Forging the chains of liberty - and forgetting them

When I was growing up in Stony Point, N.Y., I was surrounded by reminders of the birth of our nation, and the sacrifices that were made to wrest our liberty from the yoke of a tyrant.

You can look up the Battle of Stony Point on the Internet and get some feel for the drama of the Revolutionary War that surged throughout the Hudson River Valley in those years. Gen. Anthony Wayne earned his sobriquet of "Mad" Anthony Wayne partly for this battle when he sent his forces against the British in the dark of night with unloaded rifles and bayonets to gain the element of surprise. Gen. Washington himself supposedly came up with the strategy, which gave the Continental Army its last crucial victory in New York before the war moved south.

Not far away from my old home town is West Point, where the U.S. Military Academy is found today, but which in 1778 was the site of one of the grandest statements of American ingenuity ever. At that time the Royal Navy hoped to use the Hudson River to divide the New England colonies from those to the west and south, and since they were a far superior naval force compared to anything the colonies could muster, they had the upper hand.

But Gen. Washington was not to be deterred. He ordered a great chain to be forged that would be stretched across the entire river, which at that point is nearly a third of a mile wide. More than 800 wrought iron links that were each two-feet long were used in the chain, which was intended to halt naval traffic dead in the water so that artillery could bombard British ships from either shore.

West Point, Stony Point, George Washington, Anthony Wayne - those were the places and faces of my boyhood. Perhaps that is why I am inclined to be a bit romantic about the Revolution, and about the American nation it engendered. I saw the surviving links of that great chain at West Point when I was a boy, and everywhere you would go in that region there were small blue and white signs along the roadways that told what momentous event had taken place nearby.

I don't suppose many people growing up amidst those signs today spend much time thinking about our common forefathers. I doubt there is even a Fourth of July parade down Filors Lane anymore where I grew up and watched the Doughboys of World War I and the heroes of World War II (still young then in the early 1960s) march past my door and alongside a stone wall that had stood those 200 years.

But what is it that the philosopher taught us? Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it? Ah yes, and there is so much to remember. It is an arduous task indeed to forge those links of memory that must stretch from 1776 to 2006, but if we don't pull that chain of liberty taut, then we are defenseless against the superior forces of lethargy, sloth and selfishness which always try to divide us from our own best interests.

Yet many are daunted by the challenge, or fail to see the danger. In 1778, no doubt there were naysayers, too, those who laughed at Washington and his plan to dissect a great river. It was indeed a grandiose statement, one nearly mythic in proportion, but yet it served a practical purpose. The British gave up their dominion over the river and never tested the chain at West Point.

But do we face any kind of challenge today comparable to the British army and navy? Is there any reason to harp on the battles of yesteryear?

To ask such a question in today's politically correct climate is almost to invite calumny. After all, we are at peace, aren't we? Oh wait, no, we are at war. But yet there is no immediate danger to our sovereignty, is there? Oh wait, there is an entire worldwide culture which would destroy us. But surely that is to overstate the immediate danger, isn't it? We are not in danger of being overrun by Islam as Spain was overrun in the 8th century, are we?

Perhaps not, but Islam is not the only danger we face either. What about the immediate danger of 10 million to 25 million foreign nationals crossing our border and imposing their culture on us? Spain was forced to learn Arabic when it was overrun by the armies of the Caliph al-Walid in 711 A.D. Today we are in the process of being overrun by a horde of people flooding our southern border and ironically we are being forced to learn Spanish.

To add to the irony, those Mexicans who press into our nation call their movement the Reconquista, because they say they are reconquering the lands which hundreds of years ago belonged to Mexico, and before that to Spain. But friends of the illegal immigrants here in the United States just smile and put up a welcome sign. "It's a big country," they say. "Immigration is what made us great. Let's welcome these foreigners and build our country together.

Thank goodness, the Spanish took a different view when they were invaded from the south. It was not an easy battle for them when the Islamic armies came ashore at Gibralter. Thousands upon thousands died. Hundreds of thousands were forced to convert to Islam, until only one small bastion of authentic Spanish culture remained. It was from the Kingdom of Asturias in northwest Spain where the European resistance to Islam began in 718. That battle was not completed until 1492, more than 750 years later, when the Moors were finally pushed back across the sea.

Whether we Americans have the heart for such a battle has not yet been decided. But do not think that we are untouched by the forces of history. In this coming century, we face not one challenge to our sovereignty, but two. Internally, we are already weakened by a movement that would change our way of life through intimidation and sheer numbers. Externally, we are in the midst of a worldwide battle against Islamic fascism that has not changed much from that July day nearly 1,300 years ago when the Islamic army crossed the Guadalete River in Spain, captured the Emperor Rodrigo, and sawed off his head to be displayed on a pole.

Interestingly, the forced conversion of Spain to Islam also has a direct connection to my youthful days in New York and to New York history. Just across the Hudson River from where I lived was the hometown of Washington Irving, most famous for his headless horseman of Spooky Hollow and the narcoleptic Rip Van Winkle. Irving was named after Gen. George Washington and later wrote a famous biography of that worthy. But Irving also spent many years in Spain and wrote an account of the battles that ended Muslim power in Spain in his "Chronicle of the Conquest of Grenada."

Clearly there is much to learn from even a casual perusal of history. Perhaps, as I suggested earlier, it is too much. We Americans do not have much of an attention span these days. Between our trips to the movie theater, the baseball diamond, the shopping mall and to cyberspace, it's hard to squeeze in an understanding of where we came from or to think about the possibility that someone might want to take away what we have.

But there are enemies of our way of life among us. There always have been. I think of one more blue-and-white sign that you could see on a quiet little street near Filors Lane in Stony Point, N.Y. That street was called Major Andre Lane and was named after the British officer who had assisted Gen. Benedict Arnold in plotting to surrender the fort at West Point to the British in exchange for 20,000 pounds. Major Andre, the sign informed me when I stopped to read it on my bike, had been captured on that hill in 1780 and arrested. He was later hanged as a spy while Benedict Arnold fled to live out his years in disgrace in England. One last history lesson.

One last lesson that is easy to ignore as we tempt fate and see if we are really doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past or not. I for one wish we could learn from history, but I have my doubts. There is just too much stubborn insistence on how wonderful we are, or how lucky.

We can't count on our luck to save us, but only our vigilance, and we have precious little of that.

Perhaps it is time to consider a corollary to Santayana's famous aphorism about history. My proposal? Those who close their eyes to the dangers of the present are condemned to die in the dark.