Posted on 05/08/2003 4:05:08 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
There is vice as well as virtue in the presence in most American homes of several flavors of 24-hour cable news channels. The vice is that we are doing to ourselves electronically and institutionally what Winston Smith observed at the Ministry of Truth in the novel 1984. We are sacrificing both the past and the future to the moving moment – we are throwing facts down the "memory hole." The Democrat-sponsored mini-flap over President Bush's speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln is a case in point.
The two main attackers of the President's "photo-op" speech aboard the carrier which was returning to home port, are Senator Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Congressman John Conyers, D-Mich. Each in his own way has said in Congress, and via sound bites played on TV repeatedly, that President Bush "took advantage" of the military by "staging" this speech there, and that his actions were at least "inappropriate."
In George Orwell's novel, 1984, the Information Minister demonstrates the power of the state to manipulate facts. He shows Winston that the description of something that occurred can be thrown down the "memory hole," and after that, it is as if it never happened. This novel, written in 1948, has been chillingly prophetic of how totalitarian governments can control information and make events that actually occurred, disappear by fiat.
A classic example of type came in 1953 when Laventi Beria, chief of intelligence in the former USSR, was summarily tried and executed as a traitor. Actually, it was done to eliminate him as a potential successor to Josef Stalin, who had just died. The entry for "Beria" in the Soviet encyclopedia, found in all schools and universities, was replaced by a paste-over paragraph on the "Bering Strait." Not only was the man eliminated, so was the memory of him.
What does all this have to do with the speech by President Bush this week on an American aircraft carrier? Nowhere in the extensive press coverage of the Democrat complaints about the speech has anyone mentioned Abe Lincoln – the man, not the carrier. An essential part of history has been dropped down the American memory hole.
President Abraham Lincoln, on government time, at government expense, and in his official capacity, took a trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and delivered a short speech on 19 November, 1863. The Civil War was not yet over, but it was clear by that time that it soon would be. The Union would prevail; the costs in of the war blood and money would soon be over.
Every President, at or near the end of every war that America has fought (and which achieved any significant objective – so the Vietnam War is excluded) has given similar speeches. In each case, appropriate settings and trappings were chosen. In every case, the speech thanked the nation and the members of the military for their commitment and sacrifices. Always, the President reminded all Americans of the cause for which we fought.
When I was growing up, just about every American history book, every book on rhetoric, and many books on American literature included the text of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Today, it is far less common in such books. After all, it was delivered by a Dead White Man, and it is now considered somehow wrong to make value judgments and conclude that this was one of the greatest speeches ever delivered by anyone.
The point here is that every single word of the criticism of President Bush's speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln could have been directed at the actual Abe Lincoln. More than merely appearing in a military setting, Lincoln went to Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery to the tens of thousands of men who died in that great three-day battle which was the turning point in the Civil War. If one wants to be cynical, Lincoln was seeking to increase his stature by standing and speaking above the graves of thousands of dead soldiers.
Of course, Lincoln had no such purpose. He was performing one of the expected, ceremonial duties of any President at, or near, the end of a war. He was offering both thanks and reassurance to the people.
My question about the coverage of the flap over Bush's speech is this: Why, in dozens of hours of coverage on four different cable news networks, has no one mentioned that such speeches have been given before, by many Presidents? Why has no one yet mentioned the Gettysburg Address?
Lincoln's speech was given for the same reasons and under similar circumstances as the Bush speech. This should have been obvious to anyone, including the news readers on TV.
Mind you, I am not suggesting that Bush's speech was remotely in the category of Lincoln's nearly perfect speech. Lincoln was schooled in the classics of Western literature. He had a natural feel for words and the texture of language. Not even the most capable of modern public speakers has that background – the last Western leader with that kind of education and that kind of power in his spoken words was Winston Churchill. Given the watered-down nature of modern education, there may never be another President or Western leader who will speak as well.
The main speaker at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery was Edward Everett. He orated for two hours on the sacrifices of the 45,000 casualties in the battle there. Yet it is the ten sentences spoken by Abraham Lincoln which endure as the most powerful words that day, and yet endure today.
All I am saying is this: we have this one great example of end-of-war speeches by President Lincoln that stands for all the others. All wartime Presidents have given such speeches under such circumstances. And any commentator on this subject should have recognized this and mentioned this, during the current public discussion about Bush's speech.
But the attitude of the on-air commentators, and of their editors and executives, is that only the here-and-now matters. The approach is that what happened four score and seven seconds ago is news. What happened four score and seven minutes ago is old news. And what happened four score and seven years ago is far too old to mention on-air. As Orwell wrote in 1984, "The past is dead, the future is unimaginable."
Our 24-hour news channels have degenerated, and with them the nation has degenerated, into vivid but disconnected moments. Our roots are cut off as the past is ignored. Our future is short-changed as "tides in the affairs of men" are ignored. All we have left is the Brave New Moment.
Because it is disappearing from the textbooks, because it is seldom read and almost never memorized and recited, the Gettysburg Address deserves to be reprinted in our times, and in all times of crisis to come. Here is that text, as it appears carved in the marble of the Lincoln Memorial. Few of the words of any President better warrant being carved in marble for the ages: [Do not skim what follows because you've seen it before. Read it slowly and out loud to feel the full power of the words.]
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
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Comments can be added on the "Letters to Billybob" page And please also click the link for "to Restore Trust in America." If you like these Reports, you will like that. It strikes the same theme that President Bush did, repeatedly, in his press conference after the 2002 election. Again and again he said the victories were due not to him, but to the candidates themselves who earned the "respect" and the "trust" of the American people.
(C) 2003 Congressman Billybob. All rights reserved.
This article might be published on UPI later, but it is already up on my website.
So--- Bush was in civilian clothes.
Someone is yakking when they should be watching and listening.
After all, he was there . . .
. . . as a protestor.
It is a clue, perhaps, to their perverted value system.
Would they have complained had the President flown to the Honest Abe in his customary helicopter, Marine 1? Probably. A little...
Would they have complained had the President arrived on board in a business suit? No, his dress wouldn't have been an issue.
Thus, what has Democrats' blood pressure peaking is NOT the fact that President Bush went aboard an aircraft carrier at sea to make a speech regarding the cessation of hostilities in Iraq.
No, the bile is rising in their throat because he looked so good doing it!
That he arrived in a combat plane, which he could actually pilot, reminded people of the President's own service and his high regard for honor. Such service and regard reflects poorly on the lily-livered left.
And that he was appropriately clad in a flight suit -- and looked like he belonged in one -- enhanced his photogenic appeal. Thus did the President beat them at their own shallow game...of appearances!
Imagine the master of the photo-op, Bill Clinton, in this scenario. You can't!
And, thus, is yet another clear distinction drawn and dramatized -- between honorable Republicans and craven Democrats.
Here we have The Cowboy...and over there are the Squatters, the Card Sharps and Teddy, the Town Drunk. Who shall The Fearful Townspeople trust with their vote?
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