enough to do in
serving God, country without
abandoning themselves

On November 15, 1862, Abraham Lincoln, quoting George Washington, issued a General Order Respecting the Observance of the Sabbath Day in the Army and Navy.

Abe quoting George.

Ought to be good enough for anybody.

Mr. Lincoln wrote:

The President, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, desires and enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men in the military and naval service. The importance for men and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due regard for the divine will demand that Sunday labor in the Army and Navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity.

The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer nor the cause they defend be imperiled by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High. “At this time of public distress,” adopting the words of Washington in 1776, “men may find enough to do in the service of God and their country without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality.” The first general order issued by the Father of his Country after the Declaration of Independence indicates the spirit in which our institutions were founded and should ever be defended:

The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.

Hoping and trusting

That we might endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.

Hoping against hope it seems somedays.

impossible to
listen without idea that
senses are deceived

No matter how familiar a person may be with modern machinery and its wonderful performances, or how clear in his mind the principle underlying this strange device may be, it is impossible to listen to the mechanical speech without his experiencing the idea that his senses are deceiving him.

So reads an article in in the journal, Scientific American.

The date of the article is December 22, 1877.

The subject of the article?

The article was written after an in office demonstration of Thomas A. Edison’s first phonograph.

As the Scientific American, it was a ” …simple little contrivance” as the machine itself is still working, or at least it was when Alistair Cooke demonstrated it in his America: A Personal History of the United States (which was produced in 1976 … this video itself is 50 years … how did that happen??)

The AI of its day and the phonograph inspired some of the same fears.

It is already possible by ingenious optical contrivances to throw stereoscopic photographs of people on screens in full view of an audience. Add the talking phonograph to counterfeit their voices, and it would be difficult to carry the Illusion of real presence much further.

The sky is falling … again.

Lets run and tell the King.

PS: Thinking of Kings and those who want to be, this article also had a warning for its day and today.

“The witness“, states the article, “in court will find his own testimony repeated by machine confronting him on cross examination.”

work was mine to do
have tried to give it every
thing that was in me

He acknowledged that when he became president he had grave doubts about his capacity to do the job:

“When Franklin Roosevelt died, I felt there must be a million men better qualified than I, to take up the Presidential task.

But the work was mine to do, and I had to do it.

And I have tried to give it everything that was in me.”

He reflected on the decisions, large and small, every president has to make: “He can’t pass the buck to anybody.”

On Harry Truman in the book How Did We Get Here? From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump by Robert Dallek, HarperCollins Publishers, 2020.

Seems like Mr. Truman also said something along the lines of that it is amazing how much you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.

I guess that’s why each generation longs for the good old days.

people determined
correct what perceive to be
injustice, error

Now, some 180-odd years later, we can say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

We’ve made it.

And not because we have not come through some rough, indeed perilous, times.

The history of each of the amendments to the Constitution, including the first ten, our Bill of Rights, is invariably the story of a self-governing people determined to correct what they perceive to be injustice and error.

In fact, one might say that each amendment added to the Constitution was an attempt of the American people to expand and extend the blessings of self-government and its manifold benefits to an ever-wider circle of our citizenry.

John Henry Faulk wrote that back during the Watergate Era.

He wrote:

“… the office is invariably bigger, more important, and a lot more permanent than the officeholder.

The powers that go with the highest office in the land, the presidency, are awesome indeed.

But they belong to the people, all the people, still.

The man who holds that office and forgets whom those powers really belong to does so at his own peril.

As we have seen.”

What Mr. Faulk would have made of what is going on now is interesting to ponder.

Yet all I can come up with is that I understand why the Children of Israel “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, When we remembered Zion.“

During Watergate, Mr. Faulk wrote, “Now what’s causing all the confusion?

Why, the fact that we’ve got a prominent citizen, a man that has held the highest office in the land, suspected of some felony crimes.

But, he’s so prominent and held such a respected office, that we don’t know whether he even ought to be indicted, let alone made to stand trial.

More than that, it’s going to hurt a lot of people’s feelings if he is put through the wringer.

It’s going to hurt a lot of folks’ feelings if he ain’t.”

And that was all based on Watergate.

As Former President Obama said of Mr. Trump and the battle of the birth certificate, “Remember when we thought that was as crazy as he would get?”

It all reminds of something else Mr. Faulk wrote in his Pear Orchard series:

… you know, that there worries me a heap. By God, it seems that people don’t quite know what it’s all about no more. Them that talks loudest is the ones that seem to know the least.

All quotes from The uncensored John Henry Faulk by John Henry Faulk, 1985, Austin, Tex., Texas Monthly Press.

This is the flag I ordered through the office of Congressman John Lewis before he died.

I have a certificate that the flag once flew over the Capitol Building of the United States of America.

It used to mean a lot around the world.

… used to.

It used to stand for an American people eager to expand and extend the blessings of self-government and its manifold benefits to an ever-wider circle of our citizenry.

… an ever-wider circle of our citizenry.

It can again.

send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me, lift lamp
beside golden door

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door

Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American author of poetry, prose, and translations, as well as an activist for Jewish and Georgist causes. She is remembered for writing the sonnet “The New Colossus”, which was inspired by the Statue of Liberty, in 1883.

The above is from Wikipedia.

The words are still a part of the mythology of America.

I hope this myth dies hard but so many seem to want it.