“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
On this day in 1864, Union Adm. David Farragut was lashed to the rigging of the USS Hartford, surveying the progress of the Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay. His fleet of ironclads and wooden ships aimed to take one of the last open Confederate ports, that of Mobile Bay, Alabama. Unfortunately, the Confederates had set up a maritime mine field in the waters of the bay to prevent any ships from getting through. Not to mention the forts within firing range of the Union fleet.
The ironclad USS Tecumseh ran into a torpedo and sank. Union captains of the other ships, though within range of Fort Morgan, began to issue orders to halt their ships, not wanting to be the next vessel to sink thanks to a torpedo. Farragut, however, was determined to have victory no matter the risks. “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” he roared. The USS Hartford charged through the minefield and Farragut won a critical victory.
Farragut’s order has gone down in history as one of the most famous issued by an American military commander. It exemplifies the courage, daring, perseverance, and belief in the impossible that have always characterized the greatest American heroes.
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Unfortunately, in the 21st century, the American population at large has lost some of that spirit. The COVID lockdowns and 2020 election were our wake-up calls to the fact that we had begun to prioritize comfort, “safety,” and/or ideology over our rights and freedoms. We let the government ruin our lives for over a year because “the experts said so.” Now, we are beginning to understand how concerted is the effort from our infiltrated political and cultural institutions to turn our Republic into a Marxist dictatorship.
We voted Donald Trump into office, but that is hardly sufficient. Each one of us will have to take responsibility for reforming our institutions and holding our politicians accountable. The rot is so deep that it will no doubt take a good deal of time and effort, but we cannot afford to shirk the task, unless we want George Orwell’s “1984” to leave the realm of fiction and become painful reality.
We the People have the power to speak our minds to our elected officials, as when Trump backtracked on amnesty for illegal alien workers after MAGA backlash. We have the power to show up to school board meetings, attend rallies, investigate the curricula and promoted books at our local libraries and schools, and educate the next generation about our history and political system.
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Frederick Douglass once said, “A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box.” That sums up the core rights and responsibilities of the American form of government. We cannot rely on our fallible politicians, of any party, to save us from the top down. America can only flourish if we rebuild from the bottom up.
Let Farragut and our other military heroes be our inspiration. Let not the viciousness of the Democrats and the violence of their acolytes deter us, just as the Democrats’ Civil War didn’t deter Farragut. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
