OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER...A WHOLE LOT OF STUFF
jose
By: Phil Brennan
The other night Ann Coulter asked my boss, Chris Ruddy how old I am.
That got me thinking that since late next week I'll be having a
birthday, it might be instructive to recall not how old I am
chronologically, but how old I am to be able to remember a whole lot of
stuff.
My friend Michael Reagan, no spring chicken himself, was kind enough
the other day to tell me that I am as old as dirt, and suggested that I
had been around long enough to have been baptized by John the Baptist.
That's not quite true, but I have been around long enough to remember
what the majority of Americans regard as ancient history, if they know
anything about it at all.
I'm old enough to remember that my paternal grandfather was born in
1850 and enrolled in Manhattan College a mere three years after the War
Between the States, which he had lived through, ended.
I am old enough to remember that my maternal grandmother, born in
Brooklyn in the 1850s, lived long to tell me how a neighbor's son had
run across her front lawn shouting that Lincoln had been shot.
I am old enough to remember that her oldest daughter, my aunt Day was
born in the year that George Armstrong Custer was killed at the Little
Big Horn and I'm old enough to have known an old soldier who had served
with men who had served at one time or another with Custer.
I am old enough to remember going to Decoration Day (now called
Memorial Day) parades and seeing a number of Union Army veterans riding
on open limousines and still hearty enough to wave to the crowds.
I am old enough to remember hearing my maternal grandmother recall the
early days of her marriage when she lived in post-war Richmond Virginia
in the mid-1870s with her cotton broker husband and speak of the
terrible poverty and deprivation that existed among people who had
recently lost a war that had devastated their state and the entire
South. Although her own father had been so badly wounded at Bull Run as
a member of the famed Irish Brigade fighting against the Confederacy
that he died 10 years later in a veteran's hospital of the effects of
his wounds, and she had been an avid supporter of the Union, she felt
deep shame over how her neighbors in Richmond fared at the hands of the
federal government - her government.
We treated the defeated populations of Germany and Japan far better
than we treated our fellow Americans below the Mason-Dixon line. There
was no Marshall Plan for them. They got reconstruction and occupation
by a victorious army instead. And of course, carpet baggers - a specie
that disappeared until Hillary Clinton, following in the footsteps of
another non-New Yorker Robert Kennedy, ran for the Senate in a state in
which she had never lived (sorry, I couldn't resist that urge).
I am also old enough to remember the times when New Yorkers would have
run her out of town on a rail had she been rash enough to plunk herself
down in their midst and announce that she was going to run for a Senate
seat as if she were one of them. Tammany Hall was still around and must
have been enraged - after all, in those days you had to earn the right
to seek to represent the sovereign state of New York in the U. S.
Senate - and of course, it goes without saying that you had to be a
real New Yorker. Today's New Yorkers are less discriminating.
I am old enough to remember that most people lived where their parents
and grandparents and great-grandparents lived. Families were close
knit. Kids knew and saw their grandparents and their uncles and aunts
and cousins all the time. As a result we had a genuine sense of who we
were and who we came from and above all, what our heritage imposed on
us - what was expected of us, which was what our parents expected of
themselves.
I am old enough to remember that we were taught to respect our elders
even those that didn't deserve an ounce of respect. They were our
elders, and one respected one's elders - that was it. We never, never
called our parents' friends by their first names - they were always Mr.
and Mrs. (never, thank God, that barbaric innovation of our times - Ms.
- in those days ms. meant manuscript").
If they were really close friends they became honorable uncles and
aunts. We were respectful to our parents, even when we reached the age
when we were convinced that they were hopelessly behind the times and
had no idea of what it was all about, and of course well before the age
when we realized that they really did know what they were talking
about, and far more, after all. I am old enough to remember that we
kids wanted only to be what our parents were, to have what they had,
and do what they did and enjoy the things they enjoyed. And to live
good and decent lives as they lived.
I am old enough to remember how we cherished the simple things, which
are always the best things, and would have reacted in horror at the
sordid decadence that passes today as everyday recreation and enjoyment
- wallowing in the slime of the sexual pigsty where one can be and do
whatever one feels one wants to be or do, no matter how revolting the
resulting behavior. I am old enough to remember where actions had
consequences - you paid for what you did with no excuses that allowed
you to blame your misdeeds on your genes or something that happened to
you when you were an impressionable child - when crimes were crimes and
not "mistakes" and when there were things that were evil by their very
nature and were recognized as such. I am old enough to remember that
when things were not broken, nobody tried to get the government to fix
them, and when it was understood that people were responsible for their
own actions and their own welfare unless they were absolutely incapable
of taking care of themselves - and it was then incumbent on their
families or their neighbors or their churches to see to their needs.
Government, with its meddling and usually incompetent ways was seen
only as a last resort.
I am old enough to remember that we knew that history - and our
religious faith - taught us that the way to make a better world was not
by some coercive government spending program or socialist scheme or
globalist fantasy, but by making ourselves better. Good begets good. As
Richard Burton once remarked in an otherwise perfectly awful movie "You
can't do good unless you can be good,"
I am old enough to remember - and mourn - the glorious Latin Mass, it's
solemnity and mystery that helped you rise above your mundane self and
the world around you, and elevate your mind and heart in the quiet
majesty of Gregorian chant. It took you out of the day-to-day world and
gave you a glimpse of what could be and what was to come. It made you
realize that, in the words of the song, if you allowed it to happen,
you were being made more than you could be." It was a solemn
celebration, presided over by an ordained priest who did all the work
on your behalf, leaving you to submerge yourself in the Divine mystery
of the Eucharist. Since then, what was not broken, was "fixed" and the
result has been organized chaos and a rush for the exits.
I am old enough to remember that children were taught history and knew
and deeply admired most of what could be known about George Washington
and the Founding Fathers, their heroism, and their brilliance and
foresight in constructing a government designed to reflect the will of
the people while restricting both the excesses of their aroused
passions and the power of the government they established.
I am old enough to remember when it was taken for granted that this
nation was based on the 2000 year-old principles of Christianity upon
which Western civilization itself was based, and on the understanding
that mankind is never on its own, but subject at all times to the
Divine will as expressed most clearly in the Ten Commandments and in
Holy Scripture. The idea that the Founding Fathers meant to denigrate
religion and ban it from the public square would have been considered
the idiocy that it indeed is. In those days we took the Constitution to
mean what it said: that Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; in
other words that the federal government could not establish a state
religion a la Britain's state established Anglican Church, nor prohibit
the practice of religion in or out of the public square. There was not
one word about a "wall of separation between church and state."
I am old enough to remember that agree or disagree with the
government's decision to go to war, once in a war you backed your
country to the hilt. You respected those fighting the war and in harm's
way, would have tarred and feathered anyone who dared to call them baby
killers and worse, and would have banished to the outer darkness a
United States Senator who compared them to blood-thirsty tyrants.
I am old enough to remember that at the outbreak of World War II,
youngsters yearned to be old enough to serve in the military and go
into harm's way to serve their nation in a time of peril. I am old
enough to remember the long lines in front of the recruiting stations
after Pearl Harbor as millions of young Americans sought to commit
their lives to the service of their nation, and the frustration I
endured until I reached the magic age of 17 in 1943 and the Marine
Corps was rash enough to take me in and endeavor to make a man out of a
spoiled brat.
And I'm old enough to remember that in the darkest days of World War
II, when the casualty figures in such monumental battles as Tarawa and
Normandy and Iwo Jima soared to numbers so high the normal mind could
not deal with their reality, and that the normal time overseas for our
troops was a long 36 months, there were no calls for giving up the
struggle - just grim determination to see the thing through to a
victorious conclusion. Americans after all, won all their wars; losing
was unthinkable.
I am old enough to remember when Americans looked forward to the future
with hope and determination to shape it into what we wanted it to be -
we glimpsed that shining city on the hill Ronald Reagan spoke about,
and we were determine to reach it. The future was in our hands and we
were confident we could make it what we believed it could be. We did
not feel the anguish and dread most Americans experience today when
envisioning our Nation's future.
Oh, in case you are wondering - a week from Friday, on July 8, 2005, I
will be 79 and, thus entering my 80th year in this vale of tears. Deo
Gratias
"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with
this notice and hyperlink intact."
GW Chimpzilla
> OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER...A WHOLE LOT OF STUFF
>
> By: Phil Brennan
>
> The other night Ann Coulter asked my boss, Chris Ruddy how old I am.
I bet she wanted some anal sex!
jose
about someone who loves America.
rudy-...@excite.com
I bet Jose does too.
bernard spilman
"jose" <josef...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1120179499.9...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER...A WHOLE LOT OF STUFF
>
> By: Phil Brennan
>
> The other night Ann Coulter asked my boss, Chris Ruddy how old I am.
> That got me thinking that since late next week I'll be having a
> birthday, it might be instructive to recall not how old I am
> chronologically, but how old I am to be able to remember a whole lot of
> stuff.
>
> My friend Michael Reagan, no spring chicken himself, was kind enough
> the other day to tell me that I am as old as dirt, and suggested that I
> had been around long enough to have been baptized by John the Baptist.
>
> That's not quite true, but I have been around long enough to remember
> what the majority of Americans regard as ancient history, if they know
> anything about it at all.
>
> I'm old enough to remember that my paternal grandfather was born in
> 1850 and enrolled in Manhattan College a mere three years after the War
> Between the States, which he had lived through, ended.
"Lived through," but not "served in." So the bastard chickenhawked
out of that one too? A true republican even back then.
WS
Roger
>
> By: Phil Brennan
>
> The other night Ann Coulter asked my boss, Chris Ruddy how old I am.
> That got me thinking that since late next week I'll be having a
> birthday, it might be instructive to recall not how old I am
> chronologically, but how old I am to be able to remember a whole lot of
> stuff.
>
> My friend Michael Reagan, no spring chicken himself, was kind enough
> the other day to tell me that I am as old as dirt, and suggested that I
> had been around long enough to have been baptized by John the Baptist.
"Is there a group on the Internet where discussions are held by adults on
serious issues? I am fed up with political parties and their uninformed
adherents who haven't the intellectual capacity to analyze and discuss 21st
Century issues and backup their positions with
verifiable facts. I find that most of the posters on this NGs are
adolescent, uniformed and closed minded. Most of the Posters are like the
professional politicians who lie, cheat and steal for a living and are all
headed for eternity in Hell unless they change their self-possessed
ways."