As we engage in the Fight for Freedom

We don't know how, or when--but we can be ready, and doing what we can to peacefully, creatively and courageously bring justice and light

As we engage in the Fight for Freedom

By Guest Column Jim Vanne



“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”—Winston Churchill



As we engage in the fight for freedom, we repeatedly find ourselves horribly handicapped by seemingly overwhelming problems: We are often massively outspent by grotesquely rich and well-connected Learjet leftists and limousine liberals; the left—given that power, not truth, is paramount -  is able to lie with impunity, while we have no such ethical freedom to do so; the antics of the “Bombs-Away Billy” Ayers types and their “long march through the institutions”—the most recent incarnation of which is seeing the military being co-opted by multiple generals being fired, possibly for refusing to fire on their fellow American citizens—continues apace; Hollywood, the “lamestream media,” and the co-opted leftist education complex all have, as Churchill said about a lie, run around the world before truth could even get her boots on… and Churchill himself has been banished from Obama’s Oval Office, of course.

Frankly, what hope do we realistically have? Is it true that our hopes are slim to none—and Slim has just left town?

Actually, there is hope. Looking at history, we see an Invisible Hand time and again. Where exactly did that mysterious fog come from when Washington crossed the Delaware to avert utter disaster? Why did the dive bombers at the Battle of Midway make the “chance” turn they did for just one more look before their fuel ran out? Was it just an accident that Reagan didn’t have a major artery severed when he was shot? Unless you believe all is mere chance, we know that history generally has a way of eventually - long or short - resolving the perfidy, arrogance and lies of the Saul Alinsky types that have stalked the world over the centuries. No, the victory of justice is not a slam-dunk given - sometimes evil has had a very, very long run. Islam and the USSR are but two examples. But where there are willing, courageous people who pair that with faith in the Unseen Mover, many things have happened in history that engender hope. Here are two historical events for your consideration, where faith (in God, freedom or justice) paired with courage resulted in almost unbelievable historical events:



British Fairey Swordfish vs. The Bismark

The British Fairey Swordfish, introduced in 1936, was almost obsolete before its maiden flight touched down. As a matter of fact, by the end of WWII the German Me262—along with a few other airplanes—featured jet propulsion… not the Snoopy-like biplane wings reminiscent of WWI airplanes found on the Swordfish you see here. Nor was it well armed. Militaryfactory.com notes that “The standard armament of the Swordfish was something more akin to the fighters of World War I than the Second World War.” Top speed was 138 MPH—a speed perhaps one or two readers may have come close to in their automobiles (though I admit nothing!) at one time or another—as opposed to the Me262 top speed of 541 MPH, or propeller driven Mustang P-51 top speed of 437 MPH. The more common German opponent, the Me109G, had a maximum speed of close to 400 MPH, dependent upon the model. Long story short, the Swordfish was like putting your grandmother in the ring with Mike Tyson.

Arrayed against the Swordfish during one critical battle of WWII was the most modern warship of its time, the Nazi’s Bismarck, brought to life by the same vaunted German engineering the world still respects today. And the ship was not just modern—it was absolutely bristling with every kind of impenetrable defense armament imaginable, against any kind of attack conceivable. Impenetrable? Arranged with defenses to repel any attack? Does this remind you, perhaps, of a similar political situation today? It sure does me.

In a feat of daring, the Bismarck got out into the open Atlantic after the Battle of Denmark Strait, sinking one major British warship and damaging another. With its unmatched armament, firepower and speed, the whole course of history was about to be changed by Hitler’s National Socialists by shutting down the lifeblood of the war, the convoys, which brought every necessity needed by the Allies to survive.

Enter the tiny, under-powered, under-armed biplane, the Swordfish, armed a single torpedo. Launched in a seeming suicide mission against the Bismarck (in a previous attack, the aviators had mistakenly attacked one of their own ships!), they struck desperately—and with what seemed to be in failure (only one torpedo hit a heavily armored section, with virtually no damage resulting). Except for one other thing: another torpedo scored a—shall we say—“lucky” hit, striking at the very far stern, hitting the port rudder shaft. In fact, the torpedo came an eyelash from missing completely. But it did hit, and by happenstance—or Providence—the Bismarck’s rudder was damaged, and now locked into a 12 degree turn to port, turning it from indomitable—and having survived numerous previous encounters - to almost defenseless. The end, as you know, was not long in coming after that, and the Bismarck—along with its threat to change the war - was no more.

The Swordfish aviators had no way of knowing if they would be successful when they launched; they had no way of knowing whether they would be shark chum in the water in few hours or not. But launch they did, and now we consider them heroes. The application to you, dear reader, need not be spelled out—except that our literary (make no mistake—our battle today is one of the pen, the microphone and the blog, not the sword) Fairey Swordfishes are fighting the indomitable battleships found in today’s leftist journalism, politically correct educational systems, an utterly corrupt and decadent entertainment complex, and worse.

Battle of Midway
A similar story during the same war occurred in the Pacific, while the US lay prostrate after Pearl Harbor, when all was seemingly lost. You may know the name of the battle, Midway, but perhaps not the fine print of what happened. Long story short, slow, underpowered torpedo bombers were again used against a superior Japanese force, resulting in one attack where all fifteen TBD Devastators of flight VT-8 were shot down without being able to inflict any damage, flight VT-6 losing 10 of their 14 Devastators, and 10 of Yorktown’s VT-3’s 12 Devastators shot down with no hits to show for their effort. Imagine yourself at that moment: almost all of your attacking aircraft have been lost, with your country’s back already against the wall. You have just watched almost all your friends die in a courageous, but utterly futile attack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_TBD_Devastator

But just one second. Unknown to you, as a flyer in one of the ill-fated attacking torpedo bombers (assuming you were one of the few that lived), in order to shoot down these lumbering American albatrosses, Japanese fighters had to come down to low altitude to shoot them down. Thus, no Japanese fighters were “up top,” watching for enemy aircraft. And there might not have been any American aircraft “up top” if it weren’t for two plucky American dive bomber squadrons - who just happened to be critically low on fuel because of the time spent looking for the enemy, but decided to push a little longer, and a little harder. In fact, squadron commander C. Wade McClusky, Jr., putting his life at risk, decided to continue his search just that little bit little longer, and by good fortune—or Providence- spotted the wake of the Japanese destroyer Arashi, steaming at full speed to rejoin the Japanese fleet after attacking a US submarine. This “happenstance” led the dive bombers directly to the Japanese fleet, which was now bereft of fighter cover at high altitude after engaging—and wiping out—the American torpedo bombers. And those few Japanese planes able to try to mount an attack were low on fuel and ammunition. Happenstance? Providence conjoined with courage? I ask you this: Why was there no fog to cover the Arashi as there was with George Washington?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Wade_McClusky,_Jr.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_destroyer_Arashi


Perhaps you, as a blogger or person fighting for truth, feel very akin to those torpedo bombers. You may well be the modern day equivalent, doing a thankless task that has seen little to no success. Yet, may it be your courage, your perseverance, your integrity that could well be opening the path for others? You, like the torpedo bombers who went to their deaths, may never know. But that doesn’t mean your effort is meaningless or insignificant. In fact, it may very well be your sacrificial work that opens the door for someone else. Or, it may be you, yourself, that finds success when you have only 10 minutes of emotional (or financial) fuel left. You may never know, but we do know from these stories about how courage combined with Providence won the day against insurmountable odds. Can we do any less, during a similar time of despair?

There is a third, fictional story that might encourage you, if you are a person of faith, as I am. CS Lewis’ third book his magnificent space trilogy, That Hideous Strength, foresaw a day much like ours now, in which, as Churchill warned while fighting the fascism of that day “But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.” Does fascism (which is, by definition, the merger of the socialist state and big crony corporations) aided by perverted science ring a bell for anyone? In Lewis’ dystopic vision of the future, he imagines one of the leading ministries, N.I.C.E - National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, created for the betterment of mankind - leading the charge into state backed utter evil and darkness. (And in a fitting irony, the unsuspecting bureaucrats in England actually obliged us by creating a real, live government department actually functioning in England as I write, called N.I.C.E - National Inst. for Health and Care Excellence. Not that anyone in the British government was aware of this!) In Lewis’ novel, evil progress rapidly across this future “unEngland”—perhaps as rapidly as it is progressing across the West today. But, in the book, the powers that be ‚Äì by the very nature of who they were and what they were doing - also began to dabble in a science-cum-black-arts, engaging them—all in the name of a perverted science paired with a lust for power - with entities called “macrobes.” Unknown to the elite of Lewis’ N.I.C.E, these “macrobes” were simply demons, shorn of their horns and red suits, all to make them more palatable to the sophisticated elite. Of course, these macrobes easily duped their urbane Agenda 21 style alter egos, and led them down—as is always the case with demonic forces—paths ending in the destruction of both their programmes as well as their very selves. Devoured by their own flirtations with evil, the result was, as Jacques Mallet du Pan wrote of yet another evil, socialist era, the French Revolution, “la revolution devore ses enfants”—the revolution always eats its own young.

All of the above is to say that we have hope. There is no honor among thieves, and very regularly throughout history, evil eventually turns inward and starts hacking at its own members. Yes, there are indeed times when evil has had a very, very long run. Think of peaceful Coptic Christians Egypt who have faithfully suffered for a thousand years as dhimmis under Islam as but one example. But God is indeed active in history, or as Lewis put it in his Narnia Chronicles, “Aslan is about.” We don’t know how, or when—but we can be ready, and doing what we can to peacefully, creatively and courageously bring justice and light.