The Conservative Case for a single "President's Day"
As I often do in the mornings, I was listening to Bob Davis on KSTP. There are lots of times that I'd love to call in, but it's just not in my general nature, and usually by the time I might have an opportunity to do so, the topic has changed or I've lost interest.
This morning, one of his topics was his displeasure with the fact that our increasingly politically-correct society had combined Washington and Lincoln's birthdays into a single non-specific "President's Day", ostensibly to keep from putting too much emphasis on a few great Presidents and avoid hurting the feelings of some losers (ahem CARTER ahem). Davis was doing a fine job on this topic until I realized that there is a good conservative case to be made for keeping it the way it is now.
We've had a number of great Presidents - Publius names five below. And while I'd readily admit to putting Washington and Lincoln in a category all by themselves, I think we could (and should) make a strong case for putting Reagan right up there. I'm sure that cigar manufacturers and philanderers the world over have similar thoughts about Clinton. Yet, as much as I like the traffic situation when we have national holidays (which just goes to show that we have WAAAY too many federal employees, but that's a post for another time), we as conservatives cannot in good faith support additional useless federal holidays. As it is, our single "President's Day" is a virtual guarantee that in the future, we won't add additional federally imposed holidays to honor additional great Presidents.
Remember - there's a name for a country where holidays and vacation time have a drastic negative effect on productivity -- "France" -- and no one I know wants to head down that road.
This morning, one of his topics was his displeasure with the fact that our increasingly politically-correct society had combined Washington and Lincoln's birthdays into a single non-specific "President's Day", ostensibly to keep from putting too much emphasis on a few great Presidents and avoid hurting the feelings of some losers (ahem CARTER ahem). Davis was doing a fine job on this topic until I realized that there is a good conservative case to be made for keeping it the way it is now.
We've had a number of great Presidents - Publius names five below. And while I'd readily admit to putting Washington and Lincoln in a category all by themselves, I think we could (and should) make a strong case for putting Reagan right up there. I'm sure that cigar manufacturers and philanderers the world over have similar thoughts about Clinton. Yet, as much as I like the traffic situation when we have national holidays (which just goes to show that we have WAAAY too many federal employees, but that's a post for another time), we as conservatives cannot in good faith support additional useless federal holidays. As it is, our single "President's Day" is a virtual guarantee that in the future, we won't add additional federally imposed holidays to honor additional great Presidents.
Remember - there's a name for a country where holidays and vacation time have a drastic negative effect on productivity -- "France" -- and no one I know wants to head down that road.
posted by festivus | 2/21/2005 10:57:00 PM
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Then again, the less time spent by our legislatures debating holidays, the safer we and our property will be from the legislatures. Perhaps we should support 365 federal holidays!
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