Today is Memorial Day, the day we honor those who have fallen fighting for their country and freedom.
Memorial Day first started to be observed after the Civil War. That war was the bloodiest in American history and the casualties of that war were unprecedented. The number of killed and wounded in the three previous declared wars, the War of Independence, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War, were insignificant compared to the slaughterhouse that the Civil War became. After the war people in both the North and South began to commemorate the soldiers who died for their country. The date of this commemoration varied throughout the country until it settled on May 30.
In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill. This law moved the dates of four holidays, including Memorial Day, to the nearest Monday to create three-day weekends. This, I think, was unfortunate. I believe that converting the day on which we honor our fallen heroes into a long weekend tends to diminish the significance of this day. It becomes no more a day to take off work and for businesses to have sales. There should be more to Memorial Day.
There were some interesting results from the Indiana Republican primaries last week. Normally, elections for state legislatures do not attract any notice outside their state. Still, Indiana’s Republican primaries were viewed nationwide as a test of Donald Trump’s continued control over the Republican Party. As reported by WRTV in Indianapolis:
A majority of Republican Indiana state senators whose opponents were endorsed by President Donald Trump lost on Tuesday, a display of the president’s enduring influence over his party after lawmakers rejected his redistricting plan five months ago.
Of the seven challengers endorsed by Trump, at least five won.
“Big night for MAGA in Indiana,” U.S. Sen. Jim Banks wrote on social media, adding that he was “proud to have helped elect more conservative Republicans to the Indiana State Senate.”
The president’s allies spent at least $8.3 million on races that rarely get much attention from Washington. It’s been a costly and unprecedented intraparty battle that has exacerbated tensions among Republicans ahead of the November midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
The losing incumbents were among the Republican State Senators who rejected Trump’s call for Indiana to redistrict its Congressional seats to give the Republicans an advantage in the upcoming midterms.
Trump began leaning on Republican-led states last year to redraw their congressional maps, making it easier for his party to hold its thin majority in the U.S. House. Although redistricting is normally done once a decade, after a new census, Trump wanted to abandon tradition to gain a political edge.
Texas was the first to follow through, and the White House pressured Indiana to go along too. Vice President JD Vance met with state politicians in Washington and Indianapolis, and Trump weighed in by conference call.
However, Indiana senators rebuffed the effort, one of the president’s first significant political defeats of his second term.
The Democrats have been abandoning tradition to gain a political edge for years. It is about time the Republicans followed suit. Personally, I would rather neither party engage in gerrymandering. Congressional districts ought to be compact geographically and not overtly favor either party. The weird shapes that make elections less competitive than totalitarian single-party regimes hardly seem democratic. Both sides play the gerrymandering game, however, and I suspect the Democrats have been more successful, or ruthless at it. It would be foolish for the Republicans not to play by the same rules. But, then, all too often, the Republicans have been the foolish or stupid party.
As it happens, Indiana is fairly good about the shape of its Congressional districts. They are all rectangular. No districts are shaped like ear muffs or attached to opposite sides of the state along a highway. Of Indiana’s nine districts, seven are red, and two are blue. This reflects the partisan divide in the state. Indiana is solidly red except for blue dots at Indianapolis, Bloomington, and Gary. I am not sure how any degree of gerrymandering could change that, except by splitting Indianapolis. The Trump-supported map did split Marion County and introduced some odd shapes. To be honest, I didn’t care for the new districting.
Still, I am happy that the Trump-backed candidates won. I much prefer the new populist GOP that fights to win over the old Republican Party of crony capitalism and spineless jellyfish who prefer losing gracefully over doing the hard fighting necessary to win. I want a party that’s willing to fight, fight, fight for the country’s future, and last week’s victories are a step in the right direction.
Today is Cinco de Mayo, or the Fifth of May. Contrary to what is commonly believed (including by myself), Cinco de Mayo is actually more of an American, or at least a Mexican-American, holiday than a Mexican one. Cinco de Mayo is only celebrated regionally in Mexico, primarily in the states of Puebla and Veracruz. Schools are closed on this day, but it is not an official national holiday in Mexico.
Cinco de Mayo celebrates the Mexican victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. In 1861, the Mexican government was bankrupt, and President Benito Juárez suspended payments on Mexico’s foreign debt. In response, Britain, France, and Spain sent naval forces to occupy the city of Veracruz and demand payment of the debts Mexico owed them. Juarez managed to reach an arrangement with Britain and Spain, but the French, under Emperor Napoleon III, had other ideas.
Louis Napoleon III was the nephew of Napoleon I Bonaparte. He had somehow managed to get himself elected president of the Second Republic of France in 1848. Still, he decided that president was not a grand enough title for a Bonaparte, and in 1851 he seized dictatorial power in France and named himself Emperor. Despite being the nephew of Napoleon I, Napoleon III was not a particularly aggressive Emperor and was mostly content to have France at peace with other European powers. With the crisis in Mexico, however, Napoleon III saw an opportunity for France to gain an empire in Latin America. The United States was involved in the Civil War and was in no position to try to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. In fact, an additional benefit to the French occupation of Mexico would be to give France a base with which to send aid to the Confederate States, keeping the nation divided and unable to resist the French conquest.
The French army invaded Mexico with 8000 men under the command of General Charles de Lorencez late in 1861. This army marched from Veracruz in April 1862 and defeated Mexican forces led by Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin on April 28. Seguin retreated to the city of Puebla, where the Mexicans had two forts. Seguin had only 4500 badly armed and trained men to defend the city. It seemed likely that the French would crush the Mexicans and march on to Mexico City without any further resistance.
On May 5, Lorencez attacked the forts with 6500 men. Against all odds, the Mexicans successfully defended the forts against three assaults. By the third assault, the French artillery had run out of ammunition, so the infantry had to attack without artillery support. They were driven back, and the French had to fall back. Then, Seguin attacked with his cavalry while the Mexican infantry outflanked the French on both sides of their positions. The French were routed with 462 men killed, while the Mexicans only suffered 83 dead. This unlikely victory has been an inspiration for Mexican patriots ever since.
The victory was a short-lived one. Napoleon III sent reinforcements to Mexico, and the French were able to conquer the country. Napoleon III placed the Austrian Habsburg Maximilian as the first Emperor of the Mexican Empire. He was also the last Emperor, since, as soon as the United States had finished the Civil War, the US government made it clear to Napoleon III that it would not tolerate a French colony on the southern border. Since Napoleon III did not want to fight a war against battle-hardened Civil War veterans, he removed the French troops. Maximilian, even though he sincerely tried to govern Mexico well, was quickly overthrown and executed.
Although Benito Juárez declared that the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla would be a national holiday, Cinco de Mayo was first celebrated by Mexicans in the American Southwest, the territories the US gained in the Mexican War. The former Mexicans began to celebrate Cinco de Mayo both to express their Mexican identity and to show their support for the North in the Civil War. It may seem odd that these unwilling Americans would care about a war half a continent away, but the Mexicans were against slavery, and Hispanics insisted that California enter the United States as a free state. Cinco de Mayo gained popularity in the 1960s with the rise of Latino activism and even more so in the 1980s, when beer companies realized that the holiday’s celebratory nature made a good marketing tool to sell more beer.
So happy Cinco de Mayo, or should I say Feliz Cinco de Mayo!
Some time ago, I asked this question about Pope Francis. It seemed to me that the previous Pontiff was more concerned with upholding the Gospel of Wokeism than the Gospel of Christ or the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Now the time has come to ask whether Pope Leo XIV is actually Catholic.
Is he Catholic?
What prompts the question is this tweet from the Holy Father:
This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood” (Is 1:15).
It seems to me that Pope Leo is jettisoning hundreds of years of Catholic Just War doctrine, not to mention the noble traditions of the Crusades, in favor of a kind of pacifism more associated with such sects as the Quakers or Mennonites, or with a different tradition altogether, such as Jainism.
While there are pacifist traditions within Christianity, mainstream Christianity rejects pacifism. Pacifism is only effective when it is unanimous. Everyone must reject the use of force or violence. If only a single person is willing to use force to achieve his ends, pacifism only enables the aggressor. It makes victims of those unwilling to fight.
The only way to prevent the use of force for evil ends is the use of force for good ends. An individual can turn the other cheek when offended. The state cannot. The state must use force internally to enforce the law and externally to deter aggression.
Christianity is not a pacifistic religion. Christianity is a fighting religion. J Christians are not neutral between good and evil, as some Eastern and pantheist traditions are. We believe that good and evil are real, and we are called to support the good and fight the evil. Yet, Christians do not believe war and violence are good in themselves, as do the Islamic jihadis. We do not fight for glory and booty or to extend the rule of Christ. Christians fight to secure peace and justice. We fight in self-defense and in the defense of the innocent. War, in Christian thought, is an evil but often a necessary one.
Because Christians accept the need for war in a fallen world yet do not wish to glory in war, we have developed the doctrine of the Just War. The Catholic Church, in particular, has given a lot of thought over the centuries on the criteria under which a war can be considered just. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, these criteria are:
the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
there must be serious prospects of success;
the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
Contrary to what Pope Leo XIV believes, the doctrines of the Church he is supposed to be leading are not that Jesus Christ rejects war and those who wage war. John the Baptist did not tell the soldiers who came to him to give up their swords. Nor did Jesus tell the centurion who asked for his servant to be healed to resign his commission as an officer in the Roman army. The Old Testament is full of wars that are often justified. King David is held as a model king, yet he fought many wars. God did listen to David’s prayers. In fact, the Book of Psalms is filled with the prayers of David.
I am not certain whether Pope Leo had our current military action against Iran in mind when he made his comment. The Pope has said that his general intent has not been to attack President Trump. I will take him at his word.
It seems to me, though, that America’s current military action against Iran fulfills all the listed criteria for a just war. Iran has been responsible for numerous acts of aggression against the United States and its allies. The seizure of the United States embassy by the current Iranian regime back in 1979 was an act of war. The United States has made multiple attempts to repair relations for seven presidential administrations, to no avail. Iran has either taken advantage of American peace overtures or ignored them. The military campaign thus far has been one of the most successful in our history. The purpose of the campaign is to prevent Iran from developing atomic weapons. Given Iran’s stated intention to make use of nuclear weapons to eliminate both the Great Satan and the Lesser Satan (America and Israel), it is difficult to imagine any evils created by the United States greater than the potential threat of an atomic bomb in the hands of terrorists.
Is this Pope Catholic? It is perhaps presumptuous for me to say. Like his predecessor, he seems more interested in spreading the Gospel of Social Justice than Christ crucified. My concern is that Pope Leo XIV seems to be more interested in appeasing the persecutors of Christians than confronting them. He appears to be concerned with accommodating the Muslims, who are the foremost persecutors of Christians. He visits mosques and praises Islam, while seemingly ignoring the victims of Islam and whitewashing its savage and violent history. I may be doing the Pope an injustice by characterizing him in this fashion. I hope I am. I would rather be mistaken by what I see as pusianmmity in the face of the enemies of Christ.
In the meantime, I keep thinking the Roman Catholic Church would be better served by the likes of Urban II or Julius II. But I guess they don’t make popes like they used to.
David's Commonplace Book 