Been reading about whaling lately and im surprised it doesnt occupy a greater place in the american mythos. For most of the 19th century like 90% of the world market in whale products was harvested by US flagged whalers out of New England. We had guys literally circling the globe for years at a time, doing battle with real life sea monsters, exploring barely charted waters, getting eaten by cannibal tribes, getting cast adrift thousands of miles from land and surviving. Many true stories from that time that are ripe for movies etc. With the notable exception of Moby Dick (which was inspired by the true story of the whaleship Essex being sunk by a sperm whale) you dont hear much about it in popular culture. Whaling is to US maritime history what the Napoleonic era Royal Navy is to Britain or the treasure galleons and conquistadors are to Spain
The Venn diagram between people who think you should get fired for using the R word and people who think you should be able to euthanize your child if it has Down syndrome is almost a circle
Abraham Lincoln surmised it well enough.
“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad.
If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Amazing line from @POTUS:
“In recent years, we've often heard it said that America is merely an idea. But the cause of freedom did not simply appear as an intellectual invention of 1776. The American founding was the culmination of hundreds of years of thought, struggle, sweat, blood, and sacrifice on both sides of the Atlantic.”