The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Thinking of Christmas in July

Posted on | July 4, 2024 | No Comments

Does it occur to you that, instead of celebrating the Fourth of July, when the Declaration of Independence was published, that instead we should celebrate our independence on the Nineteenth of October?

It was on October 19, 1781, that Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, the victory that finally secured America’s independence, but the Nineteenth of October comes and goes unnoticed every year, with not even a special sale at your local auto dealer to commemorate it. But why not celebrate December 26? It was on that cold winter morning in 1776 that the Hessian troops in Trenton, New Jersey, found themselves roused from their sleep by the attack of Washington’s army, which had crossed the ice-choked Delaware River on Christmas Night to launch this assault.

My favorite meme of all time gets quoted today here:

The Declaration is today best-known for a few phrases from the preamble: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” etc. Even those who know next-to-nothing about the American Revolution or the men who fought it generally recognize those phrases, and it is a pity that the full history of that struggle is so inadequately taught in schools.
Were there one point which I could get every young person to understand about the Revolution, it would be this: It is not to Jefferson’s eloquent phrases that we owe our liberty, but rather to the toil, suffering and dogged persistence of the men who served in the ragtag band of Patriots who defeated the British army in a long war. . . .

That’s the latest from my Substack newsletter — you can sign up to subscribe for free — but I hope you won’t mind me taking this opportunity to remind you that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

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Category: History

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