod for his machine-gun, he has tied the weapon to a fire hydrant. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)</div>
Despite MacArthur’s repeated calls for the Japanese to surrender, they resisted with suicidal desperation while the American commander anguished over the destruction of the once beautiful city. GIs accustomed to fighting in jungles and beaches had to quickly learn the ways of deadly urban warfare, in which every floor of every building, every stairwell, even closets, were bitterly contested. It was a brutal, often hand-to-hand, form of combat the likes of which had not been seen in the Pacific before, made all the more difficult by the number of civilians.
The Americans, wielding rifles, grenades, satchel charges, flamethrowers, sometimes even rocks and spades, eventually cornered the remaining Japanese in the one-quarter-square-mile fortress of Intramuros, whose walls, twenty-five feet high and forty feet thick, had withstood maritime raiders and earthquakes since the 1570s. General Kenney wanted to bomb the citadel, but MacArthur, aware that many civilians were trapped within, denied his requests, especially the use of napalm. But he did allow the big guns to fire on the holdouts. (In the end, the shelling was so destructive it didn’t really matter.) Eventually the guns breached the walls and the Japanese, including the recalcitrant Iwabuchi, were wiped out or committed ritual suicide.
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With tactics in the capable hands of his field commanders, MacArthur set out to visit the liberated Santo Tomas and Bilibid prison camps. The conditions of the internees horrified him. He was especially moved by the military captives at Bilibid, who made pathetic attempts to stand at attention. In his memoirs he wrote: “Here was all that was left of my men of Bataan and Corregidor…As I passed slowly down the scrawny, suffering column, a murmur accompanied me as each man barely speaking above a whisper, said ‘You’re back,’ or ‘You made it’…I could only reply, ‘I’m a little late, but we finally came.’”
<div id="attachment_856923" style="width: 934px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856923" class="size-large wp-image-856923" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-563522359-924x576.jpg" alt="American soldiers who were part of the liberation of the Japanese Bilibid POW camp stop to talk with two internees who had been in the prison camp for two years, Manila, Philippines, February 11, 1945. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)" width="924" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-563522359-924x576.jpg 924w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-563522359-300x187.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-563522359-768x479.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-563522359.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 924px) 100vw, 924px" />American soldiers who were part of the liberation of the Japanese Bilibid POW camp stop to talk with two internees who had been in the prison camp for two years, Manila, Philippines, February 11, 1945. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)</div>
By the time the 29-day fight for Manila was over, and every last Japanese killed, the city had been utterly annihilated with some 11,000 buildings reduced to ruins and ash. 70% of the utilities, 75% of the factories, 80% of the southern residential district and the entire business district had been razed. Of all the Allied cities, only Nanking and Warsaw saw such destruction and civilian carnage. No one will ever know for sure but it is estimated that 100,000 Filipinos died at the hands of the enraged Japanese.
On March 4, 1945, Manila was officially declared secured. The smoking Philippine capital had been liberated, but at a horrific cost to the city and its bewildered inhabitants. CBS News correspondent Bill Dunn would reflect on the tragedy, summing up the horrible effects of war: “The Manila of 1941 was a unique Manila, a Manila that had never existed before, a Manila that would never exist again.”
* * *
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-1-climax-of-the-southwest-pacific-war" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 1: Climax Of The Southwest Pacific War</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-2-race-to-manila" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 2: Race To Manila</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-3-the-massacre-of-manila" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 3: The Massacre Of Manila</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-4-victory-and-aftermath" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 4: Victory And Aftermath</a></h3>
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Manila Harbour

The Battle Of Luzon, Part 3: The Massacre Of Manila

In planning the battle for Luzon, MacArthur would have liked to surprise his waiting opponent. But Yamashita understood that Lingayen Gulf offered the only approach to the central Luzon plain, on which U.S. tanks could maneuver most effectively. It also had the best road and rail networks approaching Manila. Although he initially stationed 36,000 troops to cover the 22 miles of landing beaches, Yamashita conceded that U.S. naval firepower would just scythe his men down on the shoreline. And despite his public bravura, the Japanese commander knew that, with Halsey’s and Kinkaid’s U.S. fleets now masters of the sea, and Kenney’s planes filling the skies, the best he could really hope for was a holding action through a defense in depth to give the home islands time to prepare for the inevitable invasion. 
So, in December 1944, he withdrew his men and headquarters, along with members of Tokyo’s puppet Philippine government, headed by the controversial President José Laurel, into the more defensible terrain around the Philippine summer capital of Baguio, 30 miles east of Lingayen and 150 miles north of Manila.
<div id="attachment_856493" style="width: 750px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856493" class="size-large wp-image-856493" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-59525-740x576.jpg" alt="Battle line entering the Lingayen Gulf. The USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) leads the USS Colorado (BB-45), USS Louisville (CA-28), USS Portland (CA-33), and USS Columbia (CL-56) in a battle line entering the Lingayen Gulf preceding the landing off Luzon in the Philippines in January 1945. Catalog #: 80-G-59525. National Archives &amp; Records Administration." width="740" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-59525-740x576.jpg 740w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-59525-300x233.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-59525-768x598.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-59525.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" />National Archives &amp; Records Administration.</div>
At dawn on January 9, 1945, code-named &#8220;S-Day,&#8221; the enormous U.S. fleet — the largest of any landings in the Pacific and equal to the American contingent at Normandy — lay to in Lingayen Gulf and over 800 anchors splashed into the unusually calm waters. It was an awesome display of U.S. industrial might. At 0700, the big guns of some 70 battleships and cruisers roared, sending shells of all calibers whistling down onto what turned out to be undefended beaches. Beginning at 0930, the first of 175,000 troops of Gen. Walter Krueger’s Sixth Army waded ashore while Gen. Robert Eichelberger’s smaller Eighth Army was held in reserve. 
<div id="attachment_856503" style="width: 722px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856503" class="size-large wp-image-856503" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-507339859-712x576.jpg" alt="Coast Guard-manned landing barges bringing troops to the beaches of Lingayen Gulf during World War Two, Luzon, Philippines, circa January 7th 1945. (Photo by US Coast Guard/Getty Images)" width="712" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-507339859-712x576.jpg 712w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-507339859-300x243.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-507339859-768x621.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-507339859.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 712px) 100vw, 712px" />US Coast Guard/Getty Images</div>
By the end of the day, the GIs would push eight miles inland. Only the occasional Kamikaze air and even suicide boat attacks, with sporadic artillery rounds warbling in from distant enemy gun positions, disturbed the otherwise smooth operations.
Once four of Kruger’s divisions made it ashore and began to press inland, MacArthur left his headquarters on the light cruiser USS Boise and headed in. Filipino peasants waving U.S. and Philippine flags joyfully greeted the Americans, while others raced ahead to spread the word that after over 1,200 days of Japanese rule, MacArthur had returned as promised, and their deliverance was finally at hand.
<div id="attachment_856693" style="width: 725px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856693" class="wp-image-856693 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-304340-715x576.jpeg" alt="Lingayen Gulf Landings, 1945. General Douglas MacArthur and staff leaving USS BOISE (CL-47) on 9 January 1945 to go ashore on the Lingayen Gulf beaches, Luzon Philippine Islands. Catalog #: 80-G-304340. National Archive. Naval History and Heritage Command" width="715" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-304340-715x576.jpeg 715w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-304340-300x242.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-304340-768x619.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-304340.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 715px) 100vw, 715px" />Lingayen Gulf Landings, 1945. General Douglas MacArthur and staff leaving USS BOISE (CL-47) on 9 January 1945 to go ashore on the Lingayen Gulf beaches, Luzon Philippine Islands. National Archive. Naval History and Heritage Command</div>
The central Luzon plain, the amphitheater in which Krueger’s army would be maneuvering, was roughly 40 miles wide and ran some 110 miles due south from Lingayen to Manila Bay. It was walled in on each side by high, rugged peaks blanketed under a thick layer of jungle vegetation. It provided ideal terrain for flying columns to advance quickly down the fine roads leading to Manila.
MacArthur had earned the epithet “Dugout Dug” on this island in 1942 when he rarely ventured from his headquarters in Corregidor’s Malinta Tunnel to visit the front lines during the bitter struggle to hold Bataan. But now the General was, quite literally, often out in front leading the GIs and tankers in their advance south. No doubt invigorated by the prospect of reaching his beloved city of Manila, he raced around the battlefield in his five-star-studded Jeep like a man decades younger. At one moment he could be found perched on the turret of a tank ascertaining Japanese positions. Other times up in a B-17 watching a parachute jump. Once when confronted by an enemy roadblock and a Nambu machine gun opened up, a flummoxed lieutenant shouted to him, “We’re going after those fellows, but please, sir, get down; we’re under fire!” Another time, while inspecting the lines of the 161st Infantry regiment, they were suddenly attacked by Japanese tanks and the lines buckled. In conduct reminiscent of his days leading the Rainbow Division over the top in the First World War, the highest-ranking general in the Pacific Theater personally rallied the troops who beat back the assault, earning him his third Silver Star.
Although courageous to the point of being reckless, there most likely was a method to MacArthur’s madness. It was to goad the cautious Krueger to move faster as he suspected, correctly, that Yamashita had opted to withdraw into the rugged mountains east of Lingayen to let the Americans come to him in time. Thus, he saw no need for caution. But Krueger feared a screaming host of Japanese might come charging down from the mountains to puncture his left flank, cutting him off from the beachhead to his rear, and, in Romulo’s words, “slicing him up like a pie.” But for a frustrated MacArthur, who justifiably feared Japanese reprisals against POWs and Filipino civilians alike, speed was everything. “Get to Manila!” he exhorted his commanders. “Go around the Japs. Bounce off the Japs. Save your men, but get to Manila!”
<div id="attachment_856567" style="width: 733px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856567" class="wp-image-856567 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-258490-723x576.jpeg" alt="Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, USN, Commander Seventh Fleet, and Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, USA Commander Sixth Army, on board PT-525, off Leyte Island, the Philippines, 23 October 1944. The boat was taking General MacArthur ashore at the time. Catalog #: 80-G-258490. National Archives. Original Date: Mon, Oct 23, 1944. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="723" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-258490-723x576.jpeg 723w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-258490-300x239.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-258490-768x612.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-258490.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px" />Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, USN, Commander Seventh Fleet, and Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, USA Commander Sixth Army, on board PT-525, off Leyte Island, the Philippines, 23 October 1944. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
While Kruger was directing his Sixth Army in their fight to capture the enormous complex of runways and installations that made up Clark Field, his commander unleashed his reserves in a series of rapid thrusts elsewhere that confounded his Japanese opponent. Due to the Mindoro landing, Yamashita had to contend with the possibility of an attack from the south. So he sent part of his army to shore up defenses below Manila. As such, the landings in Lingayen caught every Japanese column in motion.
On January 31, MacArthur put a division of paratroopers from Eichelberger’s Eighth Army ashore at Nasugbu, 40 miles south of Manila. The landings were virtually unopposed as Col. Masatoshi Fujishige, upon whose shoulders the defense of the area had been entrusted, had placed his troops in defensive positions closer to Mindoro. In a scene reminiscent of the Allied advance through Holland, civilians cheered their American saviors, gifting them with food and spirits, and covering their vehicles in flowers until they resembled victorious Roman chariots.
Meanwhile, the General landed another corps at Subic Bay west of Manila above Bataan, and with minimal losses captured the valuable port of Olongapo while hitting the bewildered Yamashita with another regiment at Mariveles on the southern tip of the peninsula, trapping the Japanese troops in a double envelopment. Bataan, on which the Americans and Filipinos held out for months in 1942, fell in seven days. By the end of January, Manila was surrounded.
The most difficult Japanese nut to crack should have been the 5,000 Imperial soldiers stationed on the island bastion of Corregidor in the mouth of Manila Bay. With exquisite timing, paratroopers descended on the island’s “topside” while GIs stormed the “bottomside” beaches. After a week of fighting, the remaining defenders blew themselves up in the Malinta Tunnel. Although the Japanese lost twice their initial landing force taking the island in 1942, the Americans suffered fewer than 300 KIA (50 in the final explosion).
<div id="attachment_856583" style="width: 759px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-856583" class="size-large wp-image-856583" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3225792-749x576.jpg" alt="16th February 1945: American paratroops of the 503rd Regiment (Parachute Regiment) drop on the bomb-shattered terrain of the island of Corregidor in the Philippines. The air warriors quickly seized batteries and defences, clearing the entrance to Manila Bay and opening the harbour to the Allied fleet. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="749" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3225792-749x576.jpg 749w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3225792-300x231.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3225792-768x590.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3225792.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 749px) 100vw, 749px" />Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</div>
The landings and subsequent race to Manila from all sides had been a remarkable strategic enterprise, which earned the ardent praise of no less an astute observer than Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. George Marshall, who in his report would declare: “Yamashita’s inability to cope with MacArthur’s swift moves, and his desired reaction to the deception measures, combined to place the Japanese in an impossible situation.” The enemy, he went on, “was forced into a piecemeal commitment of his troops” which left the Agno River, a potential major defensive stronghold, lightly defended. MacArthur was able to neutralize Japanese numerical parity by compelling his opponent to split his forces and then scramble to attack with whatever units were in the zone of operations. The General himself would write in his memoirs with typical MacArthur braggadocio (though in this case justified) “Never had such large numbers of troops been so outmaneuvered…and left tactically impotent to take an active part in the final battle.”
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With Clark Field finally in the methodical Krueger’s hands after heavy fighting, as well as engineers clearing out booby traps the Japanese had sewn all over the installation, the Americans from both the north and south were poised to enter the capital.
It was now early February and the 1st Cavalry, the vanguard of 100,000 Americans pouring down Luzon’s main highways while the rest guarded the beachhead, had reached the suburbs of Manila. With the bulk of Yamashita’s forces nullified in the rugged terrain around Baguio, victory was in the air. The triumphant MacArthur, now at the threshold of all he’d been pushing towards for the past three years, was preparing a grand parade through Manila ala the Allies’ triumph down the Champs Élysées. The media celebrated. Newsweek reported: “Prize Of The Pacific, Manila, Fell To MacArthur Like A Ripened Plum!” Time magazine headlined its Philippine story “Victory! Mabuhay!” (Tagalog for “Hurrah!”).
But the headlines were shatteringly premature. In fact, before the fight for Luzon was over, the city of Manila would suffer one of the most cruel and heartbreaking tragedies of the Second World War.
* * *
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-1-climax-of-the-southwest-pacific-war" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 1: Climax Of The Southwest Pacific War</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-2-race-to-manila" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 2: Race To Manila</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-3-the-massacre-of-manila" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 3: The Massacre Of Manila</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-4-victory-and-aftermath" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 4: Victory And Aftermath</a></h3>
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Correction: And earlier version of this article contained a photo of General Douglas MacArthur returning to the Philippines, wading through the water. MacArthur&#8217;s famous return took place in 1944 not in January of 1945. The image has been removed.

80-G-59525

The Battle Of Luzon, Part 2: Race To Manila

In December 1914, an observer flying over Western Europe would have gazed down at a most striking, and sinister, topographical feature. Two chains of deep trenches and concertinas of barbed wire slithered in snake-like patterns as far as the eye could see from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps, slicing an unsightly laceration across the blasted out fields of northern France and Belgium.
Hunkered down within these subterranean troughs amid the stench of feces, urine, decaying flesh and gun smoke, squatted the great armies of the Western Front. They glared at each other across a moonscape of water-logged shell craters, trees blown into twisted matchsticks silhouetted against a bleak sky, and grotesquely decomposing bodies of friend and foe alike left to ignominiously rot out in the “no-man’s land” between the lines.
<div id="attachment_848779" style="width: 441px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-848779" class="size-large wp-image-848779" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3067223-431x576.jpg" alt="circa 1914: German soldiers in the trenches during WW I. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="431" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3067223-431x576.jpg 431w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3067223-224x300.jpg 224w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3067223.jpg 766w" sizes="(max-width: 431px) 100vw, 431px" />Circa 1914: German soldiers in the trenches during WW I. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)</div>
The big guns to the rear lobbed their deadly payloads down onto bewildered youths, many in their teens, just struggling to survive this eerily troglodytic existence; one that, considering their innocence of life just the year before, must have seemed like a nightmare from which they could not stir.
The war, just five months in, had begun as a conflict of mobility, when in August the Kaiser’s armies, distinct in their steel gray long coats and spiked pickelhaube helmets, confidently marched through Belgium to strike at the French in a drive towards Paris and victory. But the poilus and their British Expeditionary Force (BEF) allies rallied at the Marne, just 30 miles from the French capital, and threw the Germans back in a bloodletting that shocked the world.
A series of failed attempts to outflank the other sent casualties on both sides soaring, but no breakthroughs were made, and the front stabilized. In a very short time the troops settled in, burrowing deep into the ground to escape the killing power of the new technological age of machine guns and fast-firing artillery. And there they remained, stagnant, immobile, rain soaked, miserable.
And yet even in the trenches, the very monument to man’s savagery and folly, hopeful demonstrations of the better angels of our nature could occur. And so it was on Christmas 1914, that one of the most poignant scenes in the history of warfare took place.
While the men of the BEF settled into their trenches to try and celebrate the holiday as best they could, strange sounds began to drift over from the German lines. Singing. “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht / Alles schläft; einsam wacht …”
British Private Frank Sumter recalled: “And then we heard the Germans singing ‘Silent Night, Holy Night.’ And our boys said ‘Let’s join in.’ So we joined in with the song.” At first, the British sentries weren’t sure what to make of the German activity, which included lighting festive candles on the rim of their trenches. Nervous Tommies peeked their heads up over the parapets then quickly ducked back down for fear of snipers.
But no one shot.
<div id="attachment_848753" style="width: 756px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-848753" class="size-large wp-image-848753" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-506037221-746x576.jpg" alt="British and German meeting in No Man's Land during unofficial true Christmas 1914. Northumberland Hussars, 7th Division, Bridoux-Banks Sector. (Photo by: Robert Hunt/Windmill Books/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" width="746" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-506037221-746x576.jpg 746w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-506037221-300x232.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-506037221-768x593.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-506037221.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 746px) 100vw, 746px" />British and German meeting in No Man&#8217;s Land during unofficial true Christmas 1914. Northumberland Hussars, 7th Division, Bridoux-Banks Sector. (Photo by: Robert Hunt/Windmill Books/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)</div>
Pvt. Leslie Walkington remembered the extraordinary event that followed. “And then we saw a German standing up, waving his arms. And we didn’t shoot.” Instead of a battle cry, the Germans were calling out to their British Kameraden to have a truce and celebrate Christmas together. The men on both sides of the lines eventually overcame their suspicions and climbed out of their trenches. They met out in the open, offering enemies not the cold steel of thrusting bayonets, but rather the warm flesh of extended hands.
A German Lieutenant Neimann picked up his binoculars and to his surprise &#8220;saw the incredible sight of our soldiers exchanging cigarettes, schnapps and chocolate with the enemy!&#8221;
There is a commonality among soldiers that transcends national politics or flag. By this time in the war, both sides had shared the same experiences of chronic fear, physical misery and illness, filth, mourning lost friends, and homesickness. The truce extended to parts of the French sector as well. Gustave Berthier wrote to his parents, &#8220;On Christmas Day the Boches made a sign showing they wished to speak to us. They said they didn&#8217;t want to shoot. &#8230; They were tired of making war, they were married like me.&#8221;
A common legend of the Christmas Truce of 1914 has it that the enemy combatants engaged in impromptu games of football (soccer) in the “no-man’s land” but some historians dispute the legitimacy of such claims. Although, given the Christmas miracle that occurred right in the middle of a war so terrible that author William Manchester described it as “the worst thing that had ever happened” it is not out of the question.
One can imagine the words of Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Man He Killed” on the minds of every soldier no matter the uniform, on this most magical of Christmases at the front: 
 
Had he and I but met 
By some old ancient inn, 
We should have set us down to wet, 
Right many a nipperkin! 
 
But ranged as infantry 
And staring face to face, 
I shot at him as he at me 
And killed him in his place… 
 
Yes; quaint and curious a thing war is! 
You shoot a fellow down 
You’d treat if met where any bar is 
Or help to half-a-crown.
For nearly two and a half billion Christians of every race and nationality across the globe, Christmas is a joyous celebration of the birth of Our Lord, now two millennia in the past, and yet still so powerful in its meaning and presence in our lives. One hundred ten years ago, in the middle of a grisly battlefield, in the middle of a ghastly war, the love of Christ and the affection He wishes us to bestow upon each other was alive and well amidst a scene of unprecedented violence and suffering. Indeed, on this day, at this time, enemies could lay down their arms, exchange warm greetings and gifts, and, if for a short time, fulfill the Christmas promise of peace on earth and good will towards all mankind.
But Mars is not so benevolent a god; sadly, if inevitably, the truce didn’t last.
Irate officers on both sides put an end to what very well could have been considered treasonous fraternization with the enemy. Even a capital crime.
Pvt. Archibald Stanley remembered how one of his officers abruptly canceled the informal truce in his section of the trenches. There were still a few Germans out in the open when he approached Stanley and said, “You still got the armistice?”
The grim officer then picked up a rifle, took cold aim, and promptly shot one of the Germans dead. The rest leapt back into their dugouts, and returned fire. And so the war began again.
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a fund manager and author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD" target="_blank" rel="noopener">three books</a>. His articles have appeared on the pages of Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, The Blaze, Breitbart, Zerohedge and other outlets. You can follow him on <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener">X</a> and <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Substack</a> 

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

World War I Interrupted Card

Christmas Miracle On The Western Front, 1914

Christmas

Europe

France

Germany

Great Britain

Soldiers

United Kingdom

World War I

It is a truth universally acknowledged (by all right-thinking people, anyway) that Christmas comes too early. First you have the people who hoist up their wreaths and garlands at the first sign of falling leaves—a practice which should, in my opinion, be punishable by immediate deportation. I don’t care if you’re a legal citizen. The spirit of Project 2025 surely demands that we send October hall-deckers back to whichever country their ancestors most recently arrived from. Boughs of holly, gay apparel, and so forth become permissible at exactly the moment when Santa Claus reaches Herald Square in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. This was decided at the Council of Chalcedon.
But even then, December 25 is surely a demoralizing choice of dates for the pinnacle of all jollities. The excitement ramps up to a maximum just as the days are starting to droop into their coldest and darkest. This is a bright consolation for the feeling that you are looking at the sun from an increasingly unflattering angle. But then Boxing Day hits like a hangover on December 26 when, in the words of an extraordinarily depressing and mawkish poem by civil rights leader Howard Thurman, “the star in the sky is gone” and “the kings and princes are home.”
Thurman somehow meant this to be inspiring, but it’s obviously a galactic let-down. Here you are, your yearly allotment of cheer utterly spent, and there now stretch before you two months of slush and darkness with nothing to punctuate the tedium but New Year’s resolutions and Valentine’s Day. So the only activities scheduled to leaven the winter doldrums in our modern system are setting homework assignments for yourself and grappling with the crushing fear that you might die alone. Nice going, everyone.
Our ancestors knew better. What if I told you December 25 could be not the punishing end, but the gleeful start of the festivities? “The Twelve Days of Christmas” isn’t just the wish-list of an eccentric and high-maintenance wifejak. It’s a picture of how the season ought to be. Instead of dutifully pledging to obsess over hydration come January, you could be cavorting merrily among a retinue of milkmaids and an assortment of waterfowl. Or at least you could leave your Christmas lights up without remorse.
All this and more can be ours if we simply ditch the secular falderal and refer back to the liturgical calendar. Christmas would then last until January 6—which is not the Solemnity of the Insurrection but the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the wise men’s visit to the manger. The kings and princes are not home come New Year’s, thanks very much, they are just getting started—as we should be. By some accounts the Christmas season extends all the way to “Candlemas” on February 2, which commemorates the presentation of the baby Jesus in the temple according to Jewish rite. That would make Christmas 40 days long, rivaling the 50 days of “Eastertide” to celebrate the resurrection.
But just as the exuberance of Easter is preceded by the 40 somber days of Lent, the 40 days of Christmas are preceded by days of preparation known as Advent. This is the key to understanding the rhythm of the whole liturgical calendar: it goes through successive periods of grief and joy, silence and music, death and resurrection. It takes the natural ebb and flow of the light throughout the year as raw material in a grand work of art, using the solar system itself to construct a symbolic picture of Jesus’ life. In Genesis, when God sets up the stars as “signs to mark the seasons,” the rhythm of the year becomes a language for conveying the order of creation. The Jewish calendar, pinned to the cycles of the moon, established the pattern. The Christian calendar, founded on the schedule of Jewish feasts that Christ observed, grows out of it.
The winter solstice, when the daylight becomes shortest, makes for a natural beginning to this yearly sequence. Unlike Easter, which took place firmly during the festival of Passover, Christmas isn’t identified with a specific date in the Bible. Many people now think Jesus was born sometime in the Spring. But the winter date was fixed already by the <a href="https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/EMCO/SIM-00726.xml?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">4th century A.D</a>. St. Augustine of Hippo loved to <a href="http://dec25th.info/Augustine's%20Sermon%20192.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">preach</a> about the symbolic appropriateness of December 25th as an entry point for God into the world, precisely because of the dark and the cold: “He, therefore, who bent low and lifted us up chose the shortest day, yet the one whence light begins to increase.” As the day wanes to its lowest ebb and the year rolls into its most brooding silence, the light of the world slips in and begins to grow.
This is deep and ancient magic. Every people and tribe has long since recognized that the earth wheels through a cycle of death and rebirth. Christians saw in their lord and savior the answer to a promise whispered through the very structure of creation, written in the very bones of the year. This is why it remains hilarious when detractors, as they have done since antiquity, accuse Christians of “appropriating” or imitating pagan rituals. The obvious answer to this is that yes, of course—in Christ we behold the fullness of a reality only dimly glimpsed in the nature worship of old. All the pageantry of myth and legend points at last to the greatest story ever told, and told again each year.
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-advent/id1513602173?i=1000678202687" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>
Hence the season of Advent, a period of waiting and watching as the world grows dark. It covers the four weeks before Christmas, each one of which is dedicated to a different element of the story—the hope of the prophets, the peace of Bethlehem, the joy of the shepherds, the love of the angels. Shortly after <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3501.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">St. Martin of Tours</a> ripped his cloak and gave half to a beggar on a cold winter day, the season became associated in France with alms and fasting. Now most churches keep some form of the ritual. Creation itself holds its breath, and mankind awaits the adventus, the arrival, of a transforming light.
Not that you can’t play Christmas music in December. But you’ll get more out of the season if you spend part of it in contemplation, reading, and prayer. The world winds down this month in anticipation of a rebirth that comes just when creation feels most exhausted, its natural powers and energies spent. At that moment an all but invisible gap opens in the machinery of things, and there enters—unseen by the government sentries prowling the city streets, undreamt of in the palaces of emperors—the light and the lord of the world. At which point, the party’s on.
* * *
Spencer A. Klavan is host of the Young Heretics podcast and author, most recently, of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Light-Mind-World-Science-Illuminating/dp/1684515335" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith</a>. The associate editor of the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Claremont Review of Books</a>, he has written for many outlets, including The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, City Journal, Newsweek, The Federalist, The American Mind, and The Daily Wire. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/SpencerKlavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@SpencerKlavan</a>. You find his daily Advent posts on Substack at and read further theological reflections at <a href="https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The New Jerusalem</a>, where he writes alongside his father, novelist Andrew Klavan.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.

Four lit candles for Advent

The Case For Advent-Maxxing

Advent

Catholicism

Christians

Church

Jesus Christ

Liturgical

Opinion

The day that then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared would &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/pearl-harbor" target="_blank" rel="noopener">live in infamy</a>&#8221; has been reduced, for many in America&#8217;s younger generations, to a vaguely familiar phrase they had to recall for an American History exam.
But it&#8217;s important for all of us to remember that day — that moment — that pushed a largely non-committal United States into global conflict, especially as conflicts arise in the present day that threaten to become global.
The Empire of Japan&#8217;s surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, lasted just over an hour and marked the beginning of U.S. involvement in the Pacific. It was that attack — along with the threat of alliance between Japan and Nazi Germany — that led Roosevelt to also call for the United States&#8217; official entry into the war already raging in Europe as well.
Several <a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/attack-on-pearl-harbor-timeline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">key events</a> foreshadowed the attack in the early morning hours:
<ul>
<li>6:10 a.m. &#8212; The USS Condor, a minesweeper, spots a periscope.</li>
<li>6:45 a.m. &#8212; The USS Ward fires on a Japanese submarine, marking the first shot fired by American forces in World War II.</li>
<li>6:53 a.m. &#8212; Ward radios Navy HQ, but decoding processes slow down its reception.</li>
<li>7:02 a.m. &#8212; Radar station on Oahu spots an unidentified aircraft, but reports are ignored because a B-17 from California was expected to arrive.</li>
</ul>
By 7:40, the first wave of Japanese attack planes were flying over Hawaii — and the coordinated attack began within 15 minutes. By 8:10, the USS Arizona had exploded. The USS Helm, a Destroyer, sank a Japanese submarine at the harbor&#8217;s entrance seven minutes later. At 8:54 a.m., 59 minutes after the first wave began, a second wave of Japanese planes arrived and opened fire. At 9:30 a.m., the USS Shaw exploded in dry dock. By 10:00 a.m., the Japanese attack planes had returned to their carriers.
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All told, Japan launched the December 7 attack with 353 planes and lost just 29 that day. However, of all the ships involved in the Pearl Harbor attack, only one would still be afloat by the end of the war.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
⏳The legacy of the Sailors, Marines &amp; civilians lost on Dec. 7, 1941 is not confined to physical artifacts, memorials or ships. Their sacrifice is the greatest example of our <a href="https://twitter.com/USNavy?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@USNavy</a> values: honor, courage &amp; commitment, which is alive and thriving in each of us.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PearlHarbor83?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PearlHarbor83</a> <a href="https://t.co/6BrSs88e8V">pic.twitter.com/6BrSs88e8V</a>
— Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard &amp; IMF (@PHNSYIMF) <a href="https://twitter.com/PHNSYIMF/status/1863760204397252935?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 3, 2024</a></blockquote>
One day later, on December 8, 1941, Roosevelt delivered a joint address to the House and Senate, eventually leading to a declaration of war.
<a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/joint-address-to-congress-declaration-of-war-against-japan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Roosevelt said, in part</a>:
<blockquote>Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
&#8230;
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph &#8211; so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.</blockquote>
The surprise attack killed 2,403 American service members and injured more than 1,100.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Tomorrow, we mark 83 years for “a day which will live in infamy.” Take time today to honor the brave men &amp; women who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor, as well as all who answered the call to service in WW2! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CBPNYNWK?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CBPNYNWK</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PearlHarborDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PearlHarborDay</a> <a href="https://t.co/ORNj4cVXAN">pic.twitter.com/ORNj4cVXAN</a>
— Acting Port Director Jeffrey Greene (@CBPPortDirNYNJ) <a href="https://twitter.com/CBPPortDirNYNJ/status/1864997012896165936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 6, 2024</a></blockquote>

Fire Aboard

Remembering Pearl Harbor, 83 Years Later

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)

Military

Pearl Harbor

When American families celebrate <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/thanksgiving" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Thanksgiving</a>, many hearken back to the Pilgrims — who braved a brutal first year at Plymouth Bay Colony and then, after a bountiful harvest, stopped everything to give thanks to God.
For years after that, many remembered those first difficult days in a new land and the years of plenty that followed — and also thanked God for rewarding their labor. But it was not until 1789, when that new land had a name and a new leader, that Thanksgiving officially became an American holiday.
Daily Wire editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro shared the decree, issued by President George Washington, in a post on X along with his own caption: &#8220;Happy Thanksgiving — and, of course, thanks to God for His blessings on the greatest nation in the history of the planet.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Happy Thanksgiving &#8212; and, of course, thanks to God for His blessings on the greatest nation in the history of the planet.
&quot;Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to…
&mdash; Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1862012800572285337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 28, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor — and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness,&#8221; Washington wrote.
The first part of Washington&#8217;s decree focused on the things for which his young nation should be thankful — beginning with the successful conclusion of the Revolutionary War and the peaceful implementation of a new form of government under the U.S. Constitution, which would complete the ratification process the following year.
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&#8220;Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks — for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation — for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war — for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed — for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted — for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.&#8221;
Washington went on to lay out that which he believed the American people should be praying for, beginning with forgiveness for &#8220;our national and other transgressions&#8221; and extending to continued safety and prosperity, not only for the newly-formed United States, but for &#8220;all Sovereigns and Nations.&#8221;
&#8220;And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions — to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually — to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed — to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord — To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us — and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.&#8221;
The official date for the Thanksgiving holiday changed from year to year until President Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, designated the last Thursday in November to be the permanent day of celebration. Only one president since — Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939 — has deviated from that schedule, opting to move the holiday from November 30 to November 23 in order to extend the Christmas shopping season.

Holiday feast

READ IT: George Washington’s Decree That Made Thanksgiving A National Holiday

READ IT: George Washington's Decree That Made Thanksgiving A National Holiday

American History

George Washington

Thanksgiving

The following is part four of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-i-understanding-dantes-vision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">four-part series</a> taken from a <a class="c-link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" data-sk="tooltip_parent">speech</a> delivered by <a class="c-link" href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Michael Knowles</a> at the National Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Conference.
* * *
So let’s go back down to Francesca for a final point on language. Francesca attempts to translate the story of Lancelot and Guinevere into her own life. She makes an interpretive error: She confuses her own life with the life of the characters in the text, which leads to her death and damnation. And this terrifies Dante.
The canto ends with Dante falling “like a dead body falls.” Why? Because Francesca quotes Dante’s own style of poetry back to him. She alludes to a poem by Guido Guinizelli, the founder of Dante’s sweet new style of poetry. And Dante fears that he might have played a role in her damnation.
Which is why the canto is, if not political, at least politics-adjacent. Because it reminds us that there is no such thing as a purely personal sin. Man is the political animal. What we do affects other people. Dante is telling us what the feminists will tell us seven centuries later: the personal is political.
Now we come to the first political canto, “Inferno” VI, which concerns Florence. This is the circle of the gluttons, and Dante meets a Florentine he doesn’t recognize: Ciacco. When Dante asks him to identify himself, Ciacco responds, “Your city, which is so full of envy that the sack already overflows, kept me with her during my sunny life. Your citizens called me Ciacco.” Ciacco is like Florence. The city is like a body. It’s the body politic. And political ills are like bodily ills. The glutton is filled to overflowing, just as Florence is filled to overflowing.
<div id="attachment_807263" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-807263" class="wp-image-807263 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-865x576.jpg" alt="Ponte Vecchio bridge. The historic centre of Florence is protected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The dome of Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore otherwise known as the Duomo can be seen. Ian.CuiYi. Getty Images." width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-1055451688-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Ponte Vecchio bridge. Florence, Italy. Getty Images.</div>
The allegorical meaning, Ciacco tells us, is that Florence is filled with envy. But there is a literal meaning too: There are too many people in the city. Dante’s ancestor Cacciaguida recalls this fact (and analogy) in “Paradiso” XVI, when he warns, “The mixing together of persons has ever been the beginning of harm to the city, as excessive food is cause of your diseases.” This argument follows Aristotle, who warns in “Politics” against “the reception of foreigners” in polities, as their presence “has generally produced revolution.” The practical politicians in the room will here find philosophical, poetical, and heavenly sanction to wear their MAGA hats and “build the wall.”
Foreigners are not bad in themselves. They just don’t fit. They’re not appropriate. Polities and people are not interchangeable. Florence, like all polities, is not just “an idea.” Ciacco traces the history of Florence through individuals and families. He recounts 86 years of Florentine history by recalling what happened after one Florentine nobleman (Mosca dei Lamberti) plotted the murder of another nobelman (Buondelmonte de&#8217; Buondelmonti) for jilting a Ghibelline girl for a Guelph. 
In our ideological age, it’s difficult to imagine that a romantic slight could be the immediate cause of a nearly two-century civil war. But sometimes it did. Dante actually traces the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict back to a single utterance by Mosca, recalled in “Inferno” XXVIII: “a thing done comes to a head.”
For Dante, history is civil war. A thing is done, it invites revenge, and then more revenge, and more revenge. Mosca’s utterance, which denies man’s agency in the unfolding of history, constitutes “the seed of evil for the Tuscans.” It’s the demise of the city.
But cities die. As Cacciaguida reminds us, “Cities have their end. The things of your world all have their deaths, just as you do, but in some it is hidden, for they last a long time, and lives are short.” Politics is the indispensable medium in which our salvation occurs, but politics understood as an end in itself leads to death.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show</a></h4>
So how do we attain the freedom to avoid this death? We find the answer in “Purgatory,” which opens with Cato, the great exemplar of Roman liberty. We meet in “Purgatorio” II a friend of Dante, the singer Casella, who recites one of Dante’s own poems back to him: “Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona” — “love, which reasons with me in my mind.”
This old poem is important because it declares Dante’s belief that love is a rational thing. Others disagreed. Dante’s poet friend Guido Cavalcanti, for instance, thought love was irrational. The courtly love tradition presented love as a kind of madness. Dante says no: Love, properly understood, is rational — which will help us to understand the famous final line of the “Comedy.”
Having glimpsed the beatific vision, Dante concludes, “Here my high imagining failed of power; but already my desire and will were turned, like a wheel being moved evenly, by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” That love is not only rational; it’s the Logic of the universe. And the concord between that rational love and the individual will is, for Dante, the substance of freedom.
So the line that Casella sings to Dante is good and true. And still, Cato yells at the group for listening to it. “What negligence, what standing still is this?” he cries. “Run to the mountain to shed the slough that keeps God from being manifest to you.”
The souls have fallen prey to nostalgia, which is a danger not because the past is bad but rather that it’s past, and we’re on a journey, and we need to keep your eyes on the prize. History and the political order serve an important purpose, but the purpose is to point us beyond history and politics. Dante and Casella are delighting in the sweetness of a poetical and philosophical intuition, but in so doing, they’re forestalling the reality of that which they intuit and seek.
The past is good because it’s for the future. The polity is good because it’s for a community beyond the polity. The particular is good because it’s for the universal. History is good — but only in light of its end, which is the eschaton and the life of the world to come.
It’s all about hope, which is the theological virtue oriented toward the future. In “Purgatory” VI, Dante asks Virgil whether prayer works. Because in Book VI of the “Aeneid,” Virgil denies the efficacy of prayer. But the souls in Purgatory all pray that God hasten their journey. How does Virgil answer?
“Their hope is not deceived,” he says. “Where I fixed this point, defect was not amended by praying, because prayer was disjoined from God.” But with the Incarnation, God has entered into history and reunited man with himself. The pagans had no such communion with God — crucially, they didn’t even have hope for such a union. So the pagans have hopeless eternity; Christians have hopeful history. We get what we desire. And our desires are mediated and shaped by the people we encounter — most perfectly, by the God who becomes man.
In the world of politics, things don’t always appear hopeful. Hence Dante’s invective in “Purgatory” VI against Italy. “Ah slavish Italy,” he cries, “dwelling of grief, ship without a pilot in a great storm, not a queen of provinces, but a whore! … What does it profit that Justinian fitted you with the bridle, if the saddle is empty? Without the bridle the shame would be less.”
Emperor Justinian, who appears in “Paradiso” VI, codified Roman law, the bridle on human action. No offense to our libertarian friends, who say that “politics is downstream of culture.” But Dante sees the law as a tutor — the bridle that reins in our lower and destructive desires and thereby establishes the conditions for true freedom.
But the bridle is useless if the saddle is empty; law does nothing without a ruler to enforce it. So Italy has become a slave, having traded the liberty of the queen for the licentious servitude of the whore. Rome weeps, Dante says, “widowed and alone, and day and night calls out: ‘My Caesar, why do you not accompany me?’”
Italy is a bride in need of a bridegroom as the Church is the bride of Christ. Dante cries out, “O highest Jove, who were crucified on earth for us, are your just eyes turned elsewhere?” The polity is the bride of the Emperor, and that this natural union is a figure of that supernatural union. Nature and supernatural orders work together — or they should.
But the emperors — Albert and Rudolph Habsburg, specifically, in Dante’s view — have abandoned their bride because of covetousness. They preferred private interest to the common good. Albert and Rudolph show us that noble lineage does not necessarily confer true nobility. But, Dante says, this is how God arranged it. “Seldom does human probity rise up through the branches, and this is willed by him who gives it, that it may be attributed to him.”
Dante spells out this lesson more fully in “The Banquet.” “The divine seed,” he writes, “does not fall on a lineage, that is on a family stock, it falls on individual persons … the stock does not make individuals noble; rather, individuals make the stock noble.” Why? Because “God alone bestows it on the soul” for “every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above.”
Here again, a tension. On the one hand, Dante says we’re essentially creatures of social context, formed by historical, political, and legal circumstances out of our control; on the other hand, he says we’re essentially individuals, whose stock will be ennobled or degraded according to the graces bestowed by God on us individually. So which is it?
We find out in “Purgatory” XXVI, where Marco of Lombardy restates the problem: “You who are alive still refer every cause up to the heavens, just as if they moved everything with them by necessity. If that were so, free choice would be destroyed in you, and it would not be justice to have joy for good and mourning for evil.”
In reality, he explains, “The heavens begin your motions … a light is given you to know good and evil, and free will, which, if it lasts out the labor of its first battles with the heavens, afterwards overcomes all things, if nourished well. To a greater Power and a better Nature you lie subject and therefore free, and that creates the mind in you, which the heavens do not govern.”
We are born in our circumstances, made by “a happy Maker.“ But then we taste the flavor of lesser goods, which we pursue to our detriment “if a guide or rein does not turn away” our love for them. We need just rulers to direct our desires back toward reason. Therefore, Marco explains, “you can clearly see that bad government is the cause that has made the world wicked, and not nature corrupt in you.”
And the chief cause of this bad government, for Dante, is that the Church has usurped the power of the Emperor. Which brings out a beautiful paradox that becomes apparent in “Purgatory” XXVII, when Virgil bids farewell to Dante by saying, “No longer wait any word or sign from me: free, upright, and whole is your will, and it would be a fault not to act according to its intent. Therefore you over yourself I crown and mitre.” “Crown and mitre” — state and Church.
The purpose of the separation of Church and State on earth, in other words, is that they be united in heaven. The purpose of our subjection to rulers is that we become free and whole as individuals. The purpose of our particular experience in time is universal blessedness in eternity. These apparent opposites are not really opposed. One is simply the way to the other.
Thus, Justinian tells Dante in the final canto of the political triptych, “Different voices make sweet notes: thus different thrones in this our life produce a sweet harmony among these wheels.”
Dante’s voice will be formed by the particular trials of his particular exile, as Cacciaguida foresees in “Paradiso” XVII: “You will experience how salty tastes the bread of another.” This is an inside joke. The bread will be salty because of the tears of exile but also, specifically, because Florentine bread is made without salt — a universal saltiness understood through a particular saltiness.
“You will experience,” Cacciaguida warns, “what a hard path it is to descend and mount by another’s stairs” — the universal indignity of exile but particular to Dante’s — here is another little play on words, I think — because Dante’s patron is Cangrande della Scala — scala meaning “stairs.”
Notice the order. We expect an exile begging patronage to ascend the stairs of the patron’s court. But Dante says “to go down” and then “to go up,” which is the form of both the poem and salvation. As for Dante’s fellow partisans, Cacciaguida warns, “Of their stupidity the outcome will provide the proof, so that for you it will be well to have become a party unto yourself.”
Does this mean we should ignore politics? No. Dante has insisted in excruciating detail upon the importance of politics even to salvation. Dante himself remained active in politics as a pamphleteer until the death of Henry VII in 1313. But Dante is reminding us that exile and salvation ultimately pertain to the individual. We are judged alone.
“If I am a timid friend to the truth,” Dante concludes, “I fear I will lose life among those who will call this time ancient.” If Dante prefers political expediency to the truth, not only will he forfeit his salvation; he will lose even his significance in history. So having seen the face of God, with memory failing and only sweetness in his heart remaining, he returns to earth to meet us, who are where he was, to guide us on our own particular pilgrimages. And thank God for that.
* * *
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-i-understanding-dantes-vision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part I: Understanding Dante’s Vision</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-ii-the-pilgrims-journey" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part II: The Pilgrim’s Journey</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-iii-distinguishing-between-true-and-false-freedom" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part III: Distinguishing Between True And False Freedom</a></h3>

Florence rooftops and cathedral di Santa Maria del Fiore or Duomo view

Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part IV: The Political Animal

Books

Dante

Florence

Italy

Michael Knowles

The following is part three of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-i-understanding-dantes-vision">four-part series</a> taken from a <a class="c-link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" data-sk="tooltip_parent">speech</a> delivered by <a class="c-link" href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Michael Knowles</a> at the National Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Conference.
* * *
So does this mean Dante hates freedom? Nothing could be further from the truth. We hear in “Paradiso” V that “the greatest gift that ever in his bountifulness God gave in creating, and the most conformed to his goodness, the one that is most prized, was the freedom of the will, with which the creatures with intelligence, all of them and only they, were and are endowed.” Dante tells us in “Monarchia” that “the human race is in its ideal state when it is completely free” and that “the first principle of our freedom is free will, which many people talk about but few understand.”
Here Dante seems to be speaking directly into our own time, when so many people are confused about the true meaning of “freedom.” 
Dante distinguishes between true and false freedom: “If judgment controls desire completely and is in no way pre-empted by it, it is free; but if judgment is in any way at all pre-empted and thus controlled by desire, it cannot be free, because it does not act under its own power, but is dragged along in the power of something else.” Lord Acton summarizes this view in the pithy statement that freedom is not the ability to do what we wish but the right to do what we ought. 
Dante loves freedom. And it is because he loves freedom that he demands universal monarchy. Because, as he tells us in “Monarchia,” “The activity proper to mankind considered as a whole is constantly to actualize the full intellectual potential of humanity, primarily through thought and secondarily through action (as a function and extension of thought).” He adds that “mankind most readily attends to this activity … in the calm or tranquility of peace.” Therefore, “universal peace is the best of those things which are ordained for our human happiness.” And the only way to get universal peace is through a universal ruler.
But then doesn’t this therefore imply a merger of Church and State under one single ruler? Not for Dante. But Dante’s enemy Pope Boniface VIII thought it did, as the pope argued in 1302 in his papal bull “Unam Sanctam.”
Boniface argued that all power on earth lies ultimately with the pope — that even the emperor is subordinate to the pope. To defend his claim, Boniface made a couple of dubious scriptural arguments. Boniface also relied on the Donation of Constantine — a document later proven to be a forgery — in which the Emperor purportedly transferred authority over the western Roman Empire to the pope.
Dante says no. Even if Boniface’s questionable readings of scripture were accurate, even if Constantine had really attempted to transfer political authority to the pope, nevertheless it would not be possible. Because on earth, everything has limits. Even the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, which our Lord gives to St. Peter — the power “to loose and to bind” — cannot be absolute because Peter could not do things that God himself cannot do.
Peter could, for instance, absolve an unrepentant sinner. He could not “loosen a wife from her husband and bind her to another while the first was still alive.” There are limits not only to the power of the emperor but also of the pope. Those limits derive from the nature of their respective offices, and the distinction between the offices derives from the fact that man himself has two natures: corruptible body and incorruptible mind. Mankind therefore, having two natures, necessarily has two ends: happiness in this life and happiness in eternity. The political order — the Empire — is meant to serve man’s temporal happiness; the spiritual order — the Church — should conduce to man’s eternal happiness.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show</a></h4>
And yet Dante does not call, as later political thinkers will, for a “firm separation of church and state.” On the contrary, he concludes by warning that his argument “should not be taken so literally as to mean that the Roman Prince is not in some sense subject to the Roman Pontiff, since this earthly happiness is in some sense ordered towards immortal happiness. Let Caesar therefore show that reverence towards Peter which a firstborn son should show his father, so that, illumined by the light of paternal grace, he may the more effectively light up the world, over which he has been placed by Him alone who is ruler over all things spiritual and temporal.” 
The pope and the emperor have distinct realms of action. But we cannot totally separate the temporal and the spiritual just as we cannot separate the literal from the allegorical or the particular from the universal.
Now, having digressed for all that context, let’s move on to the pre-political canto, Canto V of “Inferno.” Here Dante encounters Francesca da Rimini, who had an affair with her brother-in-law Paolo, both of whom are killed by her jilted husband when he discovers them.
Paolo and Francesca fall in love, she tells us, while reading. They read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. And here Dante makes an important point about language. When read in Italian, it is most important to listen to the language.
<blockquote>Amor, ch&#8217;al cor gentil ratto s&#8217;apprende,
prese costui de la bella persona
che mi fu tolta; e &#8216;l modo ancor m&#8217;offende.
&nbsp;
Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona,
mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,
che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona.
&nbsp;
Amor condusse noi ad una morte.
Caina attende chi a vita ci spense&#8221;.
Queste parole da lor ci fuor porte.</blockquote>
“Love, which is quickly kindled in the gentle heart,” “love, which does not pardon any beloved from loving,” “love led us to one death.” That last phrase: “amor condusse noi ad una morte.” “Amor” — love — is precisely in the middle of “una morte” — “one death.”
It’s untranslatable. It is possible to gist in translation, but it only really works in Italian. Dante is showing, as he tells explicitly in his essay on language, “De Vulgari Eloquentia,” that particular languages are appropriate for particular works and particular writers. Not only do different circumstances call for different forms of language — the high grammatica of Latin versus the vulgar vernacular — but writers have a special obligation to their own native vernaculars simply by virtue of those vernaculars’ being their own. Dante writes in “The Banquet” of “the perpetual shame and mortification of the wicked men of Italy who praise the vernacular of others and disparage their own.”
Dante condemns his own teacher Brunetto Latini in part for betraying his vernacular. The point is that language is particular. There’s an old expression, “traduttore, traditore” — the translator is a traitor. Individual experiences are not interchangeable.
This is more evident in Canto XXXI of Inferno when Dante meets Nimrod, who builds the Tower of Babel. When Dante meets him, Nimrod says, “Raphèl maì amècche zabì almì,” which is untranslatable, not because of some pun, but more basically because no one knows what language it is. It seems the phrase is nonsense. Which in itself is meaningful.
Observing the Babel builders, the Lord says, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” So he confused their language and scattered them over the face of the earth.
The combination of political and linguistic unity would have unleashed invincible evil on the world. So God disrupted — temporarily — their political unity and permanently severed their linguistic unity. Now we see a chasm between what is said and what is understood — a chasm which is itself merely an exaggeration of the gap that appeared between word and meaning at the Fall.
Nimrod attempted to short-circuit the particularity of politics and history. He transgressed the limits placed on man at the Fall. We learn more about this fact in “Paradiso” XXVI, when Dante meets Adam, who explains that ”the tasting of the tree in itself” did not cause “so long an exile, but only going beyond the sign.” A crucial word: “sign.” Adam in disobedience figuratively “goes beyond the sign,” and as a result there emerges a distance between literal signs — that is, words — and the meanings that they signify.
In “Paradiso” XXVI, Adam corrects Dante’s earlier belief, articulated in “De Vulgari Eloquentia,” that Hebrew alone survived the confusion of languages at Babel — that Hebrew is in fact the original language created by God — “so that our redeemer, who was to descend from them (in so far as He was human), should not speak the language of confusion, but that of grace.”
Adam says no. “The language that I spoke was all extinct before Nimrod’s people became intent on the unfinishable work.” This is because “no rational effect, because of human preference, which changes following the heavens, has ever been enduring.” Nothing is immune from history. God himself enters into history, and the Word himself speaks a language that is contingent, particular, and constantly changing.
Even the names we call God change: first it was “I,” then “El,” and so on. “This is necessary,” Adam explains, “for the usage of mortals is like a leaf on the branch, which departs and another comes.” The usage of mortals changes because, as Dante writes in “De Vulgari Eloquentia,” “Nothing can be conveyed from one reasoning mind to another except by means perceptible to the sense.” And percepts are always changing. God does not change, but everything else does, including the names we call him.
This is one reason Dante chose to write the “Comedy” in the vernacular. For some of his minor works, he chose the high grammatica of Latin. For his magnum opus, he chose the low vernacular. To go up, we must go down.
* * *
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The Florence Cathedral – Santa Maria del Fiore in an orange sunset.

Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part III: Distinguishing Between True And False Freedom

Politics

speech

The following is part two of a four-part series taken from a <a class="c-link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" data-sk="tooltip_parent">speech</a> delivered by <a class="c-link" href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Michael Knowles</a> at the National Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Conference.
* * *
In “Inferno” VI, Dante calls his political party “the party of the woods” — “la parte selvaggia” — because its central family, the Cerchi, came from a rural area. It seems to me — though I’ve never seen this in any commentaries on the poem — that this explains the repetition in the first lines. Especially when we consider the timing of Dante’s arrival in the dark wood just before his ascent to the Priorate, it seems to me Dante is calling our attention immediately to the political cause of his losing the straight way.
Some additional evidence for this view comes from Dante himself, in a letter preserved by the historian Leonardo Bruni, in which he says, “All my woes and all my misfortunes had their cause and origin in my ill-omened election to the Priorate.” So, if my interpretation is correct, this means even the vaguest and more general scene in the poem, “Inferno” I, is rooted in highly particular historical experience.
Dante then encounters three beasts at the foot of a “desert slope”: a leopard, a lion, and a lupa — a “she-wolf.”And the she-wolf scares him the most. Why? Lions and leopards seem scarier to me. What is it about the she-wolf?
We know that later on Dante will connect the she-wolf with avarice. Beyond that, we really don’t know Dante’s precise meaning. And I suspect we’re not supposed to know because we usually don’t understand the meaning of events as they occur. This isn’t “Pilgrim’s Progress.” In Dante’s journey, just as in real life, we don’t encounter giant, talking allegories. We encounter literal events and figures — with allegorical significance, no doubt, but allegorical significance that often eludes us, at least at first.
In the fallen world, there is a distance between sign and signified, between symbol and symbolized. It is a distance present in language itself. Angels don’t need language. Angels’ knowledge is directly infused. Humans need language because we’re incarnate. So we communicate in perceptible sounds and scribbles. But there’s a problem with our language. As a consequence of the Fall, a chasm has opened between what we say and what we mean. This distance — this desert, we might say — constitutes another kind of exile between word and meaning. We don’t quite say what we want to say, and we don’t immediately grasp the meaning of symbols.
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So politics is the particular things that happen, the full meaning of which we cannot know as they occur. And history is the record of politics, the significance of which we later interpret. But if we can interpret history, that means that history is not merely literal. Every particular thing evinces some universal truth, and the universal is made manifest to us only through the particular.
So what does the she-wolf mean? It seems to me the clearest connotation is political. The she-wolf nurses Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. What strikes the most fear into Dante’s heart — what most obstructs his path — is a political beast, a beast, we’ll read 40 lines later, which “lets no one pass by her way, but so much impedes him that she kills him.”
We learn this from the first character that Dante meets: Virgil, the poet of empire and history, whose “Aeneid” tells the story of the founding of Rome, the universal empire, transferred west from Troy to Italy through Aeneas, ancestor to Romulus and Remus.
Dante’s journey is not a straight-shot to God. It’s a journey incited by a particular individual, Virgil, whom we later learn was sent by another individual, Dante’s beloved Beatrice — not even a public figure — who will then introduce Dante to another individual, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who will serve as the final guide on the pilgrim’s journey, which is mediated at all times by real and specific people.
<div id="attachment_805345" style="width: 922px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-805345" class="wp-image-805345 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-171101483-912x576.jpg" alt="Dante Alighieri and Beatrice in Florence. 20th century illustration. Italian poet, 1265-1321. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)" width="912" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-171101483-912x576.jpg 912w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-171101483-300x190.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-171101483-768x485.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/GettyImages-171101483.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 912px) 100vw, 912px" />Dante Alighieri and Beatrice in Florence. 20th century illustration. Italian poet, 1265-1321. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)</div>
When Dante sees Virgil “in the great desert,” he cries, “‘Miserere di me,’ whatever you may be, whether shade or true man.” Dante doesn’t quite meet “Virgil.” He meets the “shade” of Virgil.
“Not a man — I was once a man,” Virgil explains. “My parents were Lombards, both Mantuans by birth. I was born under Julius, though it was late, and I lived in Rome under the good Augustus in the time of the false and lying gods.” Virgil is not a man because men are irreducibly historic beings. We are not souls flitting through eternity. We are incarnate creatures — composites of body and soul — and we can only ever be men by virtue of our place in history.
Therefore, Virgil identifies himself by his political circumstances: geographic in that he is Mantuan, and temporal in that he was “born under Julius.” Which isn’t even true, by the way. Virgil was born in 70 B.C. He was 21-years-old when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon. But Dante is connecting Virgil with the Empire, the perfection of political order.
Virgil speaks of the journey that they are about to undertake — even of God himself — in imperial terms. He refers to “that Emperor who reigns on high,” and he informs Dante that they will not exit the wood by going up. Dante will not retrieve the straight path by virtue of his own intellect and will. To go up, he must go down.
Dante is skeptical. He says, “I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul.” Why invoke Aeneas and Paul? What do they have in common? Two things. They both travel to the “immortal realm” — Aeneas to the land of the dead, Paul to the third heaven. And they both go to Rome. 
Dante writes of Aeneas: 
<blockquote>He in the Empyrean heaven had been chosen to 
be father of mother Rome and her empire: 
and Rome and her empire, to tell the truth, were 
established to be the holy place where the successor 
of great Peter is enthroned.
Through this journey that you claim for him, he 
understood things that were the cause of his victory
and of the papal mantle.
Later the chosen Vessel [Paul] went there, to bring back 
strengthening for that faith which is the beginning of 
the way of salvation.</blockquote>
Virgil tells Dante that he must venture into the pit of Hell, and the first thing Dante thinks of is politics. And it’s not a frivolous obsession. For Dante, Rome is divinely imbued with authority. God the Father sent his only begotten Son to be incarnate in the fullness of time into the Roman Empire. For Dante, Rome has a divine mandate to govern the whole world attested to in the Gospel of St. Luke: “There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed,” which for Dante signifies, as he explains in his political tract “Monarchia,” “that at that time the Romans exercised jurisdiction over the whole world.”
For Dante, it’s appropriate that the Romans governed the world because they were not only the noblest people but also providentially formed, as we see in the marriages of Aeneas, who had three wives: Creusa in Troy, then Dido in Carthage, and finally Lavinia in Italy — Asia, Africa, and Europe, all brought under the headship of one man. “Who will fail,” Dante asks, “to recognize divine predestination in that double confluence of blood from every part of the world into a single man?”
The Roman Empire’s divine mandate to govern is not only apparent but necessary, according to Dante, if Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross is to redeem all of mankind. As Dante explains in “Monarchia,” “If the Roman empire was not based on right, Adam’s sin was not punished in Christ.” That is, “If Christ had not suffered under an authorized judge, that penalty would not have been a punishment. And no judge could be authorized unless he had jurisdiction over the whole of mankind, since the whole of mankind was punished in that flesh of Christ.”
So Rome had the special right to govern the world. And this is good, Dante believes, because “mankind most closely resembles God when it is most a unity.” Today we worship “diversity” for diversity’s sake. Dante does not. Mankind, he writes, “is in its ideal state when it follows the footsteps of heaven, insofar as its nature allows. And since the whole sphere of heaven is guided by a single movement … and by a single source of motion (who is God) … mankind is in its ideal state when it is guided by a single ruler.”
In other words, we ought to imitate the heavens, and the kingdom of heaven is not a democracy — or an oligarchy, or a tyranny, or any form of government other than universal monarchy, which Dante concludes “is necessary to the world.”
* * *
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dante-and-the-redemption-of-politics-part-i-understanding-dantes-vision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part I: Understanding Dante’s Vision</a></h3>

Divine Comedy. Journey of Dante through the Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. By Dore.

Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part II: The Pilgrim’s Journey

Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part II: The Pilgrim's Journey

The following is part one of a four-part series taken from a <a class="c-link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b9wODrWwQo" data-sk="tooltip_parent">speech</a> delivered by <a class="c-link" href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Michael Knowles</a> at the National Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Conference.
* * *
Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet, politician, and political philosopher. The occasion of writing his magnum opus, the “Divine Comedy,” came as a result of politics. But before we get into the poem, we need some historical context. Those of you who have read Dante know that politics is a recurring theme. You need a lot of context.
Dante served in political life for just over seven years from 1295 to 1301. There were two dominant political parties in Italy during Dante’s time: the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The Guelphs supported the pope; the Ghibellines, the Holy Roman Emperor. Dante was a Guelph, and he fought the Ghibellines at the Battle of Campaldino in 1289. 
The Guelphs won. But after the victory, they split into two factions: the Whites, who wanted to limit the temporal power of the pope, and the Blacks, who wanted to expand the temporal power of the pope. Dante was a White Guelph: pro-pope but also pro-emperor — the medieval Florentine version of a RINO.
Eventually, the Whites took control, and Dante ascended to Florence’s supreme governing council, the Priorate, on June 15, 1300. This is an important date. Because it occurs historically just two or three months after the action of the “Comedy” takes place. Dante wrote the “Comedy” from 1308 to 1321, but the events occur in 1300 over the course of seven days, from Holy Thursday through Easter Wednesday.
Dante served in the Priorate for two months. In 1301, both the Whites and the Blacks appealed to Pope Boniface VIII to resolve the conflict. You can infer what Dante thought of the man by the fact that Dante signals his damnation in Hell three years before the pope actually died.
While Dante entreated Boniface to help settle the civil war in Florence, Boniface sent Charles of Valois, brother of King Philip IV of France, into Florence with the Black Guelphs to ransack the city, slaughter Dante’s friends, and exile the Whites, including Dante, who was stripped of his property and threatened with death if he returned. Dante never saw Florence again.
<div id="attachment_804553" style="width: 448px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-804553" class="size-large wp-image-804553" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-51160526-438x576.jpg" alt="Portrait of Italian poet, politician, and author Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321), early 14th Century. Author of 'The Divine Comedy.' (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)" width="438" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-51160526-438x576.jpg 438w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-51160526-228x300.jpg 228w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-51160526-768x1010.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/GettyImages-51160526.jpg 779w" sizes="(max-width: 438px) 100vw, 438px" />Portrait of Italian poet, politician, and author Dante Alighieri (1265 &#8211; 1321), early 14th Century. Author of &#8216;The Divine Comedy.&#8217; (Photo by Stock Montage/Getty Images)</div>
Now, I know what you’re thinking: Who cares? Why do we need to know all these political minutiae to appreciate a poem about the afterlife? Isn’t the point of eternity that we don’t need to care about all this historical trivia?
An intelligent, widely read, deeply educated friend has made this complaint to me. He loves Dante’s cosmic vision, but he hates that Dante demands so much political and historical context. The references are just so particular. John Milton doesn’t demand that we memorize the annual register of Roundheads to appreciate “Paradise Lost,” but Dante insists that we learn about Forese Donati, Henry VII of Luxembourg, Charles of Anjou, and so many others. My friend in exasperation has joked that the poem could be called the “Divine Comedy: or, Guido Pizzarelli Gets His.”
But that’s the point. Politics and the particularity of politics are crucial to understanding Dante’s vision — because Dante understands that politics is the medium through which our salvation occurs. We are pilgrims who will reach our final destination, wherever that may be, only through history. The journey of our life will not occur through teleportation.
Our pilgrimages entail particular deeds done with particular people in particular places as well as particular words said in particular languages — languages which are, as Dante’s decision to write the “Comedy” in the vernacular underscores, historically contingent and constantly changing. If one were inclined toward academic jargon, one might say that Dante understands the whole cosmos through a hermeneutic of particularity.
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There is no escaping history. For us, there is no neutral or eternal standpoint. We must always be moving — in our minds, in our hearts, and in our bodies — because this is not our home. We are all exiles. The particularity of Dante’s exile from Florence is a literal representation of humanity’s allegorical condition since our first ancestors ate the forbidden fruit. All of history is and must be understood to be a kind of exodus.
Dante makes this point explicit in a letter to his patron in Verona, Cangrande della Scala. In the letter, Dante writes, “The sense of this work is not simple. … The first sense is that which comes from the letter, the second is that of that which is signified by the letter. And the first is called the literal, the second allegorical or moral or anagogical.” Dante points to the story of Exodus; he quotes from Psalm 113, which he again quotes in “Purgatory”: “When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion.”
Dante says the literal meaning is “the exit of the Children of Israel from Egypt at the time of Moses.” The allegorical meaning is “our redemption done by Christ.” The moral of the story is “the conversion of the soul from the struggle and misery of sin to the status of grace.” And the anagogical sense — the mystical or eschatological sense — is “the leave taking of the blessed soul from the slavery of this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory.” One line, four layers of meaning.
To ask why Dante needs to include all these obscure references to political figures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is to ask why God needs to lead a particular people at a particular time from Egypt to Jerusalem. It is to ask why God needs to send his particular Son to be born of a particular woman in the fullness of time in a particular town under the rule of a particular emperor to die on a particular Cross. That is simply how God tells his story — which is to say, that is how the story is told. We tell our stories with letters; God tells his story with us.
Dante begins his story in a similar way, with the literal and the allegorical, the particular and universal all immediately apparent. He begins, “In the middle of our life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood.” Dante is at this point 34-years-old, about to turn 35, which is middle age, according to Psalm 90. (For some of us, this is the first of many harsh facts that will appear in the “Comedy.”)
Beyond the language of “me” and “I,” there’s something even more particular going on in the first lines of this poem. We notice the repetition of the same word three times. Three is obviously an important number for Dante. The poem is divided into three canticles: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The rhyme scheme is what’s called “terza rima” — rhymes that occur in triplets interlaced. And three the number of the Trinity.
The repeated word is “selva” — wood. The translations don’t preserve the repetition, but in the Italian we read:
<blockquote>Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita. 
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte….</blockquote>
“Selva,” “selva,” “selvaggia” — there’s the meaning of “savage” there, but it’s also as if he said “a wood that’s a woody wood.” Dante had a rather robust vocabulary. So why the repetition?
The answer, I believe, lies in Canto VI of “Inferno,” the first of the three political cantos. Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is so meticulously ordered and harmonious that it can be read not only vertically but also horizontally across the canticles. And the sixes are all political cantos because the sixth day is the final day of creation before God rests and the day when God creates man, the political animal. “Inferno” VI is about the city; “Purgatorio” VI, the nation; “Paradiso” VI, the Empire.

Dante and the Divine Comedy Duomo Cathedral Basilica Florence It

Dante And The Redemption Of Politics, Part I: Understanding Dante’s Vision

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