Orators of yore could lift crowds

All week the television reporters have been referring to this weekend as “the holiday weekend,” and I’ve sat here wondering if the federal government, which takes such great delight in creating bogus Monday holidays for its civil servants, has outdone itself by officially turning this coming Wednesday’s Independence Day holiday into the mother of all long weekends, beginning today.

If this is the “holiday weekend,” with the holiday smack dab in the middle of the workweek, what does that make next weekend, which is equidistant from the Fourth of July?

By my calculation, the only ones in this area entitled to call today and tomorrow a holiday weekend are our Canadian friends, who are celebrating what once was called Dominion Day (July 1) before it got reinvented in 1982 as the more crowd-pleasing Canada Day.

No matter. Whether one is successful in stretching out the midweek holiday or not, this particular Independence Day will take on solemn new meaning for many Americans because the nation is bogged down in an increasingly unpopular war in a far-off land, the casualty toll mounting daily and often striking close to home.

Gov. John Baldacci’s office recently listed more than 40 military personnel with Maine ties who, as of June 15, have died in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latest, 22-year-old Sgt. Joel House of Lee, was killed a week ago by a roadside bomb in Iraq on his second tour of duty there.

Like many other grieving parents of fallen warriors, Paul and Deanna House of Lee both supported their son’s decision to join the Army and took pride in his service to his country. “It’s like when your kids first get their driver’s license,” Paul House told BDN reporter Toni-Lynn Robbins as the Penobscot County community mourned the family’s loss. “You are always scared.”

A large boulder along Route 6 in Lincoln that has served as a message board of sorts for years now contains a tribute to the young man who had hoped to someday become a Maine game warden: “Freedom Isn’t Free. Sgt. Joel House. U.S. Army, 11.21.84 – 6.23.07” one painted inscription reminds motorists headed for Sgt. House’s hometown. “Fallen Hero Joel H.” reads another. In small-town Maine, the loss seems especially hard to take.

Freedom isn’t free. Just as the Founding Fathers before them more than 230 years ago, the citizens of Lee know firsthand the truth in the concise statement of the guiding principle behind the nation’s Independence Day observance.

Meanwhile, the politics of the war play out daily in the Congress, sometimes in a partisan manner, other times not. When some representative or senator with an eye toward next year’s national elections states his or her latest position on the war, it brings to mind a line by humorist Roy Blount Jr.

In an essay about the first Gulf War that he cranked out 16 years ago, Blount wrote, “From the beginning of the war in the Gulf, my position on it has been clear: If it works, I’m not against it. If it doesn’t, I didn’t think it would.”

The shoe fits many a politician in Washington today, including members of both major political parties who, as they maneuver to become our next president, struggle to get on the correct side of the war issue.

Few, if any, among the gaggle of presidential candidates can be said to truly inspire the electorate at this ridiculously early point in a campaign that won’t set us free for nearly a year and a half. And since familiarity can only breed contempt, the situation is not likely to improve a whole lot.

What this country needs (in addition to a good five-cent cigar and a ballpoint pen that doesn’t leak) is an old stem-winder of an orator who can incite the natives to their full patriotic potential with his Fourth of July speechifying. This summer of our discontent seems particularly ripe for an appearance by someone the likes of unsuccessful three-time presidential wannabe William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, whose rhetoric and dramatic speaking style in his prime reportedly could arouse crowds to a frenzy.

When Bryan addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 9, 1896, the crowd response “came like one great burst of artillery,” one newspaper reported. “Men and women screamed and waved hats and canes. Some, like demented things, divested themselves of their coats and flung them high in the air …”

You don’t see many demented constituents flinging their coats high in the air in appreciation of a candidate’s speech-making abilities these days. And a pity it is, too.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may e-mail him at old

dawg@bangordailynews.net.