Category: The Dish

The Boys Of Pointe Du Hoc:

Democracy in wartime (from "American Caesar", by William Manchester):

One evening at dinner the chief of staff (Richard Sutherland) argued that America should abandon democracy in wartime, that congress wasted too much time debating, that elections should be abolished and a dictatorship proclaimed. According to another officer:

General MacArthur listened for a while and then told Sutherland he was wrong; that democracy works and will always work, because the people are allowed to think, to talk, and keep their minds free, open, and supple. He said that while the dictator state may plan a war, get everything worked out down to the last detail, launch the attack, and do pretty well at the beginning, eventually something goes wrong with the plan. Something interrupts the schedule. Now, the regimented minds of the dictator command are not flexible enough to handle quickly the changed situation. They have tried to make war a science when it is actually an art. 

He went on to say that a democracy, on the other hand, produces hundreds and thousands of flexible-minded, free-thinking leaders who will take advantage of the dictator’s troubles and mistakes and think of a dozen ways to outthink and defeat him. As long as a democracy can withstand the initial onslaught, it will find ways of striking back and eventually it will win. It costs money and at times does look inefficient but, in the final analysis, democracy as we have it in the United States is the best form of government that man has ever evolved.

He paused and said, "The trouble with you, Dick, I am afraid, is that you are a natural-born autocrat."

Habeas Corpus:

JFK and Neil Armstrong

Sacrifice:

Bourbon, Missouri, 7 am. The flag hangs for Jimmy Summers, 1986 – 2007, killed in Iraq a little over a month ago.

Penn and Teller burning the flag while celebrating American liberty.

Anonymity:

"Uncuriosity is one of the reasons I love America. In France, though I speak French well, my accent brands me as an Englishman. In England my accent brands me as – what?  Other Englishmen would tell: accent is the first characteristic by which English people make judgements about each other.  In America my accent means nothing at all… Nothing about me causes comment.  I m one of the crowd, simply another atom in a great, shifting, restless, busy, amiable, almost undifferentiated multitude that is the American people.   

There are other large countries on earth, Russia, China, India. Only the Americans have succeeded in creating a society of complete cultural uniformity … To an outsider the uniformity of America is profoundly relaxing. America makes no demands on one, imposes no expectations, asks no questions.  It accepts the foreigner as it accepts the native traveller, someone without origins or fixed abode or past or future, a being of the here-and-now, just passing through. I love passing through. A curious, delectable, weightless, free-floating trance possesses me when I stop for a moment in places like Hardin, Montana, or Half Moon Bay, California, or Springfield, Ohio, born of the knowledge that no one will ask me who I am or what I do or whence I come or whither I am going." – John Keegan, "One Englishman’s America."

The passion for justice:

"Tom Joad: No, Ma, not that. That ain’t it. It’s just, well as long as I’m an outlaw anyways… maybe I can do somethin’… maybe I can just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it. I ain’t thought it out all clear, Ma. I can’t. I don’t know enough.

Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I’d never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?

Tom Joad: Well, maybe it’s like Casy says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then…

Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?

Tom Joad: Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too."

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema showing "Transformers" with a live dinobot. And beer!

High on my list too. Walt Whitman‘s poetry:

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;   The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,   
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;   
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench—the hatter singing as he stands;   The wood-cutter’s song—the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;   
The delicious singing of the mother — or of the young wife at work — or of the girl sewing or washing—Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;   
The day what belongs to the day—At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,   
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.