America needs ladies, but America especially needs gentlemen. Donald Trump and Bill Clinton speak to this glaring deficit in America, so beyond the liberal media hysteria to hype Trump’s deplorable conduct, all to help Hillary get elected, and beyond conservative mouthpieces and politicians sacrificing every shred of decency to prop up Donald Trump, out of political calculations over principles, here are some old LB posts on gentlemen:
Category Archives: American Character
Gentlemen: America’s endangered species
Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest
The American unCivil War of Words
One of my favorite books, which I keep on my table next to my recliner. The simple velvet ribbon bookmark with beads, is one of my quick projects.
Partisanship can, not only dull our conscience, it can throw our moral compass completely off-course, to the point that we become lost in a swirl of raging waves of overblown rhetoric, mindless lobbing of partisan invective, and end up as furtive enemies waging an escalating American unCivil War of Words. Certainly, the casualties aren’t the thousands of dead bodies that pile up in real war, but nonetheless this war comes at a great cost and is not just harmless “politics as usual” or without casualties. This unAmerican Civil War of Words is killing not only our American character, it’s killing our American republic.
Top photo: Junk on top of my craft cabinet. Bottom photo: Several candlewicking pattern leaflets.
America really began as a place where Europe’s religious malcontents, adventurers, assorted riffraff and yes, the bold and daring, decided to strike out and build their own future. That’s really who we are. We are a people, who can not only pull up our roots and plant them in a strange new land, we are a people who will learn to adapt and thrive, despite hardships. Above is a photo of the top of my craft cabinet. On the right is a container filled with ribbon scraps. The bottom photos is of pattern leaflets for candlewicking.
Candlewicking is an unique American form of needlework invented by American pioneer women, who moved West in the 1800s. Money and sewing supplies were scarce, so in the usual American fashion, industrious and creative American women began using candle wicks, which were made of braided cotton, to create a new form of embroidery, with open designs, using a colonial knot, which is similar to a French knot. Candle wicks were readily available and cheap, but the open designs allowed covering a larger space with embroidery, with less stitching.
American women weren’t just along for the ride, when they came to America, they were partners in the adventure. They helped build America too, but they also learned to create, innovate, repurpose, conserve, and strive to provide the best they could for their families.
America is a land where we are FREE to dream, as big or as little, as we choose. The photo above is a small stack of some of my dreams for future quilting projects. I use little post-it notes to mark pages in magazines and craft books all the time, to bookmark projects for the future. That Sunbonnet Sue Quilt Special is from 1986 – someday when my patience for applique peaks, I’d like to use ideas from this applique masterpiece and design my own unique Sunbonnet Sue masterpiece.
Being able to keep dreaming is part of our American spirit too.
Sunbonnet Sue is an American original, just like candlewicking. And for those who don’t think needlewomen and quilters can organize, rebel, and express themselves eloquently here’s how Sunbonnet Sue became a beloved quilt motif and how some quilters in the 1980s revolted:
“People fell in love with Sue’s sweet temperament, her ever-present bonnet, and the wholesome and good-natured vignettes of her everyday life. Soon Sue was found on postcards, greeting cards, and even became a design element on plates and dishes.
Her chunky features proved to be enticing for hand quilters and stitchers, and so Sue became preserved for all eternity in a quilt block. In the early 1900s she appeared in the Ladies Home Journal and Woman’s World magazine as well as countless newspapers and pattern magazines. During the Great Depression, Sue surged to popularity, as folks yearned for brighter and sunnier days.
Sunbonnet Sue’s popularity took a hit in the ’70s and ’80s as some quilters dared to shout, “Not all of us love Sunbonnet Sue!” A group of quilters in Kansas, known as the Seamsters Local #500, worked on a controversial quilt that came to be called, “The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue.” The current events and social unrest of the time are depicted in the blocks of that quilt.
Sue is pictured at Jonestown, Three-Mile Island, eaten by Jaws, tied to train tracks, struck by lightning – her death is represented over and over again in applique quilt blocks. The original quilt is now in a museum at Michigan State University.”
http://www.emblibrary.com/EL/ELProjects/Projects.aspx?productid=pr1637
Note: a picture of The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue quilt is at the link above.
The lower photo above is a plastic container of bookmarks, made from leftover scrapbook paper, stickers and yes, I use ribbon from that container of ribbon scraps, as a way to use little scraps of ribbon, rather than throw them away. I often put several of these bookmarks in cards for friends, in books that I’m giving as gifts or just hand some to my friends and family. Often, I go in my sewing room and sit at my little craft table and make two or three bookmarks in 10 or 15 minutes, while I am thinking about blog posts to write, but I also experiment with other craft junk and styles of bookmarks, braided ribbon ones, simple ribbon ones, or even the corner bookmarks, which you can see in the photo below:
My friend, Marrietta, is an expert quilter and she does perfectly mitered corners on all her quilt bindings. She also doesn’t throw away small scraps of fabric. Many years ago she lived here, but then she and her husband moved to Arizona. Instead of working on sewing and craft projects together like we used to, we now stay in touch and share photos of our projects and inspirations on facebook. She makes all sorts of projects with small fabric scraps, but while my quick relaxation project is bookmarks, her thing is making quilted potholders.
Marrietta also taught me how to be a more productive crafter and sewer. She doesn’t make just one thing at a time. Everything is an assembly line process with her, where you break the project into steps and make four of five at a time. One time in the mid-90s, she bought these doll heads and hands, plus angel wings on sale somewhere. She had an idea for angels, so we combined our supplies, since I had a lot of ruffled lace. We used clear plastic cones, then improvised more cones from some thick acetate-type stuff, which I pillaged from my husband’s stuff in the garage. Hot glue and a couple hours and we made about a dozen of those angels. I kept one, which is in the photo below:
American women took quilting in all sorts of new directions from the staid Old World and American quilting today is still alive and thriving, in fact, American quilters share, teach, and inspire each other in online forums, with videos and blogs. Below is a picture of just a few of the potholders Marrietta has sent me over the years. The Hawaiian shirt potholder, in the center, was made with Hawaiian print fabric scraps, that a friend of hers from Hawaii mailed her
.
I can trace my father’s family tree back to pre-Revolutionary War Pennsylvania, where they arrived in Philadelphia from Germany and settled in the wilds of northeast Pennsylvania. My father’s generation spoke PA Dutch at home, but very few of my relatives still speak PA Dutch. While many Americans are proud of their ethnic roots, from whence their ancestors came, the more important thing to be proud of is being an American.
America is all about believing, that within every individual, lies great potential, no matter the color of your skin, your religion, your ethnic background, whether your’re a man or a woman – in America all things ARE possible. It is the aspirations of people for millennia to be FREE, played out, writ large in our great nation.
Watching this descent into 2016 Election Hell, isn’t just a national embarrassment, it’s the culmination of decades of social and governmental decay. The Clintons ushered in a new era of politics in America, a brand of not just ruthless partisanship, but actual information warfare waged on the national media battlefield. It’s a vile brew of corrupt fundraising, vile character assassinations, vile mass media messaging manipulation, and vile mass media collusion to sell their messaging, all sold with endless manufactured polling data.
George W. Bush barely managed to win in 2000. Barack Obama took the Clinton information warfare to a more ruthless level and due to his endless racial politics, he has avoided being held accountable for the widespread corruption within his administration. The minute you criticize him, his Alinskyite foot soldiers attack with charges of racism. Every area of the executive branch is thoroughly corrupt, even the Defense Department, where narratives substitute for facts or the truth.
Hillary Clinton and her aides, who grossly and deliberately jeopardized national security and blatantly obstructed justice, were allowed to escape any accountability, because prosecuting them would expose the widespread mishandling of sensitive information by President Obama and his White House staff. Hillary Clinton represents total disdain for the rule of law in America.
Donald Trump seems intent on playing gutter politics, like the Clinton machine, but he is also banking on overt Russian intelligence interference in our electoral process, especially with the email leaks. Donald Trump represents the very worst in America celebrity cult worship.
This post began with a photo on one of my favorite books – (“War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars”, Andrew Carroll). I keep a letter by General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, the most famous American military leader in World War I, bookmarked. General Pershing suffered great personal loss, but he still gave his full devotion to serving America. His heartfelt letter to his young son, Warren, speaks to the American spirit we need to rekindle, to get our moral compass pointing toward a stronger, united American future:
“I want you to come so that you yourself can see something of the army and see something of France. I want you to know while you are still a boy something of the fine patriotism that inspires the American soldiers who are fighting over here for the cause of liberty. They are fighting as you know against Germany and her Allies to prevent the rulers of Germany from seizing territory that does not belong to them and from extending their rule over the people of other governments who do not wish to be ruled by Germany. I might add that in order to do this the German army, under orders from the Ruler of Germany, has committed most serious crimes, and for that also we are fighting in order to punish them.
I want you to see some of the battlefields of France with me, over which the American soldiers have fought in carrying out the great purpose of our people. It will enable you to realize later in life just what sacrifice means and just what degree of sacrifice our army is called upon to make and which they have made and are making bravely and courageously.”
He promised his young son a trip to France to see the battlefields and in words meant for his son only, General Pershing sums up the larger purpose, simple, poignant and meant to be private, a father trying to teach his son what we hold dear. He kept his promise to his son and here’s a photo of young Warren Pershing with his father in France.
General Pershing spoke of selfless sacrifice. His entire life was a testament to serving America first, which is a far, far cry from self-serving Donald Trump’s America First or Hillary’s endless opining of being America’s #1 victim of the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”. We need leaders who are personally willing to serve America first
#ConstitutionDay
Today is #ConstitutionDay
Easy interactive on:
“What is the Constitution?
and
Why does it matter to me?”
Some of us, of a certain age, grew up with Schoolhouse Rock:
Here’s one more link: Constitution Day
March Under One Flag (blog repost from 2013)
The following is a blog post, I originally posted October 16, 2013. I’ve done some slight editing to break up my mile long paragraphs (a bad habit of mine). Considering the worsening state of America’s partisan divides, we definitely need to learn how to “march under one flag” again, in fact, the divides have deepened and the wounds to our national soul fester, to the point our national character is on life support. The remedy isn’t a more liberal America or a more conservative America, it’s building a belief in one AMERICA, where every American citizen believes in The Constiution and that we are all equal under the law.
Legends on the rise and fall of great societies permeate history with certain threads, like the demise of the common culture leading the list as one of the prime harbingers of “doom”. Yes, that word “doom” comes to mind quite frequently, presaging our presumed ineluctable fated demise. Warning signs, both large and small, abound, blaring out endless streams of our culture and Judeo-Christian value system in full retreat to the relentless moral relativist message.
Some retreat for public relations reasons, like Wal-mart this past weekend (story here). The EBT system failed last Saturday in 17 states, leading to EBT recipients debit cards showing no limits. News reports indicate that in several states Wal-mart stores were crammed with customers filling slews of shopping carts with groceries and “checking out”, swiping their EBT card, which they knew did not have the funds to cover the amount of groceries “purchased” (stolen). The corollary would be long ago when people used personal checks more often and supposing you wrote a check for your purchases knowing you did not have money to cover the purchase.
There’s no difference besides the fact that media handlers will guide Wal-mart and the image of Wal-mart tracking down “poor people” for criminal prosecution over this blatant thievery might look like the giant retailer is picking on the little people. Wal-mart will likely end up eating this loss and due to American social conditioning, way too many people will use moral relativism to guide their moral reasoning in the matter – saying things like “Wal-mart can afford it” or “Wal-mart screws over the little guy all the time so turn around is fair play”. Sure, in this case some Wal-mart management in the affected states made the call to let the sales go through rather than stop the theft and they failed to follow the proper procedure in place to call Xerox when EBT cards aren’t working properly.
In this same above-mentioned scenario the more disturbing behavior is that of the crowds of people who flooded Wal-mart stores to steal food in broad daylight, with no moral hesitation. The problem with government hand-outs is the people start beginning to believe these programs really are “entitlements” and thus they never spend a moment’s notice wondering about taking other people’s money as their own, nor do they worry about stealing food from Wal-mart.
Taking stuff that is not yours is stealing, no matter the twisted semantics used to rationalize it. To delve further into this moral relativist hellish enslavement of the mind I urge you to read the article Justin linked in a comment here yesterday, “Contemporary Liberal Doublethink: Welfare = Self-Reliance”. The thieves in this scenario won’t bother to “think or reason” about their thievery, no, these are pack animals – used to being led, with no will to think for themselves nor will they ponder things like civic duty, aspiring to become better human beings or much beyond their instant gratification.
PJ Media offered this truly excellent piece written by a writer who pens under the pseudonym, Bookworm, titled “The Surprising Reason Americans Are Vulnerable to Moral Relativism”, which although lengthy, definitely rates the time. This writer posits that our American embrace of Anne Frank’s idealistic belief: “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”, creates a syllogism as described in this passage:
“Thanks to those words, Americans accept that “people are truly good at heart.” This belief creates a syllogism, one that sees Americans claiming that it must be a lie when someone dares to claim that another group doesn’t meet certain moral absolutes. How can there be moral absolutes when all “people are truly good at heart”?”
The author goes on to explain why Anne Frank’s simple idealistic belief was not only wrong in her own personal life, where she perished in the Holocaust, but it is simply wrong for mankind, in general. People aren’t truly good at heart – that part takes a great deal of civilizing effort, both in the home and in society in general, hence we used to call it “civil society”.
Aristotle offered his definition, “a shared set of norms and ethos, in which free citizens on an equal footing lived under the rule of law”, which puts us on firmer footing than most of the opining from American academics in recent decades. We need that shared set of norms and ethos as the glue to hold our splintering, divided country together. Cutting through the leftist doublethink presents a daunting challenge, but unless we commit to “winning the hearts and minds” of Americans on the importance of being “good citizens”, where “rights” rest right next to “civic duty”, we’ll continue to drift, creating an ever-widening no man’s land, rather than to use a military metaphor and which I use as my gravatar, “march under one flag”.
We must become a country under one flag again – we must become American citizens first, political partisans second.
America’s moral compass?
One of my sons told me I had to watch this video a couple weeks ago and while Trump supporters will say it’s just trying to make Trump supporters look bad and liberals will say they are bad, most people will laugh and forget about this video, which was after all done for laughs.
The thing I really am wondering about is if these people were really Trump supporters, who volunteered to review these ads (fake ads). I also wonder how many Americans, with the angry rhetoric about illegal immigrants being spewed to drum up political support, would respond like these people and if they do, we have a very SERIOUS moral crisis in America. The women in this video were way more frightening than the men – the one woman proposing tricking them with vaccinating them with something (at 6:06). She is proposing biological warfare and smiling about it – totally clueless to the magnitude of what she is blithely proposing.
No one spoke up and said any of this stuff was wrong. If Americans can be led along with ideas like this, as part of a political ad campaign, believing these are good ideas, something is very, very wrong with America’s moral compass.
I wonder how many Americans could that easily be led to committing war crimes?
And on the left we have BLM and all the way to the White House, excusing their anarchist movement and making excuses for their “anger”.
Filed under American Character, General Interest, Politics
What is the alt-right?
Hillary devoted an entire speech to Donald Trump’s “alt-right” supporters. Here’s an article by Walter Hudson, which offers some background to the origins of the alt-right movement and identifies some of the main leaders and shapers of alt-right political beliefs. Hudson explains:
“The alt-right rejects mainstream conservatism as known and pursued by the vast swath of traditional Republicans. Using familiar-sounding rhetoric, evoking lofty images of American greatness, they nonetheless reject the ideas upon which this nation was founded. Alt-right leader Richard Spencer makes this explicit in remarks chronicled by The Nation’s Joan Walsh:
When I [Walsh] try to argue that equality and pluralism are central to the nation’s founding documents, [Spencer] looks disgusted. “When I look at Thomas Jefferson’s writings, the Declaration of Independence, it makes me want to vomit. The idea that a ‘creator’ made all human beings equal? That’s ridiculous. The idea that all human beings are equal is such an appalling sentiment. We’re here on this earth for such a short period of time. The idea that we would dedicate ourselves to something as stupid as ‘equality’ or ‘democracy’ is morally insulting to me.”
Spencer’s comments are not an aberration. This is the man who coined the term “alt-right,” a recognized thought leader within the movement, saying that the Declaration of Independence makes him nauseous.It’s critical to note Spencer’s meaning here. Some conservatives may be tempted to join Spencer in a criticism of democracy. The United States is a republic, after all, and that is a meaningful difference. However, that is not the point which Spencer is referencing. For him, democracy is bad, not for the reasons which the Founders articulated, but because it threatens the nation’s racial identity.”
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/08/26/6-chilling-facts-about-the-alt-right/1/
Hudson explains the group as promoting a white tribalist belief system, predicated on rejecting not only multiculturalism, but also individual rights, in favor for a system based on a white nationalist collectivism ( a white tribe). They reject constitutionalism and opt for a race-based populism.
Everything they claim to champion, I adamantly reject.
I believe in America as a land dedicated to our founding principles.
I believe in protecting and defending The Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.
Filed under American Character, General Interest, Politics, The Constitution
“Post-reality” America: a Path to Perdition
I wrote the following in a comment in an online discussion elsewhere, but decided to post it here. I’ve used the B.H. Liddell Hart quote before, but it bears repeating. I’ve been very concerned about the acceptance of lying as no big deal, by too many Americans, our politicians and especially by the news media, for decades. When I first heard the Clinton “war room” normalizing “spin” and the liberal media using that term as if it was some sort of clever media strategy and not an affront to American civic values, the rule of law and even to their journalistic ethics, I was dismayed. Journalists should be seekers of the facts. They should be digging for the who, what, when, where, why and how on the matters they report. Here’s my comment:
“Civilization is built on the practice of keeping promises. It may not sound a high attainment, but if trust in its observance be shaken the whole structure cracks and sinks. Any constructive effort and all human relations – personal, political, and commercial – depend on being able to depend on promises.”
– B.H. Liddell Hart, “Why We Don’t Learn From History”
Sorry, I went really long again, so if you don’t want to wade through this – the main gist is lying is not just a personal character flaw – it’s a battering ram smashing against the pillars of our republic.
That phrase “post-reality” speaks to a very dangerous, horrific state of being and when it’s being imposed with the power of the state, you’re looking at a totalitarian nightmare. The hijacking of words that matter and completely turning them on their heads has been the goal of communists since the early part of the last century and for American Alinskyite/Marxists in America to continue that long march leaves us headed down a very dark road.
Living in a “post-reality” America is where we’ve allowed the very underpinnings of our republic to be corrupted. When words lose their meaning, so does the rule of law and so does our societal cohesiveness, because the common ground necessary to keep our republic girded against collapse or anarchy, rests on a shared understanding of our shared civic values.
The technology of the past century fueled mass media and our ability to communicate with others, to levels never imagined, but it has also fostered an ability for those with power and money to engage in mass deception and massively corrupt the American character (and not just Hollywood). It moved from the media blithely talking about Clinton “spin” (deliberate lying by politicians) to the Obama “narratives”, where the President of the United States has the executive branch busily rewriting facts to create a fictional version of events.
It’s so pervasive in the Obama administration, that they are purging official records, editing out portions of video from news briefings and obstructing justice whenever asked to produce records to Congress or the courts. That is the executive branch deliberately usurping the other two branches of the federal government’s power to check executive power and it should alarm everyone.
For journalists to utter the words “the administration’s narrative” is an affront to journalistic integrity, where the goal is supposed to be to report: who, what, when, where, why, and how.
The media helped the Obama administration and liberal loons spread that “narrative”, to alter the public perception of the Orlando terrorist attack, into being the result of “Christian bigotry and hate” in just two weeks. Ferguson gave us “hands up, don’t shoot” – a total lie and even more disturbing in Ferguson is the fact that there were dozens of witnesses to this incident of a white cop in an altercation with a young black man and not a single cell phone video has ever made it out into the public. That is a community willing to LIE and HIDE evidence of the truth from law enforcement, because many of these people were interviewed by police and the district attorney’s office. C’mon dozens of witnesses in a black community watching this white cop and young black man and no one pulled out a cell phone and videotaped it???
The FBI Director went on national TV and gave a list of very serious offenses and he then dismissed it as “extremely careless” handling of sensitive information, which is “grossly negligent” and even now Hillary, not only continues to lie about her email server, she’s even begun to lie about what Comey said. She has an army of political operatives and friends in the media spreading and bolstering her lies. She knows if she repeats the lies often enough, they will become the reality. It’s wholesale public corruption.
Trump doesn’t have the vast political operation of the Clinton machine yet, but he’s borrowed their talking points/scorched earth strategy to win, win, win. He blithely throws out smears, no matter their veracity, and his followers cheer that he is willing to sink as low as the Clintons. If he acquires the power of the presidency, he will be just like the Clintons. He hasn’t shown any remorse about using the Carville approach of throwing as much dirt as you can and hoping some of it sticks.
Hillary and Trump’s lying aren’t just bad personal character traits. Their lying creates large numbers of partisans engaged in, not only believing their lies, but hordes of their political followers, operatives, friends in the media and political allies jump into action to bolster, prop-up, repeat, defend their lies. It rapidly corrupts America and it feeds the rabid factionalization that is destroying America.
B.H. Liddell Hart’s , “Why We Don’t Learn From History” is available free in PDF format:
Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, Public Corruption
#PurpleHeartDay
At his headquarters in Newburgh, New York, on August 7, 1782, General George Washington devised two new badges of distinction for enlisted men and noncommissioned officers. To signify loyal military service, he ordered a chevron to be worn on the left sleeve of the uniform coat for the rank and file who had completed three years of duty “with bravery, fidelity, and good conduct”; two chevrons signified six years of service. The second badge, for “any singularly meritorious Action,” was the “Figure of a Heart in Purple Cloth or Silk edged with narrow Lace or Binding.” This device, the Badge of Military Merit, was affixed to the uniform coat above the left breast and permitted its wearer to pass guards and sentinels without challenge and to have his name and regiment inscribed in a Book of Merit. The Badge specifically honored the lower ranks, where decorations were unknown in contemporary European Armies. As Washington intended, the road to glory in a patriot army is thus open to all.”
Three badges were awarded in the waning days of the Revolutionary War, all to volunteers from Connecticut. On May 3, 1783, Sergeant Elijah Churchill and William Brown received badges and certificates from Washington’s hand at the Newburgh headquarters. Sergeant Daniel Bissell, Jr., received the award on June 10, 1783.
Churchill was a 32-year old carpenter from Enfield who entered the 8th Connecticut as a private on July 7, 1775. On May 7, 1777, he re-enlisted for the duration of the war as a corporal in the 2d Continental Light Dragoon Regiment, later the 2d Legionary Corps, and was promoted to sergeant on October 2, 1780. He was cited for gallantry in action at Fort St. George near Brookhaven on Long Island, at Coram, New York, in November 1780, and at Tarrytown, New York, in July 1781.
A native of Stamford, Brown enlisted in the 5th Connecticut Regiment as a corporal on May 23, 1775, and re-enlisted as a private on April 9, 1777, for the duration in the 8th Connecticut. He was promoted to corporal on May 8, 1779, and to sergeant on August 1, 1780, transferring with the consolidation of units to the 5th Connecticut on January 1, 1781, and to the 2d Connecticut on January 1, 1783. No record of his citation has been uncovered, but it is believed that he participated in the assault on Redoubt No. 10 during the siege of Yorktown.
Bissell, from East Windsor, enlisted on July 7, 1775, as a fifer in the 8th Connecticut Regiment, and on April 1, 1775, signed on for the duration as a corporal in the 5th Connecticut. He became a sergeant on September 1, 1777, and ended the war with the 2d Connecticut. Under Washington’s direct orders he posed as a deserter in the city of New York from August 14, 1781, to September 29, 1782, relaying valuable information to the Continental command.
The award fell into disuse following the Revolution and was not proposed again officially until after World War I. On October 10, 1927, Army Chief of Staff General Charles P. Summerall directed that a draft bill be sent to Congress “to revive the Badge of Military Merit.”
For reasons unclear, the bill was withdrawn and action on the case ceased on January 3, 1928, but the Office of The Adjutant General was instructed to file all materials collected for possible future use.
The rough sketch accompanying this proposal showed a circular disc medal with a concave center in which a relief heart appeared. The reverse carried the legend: For Military Merit.
A number of private interests sought to have the medal reinstituted in the Army. One of these was the board of directors of the For Ticonderoga Museum in New York.
On January 7, 1931, Summerall’s successor, General Douglas MacArthur, confidentially reopened work on a new design, involved the Washington Commission of Fine Arts. His object was medal issued on the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth.
Miss Elizabeth Will, an Army heraldic specialist in the Office of the Quartermaster General, was named to redesign the newly revive medal, which became known as the Purple Heart. Using general specifications provided to her, Ms. Will created the design sketch for the present medal of the Purple Heart. Her obituary , in the February 8, 1975 edition of The Washington Post newspaper, reflects her many contributions to military heraldry.
The Commission of Fine Arts solicited plaster models from three leading sculptors for the medal, selecting that of John R. Sinnock of the Philadelphia Mint in May 1931.
As described in Army Regulations 600-35 of November 10, 1941, the design consisted of a purple enameled heart within a bronze quarter-inch border showing a relief profile of George Washington in Continental uniform. Surmounting the enameled shield is Washington’s family coat of arms, the same used by the heart shape and the coat of arms of the obverse is repeated without enamel; within the heart lies the inscription, For Military Merit, with space beneath for the engraved name of the recipient. The device is 1-11/16 inches in length and 1-3/8 inches in width, and is suspended by a rounded rectangular length displaying a vertical purple band with quarter-inch white borders.
The War Department announced the new award in General Order No. 3, February 22, 1932:
By order of the President of the United States, the Purple Heart established by General George Washington at Newburgh, August 7, 1782, during the War of the Revolution, is hereby revived out of respect to his memory and military achievements.
By Order of the Secretary War:
Douglas MacArthur,
General
Chief of Staff
The association of the Purple Heart with wounds or fatality suffered in the line of meritorious service also stems from this time. Eligibility for the new award was defined to include:
•Those in possession of a Meritorious Service Citation Certificate issued by the Commander-in Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. The Certificates had to be exchanged for the Purple Heat or the award and Oak Leaf Clusters as appropriate. This preserved the ideal of presenting the award for military merit and loyal service.
•Those authorized by Army Regulations 600-95 to wear wound chevrons. These men also had to apply for the new award.
•Those not authorized wound chevrons prior to February 22, 1931, but who would otherwise be authorized them under stipulations of Army Regulations 600-95.
Revisions to AR 600-45 at the time, defining conditions of the award, elaborated upon the “singularly meritorious act of extraordinary fidelity service” required. “A wound which necessitates treatment by a medical officer and which is received in action with an enemy may, in the judgment of the commander authorized to make the award, be construed as resulting from a singularly meritorious act of essential service.” War Department Circular No 6 dated February 22, 1931, carried the same instructions.
The Navy Department at this time saw no reason to authorize the Purple Heart for its officers and men. The Department maintained that the award was “purely an army decoration.”
No record survives today of the identity of the first individual to revive the revived and redesigned Purple Heart. Local posts of the American Legion held ceremonies to honor recipients, and it was also common to invite the Adjutant General of state National Guards to preside over the ceremonies and present awards, but the practice was nowhere standard.
Developments concerning the Purple Heart after 1931 served to define further eligibility requirements for the award and to identify it even more closely with bloodshed or loss of life in the nation’s service.
In Executive Order 9277 of December 3, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt extended the use of the award to the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard after December 6, 1941, and established a uniform application of standards for the award in the Army and the Navy.
President Harry S. Truman, in Executive Order 10409 of November 12, 1952, retroactively extended Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard eligibility for the Purple Heart back to April 5, 1917, to cover World War I.
President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 11016 on April 25, 1962, extending eligibility as well to “any civilian national o the United States, who while serving under competent authority in any capacity with an armed force, has been, or may hereafter be, wounded.”
Current eligibility and conditions for the award are defined in Army Regulations 600-8-22. Paragraph 2-8e, added June 20, 1969, carries the notice that “any member of the Army who was awarded the Purple Heart for meritorious achievement or service, as opposed to wounds received in action, between 7 December 1941 and 22 September 1943, may apply for award of an appropriate decoration instead of the Purple Heart.”
The Purple Heart is ranked immediately behind the bronze star in order of precedence among the personal awards; however, it is generally acknowledged to be among the most aesthetically pleasing of American awards and decorations.
The above article in from the U.S. Army Center Of Military History
Filed under American Character, American History, General Interest, Military
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