Michele Bachmann Looks To Lost Cause For Inspiration
- December 15, 2009 20:48:13
- Read all 356 opinions
There are rallying cries worth following and there are rallying cries to back away from. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn, invoked the second kind today when she yelled, "it's like the charge of the light brigade!," in her attempt to pump up the "Code Red" tea partiers as they rallied in Washington against health care reform.
Let's go to the video:
What she doesn't seem to realize (and here she might be more on target than she thinks), the "charge of the light brigade" was a lost cause.
The "charge" refers to a forlorn British assault launched against Russian artillery batteries in the Crimean War's Battle of Balaclava. The light brigade advance through the "valley of death" was a blunder, made worse by poor communication and double-crossing, that led to many deaths.
War correspondent William Russell wrote about the battle at the time and it was later immortalized in a poem by Alfred, Lord Tenneson, who wanted to capture the bravery of soldiers fighting a futile cause. It's where we get the phrase "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die."
From the poem:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
I'm not sure that's the message Bachmann meant to send her own troops at a "die-in." Coincidentally, the Crimean War is also where the world was introduced to the nurse Florence Nightengale.
Let's go to the video:
What she doesn't seem to realize (and here she might be more on target than she thinks), the "charge of the light brigade" was a lost cause.
The "charge" refers to a forlorn British assault launched against Russian artillery batteries in the Crimean War's Battle of Balaclava. The light brigade advance through the "valley of death" was a blunder, made worse by poor communication and double-crossing, that led to many deaths.
War correspondent William Russell wrote about the battle at the time and it was later immortalized in a poem by Alfred, Lord Tenneson, who wanted to capture the bravery of soldiers fighting a futile cause. It's where we get the phrase "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die."
From the poem:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
I'm not sure that's the message Bachmann meant to send her own troops at a "die-in." Coincidentally, the Crimean War is also where the world was introduced to the nurse Florence Nightengale.
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Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Indeed, some one had blundered.
ANd no one can question the lack of a reasoning process.
Ironic, ain't it?
"Nonetheless, the War is sometimes considered to be the first "modern" conflict as it "introduced technical changes which affected the future course of warfare,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...