Hello and welcome to Monday, May 26, 2026. Today is Memorial Day. I promise you, I'll get to discussing that. It's also National Missing Children's Day,National Wine Day, National Brown-Bag-It Day, Don't Fry Day — remember your sunscreen when you go out! It's also Geek Pride Day, a day I can personally associate with as I look around at my HAM radio station and my collection of computers, and screens, all happily consuming power and giving my man cave a nice worm glow.
1738: A treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ends the Conojocular War with settlement of a boundary dispute and exchange of prisoners
1787: Constitutional convention opens at Philadelphia, George Washington presiding
1842: Christian Doppler presents his idea, now known as the Doppler Effect (through the changing colors of binary stars), to the Royal Bohemian Society, Prague
1844: The first telegraphed news dispatch is published in the Baltimore Patriot
1878: W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's comic opera "H.M.S. Pinafore" premieres in London, their first international success
1927: Henry Ford announces that he is ending production of the Model T Ford
1932: Goofy, also known as Dippy Dawg, first appears in "Mickey's Revue" by Walt Disney
1943: Agnes Moorehead appears in "Sorry, Wrong Number" on the radio program Suspense, her most successful appearance
1945: Arthur C. Clark proposes relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit
1950: Brooklyn Battery Tunnel opens in NYC
1961: JFK announces the U.S. goal of putting a man on the Moon before the end of the decade
1962: Wand Records releases The Isley Brothers' cover single "Twist & Shout"; it becomes their first top-20 hit, peaking at #17
1965: Dave Davies of The Kinks knocked unconscious in an on stage scuffle with drummer Mick Avory at Cardiff’s Capital Theatre
1968: Gateway Arch in St Louis dedicated
1969: Film "Midnight Cowboy" released. (Best Picture, 1970)
1977: Original Star Wars movie ( Eventually, Episode IV – A New Hope)
Birthdays Today (Wow lots of them today!) Include: Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist and philosopher; Bill Robinson, actor and tap dancer (Stormy Weather; The Little Colonel); Padre Pio [Francesco Forgione], Italian priest, Capuchin friar, and Roman Catholic saint; Igor Sikorsky, Russian-American pioneer of aviation; Gene Tunney, boxer (world heavyweight champion 1926-30); "Ginny" Simms, singer (Kay Kyser Band), actress (Night and Day), and radio star; Dan Wolf, American journalist, writer, and editor (founder of The Village Voice); "Kitty" Kallen, big band singer (Harry James, Jimmy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden); Hal David, lyricist ("Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head"; "What The World Needs Now Is Love"; "Do You Know the Way to San Jose"); Claude Akins, character actor (B. J. and the Bear, Rio Bravo, Movin' On); Norman Petty, musician, songwriter, recording studio owner, and record producer (Buddy Holly); Robert Ludlum, spy novelist (Bourne Identity); David Burke, British actor (the 1984-86 series of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Watson); Tom T. Hall, country singer, songwriter ("Harper Valley PTA", "The Ballad of $40" "Old Dogs Children and Watermelon Wine" ); Mark Shields, political journalist and commentator; Ian McKellen, English film and theatre actor (Lord of the Rings; X-Men); Jessi Colter, country singer ("I'm Not Lisa") wife of Waylon Jennings; Leslie Uggams, singer and actress; Karen Valentine, actress (Love American Style, Room 222); Mitch Margo, pop singer (The Tokens, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"); Robby Steinhardt, rock violinist and singer (Kansas - "Carry On Wayward Son"); Bob Gale, screenwriter (Back to the Future); and Chuck Ruff, rock drummer (Edgar Winter Group - "Frankenstein", "Free Ride"); and Mike Meyers, Actor (Wayne's World, Austin Powers).
If today's your day too, you've got a national holiday to celebrate it on. Cool!
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Yesterday, while scrounging for column fodder, the universe handed me some, in a way it rarely bothers to do. I already knew I wanted to say something to the people who fought, bled, and died for us. Then someone wandered into my electronic orbit on social media and demanded to know why nobody takes John Lennon's "Heroes of Peace" idea seriously.
The answer came almost at once. Maybe, it's because we already do, though I grant that it’s in a reality-based way that the reality-deprived Lennon never envisioned.
In fact, that's practically the entire point of today. The celebrations, the expressions of respect for those who fill the role of “Peacemaker,” and those who gave their lives in that process, are the whole point of today. I must say, this exchange I’ve described to you has handed me the perfect setup for today’s column, so let’s dig into that, shall we?
Real, lasting peace — not the bumper-sticker kind, but the real thing — is not the mere absence of war, as Lennon envisioned it. Thinking peaceful thoughts won’t conjure it. Holding hands around the campfire and singing Kumbaya won’t produce it. And negotiated settlements? Of themselves, those don’t bring peace, either. Attempt to fashion real peace without a total victory, and you have almost certainly merely scheduled the next war.
Let’s start with the most glaring example I can think of: Versailles. That treaty, crafted in 1919, the one politicians crowed would end WWI, the “war to end all wars,” fast-tracked us straight into an even larger and bloodier WWII. (Yes, World War Two. Not World War Eleven.)
Here’s why that’s so: We didn’t actually win WWI. We just stopped, threw a few parties and a ticker-tape parade, and let politicians trip over each other grabbing credit for a peace that never existed. The universe firmly corrected that delusion on a tight schedule. Germany rose again within just a few years, and history forced us to pay the price for that error in blood. History, indeed, keeps screaming this lesson at us. We keep hitting snooze.
Germany in World War II also provides another example of negotiated peace, designed so that we might “never go to war with one another again.” Neville Chamberlain learned that lesson pretty quickly, and while I grant that the cancer he suffered from limited his options, we should perhaps take note of the sacrifice of his political career on the altar of negotiation.
Now add Japan to this mix. Absent the display of atomic power, which so many to this day foolishly decry, the peaceful friend we now have in Japan wouldn’t exist. Germany after WWII? Yes, same process. We fought those wars to their actual conclusions — a victory in each case that was decisive, unconditional, and unambiguous — and what did we get? Two of our closest, most reliable allies on the planet for the last seven decades. Former enemies turned steadfast friends and genuine champions of freedom. That’s what victory produces. That, dear reader, is real peace. The soldiers who fought those wars to the finish line didn’t just win battles. They built real peace — with their sacrifice and their refusal to quit.
Next on the list of examples is Korea. We in the West, through the auspices of the worse-than-useless UN, negotiated away a hard-fought position and handed an entire nation to a communist dictator who turned it into nothing more or less than a prison camp with a flag. The world has been paying the interest on that tab ever since. North Korea stands as a towering international shame, born entirely from people and organizations that desperately wanted to take credit for “peace” without the faintest clue what peace actually requires.
I’d love to ask the people trapped in the grip of the Communists in North Korea whether they feel peaceful. Something tells me the answer wouldn’t warm your heart. Also, I’d love to see someone demanding that we in the West keep the peace with Kim explain how to do that while that madman keeps chucking missiles at the rest of the world periodically. Notice he’s not done that recently. It’s not negotiations that keep him from doing that, but rather a fear that replaces the need for laxatives; the understanding that running afoul of this president is not a wise move.
The leftist “peace” movement that Lennon so easily sat with argued that the best way to protect us is to strip away every tool we’d use to defend ourselves — what a brilliant strategy!
The truth is this: By demanding that we unilaterally disarm, they’re essentially rolling out the welcome mat for any aggressor with ambitions. The result? More bloodshed, not less, and freedom quietly dying in country after country. But sure, let’s sit across the table from every two-bit dictator who wanders in, clipboard in hand, and negotiate our way to safety. History clearly shows how that works out in the end.
Bottom line: Peace is the product of winning — decisively and completely — the war someone else started, and winning it so thoroughly that nobody entertains bright ideas about round two.
Therein lies the point of this column today. There are always people who are willing to take real peace away from us, usually for power and/or money. Opportunists, really. Or, like Iran, religious fervor.
Here's to the people who made that victory against such people happen, thus creating real peace, and lost their lives in the doing.
Those are heroes and peacemakers in the truest sense of the words. That’s what today is all about. Holding those heroes in a place of honor is the best action most of us can take in the cause of real peace. As I said last November: Look upon those actions, those sacrifices, and know what you’re seeing is strength, courage, and nobility in measures that should not, cannot, be ignored. It must be honored by us all; it was made, after all, for our benefit. We must honor such nobility where we find it, lest we lose it forever.
Thought of the day: San Francisco is banning outdoor smoking because the last thing people want to do is smell a disgusting cigarette while they’re pooping on the sidewalk.
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Have a great day, but remember, Tuesday is the new Monday. Don’t forget your sunscreen. I’ll see you in the morning.
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