On August 25, 1945, the Cold War began (some say) when, ten days after World War II ended with the Japanese surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party killed Baptist missionary Capt. John Birch (1918-1845).
On August 24, 1682, William Penn received an area of territory to add it to his colony of Pennsylvania. The area comprises, today, the state of Delaware.
In 1814 on this day, British forces burnt down the White House. Unlike audience reaction to the 1996 movie Independence Day (pictured), there was no widespread cheering among Americans for the building’s destruction.
One year later, the modern Constitution of the Netherlands received its empowering signatures.
August 24 birthdays include that of British anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Argentine literary genius Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), and French historian and author of a magisterial study of the rise of capitalism in Europe, Fernand Braudel (1902-1985),
The Ukraine celebrates its independence from the Soviet Union with a National Day on August 24.
Individual liberty . . . is the true modern liberty. Political liberty is its guarantee, consequently political liberty is indispensable. But to ask the peoples of our day to sacrifice, like those of the past, the whole of their individual liberty to political liberty, is the surest means of detaching them from the former and, once this result has been achieved, it would be only too easy to deprive them of the latter.
Benjamin Constant, On the Liberty of the Ancients Compared to that of the Moderns (“De la Liberté des Anciens Comparée à celle des Modernes,”1819)
“Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.”
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter one, p. 14.
On August 23, 1989, two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stood on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands, as part of the “Singing Revolution” that helped set the Soviet Union to its implosion.
Where there are no rights, there are no duties.
On August 22, 1952, France closed its penal colony on Devil’s Island.
At first a leper colony, it had been transformed by the end of the 19th century into a prison tasked primarily with housing enemies of the French state.
It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?
On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner led slaves and freed black Americans in a rebellion that was quickly suppressed.
What are we to make of these too-interesting/vexing times? Is it time for action about symbols? Click on over to Townhall for some ideas….