Many times I have written about the WWII era within the context of “you had to be there.” It is understandable that young people would watch the Hollywood films of the 30s and 40s, even the 50s and think America could never have been a nation like that portrayed in these old films. Were there really Americans living back then so seemingly altruistic and naïve as they seem to be in many of these films? Having lived it the answer for me is a simple yes; and in many ways Hollywood preserved a far more accurate history of those times than textbooks used in the schools today.

As a classroom teacher and even in the colleges and universities I would find myself correcting someone’s false ideas about things like the Dust Bowl migration, what led to those internment camps and the dropping of those atomic bombs on Japan and the legitimate justification for these things, about things such as proper manners, speech, and dress being enforced in the schools, it is a long list of historical misperceptions younger people today have about the “old days” that I continue to confront as the America I once knew recedes ever further from the historical memory of America. And when my generation has finally died off, there will no longer be any to tell the story of that America, and because of the collective revisionist “history” being taught in the universities and their product schools only the old books and films will remain, and in most cases will be read and viewed as too simplistic, altruistic and naïve to have ever been true of Americans living at the time.

Many people today may realize education has failed in America without really knowing why. But educated people of my generation can tell you why; just as those like me that lived the events of WWII can tell you why Americans pulled together and did the things essential to winning that war. But “armchair historians” that were not called upon to make the sacrifices to win that war cannot be trusted to tell the actual story.

No one knows better than I do how cold-blooded it sounded when I wrote that Caesar Bush betrayed America by not sending those cruise missiles on Kabul and Baghdad the very evening of 9/11. I didn’t include Tehran because I knew if Caesar had done what he should have and left America telling the rest of the world “You want some of this too?” there would not now be a Tehran to worry about nor would there be American troops dieing in Baghdad fighting an unwinnable war against Muslim fanatics. Certainly it is now beyond debate our government is led of people that have not learned from history, and are on path of destroying America because they have not learned from history, the kind of history those like me still carry as living memory.

It was bad, living an era of having to put a face to our enemies, of living daily with the necessary propaganda demonizing the enemies of America, living with the daily sacrifices essential to winning WWII, the daily reports of battles and casualties, of personally losing loved ones fighting the “Japs and Knocksies” for the sake of a world free from the threat of those like Tojo and Hitler. But we won because we were a nation pulling together, and those old Hollywood films are an accurate portrayal of the kind of Americans we were at the time fighting that war.

But we know also how many of those in politics and business betrayed us, how so many of these profited from the war and went on to create a different kind of America that would never again pull together as a nation. All the while the films of the 50s, especially the great musicals and films like “Gidget” were showing America as a land benefiting so many with hopes and dreams of a bright future We the People were being lied to, sold out and betrayed wholesale for the unholy lust for profits, the refusal to secure our borders for the sake of slave labor, trade agreements betraying the entire working class of honest Americans that kept dutifully paying taxes but losing all representation.

So I could easily relate to “Bed reading,” by William F. Buckley, Tuesday, January 9, 2007. “The sickbed serves to distract attention, but it is unsafe to assume as a corollary that such distraction is enjoyable or even productive. It may have lessened, for a few days, preoccupation with street warfare in Baghdad, but beware the seductions of innocent diversion.”

Buckley had chosen to read “The American” by Henry James, saying “It is 488 pages long, and it may be the single most boring book ever published. It is at least the single most venerated bad book ever published. The Internet will give you not only reviews of the book, but also the entire novel, chapter after chapter, word for word. Now Henry James (1843-1916), novelist, essayist, critic, is captivating when describing people and situations. I wrote about his travel books, a dozen years ago, that ‘you can close your eyes and open either volume at any page and find yourself reading prose so resplendent it will sweep you off your feet. Yet after a while, after a long while, you will recognize that you do, really, have to come down to earth because there are so many other things to do. And besides, if you stay with him for too long, in that engrossing, scented, colored, brilliant, absorbing world, you feel strung out, feel something like hanging moss.’ “

Readers might understand why after fighting this battle for so long I sympathize with Buckley, feeling myself “something like hanging moss.” Not from staying “too long, in an engrossing, scented, colored, brilliant, absorbing world” but of staying in this real down and dirty world in which the wicked continue to prosper. While I continue to spend time profitably with my friends Emerson and Thoreau, I no longer spend time with the “seductions of innocent diversion.” Even the old films serve only as reminders of the battle for the soul of America ongoing.

And while a politically correct war is unwinnable, so is a war without an America having a national identity. An America without a heritage, culture, common language and secure borders is not a nation, but rather a conflicted federacy of petty states unable to find common ground.

To have known an America in which you took justifiable pride, to have stood and pledged allegiance to the flag with a stirring in your soul and trust in your leaders, an America with a heritage, culture, language and identity as a nation in which hope of a brighter future for your children flourished and one paycheck took care of a family, if you felt the gorge rising threatening to make you vomit while watching and listening to that “speech” by Caesar Bush, if you watch and listen to the charlatans “representing” America in Congress now causing you to cringe in your very soul you understand what has been betrayed and lost.