From our not so distant past

Reposted in its entirety from Powerline:

In today’s New York Times Richard Goldstein recalls:

As Christmas 1970 approached, 43 American prisoners of war in a large holding cell at the North Vietnamese camp known as the Hanoi Hilton sought to hold a brief church service. Their guards stopped them, and so the seeds of rebellion were planted.

A few days later, Lt. Cmdr. Edwin A. Shuman III, a downed Navy pilot, orchestrated the resistance, knowing he would be the first to face the consequences: a beating in a torture cell.

“Ned stepped forward and said, ‘Are we really committed to having church Sunday? I want to know person by person,’” a fellow prisoner, Leo K. Thorsness, recounted in a memoir. “He went around the cell pointing to each of us individually,” Mr. Thorsness continued. “When the 42nd man said yes, it was unanimous. At that instant, Ned knew he would end up in the torture cells.”

The following Sunday, Commander Shuman, who died on Dec. 3 at 82, stepped forward to lead a prayer session and was quickly hustled away by guards. The next four ranking officers did the same, and they, too, were taken away to be beaten. Meanwhile, as Mr. Thorsness told it, “the guards were now hitting P.O.W.s with gun butts and the cell was in chaos.”

And then, he remembered, the sixth-ranking senior officer began, “Gentlemen, the Lord’s Prayer.”

"And this time,” he added, “we finished it.”

Col. Thorsness tells the story in his moving memoir Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey. In 2009 NRO excerpted the story from the memoir here. The Times recalls the story today as it notes the death of Commander Shuman earlier this month at the age of 82. RIP.

These, and other stories of American character, must never be forgotten.  And it is up to us to ensure that such a country never ends.

From Minnesota

Mitch Berg of the Twin Cities writes a blog entitled Shot in the Dark.  He posted this today and it deserves reprinting in full.

In Memory

…of Cindy Yuille and Steven Forsythe, who were murdered a year ago at this minute (3:25PM Pacific Time) in the Clackamas Town Center Mall in Portland, Oregon by Jacob Tyler Roberts, an insane, delusional narcissist…

…and the many, perhaps dozens, of people whom Roberts couldn’t murder in the ensuing minutes and hours, because Nick Meli – a citizen with a carry permit and a .40 cal Glock 22 – made Roberts stop short, and then end his shooting spree by killing himself.  (We talked about  it yesterday).

If you see Representative Heather Martens, Jane Kay, their PR flak Doug Grow, Michael Paymar, Alice Hausman or any of the Twin Cities’ other gun grabbers, please do me a favor and remind them – Nick Meli saved more lives in that moment than they and their groups of smug, sanctimonious, sputtering hamsters ever will.

Mitch also does a weekend radio show, available online.  Good stuff all around.

Dennis Miller on Breitbart

Miller writes:

I do know this though, Rockne just crashed in a wheat field a few days ago and the rest of us are going to all have to do our job just a little better if we are to balance out the loss of this truly consequential man.

Yes...we must do our jobs better. Thank you for the jolt of courage, Andrew.