Patriotism

It’s Personal


August 6 is the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and it is appropriate to remember in the ways that we can.  There are millions of stories connected in various ways to that event and two are very close.  They are quite different from one another, yet at root they bear the same message.

Even in the early 1940’s, when an atomic explosion was only a theory and had never been witnessed, the conflagration that would be produced was well understood.  That was a different time, though, and the imperative was to win the war with a minimum of American casualties.  Estimates ran north of a million dead and injured, should we attempt a land invasion of Japan, so, awful as it was even to contemplate, using an atomic bomb to subdue the enemy looked like the better option.  Indeed, in those days, there was little controversy over whether to use such a weapon if doing so would avoid suffering 25,000 marines killed on every island in the Pacific on the way to Japan.

My father-in-law was a scientist, a chemical engineer Ph.D and for decades was a go-to guy for making chemical manufacturing plants operate well.  He was so talented that he was called to serve on the Manhattan Project during WWII.  What that meant for him and all the scientists working on the Manhattan Project was that in order to honor their duty and responsibility as Americans to help win the war, they would have to set aside their concerns over the moral dilemma of dropping a bomb on Japanese cities.  Some, like my father-in-law, had to compromise a piece of their souls to do that, a compromise they came to deeply regret.

While the construction of that new and terrible weapon was ongoing, my father was posted in England and flew a P-47 fighting the Nazis, escorting bombers, dodging bursts of flak, getting shot at and shooting back, sortie after sortie.  In today’s more gentle terms, he was in harm’s way, but there was nothing gentle about what was happening.  He lived in a world of brutality every day, a world of sudden death and long suffering, a world where human beings saw and did unspeakable things.  Indeed, like so many vets, even years later he was unable to speak the raw truth of those days and most of his terrible secrets died with him.

He did not entertain the post war moral analysis made from the comfort of peacetime over the dropping of the bomb.  He had completed his tour of duty before that bombing, had served as an instructor to new recruits after his combat days and was on inactive status with the army.  Had a land invasion of Japan been mounted, he would have been called back into active service and sent to the Pacific to wage war once again.  Dropping the bomb made good sense to him, yet he was anything but absent of regret over those terrible days.

He had been raised to be a good boy and not do harm to others, but it had been wartime and doing what he did was his duty and responsibility, so he, like my father-in-law, did what had to be done.  And he, too, had to compromise a piece of his soul, a compromise that came with deep regret.  There are literally millions of stories like these from that awful time.

Today we use the word “sacrifice” to describe what our military people have to do.  Yet in this country where less than 1% of our people shoulder our military burden, most of us don’t really understand what that means.  My father-in-law and my father understood quite well.  They did their duty and honored their responsibility for their loved ones and for our country.  Their sacrifice was enormous, as both men shouldered a weight that they carried throughout their lives as a continuing torment to their souls.  They paid an enormous price for us.

In their sacrifice they left us a country that remains free.  Over the years they let me know in countless ways that they believed in personal responsibility and that they expected me and all of us to honor our duty and the responsibility that is inextricably bound to our freedom, just as they did.  It’s likely that all of those brave men and women of that greatest generation would expect us to do that.  Part of the keeping of our freedom is to sacrifice a piece of our convenience every four years and vote.

It’s personal.


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

National Despair


There’s no point in waving arms, getting red in the face and snapping at the annoying tweaks that are sent only to distract and manipulate us.  If we’re to understand what is behind our national despair we need to focus on the core issue that keeps us stuck in a morass of helplessness and prevents us from the exceptionalism we’re capable of creating.

Perhaps you believe that doing the right thing is the right thing to do.  If so, this may fit for you:

I despair over the paralysis of America caused by the people who are supposed to be our leaders but who, instead, feather their own nest and ensure that their system is self-sustaining, much to the detriment of the rest of us.

I despair over the abdication of the regulatory muscle that could have prevented the banking-driven recession that has hurt so many Americans and has undermined the American brand throughout the world.

I despair over the abdication of the rule of law, like claiming that torture isn’t torture, like leading us into an unprovoked war and, every bit as damaging, by the near-complete failure of Congress and the press to do their jobs to prevent all that.

I despair over the public hatred and lies that are repeated by those in leadership positions and by ordinary, angry Americans as well, spreading the venom that has come to be tolerated and even believed by a distracted public.

I despair over angry young men who take handguns, rifles and automatic weapons to movie theaters and schools and kill innocents randomly, this while the NRA tells us that guns don’t kill and that assault weapons with 100 round drums must be legal and, by all means, let’s have 34 round magazines for those Glock semi-automatics.

I despair when the meteorologists tell us that we can expect this year’s drought to be repeated for years to come and, at the same time, people we’ve elected to be our leaders blatantly lie to us and declare that global warming doesn’t exist.

I despair when a congressman or senator shouts bigoted remarks at others and, worse, when those remarks aren’t rebuked by colleagues, the press and the public.

It’s true that we’ve always had haters and liars and that we’ve always had leaders who have twisted the truth because it serves them (and not America) well.   We have always had fools and bullies.

But it seems that the American train has jumped the track over the past 30 years, that dishonesty has become the purpose and dysfunction the goal.  For example, Ronald Reagan told us this about the Panama Canal:  “We bought it, we paid for it, we built it and we intend to keep it!”  That was a huge applause line, right up until the day he gave it away.

George H.W. Bush told us over and over, “Read my lips: No new taxes.”  Then he raised taxes.

Bill Clinton told us, “I did not have sex with that woman – Ms. Lewinski,” but, well, you know.

Now Mitt Romney is twisting himself every way imaginable to tell us that he’s always been against all those things he was always for.

And these are our leaders.

In any relationship, each has a part in the situation, so ultimately, it boils down to what we – you and I, our neighbors, your goofy brother-in-law, the retired couple down the street and everyone who works at the businesses in your town – have agreed to settle for.  We have let self-serving dishonesty penetrate our leadership as we simply went about our lives with myopic focus.  The lack of public integrity is so common now that we barely lift an eyebrow when we hear the next whopper.  It’s what we expect.  And that is the real poison of despair.

There is a glimmer of hope, though, that holds promise for us.  We can cure our national despair and it is so simple, so easy and so obvious.  We have the power to change everything and it is in our hands right now.

All we have to do is to stop settling.  All we have to do is to stop tolerating the intolerable.  All we have to do is to demand truth and call out the liars.

It’s time.


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

You Can’t Tell Me What To Do


Back in colonial days there was a powerful and well-grounded fear and loathing of central authority, this stemming from very bad experiences with King George III.  He had a habit of controlling the lives of the colonists in ways they did not appreciate and they fundamentally disliked being told what to do.

Following the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation was the binding document among the 13 states.  It allowed for a pitiful central government that was barely able to function because nearly all power was in the hands of the states in the name of “states rights.”  The Articles of Confederation was so puny that General George Washington balked at it.  Ten years later the Constitution was hammered out and it gave the central government the muscle it needed to do what central governments must do.

They called it “states rights” another time and the Civil War erupted.  Of course, the economic costs and social issues of slavery and its abolishment were the heart of the dispute, but there was a powerful rebellion against authority that helped to fuel passions.  That passion lives on today in the hearts of those who call the Civil War the “Northern War of Aggression.”  That battle – the “you can’t tell me what to do” resistance – has continued unbroken, not just in the south, and today it has become nearly as virulent as at any time in our history.  Indeed, it is the ultimate wedge issue.

Since President Obama took office the Republicans have primarily been a stop sign even to things they formerly proposed, endorsed and co-sponsored.  The result has been legislative stagnation in the face of enormous national need.  What is even more telling is the language that has accompanied their obstruction.  It can be simply described as, “You can’t tell me what to do.”

Most recently the implementation of the Affordable Health Care Act has elicited histrionic claims of a war on religion and violation of the First Amendment.  The proudly independent types bellow that the government can’t tell them what to do and it most certainly can’t tell their church anything, either.  Let this example be a placeholder for a key cause of the resistance to reform of anything in Washington and it will be pretty close to the center of the bulls eye.

Surely, there is room for discussion about the implications of requiring institutions owned or run by churches (not the churches themselves) to include birth control in their health care insurance plans for employees.  Suggesting that this is a war on religion, though, is hyperbolic nonsense and stubbornly railing against authority raises the question yet again:  Can the government tell us what to do?

Irrespective of your personal preferences, the government says that you may not own a nuclear weapon.  The government requires you to stop at stop signs.  The government says that you may not poison your neighbor’s dog even if he barks through the night (the dog, not the neighbor).  The government says that if you run a meat packing plant that you must follow rules of cleanliness and you can’t include in your sausage the rat that fell into the kettle.

The point is that we have laws and regulations because, as the saying goes, your absolute freedom stops at the tip of my nose.  That means that we must have some agreement about what each of us may do, what each of us may not do and what all of us must do in order to have a civil society and to arrange for what is best for all of us.  That comes at some expense to each of us, surely in the abridgment of our absolute freedom.  The absence of those laws, though, would be far worse than the presence of them.  The trick, of course, lies in finding the middle ground that serves best.

So, yes, Virginia, the government can tell you what to do.  You have the right to not like it.  You have the right to attempt to change the laws.  And you have the right to obey the laws or suffer the consequences of violating them.

But for those who want to push back against anything Obama, please be considerate of the 80% of Americans who don’t want to hear histrionics like “war on religion,” nor do we want to hear the latest installment of “You can’t tell me what to do.”  The battle that has real value is the battle for the kind of America we want this to be for all Americans, not just the impassioned, vocal few.

“Remember that knowing a tomato is a fruit is knowledge, but knowing not to put it into a fruit salad is wisdom.”       Dan Keding


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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