The battle of Yorktown is marked as the victory that ended the American Revolution, and began the American experiment in democracy. (Yes, I know that it was two more years before a treaty actually ending the war \u2013 but Yorktown was the reason the treaty was signed).<\/em>\u00a0It was an overwhelming \u201cupset\u201d, to use a sports analogy.\u00a0\u00a0It was like my alma mater, Denison University beating Ohio State on the football field, or the Toledo Mud Hens defeating the New York Yankees in baseball.\u00a0\u00a0The British Army was perhaps the strongest in the world, and the British Navy was definitely the best.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that didn\u2019t matter; General Cornwallis got his British forces backed into a corner. And the British Navy wasn\u2019t at the battle, the French Navy was. They blocked Cornwallis from any extraction by sea. After days of siege warfare, the unthinkable finally happened. A white flag flew from the parapet, and Cornwallis marched his troops out to surrender. But he couldn\u2019t accept the loss himself, he sent his second in command to offer his sword to General Washington. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Washington, the consummate military man, was always aware of protocol. He instructed his second-in-command, General Benjamin Lincoln (no relation to Abraham),<\/em> to accept the symbolic gesture. As the British stacked their weapons and marched into captivity, their pipers played the old English ballad, \u201cThe World Turned Upside Down\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The world feels pretty upside down today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The former Prime Minister of Japan was assassinated, shot in the back with a homemade gun. If that happened here in the US, it would be just \u201canother brick in the wall\u201d in this summer of mass shootings. But in Japan, you can count the number of deaths from gun violence for a year on one hand. Nothing more powerful, or cowardly, than an assassin with a plastic sawed-off shotgun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, the United States is again leading a coalition of forces to oppose Russia. A smaller democratic state, Ukraine, is under mass attack. Instead of letting the Russian autocrat Putin exercise his will un-challenged, the US is doing everything short of direct warfare to stop him. It\u2019s one of the few things that most Americans actually agree on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s because the democracy that Washington helped create is also now under siege. The essential tenet of our government, that the most votes wins, is under attack. Perhaps as many as thirty percent of Americans believe that an election was stolen. They think that Joe Biden usurped his position illegally, and that their only vindication is to \u201cchange the rules\u201d so that they can decide the winner regardless of the vote count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our nation with all its blemishes and flaws, for more than half a century stood, \u201cas the shining city on the hill\u201d for the world. It seems to be a bit dimmer right now. We didn\u2019t create the \u201cpost-truth\u201d world, but our nation fully practices \u201cpost-truth\u201d. And its American companies: Facebook and Twitter, Apple, Microsoft and Google, that intentionally or not, are the mechanisms of spreading the lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How crazy is this: on the next update for my brand new IPhone (13 mini), Apple will offer a switch that will guarantee my phone cannot be hacked. I guess that\u2019s a good thing \u2013 but that also means the courts, the police, the FBI can\u2019t get in my phone either. I have nothing to hide on my phone, or computer, or anywhere else. If the FBI needs to get into my phone, it\u2019s probably because something bad happened to me. But if I flick that switch \u2013 it erases itself rather than \u201cgive up\u201d data. And yet I\u2019m still tempted to \u201cprotect\u201d myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what\u2019s even more confusing, is that both sides, \u201cMAGA\u201d or \u201cBlue\u201d, would agree to that. There is fear of an unformed \u201cthem\u201d that requires protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. King often used the phrase, \u201cThe arc of the moral universe may be long, but it bends toward justice\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0For most of my lifetime, it\u2019s felt like we could actually see \u201cthe bend\u201d, as it arced towards more freedom for Americans.\u00a0But in recent years it seems like the arc just goes off into an unseen universe, far from a final just landing.\u00a0Much of the work that so many Americans have done to bend it, seems to be lost.\u00a0\u00a0Whether it\u2019s about race, or gender, or identity; the America of today is less just than at any time that my sixty-five years can remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The world feels upside down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The American Revolution was a protracted struggle.\u00a0\u00a0It took six long years from the town squares of Lexington and Concord to the white flag of Yorktown.\u00a0\u00a0And for most of those years, the Continental Army lost.\u00a0\u00a0They lost at Lexington and Concord, they lost at Brooklyn and Harlem, they lost Philadelphia, they lost 10,000 troops under Benjamin Lincoln who surrendered Charleston, just a year before Yorktown.\u00a0\u00a0They suffered through the harsh winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge, and three other winters in the nearby Watchung Mountains of Western New Jersey.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Washington knew that the ultimate goal was for his army to survive. Survive long enough that the British ran out of patience, and money, to maintain occupations forces. Survive by avoiding a cataclysmic final battle, a \u201cGettysburg\u201d that risked his entire force. Washington kept his Army alive and fighting, for six long years, until he finally could capitalize on a British mistake. The arc of his mission finally bent towards victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It feels like we are in a time of decision, of determining whether our world will remain upside down, or whether we will find a way to right ourselves, and our nation. It\u2019s not time for the white flags, or to give up our swords. Like Washington and his second-in-command Lincoln, it\u2019s time to redouble our efforts, so that we can drown out the British pipers with our own ditty, \u201cYankee Doodle Dandy\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Trust No One<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Moral Arc<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Struggle <\/h3>\n\n\n\n