The Establishment Department of History – you know, the people who inform us that the study of history began with the death of Elvis – are now informing Boobus that last night’s slaughter – which killed 50 people – was “America’s deadliest shooting.” I will give these “experts” the benefit of the doubt and assume they mean numbers of Americans killed in one day at one location. Revisionist that I am, I must correct this false accounting. The numbers of soldiers butchered in the American Civil War reflect the following: [1] Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) shows 7,863 dead; [2] Seven Days Battles (June 25-July 1, 1862) had 5,228 killed; [3] the Battle of Chickamagua (September 19-20, 1863) provided 3,969 dead soldiers; [4] the Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), accounted for 3,654 dead; while [5] the Battle of Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862), added 3,482 victims to the grisly total of that war. Even the battles that lasted for more than one or two days provided numbers of daily dead that ran into the thousands.
There are numerous other Civil War battles providing far in excess of the Establishment’s newly-crafted record of 50, but these people tend to discourage any inquiries involving the harsh realities of the Civil War. Furthermore, space on the LRC blogsite is not unlimited: to list all of the 50+ daily dead in that war might pose logistical problems for Lew.
I have never been impressed by the assumption that the larger the number of victims of wrongdoing the greater the evil involved. I am reminded of scenes from two of my favorite movies: the first being The Americanization of Emily, in which Julie Andrews is being told of James Garner’s heroism in being “the first American to die on Normandy Beach,” to which she replies “oh, was there a contest?” The second film, Judgment at Nuremburg, has the wonderful line of the judge, played by Spencer Tracy, in which he lists three of the principles for which this war-crimes tribunal stood. The last of which is “the value of a single human being.” The political Establishment – which, by its nature, values collectives more highly than individuals – is aroused only by large numbers of victims. For civilized men and women, the murder of 50 victims does not increase human suffering, but only repeats it!
4:14 pm on June 12, 2016
