Limited Government Day

Monday’s holiday started out:

Sixty-one years ago, in 1951, a Californian named Harold Stonebridge Fischer formed the President's Day National Committee with the intention of creating a holiday that would honor the office of the presidency, but no particular president.​

The enclosed article tells us exactly which president the holiday celebrates. I’ll wager that a lot of Americans believe it celebrates every president —— and/or the office as Stonebridge originally intended. There’s the rub. In 1951 neither Stonebridge nor anyone else could envision anti-America traitors becoming president. Yet in the minds of many Presidents' Day implies honoring Clinton and Hussein along with George Washington.

Interestingly, it is Clinton and Hussein who made a mockery out of honoring the office. If two characters like can make it to the presidency the office deserves to be held in contempt not honored.

Another disgrace is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Nothing sickens me more that a holiday honoring a hustling preacher. It is doubly disgraceful because so many Americans did much more for this country than did King without having a holiday named after them. I’m not talking about government officials. I’m talking about private sector Americans who built this country for all Americans. King did what he did for a pack of angry malcontents who hated, and still hate, everything about America.

And don’t shout racist. There are just as many pieces of white garbage who fit the description as there are black. Look in Hussein’s administration and among the Occupy Everything crowd if you want to see the kind I am talking about.

Finally, nothing is ever repealed, but I’d sure like to see Big George honored on his birthday and Presidents' Day scrapped right along with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I’d replace them both with a Limited Government Day. If ever an ideal deserved two holidays it is limited government.

The Day That Isn't
By Peter Hannaford on 2.17.12 @ 6:07AM

On Monday we'll celebrate Washington's Birthday, and no one else's.

On Monday America will celebrate a day that isn't. Millions of desk and wall calendars will show the third Monday of February as "Presidents' Day," but there is no such thing and thereby hangs a tale.

Sixty-one years ago, in 1951, a Californian named Harold Stonebridge Fischer formed the President's Day National Committee with the intention of creating a holiday that would honor the office of the presidency, but no particular president. He found some like-minded people to fill out his committee and push the idea and he must have acquired some financial donors, for he was executive director of the committee for the next two decades.

He lobbied Congress, proposing March 4, the original Inauguration Day, as the date for "Presidents' Day," but the bill to make it happen became stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Several members were concerned that adding a third holiday to celebrations of Washington's and Lincoln's birthday would be bad for the economy. Several state governors issued proclamations declaring March 4 to be "Presidents' Day" in their states.

Nevertheless, the federal bill went into hibernation.

In 1968 sentiment grew for a Uniform Monday Holiday Act that would move several national holidays from their specific dates to the nearest Monday, thereby reducing down-time for the economy and giving workers a series of three-day holidays. An early draft of the enabling bill would have renamed the Washington's Birthday holiday "Presidents' Day" to honor both Washington and Lincoln, whose birthday is on February 12 and has never been a national holiday.

The bill passed and was signed into law as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act on June 28 that year. George Washington's birthday, February 22, was moved from that date to the third Monday of the month and remains officially, the George Washington's Birthday Holiday. The term "Presidents' Day" is not mentioned in the Act.

Some Lincoln devotees saw the name "Presidents' Day" as an opportunity to use the new dating of the holiday to honor both men. Three states, Illinois, Missouri and Connecticut set February 12 aside as a state holiday to specifically honor Lincoln.

Other states have their own take on the George Washington's Birthday Holiday. Massachusetts state law requires the governor to issue a "Presidents' Day" proclamation on May 29 every year to honor four presidents with roots in the state: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Calvin Coolidge and John F. Kennedy.

Alabama calls the holiday "Washington and Jefferson Day," although Thomas Jefferson was born in April.

Used car and mattress salesmen, however, love what they call "Presidents' Day," as they salivate over plans for three-day weekend sales. Beginning in the 1980s advertisers began to use the "Presidents' Day" designation apparently because it had a snappier sound than "Washington's Birthday." The growing repetition of the fake name led calendar producers do put it on their products without verifying it.

It has been said that a day that honors all presidents honors none. After all, who stops to think about William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce, or Chester A. Arthur on the third Monday of February? Many people may be confused about the day, but the Wikipedia Encyclopedia isn't. If you go to Wikipedia and enter "Presidents' Day," it will redirect you to "Washington's Birthday." As will Google.

Mr. Hannaford is the author of The Essential George Washington.

About the Author

Peter Hannaford is a member of the board of the Committee on the Present Danger. His latest book is Reagan's Roots: The People and Places That Shaped His Character.

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/02/17/the-day-that-isnt

 

The “Washington” in the title of the enclosed article refers to George Washington. Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933) captured why today’s America-haters so despise GW:

“Wherever men love liberty, wherever they believe in patriotism, wherever they exalt high character, by universal consent they invoke the name of George Washington. No occasion could be conceived more worthy, more comprehensibly American, than that which is chosen to commemorate this divinely appointed captain.”​

Liberals may not realize it but the failure to honor Washington, the city, is their doing, too.

Failure to Honor Washington: a Triumph of the Left
Greg Halvorson Monday, February 20, 2012

On this, what would have been George Washington’s 279th birthday week, Americans will go about their business, a free people, without acknowledging – nor celebrating – the man whose toil on their behalf was measureless. I say “free people,” sadly aware that we’re becoming less free, and that diminution of Washington symbolizes the push to “alter” history to make this so.

This, of course, derives from the Left, which spreads tales – false ones – of racism amongst the Founders, and which last year had members of the NAACP hide the General from view. Indeed, they boxed him in, shielding the Offender, even as they praised the author of the line, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

And now “President’s Day” disrespects George again. The equivalent of “every leader gets a prize,” it mocks history, inspires no one, and displays the lengths to which fools go to be foolish. There is no par between George Washington and James Polk, between Thomas Jefferson and Millard Fillmore, and to assert otherwise says: 1) that no president is different from any other; 2) that individuals must bow to the Collective; and 3) that history is a dull, generic ride.

False on each count. When you honor everyone, you honor no one, and honor becomes meaningless. The name of the law which created President’s Day – The Uniform Monday Holiday Act – is absurd, much like the mush it inspired. Debating the bill, Rep. Dan Kuykendall (R-TN), foresaw the outcome:

“If we do this - change the date of the Washington holiday – ten years from now our children will not know what February 22 means. They will not know or care when George Washington was born. They will know only that in the middle of February, they will have a three-day weekend for some reason…. This will come.”

It has. The progressive effort to rewrite history and to demonize – and erase – the Founders has succeeded. General Washington is now less revered than Lady GaGa. Obscurer still is the honor President Coolidge bestowed on him:

“Wherever men love liberty, wherever they believe in patriotism, wherever they exalt high character, by universal consent they invoke the name of George Washington. No occasion could be conceived more worthy, more comprehensibly American, than that which is chosen to commemorate this divinely appointed captain.”​

Divinely appointed captain.

Makes one wish His Excellency were alive. And that somehow, through Providence, he could lead us again.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44742

 

I’m happy to report that I am not alone in my objection to Presidents’ day. The following article is self-explanatory:

Push to give George Washington his birthday back
By LARRY MARGASAK | Associated Press – 12 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Quick quiz. What is George Washington's birthday?

The official U.S. government answer is the third Monday in February, the day you can get a car or mattress on sale.

Lawmakers and witnesses at a House hearing Wednesday favored giving the first president his birthday back. They agreed that the federal holiday should be restored to Washington's real birthday of Feb. 22.

Through 1970, most Americans knew Washington's birthday because that was the holiday. The nation's holiday lineup was changed by a 1968 law that took effect in 1971, making Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Presidents Day Monday holidays to give Americans a three-day weekend.

The Senate Judiciary Committee report on the changes said the holidays would provide "substantial benefits to both the spiritual and economic life of the nation."

Well, the economic part certainly proved to be true.

"We need to change the focus from celebrating sales at the mall to celebrating the significance of President Washington's birth to the birth of our nation," said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., sponsor of a bill to change the holiday to Feb. 22.

He was backed at the hearing by lawmakers of both parties, a historian, an educator and a member of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, which cares for Washington's historic Virginia home.

Wolf, who was a witness at the hearing, asked in his statement whether anybody else celebrated a birthday on the third Monday of a month. No hands went up.

Anne Neal, president of a higher education organization, said there was a serious reason to restore the holiday.

"As we move forward into the 21st century, too many of our future leaders are graduating with a profound historical illiteracy that bodes ill for the future of the republic," said Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

She added, "George Washington is no mere president, to be jumbled with Millard Fillmore and Chester A. Arthur."

http://news.yahoo.com/push-george-washington-birthday-back-213514496.html