Today is May 11, Veterans Day, originally called Armistice Day, which became a federal holiday in 1938 to celebrate the armistice ending hostilities of WWI "on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918".
Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, was created in 1868 to honor the Federal soldiers who died in the Civil War, and then was adopted by every state by 1890. So many have served and so many died since then, so in 1954 Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day in order to recognize all veterans for all time and all wars and by law it's now always celebrated on November 11th.
I've linked and written a lot about Woodrow Wilson who laid the ground work for the administrative state and our unending intrusion in the affairs of foreign nations where we have no skin in the game, which is what America's entry into WWI really was. I usually list Teddy Roosevelt as the worst President because he gave personality to the progressive movement. He laid the intellectual, emotional and psychological groundwork for the fascist policies later imposed by Woodrow Wilson, using America's unnecessary involvement in WWI as a justification, or the excuse if you like.
Both Teddy and Woodrow believed the Constitution was an impediment to human progress. But it was Wilson who actually imposed and applied those fascist principles during WWI, and for that, he's the worst President in American history, hands down.
WWI was a “calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings,” and that “war isn’t worth one life". That generation of soldiers suffered so horribly at the hands of incompetent leaders are gone now. Another reason I posted this is because I'm quite emotional about these wars and the terrible suffering these men endured, during the war and after "peace" was attained, at such a terrible price. I wish more people read The Guns of August.
Neither the Zimmerman Telegram nor the sinking of the Lusitania justified America entering that slaughter house where generals tried to wear out German machine guns with young men's bodies.
Wilson used both of these examples as an excuse to enter the war, America had no skin in that game. There was no need for America to enter this war over the sinking of the Lusitania. The Lusitania was a British ship and there's more than enough evidence it wasn't just a passenger ship - it was in reality a munitions carrier disguised as a passenger ship, and naturally the disguise required passengers. This wasn't an act demonstrating German brutality as much as it was English disdain for civilian life, and that was especially true of Winston Churchill who - as Lord of the Admiralty - ordered English shipping to fly flags of other countries, especially American flags in hopes of Germany sinking legitimately flagged American ships to draw America into this war.
They knew this could, and eventually would happen, and used this for propaganda purposes to draw Americans into the war. As for Wilson - he was a well know anglophile and privately wanted to enter the war on England's side - all the while lying to the American public proclaiming how he was a devoted isolationist. And going to war over Americans who died on a foreign flag ship in time of war was a standard created by Wilson to justify the unjustifiable.
As for the Zimmerman Telegram where Germany invited Mexico to form a military alliance and attack America if the United States entered the war, promising financial and military support; that outraged the America public, but how did the public know? Wilson made sure they knew in spite of the fact Wilson had to know Germany was in no way capable of aiding Mexico in any way, and Mexico was in no way capable of invading the United States, a situation that Wilson could have easily resolved with a nasty diplomatic letter to the President of Mexico. But the Anglophile Wilson wanted America in the war, and the world has paid a massive price ever since.
There have been a few articles about WWI that I think are worth viewing:
The stupid ending of a stupid war - What started the First World War? Answer: the public murder of a member of the Habsburg dynasty and his wife. That’s it. Because of that, an estimated 15–22 million people died, mostly soldiers. So many men were killed that thereafter, many European women would never be able to find husbands....... To further set the stage at the war’s outset, France and Switzerland were the only nations in all of Europe that were not monarchies. Britain’s Queen Victoria had assiduously married off her daughters so that Kaiser Wihelm, Tsar Nicholas of Russia, and Britain’s King George V were all first cousins.......
The machine gun was also a major new factor. As mentioned in The Social History of the Machine Gun by John Ellis (Johns Hopkins University Press), an initial tactic for dealing with a machine gun was to overwhelm the position so it would eventually run out of bullets......
Perhaps the greatest bungle was the establishment of financial reparations against Germany, denominated in German marks. The Weimar government soon fired up its printing presses and churned out tons of “legal tender” in order to fulfill the obligation. Such inflationary distress set the stage for the rise of National Socialism and the eventual deaths of several millions more, this time including many more civilians, partially due to the advent of aerial bombing of population centers as a tactic........
Making sense of the Great War - As a student of history, it is not exactly clear to me why we were involved.......It is not only U.S. involvement in that war that is hard to fathom. The reason for British involvement in a continental conflict in 1914 is difficult to understand. Up until that point, England had been wary of getting itself involved in a European land war.
Traditionally, it did not possess a large standing army, and its ambitions on the European continent were limited. Its preference was to remain an isolated island nation with global maritime trading ambitions rather than one directly involved in the struggle for European continental hegemony. The war to depose Napoleon, one hundred years earlier, had been a rare exception. In that instance, the English people had found themselves in league with the illiberal, conservative land powers of Prussia, Austria, and Russia, a rather odd arrangement for a liberal democracy with a global maritime outlook.......
Had we stayed out of WWI, the U.S. would have secured it place as the long-term dominant power in the world, greatly overshadowing the threats that came later from Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Indeed, had we focused on the development of our own economy, including military research, WWII and the Cold War, and the current rivalry with China, might have been avoided or lessened. It is also very likely that the Great Depression would have been less severe, since in part it was triggered by overhanging war debt........
Woodrow Wilson laid the psychological and intellectual foundation for all the disastrous issues the world is facing right now. The least we can do is make sure the history being taught in America's educational institutions is not the leftist swill and propaganda we're seeing regularly touted by the left and their myrmidons of the Pravda media.










