W.D. Ehrhart

Why I’m Not Voting for Donald Trump

by

Just a few days ago, an e-mail acquaintance of mine sent me this: “Gotta admit I’m voting for Trump because I fear what happens if he loses. Who is Trump running against? I don’t think that Joe’s cognitive skills are up to the task. I think almost everything he says has been scripted for him. “Harris? I’m not even sure Joe picked her. Look at the horrible claims she made against him while she was still campaigning—and now they’re buds? I have to believe that powers behind the scenes have designs on how they’ll direct Joe on what his policies will be. If, for some …

Read moreWhy I’m Not Voting for Donald Trump

Trump & the Military: Is Anyone Really Surprised?

by

A recent article in September’s The Atlantic titled “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’” details our current commander-in-chief’s flagrant disrespect for the men and women in our armed forces together with the generations of American service personnel who went before them. I need not repeat the insults and ignominies he heaps upon those who have served their country. You can readily find the article online and read it for yourself, if you haven’t already done so. What amazes me is not what the article says, but the fact that so many people are only now expressing their outrage over Trump’s disrespect …

Read moreTrump & the Military: Is Anyone Really Surprised?

Smedley Darlington Butler: What a True American Hero Looks Like, Part Two

by

In our issue of July 17, 2020, W.D. Ehrhart wrote about the the extraordinary early career of Smedley D. Butler. by W.D. Ehrhart Butler was not without his warts and blemishes. He loved the adrenalin rush of combat, the sheer challenge and excitement of it. As a young lieutenant, he complained in letters to his congressman father that the policies he was enforcing in countries like Nicaragua, Honduras, and Haiti were corrupt and immoral, benefitting only the white wealthy ruling class in America, yet he continued his career in the Corps for nearly three more decades. He began to speak out only after he’d gotten …

Read moreSmedley Darlington Butler: What a True American Hero Looks Like, Part Two

Smedley Darlington Butler: What a True American Hero Looks Like

by

by W.D. Ehrhart I went through Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, in the summer of 1966. We learned all sorts of things that summer, but one thing we learned was the names of the two Marines who had each won not one, but two Medals of Honor: Dan Daly and Smedley Butler. Butler would have received three Medals of Honor if the award had been available to officers during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 China. Every enlisted man on a patrol he led as a teenaged lieutenant received one, but he was instead awarded the Marine Corps Brevet Medal, the highest …

Read moreSmedley Darlington Butler: What a True American Hero Looks Like

As American as Apple Pie

by

For much of my adult life, I have taught high school English and history, most recently including eighteen years at the Haverford School for Boys in suburban Philadelphia, retiring in June 2019 at the age of 70. In my U.S. History course, I always teach a unit I call “Race in America,” which begins with the first shipload of Africans arriving in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, and goes right up to Rosa Parks and the modern Civil Rights Movement. I sugarcoat nothing. We cover slave life on the plantation with its whippings and brandings and castrations and amputations, the almost infinitely repeated rape of female …

Read moreAs American as Apple Pie