OPEN THREAD: You waited for it, and here it is.

HISTORY OF THE AMERICANS: Sidebar: “The Soldier’s Faith,” a Memorial Day Speech.

On May 30 – Memorial Day — 1895, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a Harvard man and then a justice on the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, delivered an address to the graduating class of 1895 in Cambridge. The speech, known as “The Soldier’s Faith,” is in and of itself fascinating substantively and also for its indirect effects. Regarding those, Theodore Roosevelt, another Harvard man, read the speech some seven years later and determined to appoint Holmes to the Supreme Court on account of it.

Beyond that, the speech is incredibly prescient, in certain respects, and eloquent, even poetic, on the question of personal courage and purpose to a degree that will seem alien to most Americans today, at least those of us who have never served.

I’m not at all convinced that Holmes took the right lessons from his service, but read (and listen to) the whole thing.

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS CAN’T GET IN THE WAY OF POLITICAL POINT-SCORING: Ind. abortion doctor violated privacy laws in revealing girl’s rape, board rules. “An Indianapolis doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim violated privacy laws when she spoke to a newspaper about the case, the Indiana Medical Licensing Board concluded. The seven-member board, which is appointed by the governor, imposed a $3,000 fine and a letter of reprimand Thursday on Dr. Caitlin Bernard. The panel cleared her on the more serious charge of failing to report abuse of the girl in a timely manner, meaning she will keep her medical license. . . . The girl’s case made national headlines and ignited a political firestorm following the June 24 Supreme Court ruling that overturned the landmark abortion decision in Roe vs. Wade.”

Sounds as if she got off light.

A SMALL VICTORY: Arizona drops charges against ASU student arrested for handing out Constitution. “All witnesses who testified to Tizon’s actions confirmed that the table did not block pedestrians nor interfere with other groups, his attorneys had argued, adding university officials disregarded their own policy, unlawfully restricting Tizon’s freedom of expression.”

Now punish the people responsible.

THE MAN THE MYTH, THE LEGEND: Report: Fired Biden energy official Sam Brinton led D.C.’s Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

Sam Brinton, according to a report Thursday on Fox News, had been the leader of the Washington D.C. chapter of the group of drag-queen “nuns” known for ribald and blasphemous humor.

Citing “tax filings reviewed by Fox News Digital,” the network reported that Brinton was the D.C. Sisters’ principal officer and went by the nuclear-punning name Sister Ray Dee O’Active.

Both Brinton and the San Francisco-based “nun” group have been in the headlines recently.

Brinton was arrested as a fugitive from justice in Maryland earlier this month in the third of three airport-luggage thefts after having entered pleas that avoided jail time in two other thefts in Minneapolis and Las Vegas.

The Sisters were invited, then uninvited, then reinvented by the Los Angeles Dodgers to the team’s June 16 Pride Night, the flip-flopping resulting from first pressure from Catholics and then pushback from LGBTQ advocacy groups. The “nuns” regularly mock Christianity and the church by, for example, pole-dancing around a cross.

As head of the D.C. Sisters, according to Fox News, Brinton regularly led group events including “bar ministry” gatherings, drag brunches, White House protests and at least one “high heel race.”

Blair’s Law in action: “Coined by Australian journalist, Tim Blair as ‘the ongoing process by which the world’s multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force.’”

NEO: Wherefore woke corporations?

The right has a saying: “Get woke, go broke.” It’s not always true, but it does seem as though it is sometimes the case that taking a woke leftist stance hurts the bottom line. Just ask Budweiser or Disney. And yet it’s seemingly done all the time.

It certainly didn’t used to be that way – that is, companies were far more rigorous in enforcing a “no-politics or alignment with causes” stance (see this). What changed? On the surface, it would seem to make no sense, but there are a host of reasons for it that probably would take a book to explain (and there may be a book someone has already written, and that someone isn’t me).

In 2015, Ashe Schow, then with the Washington Examiner wrote, “With all the attention being paid to college-aged social justice warriors and microagressions, one has to ask: What happens when all these delicate snowflakes enter the workforce?”

Target, Bud, Disney, and the L.A. Dodgers are finding out good and hard — just as the New York Times’ newsroom did in 2020.