cut his words off short
and he threw a frightened glance
over his shoulder

The port was filled with riverboats, more than he had ever seen at one time before in his life. Half the self-propelled barges of Germany — more than half, perhaps — were there, packed in, rank beside rank, and nearly all of them riding high in the water to prove that they were empty. There were friends and acquaintances everywhere, shouting greetings as soon as they recognized him and his barge.

“The Fritz Reuter’s here, boys. Now the war can start.”

The barge captain who shouted the last remark cut his words off short, with a note of apprehension in the final syllables, and he threw a frightened glance over his shoulder — the sort of glance which Germans had for years been casting behind them after a rash speech.

From the short story, If Hitler had Invaded England in the book, Gold from Crete ; ten stories by C. S. Forester (Little, Brown. Boston, 1970).

My son recently got a passport.

I asked him where he was going?

“Nowhere“, he said, “… just need to prove I am a citizen of the United States.”

All my life I have watched Movies and TV shows were men in black trench coats and black hats and tight lipped smiles say to someone, “Your Papers …?“

When I was kid, I had to ask my Dad what that meant.

I didn’t know.

I was an American.

From America.

A place where no asked for your papers.

A place where no one carried papers.

It used to be one of the things that Made America Great.

I watch as those things, those things that Made America Great are ripped away by people who claim to want to Make America Great Again?

And I wonder …

What was it like in Germany in when Hitler and HIS entourage took over.

Joseph Goebbels said, We are going into parliament to arm ourselves with weapons from democracy’s arsenal. We are becoming members of parliament in order to hamstring the Weimar way of thinking…

If democracy is stupid enough to give us free tickets and allowances for this disservice, that is its own business. We don’t worry about it. We will use any legal means to revolutionize the current state of affairs. (“What do we want with the Reichstag?” [“Was wollen wir im Reichstag?”] in his newspaper Der Angriff [The Attack], April 30, 1928.)

But what was it like for people like us in Germany to watch as the Nazi’s used any legal means to revolutionize the current state of affairs.

Can’t look at the voting records since as soon as the Nazi’s got slim majority control of the German Reichstag they outlawed any other political party so their percentage of all votes cast was almost always near 99%.

The average citizen of Germany during Word War 2 doesn’t show up in literature too often but this short story of Mr. Forester’s came to mind.

To invade England, in this story, the German Navy gathers together a collection of river barges skippered by everyday Germans.

Men not in the military and probably not a part of the political process.

They get together.

They see old friends.

And they joke.

They joke about the Government.

They joke about the Government and cut their words off short.

They joke about the Government and cut their words off short, with a note of apprehension in the final syllables.

They joke about the Government and cut their words off short, with a note of apprehension in the final syllables, and through a frightened glance over their shoulder.

They joke about the Government and cut their words off short, with a note of apprehension in the final syllables, and through a frightened glance over their shoulder — the sort of glance which Germans had for years been casting behind them after a rash speech.

The Trump years.

The Make America Great Again years.

The solutions … in search of problems.

In search of problems most of didn’t know we had.

The solutions to problems most of didn’t know we had that come at cost we don’t appreciate until it’s too late.

I told my son, I never needed a passport just to live in the United States.

And I cut my words off short, with a note of apprehension in the final syllables, and through a frightened glance over my shoulder — the sort of glance which we have for years been casting behind us after a rash speech.

PS: I have to point out that in the years leading up to the Civil War, the Southern States used their ‘slim majority’ in the House of Representatives to pass a rule FORBIDDING even the mention of the word ‘SLAVERY’ let alone any legislation to come to floor in the subject.

try obedience
to Constitution, laws
don’t you think that’d work?

On February 23, 1861, Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington, DC for his March 4th Inaugural as President of the United States.

Meeting in Washington at the same was the Peace Conference of 1861, which according to Wikipedia, was a meeting of 131 leading American politicians in February 1861, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on the eve of the American Civil War. The conference’s purpose was to avoid, if possible, the secession of the eight slave states from the upper and border South that had not done so as of that date. The seven states that had already seceded did not attend.

An invitation was passed along by the Conference to meet with Mr. Lincoln and he replied that he would receive members at 9:00 p.m.

Mr. Lucius E. Chittenden, a Vermont delegate to the Conference, later wrote of that meeting:

There was only one occurrence which threatened to disturb the harmony and good humor of the reception. In reply to a complimentary remark by Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Rives had said that, although he had retired from public life, he could not decline the request of the Governor of Virginia that he should unite in this effort to save the Union. ” But,” he continued, ” the clouds that hang over it are very dark. I have no longer the courage of my younger days. I can do little — you can do much. Everything now depends upon you.”

“I cannot agree to that,” replied Mr. Lincoln. “My course is as plain as a turnpike road. It is marked out by the Constitution. I am in no doubt which way to go. Suppose now we all stop discussing and try the experiment of obedience to the Constitution and the laws. Don’t you think it would work?”

Here today on the 4th of July, 2025, 250 years after Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and George Washington being appointed to the command of the Continental Army, we seem to have lost our way.

I found that difficult to understand as I feel that our course is as plain as a turnpike road.

It is marked out by the Constitution.

I am in no doubt which way to go.

Suppose now we all stop discussing and try the experiment of obedience to the Constitution and the laws.

As Mr. Lincoln asked, Don’t you think it would work?

Sadly, as Bruce Catton wrote, Lincoln’s path might indeed be clear—to him, at least, if not to all of his fellow countrymen—but a general appeal for obedience to the Constitution meant nothing at all, because the Constitution meant such different things to different men.

Maybe at one time, this might have been seen as part of the beauty if not majesty of the Constitution of the United States.

Not something used, as it was in 1861, to wreck it.