January 30, 1974

Bicentennial A Time For Dignity

The way things are going we might as well call off the Bicentennial Celebration of America.

The left-wing detractors of all that is worth while in the United States have undertaken to burlesque our 200th birthday.

So far the score is two to nothing in their favor - with no one in sight to challenge them.

Last month they made a sick joke out of a reenactment of the Boston Tea Party.  This month they planted a communist monument in the very office of the Bicentennial Center for the District of Columbia.  One shudders to think what they might do with the anniversary of Paul Revere's ride or the Battle of Yorktown.

The bully boys of Boston gave us a preview of the New Left's scenario of propaganda when they broke up a solemn replay of the Tea Party.

As a group of young men, recruited by the Boston city administration boarded a replica of the original tea ship another group, recruited by some unknown leader with a twisted mind, rowed into the act.

The intruders carried an effigy of President Richard Nixon.  They came alongside the historical ship, boldly climbed aboard and demanded that the proceedings be stopped.

We are told by the Associated Press that many of the young men who had been participating in the historical drama "cheered".  They then helped the radicals tar and feather the Nixon effigy and hang it from a yard-arm.  On shore, a throng of youthful activists encouraged the tantrum with bull horns and placards.

With this, the official party led by the Boston mayor melted away leaving the simple-minded hoodlums to clamber about the rigging like so many apes.

This is the way the brown-shirted Nazi bullies intimidated the majority of silent, apathetic German citizens and paved the way for fascism.

It is frightening to speculate on the possibility that the very place American freedom started might be the place where it ends - exactly two centuries later.

Then, on Jan. 14, the Bicentennial Center for the District of Columbia was dedicated by the mayor of Washington.

Centerpiece of the dedication was a mural painted by one H.H. Booker II.

Among the more prominent personages portrayed were Karl Marx, the author of Communism; Friedrich Engels, Marx's financial backer; Joseph Stalin, bloody dictator of Russia; Mao Tse-tung, leader of the Chinese Communists; and Angela Davis, confessed Communist and accomplice of assassins.

For further insult, the artist (?) drew a caricature of President Nixon wearing a mustache and the costume of a movie gangster.  He drew the President's daughter, Tricia, with an Afro hairdo.

I don't care how much you dislike America or the President.  There is a time for dissent and a time for dignity.  Every act of patriotism, every appearance of an elected official, every public activity can not be warped into irrelevant propaganda.

When a U.S. News & World Report writer asked a Centennial official what Communist heroes had to do with U.S. history, the official explained lamely that "all were involved with the United States over the past 200 years."

Yet, strangely absent from the mural, were American heroes such as Washington, Jefferson, Paine, Franklin and Adams who were genuinely involved with this nation.

The painter explained to the Washington Star-News that the Centennial Commission had told him to "make faces" on the walls so he drew those he considered most interesting.  He called it a "lot of fun" and seemed to regard the mural a clever joke.

This may be a joke, but it is on you and me if we let these desecrations go unchallenged.

How ironic that your tax money and mine often is used under the guise of patriotism to stifle our regard for our own country.

One face that we should demand be painted on the Washington D.C. mural is that of the patriot John Philpot Curran who said in 1790, "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active.  The condition upon which God path given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."

Our forefathers fought for liberty with their lives.  We stand in jeopardy of losing our liberty by default to the minority with the worst manners.

For evil to succeed, it is necessary only that good men do nothing.

Author: Lindsey Williams