The Legacy Of Herman Wouk

By:  Paul Schwartzmeyer

Yesterday, with little fanfare, one of the greatest writers in history, Herman Wouk, died at the age of 103. With him, a little piece of America died.

Wouk’s parents, like many Jews, emigrated from Russia to the USA in the early 1900’s. They battled abject poverty as well as racism and grew to love America, a country that, in its own way, hated them.

I first read Wouk’s “War and Remembrance,” on an oil rig in the Persian Gulf. My crew was on standby offshore and I laid in bed listening to the rig engines grind on as the rough necks “tripped pipe.” When the engines stopped, we’d go to work. I recall hoping that they’d stay on until I finished reading. The book, which was really a series of stories, mesmerized me.

That book is what created my passion for travel and adventure, but that’s not what drove Wouk. A combat veteran of WW2, Wouk was a Hasidic Jew, who spent countless hours studying the Talmud. That discipline can be best explained in the words of my old friend Bob Kurshner.

“Paul. You Catholics are stupid. You tell your smartest people, your priests, that they can’t have children. Imagine your father is a Rabbi. He’s your role model. He comes home every night and spends five hours studying the Talmud.”

Many, if not most of the Jews emigrating to the US came from Russia, Germany and Austria, as well as a spattering of Eastern European countries. Along with them came a veritable army of Germans. Contrary to what leftist babble on about, these were the men that built America.

And, America did NOT welcome them in the least. The KKK signs of that time said,

“No niggers”

“No Jews”

“No Catholics”

Hardly a welcome mat.

A good example is Henry Lehman, one of the fathers of what we lazily call our “market economy.” Lehman created, with his brother Mayer, New York’s cotton exchange and eventually, a company that was the mother of the US markets.

Unless you know Jews or Germans personally, you can’t imagine how hard these people work. Along with crushing hours and steel willed discipline, they have an uncompromising toughness. They ran their companies in places where they were not welcome, with governments controlled by people discriminated against them, and prospered.

This is why the left hates them so much. They can’t compete.

Throughout history, conquering armies destroyed the cultures of those they defeated. Most recently, it was the Taliban that has destroyed most of the holy sites in Afghanistan. If the Muslims retake Jerusalem, they’ll reduce it to rubble. In fact, they state this publicly as their goal. By doing this, they can create a new narrative and a new history.

The history of empires is that they are built by great men and willed to their worthless children who piss away their inheritance. The history of Judaism is that they do not allow their children to become worthless. Their almost maniacal dedication to education and family as fierce discipline are the keys to their survival.

To the end of his days, Herman Wouk was a Hasidic Jew. He never wavered. It was that discipline that gave him the will and power to dedicated tens of thousands of hours to The Winds of War, and its sequel, War and Remembrance.

When I was in the 8^th grade, my English teacher, Mr. West, a brutal man trained as a Jesuit decided I wasn’t competent at reading aloud in front of people. He made me read the great Longfellow epic, “Evangeline,” every day in class. In the middle of the winter, I’d stand there with the windows wide open, freezing my ass off, reading that poem. I hated it.

In 9th grade, my math teacher, Mrs. Shay, would assign mountains of algebra homework. It was brutal. We thought the woman was a masochist. I can to this day see the woman pounding her finger on her book saying, “You must read and study this book every night!” 3/4ths of her students got 100 percent on the Regents exam. Yet she failed my friend Judy, a girl who got a 100% for not turning in all her homework.

What they called discipline today’s “edutainment” teachers would call child abuse. Educators present information as if it’s a bag of skittles. They dance around like idiots convinced that they have to make edutainment “interesting” to inspire the lazy, cellphone addicted mall rats that sleepily stagger into their classrooms.

One of the greatest books ever written, “Gone with the Wind”, is being forbidden in America’s schools. I must have read it ten times. The book is amazing. It’s being replaced with an idiotic series of books featuring kids in a witchcraft school that fly around on broomsticks. The books have a plot so simple, a 4^thgrader could have written them.

In 70 years, “Gone with the Wind” sold 30 million copies, yet it took 5 years to sell 53 million copies of “50 Shades of Gray,” a psycho-porn novel whose only real purpose is as a masturbation aid for middle aged women. These same women are now launching the #Metoo movement, complaining about sexual discrimination!

I’d say God help us, but that would be blasphemous. God should NOT help people who act like this. People who abandon God, should not ask for favors.

Soros, a profoundly evil man, has stated publicly that he hates America, a country that gave him citizenship and protection.

He has used his billions to crush Christian American culture, though it’s hard to argue that we needed his help.  Here in New York, the massive stone cathedrals built by our ancestors are being used as rap studios, flea markets and converted dental offices.

What child going to a public school today would use Henry Lehman as a role model? Lehman would be banned from schools as a man whose family owned a slave, was an ardent capitalist and an unapologetic Jew. Three strikes and you’re out.  Shouldn’t a Lehman protégé’ create a country, Palestine, as a rich, democracy and hand it over, lock, stock and barrel, to people who vow to exterminate them from the face of the earth?

How many would choose Wouk, a man who, with his wife, sacrificed for years to create great historical novels and dedicate them to the glory of God?

Too few.