HBO is currently broadcasting a documentary movie, titled Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater. The film is a nostalgic tribute to the late Senator Barry Goldwater, produced by his granddaughter, CC Goldwater, who was five years old when he ran for president in 1964.

I recorded it a week ago, and finally managed to sit down and watch it last night. I was a high school sophomore and a passionate Goldwater supporter back then, and the memories of Barry’s triumphant nomination by the Republican Convention, and of our defeat in the election after a vile and scurrilous campaign are still vivid for me. Barry Goldwater was a standard-bearer to be proud of, and merely looking upon his features again and hearing his voice makes me smile.

One finds, viewing his granddaughter’s film, that even some of Barry’s old-time enemies, with the perspective of time, have come to respect and appreciate him better. There were a number of interesting observations, and I made a point of writing several of them down.

Al Franken:

There were people who said: if you vote for Goldwater, the Vietnam War will escalate, and we’ll have 450,000 American troops over there. And a friend of mine voted for Goldwater, and that’s exactly what happened.

Robert MacNeil:

I did not think, at the time, privately, that Goldwater would make a good president. But, in a year or two afterwards, as the Lyndon Johnson White House became paralysed by self-deception over Vietnam, I wondered whether we, and the country, had undervalued Goldwater’s integrity, and whether it might not have served the country better.

John McCain:

I’d love to be remembered as a Goldwater Republican. But I don’t pretend in any way to live up to the legacy of the man who literally changed the face of politics in America.

George Will aptly summed it all up.

People say Goldwater lost in 1964. Some of us think Goldwater won. It just took sixteen years to count the votes. In 1980, we finally got the results, and Conservatism had won.

Watch for it on your local schedule.

video

Hat tip to Red Square.

Charles Babcock, at Information Week, picks the dozen greatest pieces of software ever written. His choices were:

1. Unix

2. IBM System R

3. gene-sequencing software at the Institute for Genomic Research

4. IBM System/360

5. Java

6. Mosaic

7. Sabre system

8. First Mac Operating System

9. Excel spreadsheet

10. Apollo Guidance Computer

11. Google search rank

12. Morris worm

Somehow or other, he overlooked Castle Wolfenstein and Doom.

Recent excavations in a well discovered last fall at Jamestown, Virginia have produced a number of interesting artifacts from the earliest English settlement in North America. The well, located within the 1607 stockade, is believed to be the earliest at the Jamestown colony.

The finds included a brass Scottish pistol, a ceremonial lead halbard bearing the arms of Lord De la Warr, leather shoes, and a small lead tag bearing the stamped inscription “James Towne.”

Times Dispatch

Virginian Pilot

John Trumbull, The Declaration of Independence, 1817
Oil on canvas, 12′ x 18′, Rotunda of the Capitol, Washington, D.C.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

SIGNATURES:

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock

Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll

Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple

Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

The Republican Administration, at the present time, clearly needs to be reminded that it is the Party of Lincoln.

On August 15, 1861, a grand jury was convened in New York to investigate the conduct of a number of opposition newspapers.

The records of that grand jury state:

There are certain newspapers within this district which are in the frequent habit of encouraging the rebels now in arms against the federal government by expressing sympathy and agreement with them, the duty of acceding to their demands, and dissatisfaction with the employment of force to overcome them…

The grand jury are aware that free governments allow liberty of speech and of the press to the utmost limit, but there is, nevertheless, a limit…

The conduct of these disloyal presses is, of course condemned and abhorred by all loyal men; but the grand jury will be glad to learn from the Court that it is also subject to indictment and condign punishment.

On August 22, the newspapers named by the grand jury were suspended from the mail by order of the New York postmaster.

When their next issues were delivered to Northern cities by train, the United States marshall for the Eastern District seized all the copies, in accordance with the War Department’s General Order No. 67.

That order specified that “all correspondence and communications” which put the public safety at risk should be confiscated, and that, in future, the punishment for creating such correspondence and communications would be death.

–Robert S. Harper, Lincoln and the Press, 1951, pp.114-116.

Harriet, a 176-year-old giant Galapagos tortoise (Geochelone elephantopus), allegedly collected by Charles Darwin, has died in Australia after a short illness.

This unattributed email item seems to be basically factually correct, and provides plenty of food for reflection.

THE YEAR 1906

This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1906. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes!

Here are some of the US statistics for the Year 1906:

The average life expectancy in the US was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes in the US had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

There were only 8,000 cars in the US, and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.

With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

The average wage in the US was 22 cents per hour.

The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births in the US took place at home.

Ninety percent of all US doctors had no college education. Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as “substandard.”

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.

Five leading causes of death in the US were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza

2. Tuberculosis

3. Diarrhea

4. Heart disease

5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented yet.

There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

Two out of every 10 US adults couldn’t read or write.

Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores.

Back then the pharmacist said, “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”

Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the entire US.

So, to think I forwarded this from someone else without typing it myself, and sent it to you in a matter of seconds! Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.

A group blogging effort is being organized in observance of the 9/11 attacks, in which 2996 blogs are to be enrolled. Each blog is to publish on September 11, 2006 a memorial to one of the 9/11 victims.

Never Yet Melted will be memorializing Rick Rescorla.

More volunteers are needed.

2996 project

At the end of last month, for reasons of his own which are difficult for the rest of us to fathom, John Kerry launched a new campaign of press statements replying to the charges about his awards and military record made by fellow Swift Boat Veterans during his 2004 presidential campaign.

The Swift Boat Veterans’ attacks on Kerry’s record, and the associated book, unquestionably demolished Kerry’s “reporting for duty” campaign theme, and Kerry’s failure during the course of the campaign to release his military records and to reply effectively to the veterans’ charges did not go unnoticed by the voters.

More recently, Kerry seems to have decided that everyone has discarded his copy of Unfit for Command, and forgotten all the details, and he evidently thinks it’s now safe to go around striking martyred poses in front of the obliging liberal media.

Well, John Kerry is wrong. Not everyone has forgotten, and it is not safe, as Thomas Lipscomb demonstrates with a detailed review of Kerry’s first-Purple Heart-producing skimmer mission.

June 6 is not only the anniversary of the Normandy Invasion of WWII. It is also the anniversary of the Marine attack on Belleau Wood.

At the beginning of June 1918, the spearhead of the German Army’s offensive had captured Belleau Wood on the Paris-Metz road, only 50 miles from Paris. The American Expeditionary Force launched a counter-attack to stop the German advance.

The Marine 4th Brigade, comprising the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments, was ordered to take the woods. The Brigade began its advance across an open field of wheat, swept by murderous fire from German machine guns and artillery. Urged to turn back by retreating French forces, Marine Captain Lloyd Williams of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines uttered the now-famous retort: “Retreat, hell. We just got here.”

His platoon wavered momentarily under heavy fire at the entrance to the wood, but Sergeant Major Dan Daly charged forward, shouting “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” for which, among other actions, Daly received the Navy Cross. (He had, previous to WWI, been twice awarded the Medal of Honor.)

The woods were taken, and retaken six times, by the Marine Brigade against the resistance of more than four German Divisions, including the crack 5th German Guards Divison.

Josephus Daniels, US Secretary of the Navy, wrote:

The marines fought strictly according to American methods – a rush, a halt, a rush again, in four-wave formation, the rear waves taking over the work of those who had fallen before them, passing over the bodies of their dead comrades and plunging ahead, until they, too, should be torn to bits. But behind those waves were more waves, and the attack went on.

“Men fell like flies,” the expression is that of an officer writing from the field. Companies that had entered the battle 250 strong dwindled to 50 and 60, with a Sergeant in command; but the attack did not falter. At 9.45 o’clock that night Bouresches was taken by Lieutenant James F. Robertson and twenty-odd men of his platoon; these soon were joined by two reinforcing platoons.

Then came the enemy counter-attacks, but the marines held…

Belleau Wood was a jungle, its every rocky formation containing a German machine-gun nest, almost impossible to reach by artillery or grenade fire. There was only one way to wipe out these nests – by the bayonet. And by this method were they wiped out, for United States marines, bare-chested, shouting their battle cry of “E-e-e-e-e y-a-a-hh-h yip!” charged straight into the murderous fire from those guns, and won!

Out of the number that charged, in more than one instance, only one would reach the stronghold. There, with his bayonet as his only weapon, he would either kill or capture the defenders of the nest, and then swinging the gun about in its position, turn it against the remaining German positions in the forest.

After the battle, the French renamed the wood “Le Bois de la Brigade de Marine” (“The Wood of the Marine Brigade”) in honor of the Marines’ tenacity. The French government also later awarded the 4th Brigade the Croix de Guerre, entitling members of those Marine regiments to wear the fouragere.

Belleau Wood is also where the Marines got their German nickname of “Teufelshunde” or “Devil Dogs” because of the ferocity of their attack on the German lines. An official German report described the American Marines as “vigorous, self-confident, and remarkable marksmen.”

General John J. Pershing, Commander of the AEF, at the time, said, “The Battle of Belleau Wood was for the U.S. the biggest battle since Appomattox and the most considerable engagement American troops had ever had with a foreign enemy.”

————————————

One of our commenters asked about US press coverage back then. There is an account from the New York Times, June 20, 1918 on the web, which gets the date of the attack wrong, but has some good comments from the Germans:

The prisoners said they were glad of the chance to surrender and get out of the woods, because the American artillery fire for three days had cut off their food and other supplies and they had lived in a hell on earth. The Germans seemed deeply impressed by the fury of the American attack. One of the captured officers, when asked what he thought of the Americans as fighters, answered that the artillery was crazy and the infantry drunk. A little German private, taking up his master’s thought, pointed to three tousled but smiling marines, and said: “Vin rouge, vin blanc, beaucoup vin.” He meant he thought the Americans must be intoxicated, to fight as they did for that wood.

A story in the Observer reveals that Clint Eastwood has been directing two Iwo Jima films, both to be released later this year.

(Its author, Justin McCurry, is a seriously annoying pommy twit who applies a leftwing slant to every detail of the news story.)

The first film will be based on James Bradley’s Flags of Our Fathers, a history of the battle focused on the famous Marines’ flag-raisings on Mount Suribachi, one of which was captured in the famous photograph by Joe Rosenthal.

The second film, focusing on the Japanese point of view, will be titled Red Sun, Black Sand.

Japanese Iwo Jima veterans who met Eastwood say they are confident the films will honour their fallen comrades. ‘I asked him to make a human drama, not a war film,’ said 83-year-old Kiyoshi Endo, of the Japanese Iwo Jima Veterans’ Association. ‘I wanted him to show how the soldiers felt when they were fighting and, having read the script, I think he has done that. Who won or lost is not the point.’

The Japanese Iwo Jima Veterans’ Association must be a pretty small group.