Today is the 70th anniversary of what President Roosevelt called a "day of infamy" in his sonorous tones; describing a "cowardly sneak attack by Japanese forces on the port in Pearl Harbor Hawaii". Thus began our active participation in WW ll .
Admiral Tokugawa, the leader of the Japanese fleet is reported to have said:"I fear we have awakened a sleeping bear" after the events that transpired on that Sunday morning, changing it from a beautiful sunny day to a day filled with horror and pain;with over 2000 dead and over half of our Pacific fleet either totally destroyed or heavily damaged.
President Roosevelt told us to "NEVER FORGET"....and we didn't; we went on to not only defeat the forces of Fascism in that bloody war, but we went on to become the single most powerful nation that has ever existed on Earth.
We are declining from that position today, as power inevitably does, but we still, at least for the moment, provide the single best example what a free and faithful people can be.
We are slowly being defeated from within, not from outside enemies, because we have forgotten our founding principles and our basic faith in the power of the common man to rule himself. We have forgotten that a man can only be free if he is allowed to succeed, or more importantly, FAIL, through his own efforts and not by effort of the collective. Failure is NOT the catastrophe;failing to learn from failure is. Every successful person has failed at times,indeed the more successful they are, the greater failure they usually have experienced.
Our present leaders have forgotten these basic principles that have served us so well in the past; they have come to believe that the individual is too weak to do anything by themselves and that it takes the power of government to accomplish anything, and that failure of the individual is inevitable and should be prevented at any cost;to the point were the individual isn't allowed to try anything,lest they fail. But I digress...
This is a day to remember,lest we relive the past.
Remember Pearl Harbor, remember the Twin Towers falling, REMEMBER or Founding Fathers and the Principles they held dear.
With all the hustle and bustle of getting ready for another Yuletide season, I think a great many of us forget the REASON for the Season.
Listen to this song and maybe it will make you reflect on the real reason WHY we celebrate this season every year.
I do not profess to be a Christian, but the thought that God could give us the gift of forgiveness through the sacrifice of His Son does make me feel...humble.
Guess the the old Jesuit saying of "give me a child until they're seven, and I'll have him for life" is really true....