Elizabeth Scalia
The Anchoress
7/4/2010
Bender gives us this in the comments; George Washington being told what to do by the “idiotic cerebral meritocracy”:
This piece by Larry Getlen, at the NY Post is a must-read for the day:
Washington’s plan was to conquer the Hessians on Dec. 26 by sending troops across the Delaware in three sections — under cover of darkness — the night before.
Colonels John Cadwalader and Daniel Hitchcock would lead 1,800 men to block potential Hessian reinforcements from arriving from Burlington, N.J. General James Ewing would bring about 800 men to seal off the escape route over the bridge at Assunpink Creek. Washington would lead the main attack force of 2,400 men directly into the city.
Washington believed that the element of surprise was crucial, which meant leaving by sundown on Christmas night, arriving on the Trenton side of the river by midnight to begin marching the nine miles inland, and invading before daybreak.
The plan came with tremendous risk.
“In a worst-case scenario, [Washington] would not catch the Hessians by surprise, they would counterattack, and they would pinion his army against the river,” says John Ferling, author of “Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence.”
“He really was risking everything. When he said ‘victory or death,’ he meant that not only for himself, but for that whole army.” And for all hope of American independence.
It seems quite wrong to watch a country forged by such selfless greatness as this, tumble so swiftly into an abysmal mediocrity born of an “idiotic cerebral meritocracy,” and a tawdry old electoral bait-and-switch.
It is even worse to contemplate that the tumble was assisted through the willful surrender of a so-called “free press” (to an unknown entity it preferred to dress-up, rather than examine) and by a citizenry so complacent it was content to be lied to, because it is easier to absorb a soundbite than to read a primary-source document…
…Given the deplorable lack of civic education offered by our public schools, many Americans may well be reading the document for the first time, with more than a few of them viewing the grievances of the Colonists against England with raised eyebrows, and weighing them–particularly those concerns about taxation, bureaucracy, illegal immigration, law enforcement–against our present circumstances.
It is unimaginable that George Washington, or any of the Founders, would be amenable to a Department of Justice that saw no need to prosecute a clear case of voter intimidation. That was not what Washington was willing to die for; quite the opposite…
Read the rest at The Anchoress.
