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Celebrating Pride Month
The year 1776 looked as though it would end disastrously for the American Revolutionary cause. After the high point of declaring independence on July 4, the Continental Army under Gen. Washington suffered a series of disastrous defeats around New York. There were celebrations in London and awards for the victorious generals. Washington’s army shrank as men despaired of the cause, and the Continental Congress decamped from Philadelphia to Baltimore for safety. The British went into winter quarters in New York City, the largest and most prosperous city in the colonies; and they could expect that 1777 would be a glorious year of conquest as they crushed the amateurish Gen. Washington and his despondent troops.
But the Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey, awoke to an unpleasant post-Christmas morning after the Continental Army crossed the ice-filled Delaware River. The Americans defeated the British-paid hirelings, capturing over a thousand men and crucial military stores, while only losing three of their own. In the following days, Washington would defeat Lord Cornwallis twice more at Trenton as he sought to bring reinforcements in. The year of 1776 had a very sour ending for the British. Washington’s audacious attack and the pluck of his American troops restored hope to the patriot cause.
Just a week before the surprise Christmas attack, Thomas Paine had published his pamphlet The American Crisis in which he wrote:
These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
As we celebrate Pride in America this month, we should be proud of George Washington and the troops he led across the Delaware to deliver a shock blow to the agents of tyranny. They proved themselves not to be summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. Few countries, perhaps no other country, has been blessed with such a selfless, unflagging leader. He deserves the thanks of man and woman. And God deserves our gratitude for sending us such a man at that time.
Today the crisis is great and the conflict hard. Tyranny, like hell, seems to be gaining victories, and June is a month when they attempt to celebrate those victories. But instead let us take pride in Gen. Washington and the 2,400 Continentals who crossed the Delaware on the night of 25 December 1776 and changed American history.
Published in History
I put up a new flag for Flag Month.
Nice! Despite what Dementia Joe things, you can legally own a cannon.
I was very struck by Ryan Bomberger’s column today at Townhall: Sorry people. Love is not proud.
Love is a word wielded as as weapon by the left, and very effectively too. How can one be against love? But we know what love is and is not.
“We know that love isn’t love; God is. And His attributes are defined in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, detailing in part: “Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud…Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth.”
And I thought to myself, there is my yard sign: Love is not proud.
Pride is one of the Deadly Sins. They celebrate it.
Envy is another. Envying what others have is a core attribute of the Left.
Greed is another. Grab that which those you envy have and redistribute it.
Wrath? Point out the above to a Leftist and stand back.
The only Deadly Sins left are Lust, Gluttony, and being a White Sox fan*.
* There’s actually a different seventh Deadly Sin, but I’m too lazy to look it up.
Let’s try to get it without looking it up. Isn’t it vanity?
I’m trying to come up with the connection of being a White Sox fan, but all I can think of are smug Cubs fans.
It’s sloth. I thought it was but looked it up to be sure.
Does that apply to White Sox fans?
(That’s part of the joke. If I had looked it up, I would have found out that it was Sloth, but I was too lazy.)
Doesn’t that school have a security system? Do they let any Harry, Dick, or “Little Tommy” walk in off the street and disrupt classes?
No, that’s what the bureaucracy is for 😛
< sarcasm off >
< cynicism always on >
Are you proud to be an American?
Do you like it when people boast of being American?
I’m proud of those who paid the price for my birthright and humbled by the thought that I am one of them.
Washington’s Crossing but David Hackett Fischer is a great telling of this story.
Today I read the section in Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story where he discusses Paine’s pamphlets and the crossing of the Delaware. Delighted to see your post reinforcing the importance of these events.
That’s a complicated question. I have been proud to be an American. When I lived in Kazakstan and returned back to America to visit, I thrilled every time I saw the flag or heard the national anthem. I’m still proud of the ideals that our country was founded on. I’m still proud of some of the things that our country does. But I’m also ashamed and saddened by some the godless and immoral behavior that is so prevalent today.
So am I proud to be an American? I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I was born a couple centuries too late.
Being a low profile person I prefer to avoid most of the above sins. A couple (few too many) I struggle with, but the White Sox fan and the other one, when you get around to looking it up, yah that one. When I wake up every morning I’m glad to come down to breakfast as Imus used to say, and secondly I don’t want to be on the nightly news.
I am proud to be American.
I am thankful to be an American.
Cubs beat the Sox, 7-6.
I identify as a sloth, so it is just the way I was made!
My favorite Texas battle flag! Thanks for sharing!