In keeping with our patriotic theme today…ladies and gentleman, the great Ray Charles:
The Day he had been waiting for
On the morning of July 4th, 1863, stillness ruled in two small American towns where chaos had existed just a few hours before. Not a peaceful stillness, but an exhausted one. In the tiny Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, just a few miles above the Maryland border, a titanic battle to determine if the northern states could show the guile and fortitude to withstand the “invasion” of the forces of the southern rebellion and hurl them back, juxtaposed with the mirror opposite in the river town of Vicksburg, where union forces sought to prove to the south it could be permanently cleaved in half. In Gettysburg the violence was massive and acute; in three days over 50,000 casualties resulted draining both sides further will to conclude the ultimate question of the times. In Vicksburg, the theatre was on a much more geographically strategic scale, took many months, and thousands of more lives. In the first, a perfect general, Lee. had proved himself to be human. In the second, a human and complex man, Grant, proved he was a general.
In Washington, a man who had suffered through over two years of defeat and ridicule holding up not a physical treasure, but ideals for his immediate world to fight and die over, finally had The Day he had been waiting for. Abraham Lincoln, to whom the concepts of individual freedom and equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the more perfect union expressed in the constitution, and the special purpose of a free people under a deity from the bible, never left his focus in all the preceding hard times. He finally had the day he had been waiting for, and would express it all in words several months later that will never lose their power:
” It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who have fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is, rather, for us here to be 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.”
Happy 4th of July
Happy 4th of July. Welcome to Ramparts of Civilization.
It is altogether fitting that on the 234th anniversary of the articulation of the principles of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that a blog defending and celebrating those immortal words finds birth and, hopefully, a long and fruitful existence.
For some time I have felt a progressive dread that the clarity, beauty, and magnificence of the 2600 year journey of Western Civilization has been neglected by our current nature to the tenuous point of irrelevance. All the hard learned lessons of the concept of individual freedom, creative expression, intellectual objectivity, and appreciation of the human spirit have been sublimated to a bland equivalence and desire to achieve a “soft landing” as a relic of history.
Not so fast. On this blog, like minded individuals will man the ramparts and defend the concept of the Western Ideal, founded on the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, communicated through the ingenuity of the Roman engineer, unleashed through the miraculous words of a Nazarene carpenter, protected by the courage and literacy of the medieval monk, forged in the genius of the Renaissance, released in the power of the Enlightenment, made available for all to participate by the miracle of the American Revolution, propagated through the Industrial Revolution, and defended by the brave warrior citizens when at times darkness threatened to descend and smother.
And we will try to do this while having fun.
I see this blog as the defender of the good and positive in history, politics, music, art, food, sport, science, technology and entertainment – and where my editorial expertise is lacking, through the musings and elaborations of those who know and love these cultural expressions more intimately than I.
I look forward to learning, laughing, and illuminating. To those owed so much who have defended before, and those who will pick up the lance, shield and standard, and defend ever after, welcome to the Ramparts.
btf