One of those current events that I totally missed on Thursday. Don’t Presidential Proclamations tend to carry some weight with lefties and righties? Or have they become so common and banal that nobody pays them any mind?
Who knew that Loyalty Day has been an official US holiday since 1958? And every year the current President issues a Loyalty Day proclamation? 2014 is no exception.
Presidential Proclamation — Loyalty Day, 2014.
Skipping all the “what fors” and “whereases,” leaves:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2014, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States or pledging allegiance to the Republic for which it stands.
Not just any old day in the year was worth appropriating for “Loyalty Day.” It had to be May Day just in case any USians got any ideas about celebrating International Workers’ Day.
The Cold War was always dreadful and particularly so during the 1950s when crap such as “Loyalty Day” was created, “in God we trust” was stamped onto coins and currency, and “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. USians longing for a return to The Cold War are nuts.
On a related “US loyalty issue,” Glenzilla took on Hayden and Dershowitz and apparently kicked some butt on the motion:
Be it resolved state surveillance is a legitimate defence of our freedoms…
Note to self — Find Two Hours to Watch
Justin Doolittle May Day: While the World Celebrates Workers, the US Celebrates “Loyalty” and “Law”
IOW — it’s Anti-Communism Day in America.
And certainly no mention of Beltane although the festival is part of the cultural history of many here.
Will have to defer to others here on this one as it’s new to me and it didn’t get passed down from my single distant Irish immigrant/ancestor.
I was being a bit facetious with that comment, considering the old Beltane festival is probably not widely known here, except for a handful of pagans and New Agers. I only knew due to an affection for ancient Ireland and the myths and legends thereof.
I have this vague memory from when I was seven or eight asking why we didn’t have maypoles to dance around on May first. Something I must have seen or read about in a book. It sounded like such a wonderful festival. I was informed that it’s not done in our country. That might have been when I started to smell a rat wrt to US political correctness — why that morning ritual of the Pledge of Allegiance became harder and harder to recite.
Mercifully my schools and teachers didn’t shove “Loyalty Day” on us — but we didn’t do any “duck and cover drills” either because they were correctly viewed as idiotic.
Oh yeah! I remember that! “When you see the flash, duck”. Even at around age ten, we muttered to each other, “When you see the flash, kiss your ass goodbye!”
Never heard of Loyalty Day, though. And I was 13 for the first one.
Loyalty Day didn’t seem to get much in the way of publicity from what I can recall either, at least not until Dubya’s War on Terra began. Then, yeah, suddenly that became part of our national vocabulary (at least among those getting their news filtered through Faux, Free Republic, and Limbaugh).
I’ll stick to May Day.
Early in muy teaching career, I had a student whose first name was Loyalty and last name was Day. Sweet, bright kid who had some tragedy in her life later on.