First, Patriots' Day.

Today is Patriots' Day in Massachusetts. That's the day we remember the Battle of Lexington and Concord. That's when a bunch of farmers, "Minutemen" as they came to be called, got together and gave the what-for to the Redcoats. These guys weren't pros, they were true warriors for the working day, fighting the world's most feared and disciplined army - and winning - because they fought for what was theirs, and they didn't let convention stand in the way of victory. In many ways it's the quintessential American holiday.

There's something about being self-sufficient on your own piece of land while still being part of community that provides a strong independent spirit and the desire not to take any crap from people who don't pull their own weight - whether those people be down the street or living in a palace across an ocean. This was no joke. In most people the recklessness of youth gives way to the caution of middle-age. As you get older, you just can't take the risks you used to when you were younger. No, not with a mortgage, possessions, a family to provide for and a reputation to protect. Looking like a fool on the front-page of the paper is enough of a disincentive to render most older men docile - to say nothing of the thought of financial ruin and liability.

Yet these men put everything on the line in a roll of the dice - their land, their families, their fortunes...their lives. It was a day with no social safety net, at least not anything run by the Government, and poor medicine (Ben Franklin was still out preaching about what a bad treatment bleeding was). And yet there they were, shoulder to shoulder, Muskets in hand on Lexington Green, ready to face the forces of their King. Inspirational, really.

And not a bad reminder for today, either. After all, America was founded on the spirit of independence as embodied by the excavation of musket-ball holes in the back-sides of Europeans. Although the British connection is a tad unfortunate, it's an appealing paradigm for today. Americans have always had an idea of what they were about, a willingness to go their own way, a readiness to take risks and that good old American Ingenuity at the ready to find new ways to get results. (Spare me the "Minutemen were the terrorists of their time" nonsense. The fact that they fired at other soldiers from behind trees is not the same as cutting the throats of Tory infants because King George was inaccessible.) Yes, our partnerships with old Europe during the Twentieth Century were really somewhat anomalous weren't they? We've always been about our own business, and more often than not, we've been right.

The first shot fired at the Battle of Lexington and Concord was known as "the shot heard round the world." Why? It wasn't the biggest battle on the planet - probably less than 2000 men took part. The casualties weren't the greatest the world had seen - probably fewer than 200 killed. In the history of the British Empire, it would have been a footnote. But it was the start of something new and profound, and it changed America's attitude forever as the taste of blood in the mouth began to bring people around to the cause. For Americans, and as a consequence for the rest of humanity, a new path was being trod. Americans may not think of the battle daily, but it's there in our collective unconscious - a part of who we are.

It's a happy day in Boston. The Boston Marathon is run today, and the Red Sox play a morning game. People come from around the globe to run down Boston's streets, and people from all over the globe cheer for them, and thousands pack the ball-park to enjoy the National Pastime. This Patriots' Day was bright and sunny and in the 80's - but it was a dry heat and unusual for New England weather. Yes, it's a good day to be alive.

Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Today is also Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which the victims of the Holocaust are remembered. The suffering of those days is hard to imagine sitting here in our comfort today, but it pays to do so from time to time. We need a reminder. For all that the Holocaust lives in film, television and literature, I think we've done a poor job of really conveying the full scope of horror of that time. That's no surprise, of course, considering the scope of what occurred.

Fascism - Mussolini was no Hitler.

To this day, people still debate the definitions of Fascism. Not surprising. What I take from reading about Mussolini is that Fascism became whatever Mussolini said it was - an opportunistic personality cult enforced by a kleptocratic Police-State. Mussolini never communicated a clear and consistent enough message that resonated with the Italian people that it really took hold in Italy. A lot of agriculturalists those Italians, and we know how independent they are.

So when the pressure was on the State, the cracks showed. Mussolini's power was an empty shell that needed to be backed by Nazi power when his own people started ignoring him and finally removed him from office themselves as the war wore on.

Hitler was different. He had a clear vision, consistently communicated, that resonated with the German character. It was a messianic message built on a bedrock of antisemitism. Juddenhass was every bit as central to the Nazi cause as was rearmament, the expunging of shame, as well as more generalized racial purity.

So when the pressure was on the State, the center held. And that center was Judenhass. So even though there was a labor shortage, and valuable manpower was at a premium, the Nazis slaughtered the Jews. Even though there was work to be done, and a little more nutrition would have kept the workers stronger, the Nazis starved and beat and slaughtered the Jews. They did not do it to other "subhumans" like the Slavs, who the Nazis eased up on when their labor became valuable. No, even in their darkest hours the Nazis continued the slaughter.

When trains were needed to transport desperately required reinforcements to the front, the trains waited for the cars bound for the Death Camps to pass first. When the Allies were almost upon them, and the Reich was clearly doomed, the Nazis grabbed the prisoners and continued the slaughter on the road.

It would seem not to make sense, an almost irrational, self-defeating placement of priorities. But when you understand that extermination of the Jews was a part of the bedrock upon which the rest of the Nazi program stood, you begin to get it. In this light, extermination was as much a priority as economic advance and military victory. They were all of a piece, and the decisions begin to make sense - become almost rational.

And it worked, even to the point of the regime's demise - to the last moving moment - long after there was any chance of retribution from their higher ups, because rank and file Germans were down with the program. They believed in it. They needed no supervision. It was a part of them. And not just the indoctrinated SS - the average trooper, too. Not every man and woman, to be sure, but enough. More than enough. The Einsatzgruppen and the Order Police were reservists and behind-the-lines types. They were generally older men, too old for the front, more educated than the average German Soldier, often professional family men.

Yet they were the ones responsible for the real nitty-gritty, gun-barrel to the back of the head performance of the Final Solution. They did their jobs, and they did it well - even in circumstances where they could have shirked, where they weren't under observation, they did it. When the guards of the Helbrechts Women's Work Camp took what was left of their inmates on their final death march in the final days of the war, they receive direct orders on the second day of the march from Himmler. He was in negotiation with the Allies - stop killing the Jews. Treat them as the other prisoners. It didn't matter. The Program was too in-bred in these guards to do anything less than what they ended up doing - these Germans, male and female, ordinary people all, not brainwashed SS-men, now out of contact with any higher authority - continued on their own to do what they felt was necessary and natural. They continued starving and beating and shooting to death the Jewish women they were marching. The non-Jewish prisoners, some ethnic-Germans received different treatment. More food, less sadism. They even began to serve as guards of the others in the march's final days. But for the Jews, there was no respite.

You see, Hitler had done his job well, and he knew his audience. Once the ball was rolling, it didn't require even Hitler himself to keep it going. It had a logic of its own.

Yes, Hitler killed other people, some in greater numbers, than the Jews. Around 20 million Russians perished in the War. But it wasn't Hitler's goal to exterminate the Russians. The Jews were special. And there have been other genocides in the modern era, but none so well planned for, in execution or completeness, nor any leader who so managed to convince his people of the program as did Hitler. Again, the Jews were special.

Bringing it back together.

The Holocaust was The Shot Heard Round the World that changed forever how the Jews view themselves and was the furnace in which the metal of the State of Israel was forged. Just as the Battle of Lexington and Concord may be viewed as a moment at which the ordinary New England farmer threw caution to the wind and turned his back on Europe's old ways for a role of the dice, so too did The Holocaust become the defining moment after which Jews would say, "Never Again." We will no longer sit and wait for the charity and good-will of others. We will become self-sufficient people of the soil, and if it means we must risk opprobrium to do it, still we will go our own way and take our own chances because that is what history has taught us we must do.

Some say that the United States has become the World's Jew. Well, if that's true, then Israel has become the Jews' United States - forged in fire, putting little value on the approval of Europe in favor of walking its own path and saying, "We've given you far more than you've ever given us. We're moving on." History moving forward.

It's a beautiful day in Boston. The Holocaust is gone but not forgotten. History moves on. Patriots live. Here and abroad in a thousand different places, with a thousand different faces.

I took the day off and yes, continued the clean-up. Here are a few pictures of the first blooms of Spring in my yard on Patriots' Day. Hope you had a good one!