TR & Sq. Dealing

Theodore Roosevelt & Square Dealing:

Before his cousin came up with the New Deal, Teddy offered the square deal.

Lincoln Steffens, a ­reform-­minded journalist who had met Roosevelt long before his presidency, inadvertently gave the agenda its name. Steffens interviewed TR often and knew that he fancied himself a reformer too. Peeved by the caution of TR’s first year in office, Steffens tried to embarrass him into action. “You don’t stand for anything fundamental,” Steffens told him one day at the White House. “All you represent is the square deal.”

Roosevelt, plainly overjoyed, leapt out of his chair, pounded his desk, and bellowed, “That’s it. That’s my slogan: the square deal.”

...

TR tried to assure the bullies that the Square Deal was not socialism. He did not plan to confiscate the aces and give them to the poor, he said; he meant only to prevent crookedness in the dealing. He had no objection to men of great wealth, only to the “malefactors of great wealth,” as he would call them. He didn’t name names, but the press was soon slapping the label on J. Pierpont ­Morgan and every other tycoon who ran into trouble with the trust buster. TR also declared that he would not tolerate demagogues who incited the ­have-­nots to violence against the haves. From his presidency through his run for a third term in 1912, he would denounce class envy in one breath and in the next opine that “of all the forms of tyranny the least attractive and most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth.”

It's an interesting article from The Wilson Quarterly.

On the subject of tyrants, though, I must say that I prefer Edward Abbey's argument: "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." It was that sort of tyranny that drove the American revolution: not torture and secret courts, but the stamp act.

Heroes II

Heroes, Loud and Silent:

Karrde, in an interesting post below, wonders about whether a hero is properly boastful or not. The confusion he expresses arises, I think, from the fact that the West contains two separate traditions on the subject -- the old Indo-European heroic tradition, and the Christian heroic tradition that has largely supplanted it.

Heroic boasting was a social institution that was used by Indo-European cultures to do more than advertise their past deeds. It was also a form of accruing additional glory: both for the poetic excellence of your description, and by allowing you to essentially make wagers with the future about what you would be able to do. But you must remember that many of the ones we have today are not recordings of actual boasts, but poetic interpretations of what the boasts of the greatest heroes of yore must have sounded like. (For a version of what the boasts of regular, living heroes sounded like, see the Saga of the Jomsvikings.)

The greatest version of the heroic boast for a living man was to inspire others to extoll his virtues instead of doing it himself. This was normally done through the heroic virtue of liberality. By giving great feasts and fine gifts, you would inspire others to speak very highly of you. Professional poets would sing your praises, and they were free to do so in terms that were even more boastful than you could use yourself.

The Beowulf poem stands at the end of a very long series of revisions, now lost to us (as Tolkien pointed out in "The Monsters and the Critics"). Swimming in chainmail (which really can be done, as the folks at Regia Anglorum have shown) while fighting off sea monsters, etc., this isn't the sort of boast the old warrior on whom Beowulf is based would have made. They are the sort of poetics that would have arisen about him among the professional skalds who benefitted at his court, and their children and grandchildren, who sang of him to entertain later kings with tales of their heroic progeny.

These stories -- some version of heroic stories are what Kim du Toit is wanting when he says that "we need heroes" -- serve a number of useful functions. They showcase what a hero looks like, and how one acts. They make people think of themselves as more than just individuals, but as part of a great people with a proud history that they should uphold. They reinforce common values, and inspire better behavior. They help to socialize the young, and they also serve to remind the old about what was great and good about their own lives.

The silent hero is a Christian form, and one that developed slowly. Christianity has a lot to say against boasting and pride, and after the West became formally Christian, the Church began a centuries-long task of trying to restrain the pride that was expressed by the aristocracies of all the European cultures.

In the early Anglo-Saxon church, we have the famous cleric Alcuin protesting, "What has Ingeld to do with Christ?" That lament arose in response to the fact that heroic poetry was being read among monks instead of the Bible or the writings of saints. Those monks often came from the same aristocratic classes that furnished the great kings and warriors, and they enjoyed the same poetry. Indeed, we have the Beowulf because the monks preserved it.

By the time of Sir Thomas Malory, however, the concept of pride as sinful had at least taken hold among the fighting class. Le Morte D'Arthur still has prideful, boastful warriors, but it also has the quest for the Grail with its repentence and silence; it has the conclusion wherein Lancelot abandons worldly pride for the life of a monk. There is a deep conflict between the heroic virtues, and the Christian ones.

In the Anglosphere, the increasing importance of the Protestant movement, I'd say, was the driving force in moving the balance point in that conflict. Boasting was something a good Catholic could still do, as long as he boasted of the right things and repented for other things. (As Chesterton wrote, "Any one might say, 'Neither swagger nor grovel'; and it would have been a limit. But to say, 'Here you can swagger and there you can grovel' -- that was an emancipation.") The good Protestant, especially a good Calvinist, should not swagger at all.

America especially has its cultural roots in Protestantism, and so we have a deeply embedded notion that it is wrong to boast. We like the hero (whether a soldier or a rider of bulls) who does great things, and then says it was nothing -- or simply says nothing at all. That is what we have long preferred.

There are strong advantages to this type, but also disadvantages. One of them is that you don't get the same degree of social benefit you got from the old heroic poems. Those came from having common heroes, whose stories were told and retold to all of us. A hero who refuses to be celebrated may be admirable for having the virtue of humility in spite of having done great deeds; but he also denies his culture the chance to use him as a rallying figure, to socialize the young and to help adults rededicate their lives to the better things.

In the last few decades, there has been a rise of another sort of claimant to heroism: I mean the swaggering criminal type. We've always had gangster movies, but even as late as the Godfather pictures, it was understood that the criminals were the bad guys.

That hasn't been the case lately: from "Smokey and the Bandit" to gangster rap, we've seen a resurgence of the boastful-heroic mode. It is a mode that is fundamentally better able to socialize the young than the humble mode of Protestantism. That is a problem, and it's another part of the problem Kim was discussing.

The old mode was sustainable as long as it didn't have to compete with an active heroic tradition in the counterculture. Children (especially boys) need bold, shining heroes to emulate, and if they can't get them elsewhere, they'll emulate the pimp.

There are two kinds of heroes we have to offer, and we need them both. The first are historic American heroes, so that we can celebrate our (cultural, rather than literal) ancestors in the way that Ingeld's descendants did. I think Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge did the groundwork here: their Hero Tales from American History serves as a great source for stories to celebrate.

We also need living, modern heroes. We are fortunate enough to have some. The DOD has begun a series called Heroes in the War on Terror.

The last thing we need are poets and movie makers to turn their craft to celebrating these heroes, historic and living. That, so far, is the one place where we fall short.

Anyone want to fund a movie company? I'll bet there would be a market for these films, if only someone made them.

Nonviolence

The Department of Nonviolence & Peace:

We had a discussion recently that touched on the philosophy of nonviolence. Tigerhawk wonders further, noting that 25-30% of the Democratic House has aligned on a bill forcing the creation of a new Cabinet-level position.

Meeting the Wounded:

Fuzzybear Lioness talks about the jolt of working with the wounded, and fearing she is not worthy of the sacrifice they have made for her.

And for us.

Backroad Pics

Backroad Pictures:

InstaPundit today links to a nice back road Tennessee picture. We can do good pictures from backcountry Georgia. They're not art shots, but you might like them.

If you ever wondered what it was like to sit on top of one of the Wild Bunch, here's a shot taken from atop Delaney. You can click on the picture for a bigger version. The tiny legs at the top of the photo are the puppy hiding by a chair and mounting block.



Speaking of the puppy, here's another shot of her.



Here's Blue Streke, who left this morning for his new home.



Not all the beasties are huge. Cinnamon the pony isn't exactly friendly (to anyone, although I have bad luck with creatures named "Cinnamon"), but he does have the virtue of being small.



And here's a good shot of the road, with Sherlock in the foreground.



It's not black and white, and the hills of Georgia are "small sky" rather than "big sky" country, but it's still a pretty place to be.

Heroes

Heroes:

The subject of heroes has come up at two blogs I visit regularly. Some of the questions raised are provocative: Why are certain kinds of men revered as heroes? What is the difference between the scholarly historian's list of heroes and the ordinary man's list of heroes? How does the creation of a list of heroes reflect the values of the culture?

In the comments thread at Kim duToit's place, several examples of heroes are mentioned. While many are 'big names', several are nobodies. These small-name heroes somehow seem more impressive in that they have tried to stay out of the limelight of public attention.

This raises a question about the definition of a hero--the Platonic ideal of a hero, as it were.

The great heroic legends are full of heroes who are eager to tell of their greatness to all who will listen. (Neither Achilles nor Beowulf are shy about mentioning their past deeds.) However, the boasts are not their sole claim to fame--the heroes rise to the challenge at hand, the challenge that is the center of the story.

These men are not viewed as heroes because of their boasts, but because of their deeds. Their boasts are not out of place.

In the modern world, this seems less common. One recurring image of a modern hero (especially those mentioned in this comments thread) is of a man who has done heroic deeds, and would rather not share that history with anyone else. His family and friends know, but few others have that knowledge.

Which image is a truer representation of the hero? Or do both represent the bearing of a man of heroic stature in different cultural situations?

After some deliberation on the subject matter, I am leaning towards the idea that the heroic ideal is silent about whether the hero spends his time advertising his stature. That is, the heroic ideal is centered on the actions of the hero, rather than his attitude towards telling his own heroic tale.

However, I am also deeply aware that traditional measures of heroic stature have lost most of their cultural currency in the West. We have men and women who proclaim themselves as heroes because they are in a default attitude of rebellion against the excesses of past generations. We have publicists and media personalities declaring celebrity for a variety of reasons; rarely are those reasons connected to heroic deeds. Anyone who wins the celebrity lottery has lost almost all privacy for the purposes of feeding a novelty-driven media culture.

This makes me very happy to be able to learn about heroic stories from locations like the weblogs I linked--or locations like the Someone You Should Know series at BlackFive. I can learn their stories without them being subjected to the attention of the mass media.

When discussing why a man might not want to become the center of a media circus, I pause to wonder if the existence of this corrosive media environment is a sign of sickness in the culture. If so, how deep does the sickness run? How could such a sickness be healed?

On Suits:

Arts & Letters Daily answers a question that has bothered me for decades: where did we ever get the idea that the suit was the right way for a gentleman to dress? A good one feels like you're wearing pajamas in public, compared to the rugged clothing suited for work or adventure: denim, wool, leather. The necktie is preposterous, and the only actually useful piece of the suit -- the hat -- has since been discarded by fashion. You don't see "the great men" of any other civilization dressed up like this.

It turns out there is a good reason for the development, one that arises naturally from the roots of the gentleman:

Suits are, in fact, unnatural. The peoples of antiquity, the early Middle Ages, and traditional Asia, Africa, and the pre-Columbian Americas dressed beautifully with a minimum of cutting and sewing. Togas, kimonos, pre-Columbian mantles, dashikis — however luxurious or elegant — were not constructed as second skins.

The present male uniform began to emerge in the 14th century as an unintended consequence of military innovation. The body-fitting plate armor that we now admire in museums was replacing mail of the earlier Middle Ages. New craftsmen, the linen armorers, emerged to construct padding to cushion warriors' new exoskeletons, cutting and stitching pieces of cloth to fit the body. Those artisans, Anne Hollander declares in Sex and Suits (Knopf, 1994), "can really count as the first tailors of Europe."

It goes on from there, through revolutions French and Industrial, but that is the root of the thing.

German Medals

Righting an old Wrong:

I had not been aware that 15 April was the official day for members of the Jewish faith to remember the Holocaust. I was very pleased, however, to read this account of a small measure of justice being done by the German government.

Although the army he fought in was an enemy of ours at the time, it's good to see justice done for a man who once fought for hearth and home.

H/t: InstaPundit.

Eject!

Bill Whittle:

He's written another long essay, and as always, it merits your attention. This essay is on reason, and conspiracy:

My father was interred at Arlington National Cemetery in 2002. I will never forget that day. It changed my life, and was the event that started me writing here at Eject! Eject! Eject!

The man who coordinated that service was on a hill about a half-mile from that side of the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th, 2001. He told me that they had been informed that something was going on in New York that morning. Then he heard something that he said he thought was a missile attack – a roar so loud and so far beyond a normal jet sound that he looked up at that exact moment expecting to die.

What he saw emerge from the trees overhead, perhaps a hundred feet above him, was American Airlines Flight 77 as it went by in a silver blur, engines screaming in a power dive as it hit the near side of the Pentagon. He told me – to my face – that body parts had rained down all over that sacred field. Just like red hail on a summer day. Those body parts are buried in a special place at the base of that hill.

Now. If Rosie O’Donnell and the rest of that Lunatic Brigade is right and I am wrong, then that man – that insignificant Army chaplain and his Honor Guard of forty men – are all liars. He is lying to me for Halliburton and Big Oil. That Chaplain—and all of those decent, patriotic young men in the Honor Guard, and all the commuters on the roads who saw an American Airlines jet instead of a missile – ALL of those people are liars and accessories to murder. And all of the firefighters who went into buildings rigged to explode were pre-recruited suicide martyrs dying for George W. Bush’s plans for world conquest.

Whittle mentions Popular Mechanics' tireless attempts to trod down this mire. I'd like to mention Sovay's site on the subject, which has been devoted to disproving 9/11 conspiracy theories since not very long after 9/11.

This is something that concerns us all. It is important to get it right. Kudos to those who have, as Whittle says, shed the light of reason on these matters.

Feminist Reviews

There is a Beauty in Being a Feminist Voice...

...as Germaine Greer certainly is. That beauty is that you can write a review that says, 'This book is so bad a woman must have written it.'

The review is a masterpiece of the art of criticism, brutal and insightful at once. My thanks to the ever-valuable Arts & Letters Daily for the link.

Links

Some Great Reading:

BlackFive has a story about two good young men living the fantasy of every Marine. Ooh-rah, Lance Corporals.

Karrde, who really should be posting this stuff here as well, put up his thoughts on the subject of a man's word of honor. It was occasioned by Kim du Toit's draft chapter of his book.

There's little doubt that keeping your word is the main, most important test of a man. There's a very great deal that can be forgiven or ignored, as long as you do what you say you will do, and keep your oaths.

I see that long-time reader and commenter Noel is now blogging at Cold Fury. I would have thought I'd have put CF on the blogroll a long time ago, but apparently it escaped my attention. I'll do it now, though, for certain. Noel's stuff is either very good or very, very bad, depending on how many puns he tries to work into his arguments.

Either way, it's always worth reading.

No Riding

No Riding Today:

Today my saddle busted a fender; and one of our electrical fences suffered a rather astonishing failure occasioned by two young horses barreling through it at high speed. So, lots of work, but no time for me to ride.

Plus there was one additional distraction from regular business:



The puppy picture is by way of apology to the ladies who complained about the last entry about the horses. There are good things about the horse farm, too.

There are fewer horses to ride just now anyway. In addition to Blue Streke, we've got another one of the Wild Bunch sold if he vets out. His name is Sherlock. I'm going to miss having him around -- he's the best tempered of the bunch.



Sherlock's always friendly, and according to his trainer has taken quickly to his lessons. He's been trained as a dressage horse, and I know nothing about dressage, so I have spent little time with him. Still, when I have worked with him, I've always liked him.

So, you see, it's not always terror and fury out of these beasts. Most of the time, it's pleasant and relaxing in spite of the hard work.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness:

I had a post at BlackFive responding to a lady blogger from the sinister side of the blogosphere. She had given us a backhanded compliment:

Do you think Jihad Watch and LaShawn Barber’s Corner and BLACKFIVE and Mudville Gazette and Wizbang got to be in the top 25 at TTLB only (or even mostly) because of their writing or their core fan base? Not at all! They zoomed to the top because bloggers like Michelle Malkin, Powerline, and Hugh Hewitt talked them up, linked to them, befriended them. It does not make me happy to know that people whose worldview is so narrow, intolerant, exclusive, and hateful are so much better at supporting their ideological soulmates than we on the left, whose values run to diversity, inclusiveness, a place at the table for everyone, human needs before defense contractors’ wish lists.

Yeah, the lady has a good backhand. Let me tell you about intolerance and hate.

About a week ago, I had one of the Wild Bunch throw me hard. (We're about to sell one of them, by the name of Blue Streke. He's an outstanding blue roan, with spirit. The guy came out to ride him on Saturday, and the horse bucked him right up into the air. Took two people on the reins to get the horse straightened out. The guy said, "If my vet says he's healthy, I'll take him." That's a horseman.)

This horse who threw me, I've ridden before. He is the one who threw me earlier last month, and put me briefly in the hospital. But he'd been scared by a truck that day, and on the day in question, he seemed to be calm. I'd ridden him since the incident without a problem, and he seemed happy. He came willingly to me when I showed him the rope, and he let me saddle him without any complaint.

In other words, he lied to me.

No sooner did I get on this horse than all fourteen hundred pounds of him started to run and buck. I pulled his head around and stopped him, with an effort. My partner for the ride was ready to go, and I didn't want to spend a lot of time on this horse, so I said I was going to swap out to another for the ride.

The instant he felt me take my feet out the stirrups, he threw back on with all he had. The young lady (same one from the missing-mare episode) said it was like watching a rodeo: he bucked and reared and fought as hard as a 1,400 pound horse can go. I had him in a headlock for a second, but he reared so hard I had to lean far forward to stay balanced. He got his head free, and then while I was forward he dropped and bucked and I went flying.

I landed right on my skull, with an impact that should have broken my neck. The only reason it didn't is all those years of jujitsu training and teaching: I fell exactly the right way, against instinct but with muscle memory. Because I had pressed my chin to my chest, instead of my neck breaking the impact was distributed through the muscles of my back and chest. My back still hurts every time I do anything.

The horse went running, and my brave but young companion foolishly went after him. It took me a couple of seconds to get to my feet (my Stetson had a big dent right in the back-of-the-skull section) and by the time I caught up to her, she was doing something I wouldn't advise any of you to do. My horse had run into the barn, and she had dismounted and followed him. She still had her horse by the reins in one hand (Doc, for those of you who remember the post about him) and the Wild Buncher by her other hand. He was still rearing and snorting and yelling when I got there.

This all means that she was in a narrow place, with an angry horse on one side of her and a horse that was increasingly frightened on the other, and she was holding both of them. Brave, brave girl. But it was not a good place for her to be.

I came in and took control of the horse that just threw me. In order to do that, I had to get his reins -- and in order to get the girl to safety, I needed to do it in a way that wouldn't further spook him, and therefore her horse also. I could see the fear mixed with the anger in the beast's eye when I grabbed his reins. There was only one thing to do.

I pushed all the anger out of my heart, let it go, and looked him in the eye. "I am not angry at you," I said in level tones. "Come on. Calm down."

A horse can tell if it's true. They know if you're mad. If I wanted him to be calm, he had to know I had forgiven him. All this was less than a minute after he lied to me, sucker-punched me, and almost killed me because of it.

Everything worked out. I convinced the young lady to take her horse out of the barn and go on her way without me. I got the horse to his stall, and took his tack off, so that I could go and hurt in peace. My back still hurts, but it will be all right in time. When the girl got back, I took Doc for a short ride -- because you don't want to get thrown and walk away without riding if you can help it. You need to get back on a horse.

This story is about forgiveness. If you're going to ride horses, you have to be able to clear your mind of hate and intolerance in an instant. It has to be truly empty of those things when you grab the reins or the halter of a frightened beast.

Now, there is (I admit) a certain part of me that thinks this particular horse would make an excellent rug. But it's not the part of my soul that entertains hate; it's the part that entertains humor.

I've said from time to time that I'm not aware of hating anyone, and I honestly believe that is true. There are people I like and people I don't; there are people I'm proud to know and people I think ought to be ashamed of themselves. I don't think, though, that I hate anyone.

The lady has a Shel Silverstein quote on her homepage: "If you are a dreamer, come in." My mother used to read that poem to me. If she thinks I hate her kind, she's wrong: in that she reminds me of my mother, I'm predisposed to love rather than to hate her.

What she may not understand about me and my kind could be explained this way: Shel Silverstein also wrote "A Boy Named Sue."

America, like the poet, has room for both of us. If there's room for the part that is 'a magic-bean buyer,' and there's room for the part that came "up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear."

Now, how's that for tolerance? For ladies and horses, I have more than you might imagine.

Tartan day 2007

Happy Tartan Day:

Absinthe & Cookies once again hosts the "Gathering of the Blogs." Today is Tartan Day, a day established to celebrate Scottish heritage.

Given the readership's interests, I thought we'd talk about the Battle of King's Mountain. One of the turning points of the Revolutionary War, this battle was fought largely by Scots and Scots-Irish who had taken up residence in the backcountry. Its importance is reflected in the prominence of the mountain fighter in the crest of the Scottish American Military Society. Because they crossed over the Appalachians to resist the British, the Patriot's backcountry fighters were called "Overmountain Men."

Thomas Jefferson said at the time that it was a major turning point in the war; that sentiment was confirmed by Theodore Roosevelt in his history The Winning of the West, with the benefit of more than a century's perspective. He pointed out the importance of the mountain fighter in subsequent American history:

The warlike borderers who thronged across the Alleghanies, the restless and reckless hunters, the hard, dogged, frontier farmers, by dint of grim tenacity overcame and displaced Indians, French, and Spaniards alike, exactly as, fourteen hundred years before, Saxon and Angle had overcome and displaced the Cymric and Gaelic Celts. They were led by no one commander; they acted under orders from neither king nor congress; they were not carrying out the plans of any far-sighted leader. In obedience to the instincts working half blindly within their breasts, spurred ever onwards by the fierce desires of their eager hearts, they made in the wilderness homes for their children, and by so doing wrought out the destinies of a continental nation. They warred and settled from the high hill-valleys of the French Broad and the Upper Cumberland to the half-tropical basin of the Rio Grande, and to where the Golden Gate lets through the long-heaving waters of the Pacific. The story of how this was done forms a compact and continuous whole. The fathers followed Boon or fought at King's Mountain; the sons marched south with Jackson to overcome the Creeks and beat back the British; the grandsons died at the Alamo or charged to victory at San Jacinto.

(King's Mountain is associated with the excellence of the now-famous Ferguson Rifle, because that rifle was designed by the British commander, Patrick Ferguson, although it is not clear that any of his rifles were deployed there. Louis L'amour wrote a novel around the idea that he had two of them, and gave one away: The Ferguson Rifle. Fans who want to read one of his works set in an early period of the American frontier will enjoy it.)

Ferguson sent a challenge to the backcountry to lay down their arms, or he would bring them fire and sword. Instead, they decided to bring the fight to him. The battle was decisive in preventing the British from cutting off the American South from the Continental Congress. We might have had two Canadas, in other words: a few remaining British colonies in the north, and a few in the South. That makes for an interesting mental adventure -- perhaps someone should write a book about it.

If you wish to read still more, Wikipedia's page is here.

Civilization & the Time Traveler:

Eric Blair -- who is either a supervillain or a camel-like space alien, but who has apparently excellent taste in beach drinks and Chinese pottery -- reminds us of the outstanding civilization available in Mexico in 1650.

By happy coincidence, here is a review of a book on the glories of that civilization at its merry core: England. I assume they're downplaying the good parts a bit. Like the beer: to judge from literature of the period, the beer must have made it worthwhile.

Go Scouts

A Cheer for the BSA:

It's hard to imagine any case in which I'd side against the Boy Scouts of America, who must be the finest youth program extant. When they're allied with the DOD, however, they're assured of my support. The loser, in this case, was the ACLU.

H/t: The Castle.

PQ

"The Pirate Queen"

Any readers in NYC who might enjoy a Broadway show are invited to let me know if this is any good. I can't see how a production about Queen Elizabeth I and the Irish rebel pirate named Grace O'Malley could be all that bad.

It appears to be a "Riverdance"-type show, so you'd have to like Irish music and dancing. Otherwise, for a play, it seems interesting.

GWOT Heroes

American Heroes:

The DOD is doing something very sharp: giving us heroes. That is, it's taking the time to introduce us to them:

Army Staff Sgt. Jeremy Wilzcek, Spc. Jose Alvarez, Spc. Gregory Pushkin, and Sgt. Michael Row
Part of the Soldier’s Creed is never to leave behind a fallen comrade. On the night of March 13, 2006, then-Sgt. Wilzcek, Sgt. Row, then-Pfc. Alvarez, then-Pfc. Pushkin, and the rest of their squad risked life and limb to live up to that promise.

Row, the point man, was leading the soldiers through dark, narrow alleys in the city of Ramadi as the squad headed back to base. Suddenly two men darted into a nearby house – and at that hour, Row saw that as a clear sign of imminent danger. He stopped the team, but within seconds the street exploded with an onslaught of machine-gun and small-arms fire, RPG explosions, and hand grenades. The squad dropped to the ground and directed fire at the enemy’s position.

Alvarez moved to a covered position to reload his weapon, and he noticed one of his comrades had been hit and was lying in the middle of the firefight. Without hesitation, Alvarez rushed into the kill zone to check the soldier’s vital signs – but it was too late. He covered the soldier’s body with his own and continued firing on the enemy. When he ran out of ammunition, Alvarez stood up and started dragging the soldier out of the line of fire. Row, who was pinned down nearby, provided cover fire as Alvarez struggled to move the body. When Wilzcek and Pushkin saw Alvarez’s difficulties, they ran into the open to help. But as the three moved back toward cover, two RPGs exploded 10 meters away, knocking them down and sending a volley of shrapnel into Alvarez’s right knee. The men stood up and continued dragging their comrade to the safety of a nearby courtyard.

After establishing a safe area for the injured, Pushkin and Wilzcek ran back and forth several times from the courtyard into the line of fire to rescue trapped soldiers. Meanwhile, the RPG explosions had also injured Row’s elbow with shrapnel. Even so, he continued firing on the enemy position to help the others reach safety. Once everyone was clear, Row, who was alone in the middle of the street, called for help. As Row remembered later, “I was trapped in the street, and [Pushkin and Wilzcek] pulled me out of there.”

The squad was now in the courtyard and medical assistance was being administered – but their work was not done: enemy fire continued to light up the area. When the squad started planning the next phase, Alvarez refused to be moved with the other injured soldiers, staying to help in the fight.

The insurgents, seeing the evacuation in progress, focused their fire on the rescuers. Wilzcek, already on the roof, began firing back. After clearing the rooms below, Pushkin and his team hurried up to the roof to help Wilzcek. Row grabbed a Bunker Defeat Munition – a shoulder-launched explosive for use against fortified positions – but his injured elbow prevented him from using it. He ran up to the roof, handed the weapon to Pushkin, and helped guide Pushkin toward the targets. With Row and Wilzcek providing cover fire, Pushkin took aim and fired – destroying the enemy’s position and killing a number of insurgents. With that, the squad was able to leave the area safely.

On Feb. 15, 2007, Wilzcek, Alvarez, and Pushkin were awarded the Silver Star for their bravery and actions; Row was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor.

There are many more.

Bye, FL

Huh?

Florida commits suicide, or at least you'd think so, by inviting almost all felons to vote in her elections. That strikes me as monumentally stupid, but:

Florida is one of three states — the others are Kentucky and Virginia — that still deprive felons of civil rights for life. Most other states automatically restore felons' rights when they complete their sentences, probation or parole.

Who knew? So maybe it's not such a big deal... although it still seems like a dumb thought to me.

A TX Spring

A Texas Spring:

Miss Ladybug sends a post on Texas Bluebonnets, the colorful flowers that mark the arrival of spring. She includes photos from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower center.