Mean-spirited Ingratitude

The men aboard the USS Iowa fought like a two-fisted hurricane. Their enemy was nothing less than a group of honest-to-goodness racists/fascists. Late to the fight in the Pacific, they nevertheless held firm against the last stalwart surge of an imperial Japan in the throes of yamato damashi.

Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein from California has enough good sense to recognize that these sailors fought with honest courage. We might disagree over the events of the day in Iraq, or the necessity of Afghanistan - or even about the circumstances that precipitated Hiroshima. But the reasonability test would seemingly suggest that the sailors aboard the USS Iowa deserve tribute and thanks.

The city of San Francisco doesn't agree. They have rejected the attempts of their (again, Democrat) senator to make the battleship part of a commemorative exhibit at the famous Fisherman's Wharf. You see, they feel like putting the this battleship up as a monument would be an implicit endorsement of the War in Iraq at a time when we should, y'know, be building monuments to peace and stuff.

I haven't checked the conservative press on this one - I can only expect they are ablaze. I saw an AP article about this in a newspaper at a lunch counter, and I deliberately avoided searching other blogs. I have been away from the news this week - I can only guess at the excuses and piety that are being set forth in defense of those famous socialists-on-the-Bay.

Now don't twist the issue; I am not attacking their right to dissent. I know people play bait-and-switch with the 1st Amendment - by protesting that if I say the people of San Francisco are a group of pathetic silly nitwads that I am actually somehow trying to deny their right to be silly nitwads.

I am doing no such thing. But I am saying that they are insulting brave old men who fought with dignity against a foe that deserved to be defeated. And these folks in San Francisco have abandoned common sense in defense of liberty in favor of a blind and bitter ideology.