Presidents Day, Valentines Day

Feb. 12 was Abe Lincoln’s birthday, and Feb 17 is the official President’s Day this year, and George Washington’s Birthday is the 17th and Valentine’s Day is today.  So it goes, Happy All of Them to Everybody.  Here’s Wikipedia’s interesting recitation on Presidents Day.

The cards, as usual, are from the Busch farm trove in the early 1900s, when my grandparents, my mother’s parents, were newlyweds in their 20s, hundreds of miles from their home country in southwest Wisconsin; part of the land rush to North Dakota in the early 1900s.  (There was an earlier settlement phase in Dakota Territory including my Dad’s family in the 1870s, but the real boom time came after statehood (1889), the railroad network, etc.  It was exciting times, and lonely times.  A letter from home was cherished.

They received lots of cards like the below, sometimes as postcards, sometimes as inserts with separate letters.  They kept them all, and I use them frequently here.  The originals related to history are with the North Dakota Historical Society; the others, like valentines,  were parceled out to the Busch family.

Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States when my grandparents moved west in 1905.  In the farm basement was a badly damaged portrait of all the President till Teddy Roosevelt.  Here is a photo I took of the bedraggled picture years ago:

The U.S. presidents and the U.S. Capitol, 1905. All Presidents shown up to and including Theodore Roosevelt. Found in the basement of the North Dakota farmhouse of my grandparents, who came to North Dakota in 1905.  George Washington (#1) front and center; Teddy (#26) is standing, front right.  Abraham Lincoln (#16) is standing front left.

POSTNOTE: Previous posts this week, if you wish, Feb 8 , 10, 11, 13.  Easy access through archive.  There is a lot of national news, of course.  You see the same things I do.  Be well informed and in action.

As I write, the Rule of Law ia under assault in this country of ours.  I have several times in this space referred to a 1959 52 page booklet released by the American Bar Association.  Here is a recent reference from May 5, 2024:

“In the course of developing the archival record of CGS MN.  I came across a very interesting booklet published by the American Bar Association booklet on the Rule of Law.  A pdf in four parts is here: Law Day Am Bar Assoc 1959 (c0ver through p. 17); Law Day (2) Am Bar Assoc 1959 (pages 18-24); Law Day (3) Am Bar Assoc 1959 (pages 25-43); Law Day (4) Am Bar Assoc 1959 (pp 45-52).

If I were to recommend a single page to read, it would be p. 49, “Law in a Treehouse World”.  The entire booklet is a timeless seminar for any novice in the law.”

If you haven’t read this before, give yourself the time to read these the remamining weeks of February, 2025.  The entire post is here.

This is your country under assault.  It is your responsibility – all of ours – to get engaged actively in saving it.

COMMENTS:

from Brian: Happy Valentine’s Day, Dick!    Thanks for posting.

from Judy: Thank you for these thoughts………….I cannot have imagined I would live any part of my life with the government operating as it is today.

from SAK:

Thanks Mr Bernard & I hope Valentine’s day was good for you,

We might also like to remember Saint Valentine who was martyred in the 3^rdcentury . . .

As you mention, p.49 of that document you kindly sent is impressive. I would also like to point out a bit from pp 46-47 [below]. Yes these days are different days from the Red scare days of the 1950s so allowance must be made for that. Yet it is good to keep in mind why some succeed while others fail & history rhymes even when it doesn’t repeat.

Law Above Man

Democratic government is government by law. Communist government is government by men. That, reduced to its essentials, is the difference between our way of life and that of Russia. It is therefore, singularly appropriate that May Day, the traditional day of Red celebration has been set aside in this country as Law Day.

It’s a lot harder to glamorize a law than it is to glamorize a man. Laws are by nature impersonal things. They are created by bodies of men who have been chosen by vote to represent all the citizens. They are by design expressions of the wishes of all these citizens as to how their affairs shall be regulated. They represent as nearly as possible what the majority of us feel and have felt in the past is the most just, wise and honorable way to regulate our society.

Law can’t be personalized. Legislators on any level from the national Congress to the Court of Common Council may achieve popularity or abuse through campaigns to get certain measures on the books. But once a bill becomes law, it’s bigger than and beyond the people who wrote it or voted for it. It’s bigger than those in the executive arm of government, be it the President or the dog warden, who administer it. It’s bigger than the enforcement officer, J. Edgar Hoover or the town constable. It’s bigger than the courts, from the Chief Justice in Washington to the part-time country justice of the peace.

Under communism a man—one man— is bigger than the law. His aims, his whims, his self-imposed need to stay in power are the final factors. He operates the system and changes it at will to suit his purposes; he does not operate under the system. He is above and beyond the law which works, in the last analysis, only to achieve his will. There is no law beyond the will of the dictator.

The guarantees of law, the assurance that all men are equal under the law, are the prime sources of the strength of the individual in a free society. In these days of contest with the Reds on many fronts this strength is being called upon as never before. Our celebration of Law Day is a reminder and a reinforcement of those strengths, upon which rest the hope and the confidence of the free world.

—Meriden Journal, Meriden, Conn.

Thanks again!

from Flo: All we are now facing in just the first month of the US President and his colleagues is the disaster they have brought with them to the whole world.  Mistakes happen even with the best of us, but most of us can at least apologize.