You all know this picture, but you don’t know the rest of the story.
This is the famous photo of a Frenchman as the Nazis marched into Paris, down the Champs Elysses in 1940.
I always felt so bad for this man, but you know, the French knew for six months the Germans were coming, but settled back, uncorked a bottle of wine, and sat still. Even on the Maginot Line, that sat and drank. Even though it was unfinished. It was not until the English were surrounded at Dunkirk, and miraculously rescued back to England, that the French took the German war seriously. Only it was too late.
This photograph was taken only two weeks later.
You see, the French always had this belief that someone else would come rescue them, usually the English. In World War I the joke up and down the line was that “France will defend France to the last drop of English blood.” It was the same until Dunkirk in WWII when they lost their country, then it was the Yanks to get it back for them. In truth more Americans died freeing France than Frenchmen.
Some people are just that way.
The problem with France was that the minute we handed the country back over to de Gaulle the French went right back to their wastrel, ungrateful selves. The pain in that man’s eyes in the photo belied a national flaw. His pain lasted just over four years, then was quickly forgotten. There were no lessons learned. There never are in France,.
Now, if you know your Old Testament, you know that the Children of Israel and Jehovah had an up and down relationship, God even letting them roast in captivity for over sixty years during one period of infidelity.
Sadly, for the French, they never had a special covenant with God, and have run out of friends.
But Americans tend to believe we have a special relationship with God as well. Indeed, I believe this, too, but you don’t have to be blind to notice good people have been ceding more and more of the main highway over to bad people, so that now, we’ve saying what we’re saying from a side alley.
So, like it or not, as the Old Testament lays out, most every punishment levied was deserved. The Israelites deserved it. The French deserved it. And sadly, folks, as a people we deserve it too.
Now I can’t tell you how betrayed I feel by the actions of Chief Justice John Roberts, who hereinafter will be known to me as Roger Taney Roberts. (If you don’t know the Dred Scott decision, 1857, it laid down a legal ruling that Negroes were not persons within the meaning of the Constitution). It was never really implemented but contrary to Taney’s intent, did guarantee that the matter of slavery would be settled by force of arms, not court rulings of politics.
So mark this day.
Although I doubt Justice Taney Robert’s was intending to send a subtle reminder to Americans that it is not the Court’s job to bail us out of every scrape our own neglect and lascivious behavior gets us into, still, that is its reality.
So let’s be reminded.
We don’t deserve anything other than the hard, possibly bloody road that lay ahead, to take back this country in the name of the People, for just like the French, we’ve been laying around for over 40 years waiting for five-out-of-nine men on a court to fix things for us.
So, you have one day to bellyache, then there is work to do.
Like Taney, Justice Robert’s decision will never see the light of day if we do what we know we, and only we can do.
In eight months we can render this entire decision moot. Not just in the White House, but the Congress. And in four-eight years we can ensure that no court will ever be confronted with such a case again.
Tomorrow, strap ’em on.
