Don\u2019t know much about American history?<\/p>\n
Blame the federal government.<\/p>\n
Back in 1968, Congress and President Lyndon Johnson agreed to move Veterans Day, Memorial Day and George Washington\u2019s birthday to designated Mondays to ensure three-day weekends throughout the year. Since the change would mean that Washington\u2019s birthday (February 22nd) would never be celebrated on the prescribed third Monday of February, the new holiday became known as Presidents Day.<\/p>\n
The motivation was primarily economic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe three-day weekend was favored by federal workers, private sector labor unions, the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and an array of tourist-related industries and trade associations,\u201d writes Carl Cannon<\/a>. \u201cIt was even pro-family, its backers proclaimed. It was a win-win-win.\u201d<\/p>\n The results were predictable. Today, many people don\u2019t know that we celebrate the living on Veterans Day and the fallen on Memorial Day. Others don\u2019t realize that some presidents \u2013 like George \u201cFather of His Country\u201d Washington and Abraham \u201cSavior of His Country\u201d Lincoln (born Feb. 12th) \u2013 deserve more attention and appreciation this time of year than their Oval Office brethren.<\/p>\n One way to overcome this misconception in the future is to acquaint one\u2019s self with some of the best works on Washington and Lincoln. Ron Chernow <\/a>and Richard Brookhiser<\/a> have well regarded biographies on Washington. Harry Jaffa has two<\/a> outstanding books<\/a> on Lincoln.<\/p>\n Reading any of these ahead of next year\u2019s edition of Presidents Day will go a long way toward reclaiming part of what makes America exceptional \u2013 Her exceptional leaders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Don\u2019t know much about American history? Blame the federal government. Back in 1968, Congress and President Lyndon Johnson agreed to move Veterans Day, Memorial Day and George Washington\u2019s birthday to designated Mondays to ensure three-day weekends throughout the year. Since the change would mean that Washington\u2019s birthday (February 22nd) would never be celebrated on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[956,433,4454,1470],"class_list":["post-20157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-abraham-lincoln","tag-george-washington","tag-lyndon-johnson","tag-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20157"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20163,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20157\/revisions\/20163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}