Employee

[supergee]

One advantage of growing old (perhaps the only one other than the alternative) is remembering that things weren’t always like this. I know that “under God” wasn’t in the Original Pledge of Allegiance as Written by the Founding Fathers because I can remember the discomfort of adding it. When the Duck Dynasty speaks up for the Eternal Verities, I remember when one of the Eternal Verities in their part of the world was beating the crap out of anyone who looked like them. And I remember when there was no Presidents Day.

There were two holidays: the birthdays of Lincoln & Washington. But one thing that hasn’t changed is that in large parts of the country Lincoln was the cruel federal oppressor who deprived them of their God-given right to own dark-skinned people, and they were not about to wish the sumbitch a happy birthday. Presidents Day was a compromise, or perhaps a sellout.

Charles Pierce has some thoughts on the holiday.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

was beating the crap out of anyone who looked like them

Yes, I remember the secondhand part (the children of people his age who'd grown up with the dislikes you mention and who wanted thus in the 1970s and '80s to beat the crap out of anyone German). My public school celebrated separate days off for Lincoln and Washington.

These checkpoints are valuable because they're the kind of thing that hardly any history books record, yet they affect how we (individually and together) consider the world as it "ought" to be....