Historical Amnesia

May 8, 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. Four score years ago, Allied troops entered Berlin and the Thousand Year Reich ended after 13 years. Last month marked the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord, the battles that began the American Revolution (after the “midnight ride of Paul Revere”). We heard practically nothing about the quarter millennium anniversary of our own Revolution. As I write this two days before the V-E Day anniversary, the public mention of the end of World War II in Europe is… crickets. Both events are things of which we should be proud.

I’ll also mention a shameful anniversary: last week (April 30) marked the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Like Afghans falling off planes leaving Kabul, the image of people clinging to helicopters fleeing the South Vietnamese capital should be etched in our memories. That brave land and people was abandoned to a half century of Red terror.

What’s going on with our country that critical moments in our history are being passed over with nary a mention? Why are we suffering historical amnesia?

The Dangers of the Abortion Pill

News last week made clear the “abortion pill” is not as safe as its profiteers touted. The Babylon Bee satirized what should be obvious: the abortion pill being used to induce early-pregnancy pharmacological abortions is dangerous. As they put it, “Women shocked to learn pill designed to murder babies might not be safe.” Should seem self-evident, but talk to any Democrat officeholder and you’ll see self-evident quickly goes down the drain. It’s utterly absent with Planned Parenthood (see here), whose survival depends on blood money and taxpayers. It’s why pro-abortion states are trying to enact various kinds of “shield laws” to prevent their “medical practitioners” from being accountable for what they do across state lines. Let’s be honest: A woman taking misoprostol and mifepristone to abort is a pregnant woman who is trying to induce a miscarriage. Before abortion became “health care,” normal people recognized that miscarriage was dangerous and that do-it-yourself at-home induced miscarriage was utterly irresponsible. But, for a good segment of the population, abortion makes everything sunshine and roses.

Big Bird Needs to Move Out of the Nest

President Trump signed an executive order to cut funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), arguing they are largely left-wing mouthpieces. The usual suspects immediately accused the administration of everything from fascism to censorship to taking away vital children’s programming to attacking Sesame Street. (USAID was even sponsoring a spinoff Sesame Street Baghdad, presumably with Big Burka Bird.) Why, in the current media environment where a thousand flowers can bloom, should the taxpayer be subsidizing any media enterprise? If NPR and PBS offer such vital services, they ought to be able to raise the money from those who want those services. If not — they’re not so vital.

Confessional Confidentiality

Washington State Governor and Catholic Bob Ferguson signed legislation purporting to force priests to violate the seal of confession. Newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Catholic Mark Carney pledges to protect abortion. Maybe, amidst all the yabbering in Rome about “witness,” the cardinals might consider the anti-witness from such lay Catholic politicians. Because with friends like these…

On the subject of the Washington bill, Seattle Archbishop Etienne published his response under the title, “Clergy: Answerable to God or State?” We Catholics like to talk about “the things of Caesar and the things of God,” but we often fail — perhaps out of overreaching influence of “separation of church and state” tropes — to point out two corollary truths: Caesar doesn’t get to decide division of the spoils. And, Caesar has nothing that wasn’t and still isn’t God’s first. Too many Lil Caesars seem to think they’re gods who only have to talk to themselves.

Other Ruminations

–On the subject of history, I saw on X a picture of a young woman standing in front of Mount Rushmore showing it her middle finger. Prescinding from comment on the vulgarity of young women, I think the photo is a Rorschach test. Conservatives will look at it and say “it shows why we need to teach love of country and patriotism.” Liberals will declare, “It shows how our ‘constant learner’ has inculcated a ‘critical’ perspective on her country’s history. We can’t challenge that!”

–The Federalist ran a story, titled “We All Need to Admit That America Has a Tattoo Problem,” about the proliferation of tattoos among Americans. It claims that about 20% of all Americans now sport tattoos, with double that figure for 18-29 year-olds. And the ubiquity of ink is now even forcing the military, which used to ban tattoos if they exceeded 25% of one’s body, to waive that rule. [The Church also traditionally opposed them as bodily mutilation.] Our theology of Confirmation once made it clear that the sacrament conferred an indelible character. It seems our young prefer more mundane, quasi-indelible ones. But I concur with the author’s view: “If you view the human form as beautiful, tattoos are a kind of corporeal vandalism.”

–I recently wrote here about how in vitro fertilization (IVF) undermines the notion of age. I take on this topic from a slightly different angle here. Ask yourself: what do “Lost in Space” and IVF have in common?

–There’s a certain mentality that fosters treating everything deviating from the norm as a “disability” or to cast it in clinical terms. Once upon a time, people who were late were late — and held accountable (up to and including firing) for being late. Now, there’s a young lady on TikTok who can’t understand that time focus. She’s renamed her lack of punctuality “time blindness,” and you need to recognize/accommodate her different enablement.