Demonic depictions of the enemy — which in today’s sensitive light appear politically incorrect. Beneath the words, “Factory FIRES help the JAPS,” a burning plant sends up fiendish flames bearing a strong resemblance to the face of Japan’s Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.
Excuse me for saying so, but fucking wimps, all of them. While racism is a horrible thing, these posters embody the fighting spirit that secured freedom for tens of millions of people around the globe. Including Japan. To censor this piece of history is to turn your back on the sacrifices Americans made for freedom. The freedom that saved my father’s life, and kept him out of slavery for sixty years.
Is it any wonder that the President of the United States, a constitutional scholar, deployed our forces into the Libyan civil war without seeking congressional approval? Or that Illinois gun rights activists are struggling—again, still—to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms?
And it’s not just racism or nationalism that’s swept under the carpet in this headlong rush to Orwellian homogeneity (under the guise of “diversity” no less). It’s religion too; as if there’s something unseemly about believing in the Christian values contained in the Bible. Although cincinnati.com shows it like it is [image below], USAToday and others won’t.
Examples from the Office of War Information’s “This is the Enemy” series cross the line of political correctness.
One dark-toned and dark-themed “This is the Enemy” poster features a Nazi’s hand clutching a dagger stabbing a Bible. Others feature Japanese soldiers “whose features make them look like bugs,” [Stanford University’s Hoover Institution archivist Carol] Leadenham said.
“You have to put these posters into context,” she added.
“This is not to say the images are nice. But you have to understand what was going on back then. We were at war. American troops were being tortured. And killed. These posters reflected emotions the country felt.”
[Poster collector Vernon] Rader recalled the emotions the posters stirred in him.
“They got you worked up,” he said. “Those posters reminded you what we were fighting for. They made you want to buy war bonds.”
He paused.
“I wonder why we don’t have posters like this today,” he said. “They might help us pay for those wars we are waging overseas.”
When an entire country—government, media, bureaucrats, even the military—place the need nor to hurt anyone’s feelings above the need to defend our liberty; when they “forget” the fact that this defense must be paid for with blood, sweat and tears; when they “forget” to engage the populace in this collective struggle, then we truly are a nation of cowards.
Not all of us. Some of us take responsibility for our personal defense, and decry what’s being done in our name by “our” politicians without our consent (from the Mexican border to the shores of Tripoli). But enough of us are insulated from our country’s founding values—however crudely expressed in the past—that I fear for the future of our nation.