About the Pioneer Day broadcast yesterday, the least said the better. The proportion of show tunes was slightly less than in recent years. That’s something. But Yellow Ribbonism Support Our Troops sentiment isn’t really the core of the holiday either, and that’s what they replaced the surplus of show tunes with. I don’t object exactly. Pioneer Day is the celebration of the ethnogenesis of one of the American peoples, so American patriotism is appropriate. But American patriotism alone isn’t enough. There needs to be some pioneer stuff too.

Because the pioneers are worth remembering.

“The whole earth is the tomb of heroic men, and their story is not graven on stones over their clay, but abides everywhere without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men’s lives”

Thucydides

Our collection of Pioneer Day material can be found here. It’s very much worth a click.

www.lds.org put up this video:

You can read the accompanying text here. The message is sound: the pioneer legacy is our legacy, regardless of our actual ancestry. Which is, of course, another way that the Mormon people are at heart an American people. Anyone can be one of us.


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