"Debate over the Uniform Monday Holiday Bill in 1968 touched on the fear that George Washington would be forgotten in the schoolrooms and future generations would not know about the Father of Our Country," notes a National Archives history of the commercially-driven transmogrification of Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays into the generic, one-size-fits-all Presidents' or Presidents Day celebrated here last [see how nebulous it is?] next Monday. "With the traditional ten-day buffer between Lincoln's February 12 and Washington's February 22 birthdays eliminated, the erosion of America's memory began." (Koons Baltimore Ford President’s [sic] Day New Car TV Commercial)
"Now here's a man who inherited some problems! As opposed to Obama, who is causing the problems!" quips Looking4Sanity in the roused and rousing comments of Publius's "Friday Free-For-All: Lincoln Edition" at Big Government in celebration of Abraham Lincoln's 201st birthday. Our two cents' worth:
And now what we youngsters of the fifties and sixties used to celebrate as Lincoln's Birthday is just another day in the life of schoolchildren with no sense of where they come from, no understanding of the exceptionalism of the Shining City Upon a Hill they were lucky enough to be born to.
Presidents' Day: Blagh ... Clueless North Carolina education "leaders" proposing to revamp the state's 11th-grade curriculum by skipping the Revolution and Civil War and covering U.S. history "only from 1877 onward."
As the late Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin put it: Trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers.