1k Dead. Worse Is Behind US

[Annie]

http://doctor-horsefeathers.com/archives2/000294.php#000294

September 17, 2004
ANNIVERSARY OF ANTIETAM: THE BLOODIEST BATTLE IN U.S. HISTORY

Today, Sept. 17, is the 142nd anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day's fighting in American history. Horsefeathers has listened to the weepings and lamentations of our liberal media punditocracy as American casualties pass the 1000 mark in Iraq. By historical standards this is an amazingly low casualty war, but of course utopian Liberalism finds it shocking that people would actually kill and be killed to protect their country. Liberalism long ago became a shared sensibility, a faith, rather than a coherent body of ideas, that requires display of the believers' superior virtue. So when we hear the laments emanating from the Russerts and Rathers, the Brokaws and Stephanopouloses, we are actually witnessing these narcissistic celebrities in acts of revolting self-display. In our therapeutic age, these glib wordsmiths think of themselves as IMPORTANT PEOPLE who must enlighten the rest of us. Their self-righteousness is palpable; after all, they must help us to 'get in touch' with our own deep feelings of sadness and grief. In doing so, they are exhibiting their own higher "sensitivity" by drawing long faces, and pretending to grieve deeply on behalf of all of us, over each battlefield death. One wonders what they'd have made of the following:

In 14 hours of battle, culminating in a stalemate, Antietam resulted in nine times as many Americans killed or wounded (23,000 soldiers) as took place on June 6, 1944--D-day. More soldiers were killed and wounded at the Battle of Antietam than all Americans killed and wounded in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, and Spanish-American War combined.

Imagine the depth of anti-Lincoln passions that would have been stirred if there'd been Television news coverage announcing the daily numbers of dead and wounded. Surely Lincoln would have been under tremendous pressure by the MSM to negotiate a settlement, since in their view nothing could be worth such a toll. Look at the battlefield stalemate that resulted from all the carnage. At the end of the day the exhausted armies were left where they started. Yet without the Battle of Antietam there would have been no Emancipation Proclamation and we would not be "one nation, indivisible". How fortunate that the men of Lincoln's time were realists about human nature, not yet infected by utopian fantasies. Today's highly educated, delicately metrosexual media wordsmiths should be forced to memorize the following words by John Stuart Mill:

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Posted at 10:06 AM by Stephen

 

[Merlin1047]

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. "

A concept obviously beyond the understanding of several posters. Especially the francophiles.