I have caught a severe cold.
I've been taking Sudafed and zicam but it's not slowing down or reversing. I'll just have to ride it out.
Carolyn came over yesterday and she, Josie and I watched Star Wars. We're going to watch The Empire Strikes Back today.
Megan and Tyler made the trip back from Sodak ahead of the predicted snow storm. They're supposed to fly out tonight but it depends on the weather holding.
Katie's friend Adam brought over venison tenderloins and cooked dinner for us all. The venison was delicious.
Despite my cold, it was a very good day.
After dinner Megan told us that the rest of her family (all cowboys) saw True Grit and loved it. Her dad described it as "A near perfect movie."
So, we've been having a terrific time this vacation. But last night, I learned two disturbing things.
The first was when my over educated, lawyer by degree if not yet profession, daughter claimed that the House Un-American Committee was Joe McCarthy's committee. If she didn't know that McCarthy was a member of the Senate, not the House, what other fallacies has she been spoon fed at school and swallowed whole? What the hell are they teaching them in law schools these days? Has she ever heard of the Venona Papers?
It gets worse.
An adorable and brilliant young girl taking many college courses, announced at our table that she had learned that George Washington was an incredibly stupid man who was only elected President because both the right and the left knew he could be manipulated.
"I know it sounds crazy," she said "But I've researched it and found lots of people on both sides, saying the same thing."
Really?
I have no doubt one can find lots of people claiming this ridiculous position on the internet but let's look at some facts;
First off, when George Washington was President, (1789-97) the country was brand new, having successfully broken from a monarchy. There was no 'right' or 'left', there were only 'loyalists' who stood with the monarchy and 'rebels' who broke away and won the war. By the very definition of the words, the rebels were all radical liberals.
I'm talking here about the actual definition, not how we use these words today.
Today, they would all belong to the TEA party and most likely be members of militias. Our country was born of rugged individuals who weren't afraid to use guns to claim and protect their liberty from overbearing government.
And George Washington is the man who lead an army of farmers to beat the world's only Superpower of the time.
He didn't do that by being stupid.
In fact, according to our military schools, he did it by being the most original and outrageous military strategist the world had ever known.
Early in his career, he spent time on the frontier and no doubt learned a few tricks from the Indians about guerilla warfare. The British had never seen anything like it; tiny quick units of men, attacking from ambush and then melting away into the trees to return another day to irritate the larger, better trained, better equipped invading army.
It was George Washington, not Mohammed Ali who invented the Rope-a-Dope.
He faced a military he had no chance of ever beating and he wore them down until they threw down their weapons and stormed off home saying "Fine! Take your stupid country, we don't want it, anyway!!"
I'm sure the creature teaching this version of history knows that before the Declaration was signed, Washington was a tobacco farmer who was so successful he was the equivalent of a self made millionaire.
Two hundred years before movies and television, it was really hard to make that kind of money being stupid.
In fact, Washington has been credited with pioneering new ways of treating the land and rotating crops and fallow fields to get the most out of his acreage. Those stories could all be as apocryphal as the cherry tree incident. Maybe his success wasn't based on intelligence and hard work.
Maybe he was just lucky.
And maybe there's an entire school of education based on tearing a great man down because he owned slaves and grew
tobacco. I have no evidence to support such a claim. I'm just asking; in this day and age, where there's no place on earth as politically correct as a college campus and there's nothing on earth less politically correct than a slave owning tobacco farmer, which seems more likely?
Further questioning of the young student revealed the source of the smear; She's been taught that Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, lead him by the nose.
Interesting spin, that.
As president, Washington had the wit to surround himself with the brightest men on the continent; Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams...all of whom vehemently disagreed with each other over a number of issues. Washington had the wisdom to listen to them all and choose the path that he thought best served the country.
That's the very definition of a gifted statesman and he's being painted as an idiot.
Each of these brilliant men (as brilliant men are wont to do) were upset when Washington took anyone's advice but their own. They complained about it in letters and journals which still exist. Clever, mean spirited academics are now apparently taking these works and using them to paint a picture of The
Indispensable Man as a puppet.
Even the premise that smarter men than he wanted him in the office as president so they could manipulate him makes no logical sense.
The very suggestion smacks of a cynicism that is hard to imagine.
So the question now becomes: Were our founders cynical men?
They broke away from the British Empire, which in 1776 was not only the world's lone superpower, it was the greatest empire the world had ever seen.
A group of farmers told the Crown to bug off and leave them alone, they could run things better themselves.
Read the declaration; they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.
Does that sound cynical to you?
When the Crown sent troops, these farmers grabbed their pitch forks and blunderbusses and marched (limped) out to meet the biggest, best trained, most well equipped army in the world.
Is that what a cynic would do?
They fought for seven bloody, expensive years. No one in their right mind would have undertaken such a quest. No one with half a brain would have bet on them winning.
Crazy, yes.
Cynical? No way in hell. The story of our founders is the
opposite of cynical.
How can anyone believe that after winning the revolution against all odds, the surviving patriots would immediately entrust their new government
FOR WHICH THEY RISKED EVERYTHING TO GAIN to a presidential puppet (don't forget, they wanted to make Washington king but he wouldn't have it) so that they could pull his strings?
In logical terms alone, this premise is a black hole of stupid.
Why not run for the office themselves? Most of Washington's closest advisors eventually did become president themselves. You can argue about how good a job they did but you have to remember; they had no historical template to learn from. There had never been a government like ours. They had to make it up as they went so there were bound to be some big time mistakes.
The alleged CSM of my niece's history class, Alexander Hamilton (he's the guy on the ten dollar bill, kids) never became president, but it's widely believed that he would have, if he hadn't been shot to death by his political rival, Aaron Burr before the age of fifty. Cynical men don't shoot each other, they cut deals.
In the end, logic tells me that if George Washington was stupid, we should only elect idiots to high office.
That's how your education tax dollars are being spent, folks; teaching children to hold the men who founded our country in contempt.
I knew the state of education in America was bad, I didn't realize it was
evil.
