Florida is known as the “Sunshine State” but South Dakota may have claimed it before Florida.

The first South Dakota flag was made in 1909. One side of the state flag was to include a sun and the words “The Sunshine State” according to the South Dakota Secretary of State website. //

The state also has more sun than its neighbors to the east. Multiple weather data websites said the state averages about 213 sunny days. There are about 200 days in Iowa and about 198 sunny days in Minneapolis, Minnesota. North Dakota has about 201 sunny days. //

Thrifty South Dakotans may have led to the loss of the “Sunshine State” nickname.

The two-side flag with the words “The Sunshine State” existed until 1962. Legislators decided that a flag with two distinct sides was too costly to make. It cost residents too much to buy it, so few state flags were flown, according to the S.D. SOS website said.

The flag design was changed in 1963 but “Sunshine State” hung around, apparently.

“In 1992, a measure sponsored by State Rep. Gordon Pederson of Pennington County, South Dakota, changed the wording on the flag to read “The Mount Rushmore State,” the S.D. SOS website said.

Out with the sun, in with the faces of the famous four.

But perhaps known to South Dakotans by 1992, the Florida Legislature had already taken action 22 years prior to officially adopt the nickname “The Sunshine State.”

Statesymbolsusa.org said the Florida lawmakers passed the measure in 1970. That state is also known as the “Peninsula State” for its shape. Florida has on average 273 sunny days.

We should never forget that the Plymouth colony was headed straight for oblivion under a communal, socialist plan but saved itself when it embraced something very different.

In the diary of the colony’s first governor, William Bradford, we can read about the settlers’ initial arrangement: Land was held in common. Crops were brought to a common storehouse and distributed equally. For two years, every person had to work for everybody else (the community), not for themselves as individuals or families. Did they live happily ever after in this socialist utopia?

Hardly. The “common property” approach killed off about half the settlers. Governor Bradford recorded in his diary that everybody was happy to claim their equal share of production, but production only shrank. Slackers showed up late for work in the fields, and the hard workers resented it. It’s called “human nature.”

The disincentives of the socialist scheme bred impoverishment and conflict until, facing starvation and extinction, Bradford altered the system. He divided common property into private plots, and the new owners could produce what they wanted and then keep or trade it freely.

Communal socialist failure was transformed into private property/capitalist success, something that’s happened so often historically it’s almost monotonous. The “people over profits” mentality produced fewer people until profit—earned as a result of one’s care for his own property and his desire for improvement—saved the people.

We have all heard of the Mayflower Compact, the set of laws that all agreed to live by, But it included something else. Before the Pilgrims left Holland, they needed to fund the trip. They found sponsors who would do just that. But their merchant sponsors in London and Holland required that the Pilgrims agree that everything they produced went into a common store, a common bank, and every family would be entitled to one share of the common store.

So, the Pilgrims got down to the business of living life in the New World. They cleared land, and they grew crops. The other part of the story we have heard was of the Pilgrims' first winter. Nearly half of them died of starvation, sickness, and exposure. The group's leader, William Bradford, who later became the governor of the colony, realized early on that the whole "common store" idea was a huge failure. He decided to scrap that portion of the Mayflower Compact and came up with another idea.

American Thinker @AmericanThinker
·
The Pilgrims' Abolition of Socialism (Photo Credit: Jenny A. Brownscombe) William Bradford delivered the Pilgrims from the ills of socialism to a healthy culture of economic freedom based upon individual property rights.
americanthinker.com
The Pilgrims' Abolition of Socialism
5:44 AM · Nov 28, 2024 //

Even though they didn't call it socialism or capitalism back then, the Pilgrims soon figured out that a common bank and collectivism were not going to work. It was only when they implemented the incentive to work and invest themselves in the land that they became prosperous, and it benefitted themselves and the Indians.

Makes you wonder, if we have only heard the "official" story of Thanksgiving for this long, what else have we only heard the "official" story of? //

Jill Savage @Jill_Savage
·
I looked forward to Rush Limbaugh telling us the true story of Thanksgiving every year. Let’s keep it going.
2:33 / 8:22
12:10 PM · Nov 27, 2024

https://x.com/Jill_Savage/status/1861820002338271642

“It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history,” Coolidge said in his 1926 speech on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

In an op-ed posted to Fox News on Saturday, former Mumford & Sons guitarist Winston Marshall put Trump's historic win into perspective -- including with a bit of humor.

The White House, the Senate, the House, the popular vote, a state legislative and mayoral majority, all on top of the Supreme Court majority... George Clooney retiring from politics and late-night TV hosts like Jimmy Kimmel literally crying on television. It's all too good to be true. //

And already, America has a spring back in her step. Ebullience fills the air. Hope rushes its veins. The land of freedom has embraced those qualities that made it great -- aspiration, entrepreneurship, responsibility. The nation’s eyes are fixed upwards once again. Up to Mars. Up to God. What a pleasure it was to witness history being made, and to see our transatlantic cousins back on their feet. //

Alas, this morning I have walked into a parallel universe. Beneath the heavy clouds of Heathrow, I touched down back in Blighty. You see, my country, Britain, today is what America would be if Kamala had won.

Violent criminals released from prison and replaced by Tweeters and Facebook meme creators. Rioters, let alone if they are a protected minority but given the heavy hand if they are indigenous working classes. Crippling taxes against campaign promises.

Full steam into Net Zero [climate] oblivion while protesting farmers roar tractors down Whitehall. And the hapless relinquishing of the Chagos Islands suggests Starmer’s heart is set on making British self-flagellation as public as possible.

All these decisions make sense if one understands the self-hating anti-human globalist ideology behind them.

Young Americans’ historical and civic illiteracy is a danger to the Republic, and it cannot be allowed to continue. //

Trump created the commission the day before Election Day in 2020 with the purpose of “[establishing] a clear historical record of an exceptional Nation dedicated to the ideas and ideals of its founding.” Its goal was to provide a much-needed corrective to anti-American propaganda masquerading as history such as the “1619 Project,” whose “radicalized view of American history lacks perspective, obscures virtues, twists motives, ignores or distorts facts, and magnifies flaws, resulting in the truth being concealed and history disfigured.” The commission’s report, published two days before Trump left office, sketched out a basic curriculum that balanced American exceptionalism as reflected in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with the darker aspects of our history, such as slavery and Jim Crow.

[Abraham Lincoln] helped fell trees to build a large river raft to carry farm goods down a local river and then the treacherous Mississippi to New Orleans. There, they took the raft apart and sold the logs to build houses in the first bustling big city the future president had ever seen.

Lincoln then walked the nearly 800 miles back to central Illinois. //

The 1860 presidential election has always seemed like a political presidential watershed to me. //

That was the first national confrontation between the two major parties that have shaped American politics ever since and endure today. That's because their ideologies and platforms have been – shall we say – malleable, adapting adeptly to society's changing times, interests, and priorities and starving third parties of lasting issues.

The Republican Party was created in Wisconsin in 1854 around the dominant issue of the day, slavery. In its first presidential contest, the anti-slavery GOP carried the day with Abraham Lincoln as nominee. //

When slavery split Democrats into northern and southern wings in 1860, that election became a four-way race. The northern Democrat was old friend Illinois Sen. Stephen Douglas, who fared the worst.

There were 33 states then. Douglas won one of them, Arkansas. Lincoln needed 152 electoral votes. He got 180 from 18 states with only 39.7 percent of the splintered popular vote.

Welcome to the White House, Mr. President. Until 1933, Inauguration Days back then were in March. By March of 1861, seven states had seceded. Five weeks later, Confederates started the Civil War in South Carolina.

In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all enslaved people in the South.

As an attempt to begin national healing, for his 1864 reelection, Lincoln chose as his vice-presidential running mate a southern Democrat, Sen. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee.

That’s the only time a U.S. political party has nominated a bipartisan national ticket. It worked for the election. But not so well after, when GOP Congress met Democrat president. Post-presidency, Johnson became the only president to later serve in the Senate.

Lincoln’s second inauguration came outside the Capitol with John Wilkes Booth reportedly watching from nearby. Like much of what the self-educated Lincoln wrote, the speech was full of humanity, grace, and humility, and far shorter than today's wordy promise agendas salted with calculated applause lines:

With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds…

The ensuing celebration lacked Lincoln’s favorite food, chicken fricassee. But the 250-foot-long buffet table was laden with veal, venison, quail, oyster stew, and six flavors of ice cream, including Lincoln’s favorite, vanilla.

Twenty-five days later, the Civil War ended as the deadliest conflict still in U.S. history.

Thirty days after that inauguration, the Lincolns went to a play at Ford’s Theater. It was Good Friday.

Allegedly to see the performance better, the president’s bodyguard, John Parker, left his post outside the Lincolns' box. But he wound up in a nearby saloon.

Confederate sympathizer Booth had no trouble sneaking in behind the president with his .44 Derringer. The bullet entered the left side of Lincoln’s head, passed through the brain, lodging just behind the right eye.

The 56-year-old president, who had maintained the Union but would lose three of his four sons to illness, never regained consciousness and died the next morning.

(In a bizarre twist, Lincoln's eternal rest was interrupted 12 years later by a band of grave robbers who successfully absconded with the presidential corpse for some weeks, seeking ransom for the kidnapped body. Which explains why Abraham Lincoln now rests in a Springfield memorial in a coffin sealed within two tons of cement and steel.)

On a desolate slab of island tundra in western Alaska, a resident of Adak will again become the last American to cast an in-person ballot for president, continuing a 12-year tradition for the nation’s westernmost community.

The honor of having the last voter in the nation fell to Adak when they did away with absentee-only voting for the 2012 election and added in-person voting.

“People have a little bit of fun on that day because, I mean, realistically everybody knows the election’s decided way before we’re closed,” said city manager Layton Lockett. “But, you know, it’s still fun.”

When polls close in Adak, it’s 1 a.m. on the East Coast.

The United States is a big place. Roughly 3,000 miles separate the lower 48's east and west coasts - and roughly 3,000 miles separate the easternmost part of Alaska's panhandle, where Sitka and Juneau are found as well as Hyder, the easternmost settlement in Alaska, and the Aleutian island of Adak.

Note that there are U.S. possessions farther west than Adak, but while the people who live there are American citizens, they, like Puerto Ricans, don't vote for president:

Yesterday was Columbus Day, a holiday in honor of an important man who did something important. However, under Joe Biden's misrule, it has been rebranded into a travesty called "Indigenous People's Day." No one is sure what the day is about. Most Americans ignore it while the left enters into a bacchanalia of America-bashing and virtue signaling.

I have a great deal of problems with this new commemorative day because I can't really figure out what we are honoring with that celebration. The contributions made by the aboriginal peoples of North America to American or world culture are exceedingly small. A handful of words — canoe, moccasin, squaw, etc. — have passed into common usage. There are a modest number of burial mounds and some rock glyphs to record their passing. None of the American Indian tribes had developed metallurgy or the wheel. Mathematics and even a rudimentary means of writing were unknown for the most part. Warfare was endemic and brutal, and frequently had the objective of genocide. Slavery was part of the culture of most Indian tribes, as was ritualized torture, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. In short, I find very little admirable about American Indian culture — the documented variety, not the maudlin, Dances With Wolves fake culture the left imagines existed — and can't think of any reason Americans, of all ancestries, have to be sorry that it is a thing of the past. //

Indigenous People's Day is just another assault on America by people who hate the country. Yesterday's statement by Kamala Harris is a prime example of the left and a large number of the America First crowd fetishizing anyone the US has bested economically or militarily.

Yep, Europeans destroyed Stone Age tribal societies mired in superstition and bloodletting and built the greatest nation on Earth. We won, you lost, deal with it.

Historically, and especially from the national identity and unity perspective, Indigenous People's Day makes much less sense than Antebellum South Day. //

3. The American flag is dipped in submission. This is not done.

4. The flag that remains upright is that of the Northern Cheyenne Nation. This is another one of those anomalies that demonstrate just how fake this stuff is. American Indians never had the industry to make flags, and they didn't use flags, so this is just cultural appropriation. The irony of the victory ceremony being conducted in American English, Custer's native tongue, can't be overlooked. //

Ethnic pride is great, but it can't be at the sake of an American identity. If that is where you are headed, trust me when I tell you that you aren't going to like where the path you are following is going to take you. //

Laocoön of Troy idalily
3 hours ago
Winston Churchill: Nations...which go down fighting rise again, and those...that surrender tamely are finished.

Darkest Hour (2017)

We've seen a lot of people pitching in to help out people affected by Hurricane Helene. That's a great thing because there are still so many people in a lot of need and some of the areas are going to have issues for a while, trying to get everything back on line.

Now, this is just a short list of non-government people and organizations that have stepped in. There are a ton of folks who have been helping out, including so many local folks on the ground--and we thank all of them for their efforts.

Sonia Purnell’s just released biography of Pamela Harriman, Kingmaker, attempts to be fairer to its subject than previous biographies. As the subtitle implies, Harriman led a “Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue,” and there is a lot in here about the subject’s early role as a courtesan. Whatever the details of that role, it was far in the past when I came to know and work with Ambassador Harriman on issues of international importance.

During my last four years in the FBI, I worked with dozens of U.S. ambassadors. I served as the Legal Attaché (“Legat” in Bureau jargon) at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. However, for the FBI and the DOJ, our office had wide regional responsibility. We handled the business of the Justice Department with 26 countries in Africa. So, I dealt with a wide variety of our ambassadors at posts large and small.

“Political” ambassadors are often criticized as dilettantes who buy their appointments with large campaign donations. They are contrasted with career ambassadors, who rise through the ranks of the State Department. I have quite a different impression. The political ambassadors, coming from various roles in American society, saw their mission as representing the United States as a whole, while career ambassadors narrowly protected the interests of the State Department, to the exclusion of other agencies.

When I was first assigned to the embassy in Paris, it was led by an ambassador who understood and valued what the FBI could do. Yes, she was a substantial fundraiser for President Bill Clinton, who appointed her, but she demonstrated a love for her adopted country. Pamela Churchill Harriman, a British-born aristocrat, had become the U.S. ambassador to France just months before my arrival in June 1994. //

That is how we happened to set up a luncheon for a group of federal judges.

At that luncheon, Thomas S. Ellis III, a federal district judge from the Eastern District of Virginia, discussed the World War II Normandy landings. Tom Ellis was recommending a new book. He mentioned a specific finding by the author, concerning a key Allied decision.

Ambassador Harriman responded, “No, that was Ike’s call.”

Judge Ellis persisted. “This author says …”

The ambassador: “Oh, no, Omar Bradley told me it was Ike’s call.”

A look of recognition came over Judge Ellis’s face: He realized he was in the presence of someone with firsthand knowledge of World War II.

Pamela Churchill Harriman was truly a remarkable woman. Once married to Winston Churchill’s only son and the mother of Churchill’s only grandson, she was in the room when many of the key decisions of World War II were made. For the next half century, she would continue to meet influential men, be they from London, Washington, or Hollywood. //

Thomas J. Baker is an international law enforcement consultant. He served as a FBI Special Agent for 33 years in a variety of investigative and management positions facing the challenges of crime and terrorism. He is the author of "The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy."

Hurricane Helene brought massive rainfalls and flooding at unprecedented levels, and from northern Georgia to the Southern Appalachians, to Western North Carolina, and parts of Eastern Tennessee, roads have been washed away, entire cities have been leveled, and populations devastated.

But had it not been for concerned citizens and loved ones, and some citizen journalists posting on X, the rest of the country would have been left in the dark. Up until this morning, the legacy media has all but ignored the destruction and never questioned when the worst of the weather started on Friday, why President Joe Biden was sunning himself at Rehoboth Beach, DE or why Vice President and selected Democrat nominee Kamala Harris was schmoozing with her donors in California, all while people lost their homes, their communities, and their lives.

From some reports on Sunday, despite federal emergency declarations being issued, FEMA had not even been activated. //

As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich observed, the scale of the disaster is too massive for the slow-moving FEMA. //

What most comes to the fore is how ineffective and inefficient the federal government is, and how essential and ingenious the local community is. This is what the fabric of America is comprised of, and despite the incessant meddling by this government to try and tear that fabric apart, we remain strong and even more bonded. We are going to be who we are, and the hell they wish to unleash in communities and electorally cannot change that.

Wilson was born in Louisville in 1924. She turns 100 years old this Oct. 4. She started working at Home Depot two years ago.

“That is because I want to communicate with people,” she said. “If you are not working, you lose your art of conversing,” Wilson said. “I’ve retired three times. Each time was 10 years, and I’ve gotten so sick of myself, I couldn’t stand it.”

She spent much of her life dancing and traveled the world with the June Taylor dancers. To this day, she still has the moves. Wilson danced and sang on stage at the age of 94. She performed the song, “If My Friends Could See Me Now.” //

One thing she won’t do is clean her house. Wilson said she pays someone to do that.

”I didn’t get this old without getting smart,” she said.

anon-m6q6
8 hours ago
Post this on all MSN, CNBC, Huff Post and other leftist on-line articles. It drives the libs crazy.
Someone recently asked me why I like Trump. My answer was that I don't really like a lot of things about Trump.

But this election is not about choosing the most likeable person.

Trump represents the future and has proven that he can deliver. He is a patriot to the core and even served his country for 4 years without pay.

That moment when someone says,

"I can't believe you're voting for Trump". I simply reply, “I'm NOT voting for Trump.”

I'm voting for the First Amendment and freedom of speech. I'm voting for the right to speak my opinion and not be censored.

I’m voting for secure borders and LEGAL immigration. I am voting for election integrity to include mandatory voter ID. (Why would anyone vote against this?)

I'm voting for the Second Amendment and my right to defend my life and my family.

I'm voting for the police to be respected once again.

I am voting for law & order and an end to allowing protesters to trespass and burn our cities, destroying innocent small business. (Tim Walz)

I am voting for personal responsibility and the end of the revolving door where criminals are being put back on the street. (Kamala Harris)

I'm voting for the next Supreme Court Justice(s) to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I am voting for doing away with all of the freebies given to all of the illegals and not looking after the needs of the American citizens and homeless veterans.

I'm not voting for Trump. I'm voting for America.

The Cash statue is the second new one Arkansas has sent to replace two existing ones representing the state at the U.S. Capitol. Another statue depicting civil rights leader Daisy Bates was unveiled at the Capitol earlier this year. Bates mentored the nine Black children who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

The two statues replace ones from Arkansas that had been at the Capitol for more than 100 years. The Legislature in 2019 voted to replace the two statues, which depicted little-known figures from the 18th and 19th centuries with Bates and Cash //

There are few performers with greater stature than Johnny Cash. Some might object to putting a statue of an entertainer in the Capitol, and indeed for most, I would agree. But not Johnny Cash. His cultural impact was too great, his music so defining, his life and career so quintessentially American, that he deserves this honor.

Keep singing, Johnny. America will always remember you. //

JSobieski
12 hours ago edited
HURT as performed by Johnny Cash is an awesome song that Johnny truly made his.

I consider this to be my favorite all-time montage in the history of TV. PERSON OF INTEREST is definitely worth watching. This montage mourns the death of key character and moves the plot along ... all without hearing a single word spoken. The song is perfect for this moment in the series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD8qvpMw8Vw

RIP Johnny Cash. I hope America never ceases to appreciate your gifts to this world.

know-it-all JSobieski
12 hours ago
I literally cry a bit when I here JC Hurt (a little bit more when I experience the video)

JSobieski know-it-all
11 hours ago
“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

RACISM CREATED GUN CONTROL

The first law to prevent the carrying of concealed weapons appeared in Kentucky in 1813. Very few people owned handguns back then, but many had knives. And the large Bowie knife was becoming quite popular at that time. Whites in the South feared blacks, so they outlawed the concealed carrying of any weapon, including knives.

The Democrat Party, which owned the south for generations, were afraid of slaves, freed blacks and abolitionists (i.e. Republicans) carrying Bowie knives. To maintain power over these Americans, Democrat politicians, state by state, outlawed concealed-carry. By 1850 every Southern state had made it illegal to carry any kind of concealed weapon.

Today, Democrats are still afraid of the masses. They cannot gain complete power over us so long as we own weapons. Should Harris/Walz somehow cheat their way into power, Americans can expect them to accelerate the war on the Second Amendment that Democrats have waged for decades now.

A former aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and current Gov. Kathy Hochul was arrested Tuesday morning on charges of violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy. The former aide, Linda Sun, is accused of acting on behalf of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party, to further their interests in the United States. Her husband, Chris Hu, was also arrested and charged with money laundering conspiracy, as well as conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification. //

In exchange for her assistance, it's alleged that Sun received millions of dollars in kickbacks and other benefits from the PRC, including:

Within Our Lifetime once again calling for everyone to globalize the intifada. //

Israel War Room
@IsraelWarRoom
·
Follow
Spotted at the "Within Our Lifetime" rally in NYC - "Intifada" threats to terrorize Jews around the world, as well as the logos of these terrorist groups:

• Hezbollah
• Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (HAMAS)
• Palestinian Islamic… Show more
  4:49 PM · Sep 2, 2024 //

Thousands met up at Union Square in Manhattan and marched to Washington Square Park.

They had flares and smoke bombs as some assaulted cops who tried to halt the march.

They also carried Hezbollah, Iranian, Palestinian, and Syrian flags. I’m shocked no one brought a Hamas or ISIS flag.

Of Captain Teach Alias Blackbeard

Edward Teach was a Bristol man born, but had sailed some time out of Jamaica in privateers, in the late French war; yet though he had often distinguished himself for his uncommon boldness and personal courage, he was never raised to any command, till he went a-pirating, which I think was at the latter end of the year 1716, ... //

Being asked the meaning of this, he only answered, by damning them, that if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was.

Josh Brooks @F530Josh
·
Big Army deciding their Soldiers from 130 years ago don't deserve the MOH because history is inconvenient and doesn't work with the modern narrative is a pretty good look.

10:58 AM · Jul 25, 2024 //

Congress started down this road by apologizing in 1990. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act required the Department of Defense to examine the medals. //

No matter what this Potemkin board organized by Austin finds, the facts remain that the 7th Cavalry was operating under legal orders, and the men awarded the Medal of Honor met the criteria of the time. There is no wrong to be righted here. This is simply a political act by the losers to count coup on the winners. Austin's order to “consider the context of the overall engagement" is just a way to open the door to relitigating the Indian Wars by the "stolen land" nutters.

Don't think this is the end of it. //

DaleS 2 hours ago

Wikipedia has a list of the 20 medal winners for Wounded Knee, though they claim the award to Marvin Hillock was for fighting at White Clay Creek, and he was listed for Wounded Knee "due to a later error in War Department lists."

I believe that the battle at Wounded Knee was certainly mishandled and probably avoidable. I'm sympathetic in general to the U.S. Army during the western Indian Wars; they were forced to do a difficult job (often made much worse by the behavior of local settlers and government bureacrats), and most of the time I think they did a pretty good job. But this wasn't one of those times. I care nothing for Austin's conclusions, but Miles at the time was appalled by the battle, and he was actually the superior to the commander at the battle (Forsyth) and relieved him of command. He was in a better position to make that judgment than anyone in the DoD today, and certainly had more experience in Indian fighting than the folks in Washington who reinstated Forsyth. Miles was a fine general, but hard-hearted enough to exile his own apache scouts after Geromino's capture, so for him to call for compensation to Wounded Knee survivors demonstrated that this wasn't the usual brand of Indian fighting. It was a battle, but also ended up as a massacre. I'm willing to trust Miles' assessment of the battle.

With that said, even if what we would now consider war crimes happened at Wounded Knee, this wasn't an unprovoked slaughter like Sand Creek. There was actual combat and likely actual heroism. To take an example from the list:

"Musician John Clancy, artillery, twice voluntarily rescued wounded comrades under fire of the enemy."

I don't know what the late-19th century criteria for assigning Medal of Honor was, but that sounds pretty darn heroic to me, and has nothing to do with killing Sioux, justly or not. After all these years, how could you possibly determine that John Clancy not only didn't deserve his medal, but that he and his fellow honorees should be singled out for "cruelty".

It seems to me if you want to virtue signal by dishonoring the dead, the place to start should be with Forsyth, who was the responsible for the force there. It was his job to see his soldiers acted properly, and to take measures against any of his soldiers who targetted non-combatants. //

Sojourner 2 hours ago edited

The Medal of Honor, at that time, was the only decoration for valor, and the criteria were very different from those today.

^^^This^^^

The whole Wounded Knee episode was a mess. Mistakes committed by both sides. A messy almost-ending to the Indian Wars. But make no mistake, it was a war.

These social justice warriors are wrong here, just as they are wrong in opposing dropping the A-bombs on Japan in August 1945 or, as Streiff notes, our recent base renaming and statue removal mania. They are sermonizing with the luxury of hindsight in a way that is wrong in terms of historiography/hermeneutics.

Just as in mid-July 1945 (when it was clear Japan was going to fight until no one was left alive on the Home Islands; a view, btw, which the Japanese didn't change until AFTER the second bomb dropped), at the time of the Ghost Dance no one knew what was going to happen. But there were enough Indians who felt the pull to cause the Army to be legitimately concerned. On one hand, sorry for the dead Indians. On the other, they paid (perhaps unjustly) the price for the style of warfare their tribe and other tribes had historically waged. Whatever the injustices of Wounded Knee might there have been, it clearly signaled the end of our first War on Terror (which we won, unlike Round 2). The question no one on the social justice side of things wants to answer (b/c they can't) is to name a better outcome (and path to that outcome) than what happened. I'll repeat what I've written here before: the tribes were lucky how the Indian Wars ended. It could have been much worse.

Full disclosure, I was previously more inclined to review the actions at Wounded Knee. But we no longer live in that better universe. Streiff is 100% correct: this isn't going to be a review conducted in good conscience. Instead, it's 100% political warfare waged by those who hate America on those of us who love America. It's yet another play in a series of plays to destroy the fabric of our military and of our country under the guise of "righting wrongs." Base renamings, land acknowledgments, etc. IT'S ALL BS. And it's also utterly ironic; they're doing to us what they criticize America for doing to the Indians. They believe we should have left the Indians alone to live in peace, so to make their point they won't let us live in peace.

Want to be even more revolted, see this:
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/07/20/medals-of-honor-for-soldiers-who-perpetrated-wounded-knee-massacre-may-be-rescinded/

This is what we're up against. When even our supposed allies in the press lead off their articles with titles like this.