and history
July 5, 2010 (Monday)
You can see on You Tube President Franklin D. Roosevelt and hear his speech before Congress on December 8, 1941, in which he asks for a Declaration of War retroactive to the previous day, “December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy.” There were 24 sentences in that great speech, and one of them is inscribed on the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
The sentence chosen by the War Memorial Commission is, “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American People, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.”
Shortly thereafter in the speech, the president spoke another sentence that many of us wish were included in the memorial: “With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.”
I suppose it was a simple question of which part of the speech to choose for the memorial, but it seems to me that both sentences could have been included. As far as that goes, the entire 24-sentence oration should have been engraved there. On top of that, in this digital age, it would have been very easy to have included a video presentation as well. I remember hearing the speech on the radio. I think all Americans for generations should see and hear it for themselves. It was, indeed, a great moment of American history.
I am an ardent defender of the principle of Separation of Church and State, because it assures freedom for both. But spontaneous expressions of faith are part of our history, such as Roosevelt’s “so help us God” as thousands of bodies were being retrieved from Pearl Harbor, Bush’s national prayer service after 9-11 in the wake of mass deaths from terrorism in New York City, Washington and rural Pennsylvania, and Eisenhower’s addition of “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance after millions died in a world war in which he led the armies. Those things happened. It’s the way it was and is. It’s history.