How an NYC socialite's riches preserve America's beautiful, bustling past



Let us give thanks to America’s ultra-rich from a bygone era. Without them, our world would be poorer in beauty.

That sounds like I’m making a joke, doesn’t it? The received opinion in America today is that the ultra-wealthy are slavering predators bent on “capitalisming” poor Gen Z coffee shop employees into penury.

That’s one of the best parts about the Shelburne Museum — very little is behind velvet ropes.

Well, I’m not joking, and the received opinion is baloney.

Tour de force

Whereas the anti-wealth advocates generally make their points by taking to the streets and screaming like lunatics, I'm going to try a different approach. I trust you'll find it more pleasant.

Allow me to take you on a short tour of one of the finest civic legacies bestowed upon my state of Vermont: the Shelburne Museum. I hope this product of one socialite's generosity inspires you to see what treasures may have been bequeathed to your town by a philanthropist of old.

I thank God for the ultra-rich of the past who practiced the lost art of noblesse oblige. Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie built more than 1,600 public libraries in the U.S. alone. Your town may have one. You know them by their quality, their gracious architecture, their built-in hardwood book cases and grand stairs.

Compare a Carnegie library to a modern concrete, glass, and steel monstrosity such as the Seattle Public Library.

American Versailles

Vermonters have Electra Havemeyer Webb to thank for the idyllic paradise on the shores of Lake Champlain called the Shelburne Museum. The 45-acre property has 30 buildings, one of the last steamships to ply the lake, a preserved general store and apothecary, and more. The footpath through the property is about a mile, and it takes you through rolling hills dotted with original buildings from the colonial era through the 19th century.

I imagine that it’s a bit like the Queen’s Hamlet at Versailles. Marie Antoinette constructed a working toy village at a short distance from the main palace, an idealized country village with a mill, a dairy, and charming bridges over streams. She liked to retreat from the frenetic court, and she used the Hamlet as a sort of proto-Montessori school to teach her children.

The Shelburne Museum is like an American version. All the old buildings are actually old buildings, not replicas. Most were transported to the museum grounds from other parts of Vermont and New England.

As you walk by the original saltbox-style house from the 1700s, you see the town jail built in stone on the other side of the path. It’s just two cells with doors of iron bars, but at least they gave the prisoners (likely just the town drunks) a stove for winter heat.

Josh Slocum

Up the path a bit you’ll find a working printshop that still uses an old Heidelberg press. The docents will ink up plates and press flyers right in front of you to show how events were advertised and how news was printed for distribution before the digital age, all on working antique machines.

Josh Slocum

Full steam ahead

Heiress to a sugar refining fortune, Webb was raised among the upper crust of New York City and taught to appreciate high European culture. But at a young age it was American craft that caught her eye. She devoted her time and fortune to amassing a vast collection of early American antiques, art, and everyday objects. By founding the museum in 1947, she opened that collection to the people of Vermont.

What she left is a true gift in the best philanthropic spirit of America’s old money. Mrs. Webb saved one of the last steamships to traverse Lake Champlain and had it hauled by rail onto dry land to be preserved. If you’re ever in town, bring your kids. Imagine the sense of magical whimsy when you crest a hill and see a 19th-century steamship over the horizon.

Josh Slocum

Go aboard, and find yourself immersed in Edwardian splendor. This is what travel used to look like.

See those chairs? You can sit in them. That’s one of the best parts about the Shelburne Museum — very little is behind velvet ropes. You get to touch most things, and you get to watch old machines come to life and do the job for which they were built.

Josh Slocum

The place is a paradise for boys who love mechanical toys. Go downstairs below the waterline, and you’re next to the towering vertical beam steam engine that turned the red paddle wheels and propelled the Ticonderoga at a brisk-for-the-time 17 miles per hour.

Josh Slocum

Keeping the flame

RELATED: Kerosene lamps: Your escape from the sickly glare of LEDs

The Print Collector/Getty Images

Let’s walk on to the general store. Again, this is no twee recreation of Ye Olde Time Store.

It’s a real general store, and everything inside it is from the period. The enormous cast iron stove sits in the middle of the room. On either side are goods behind the counter: tobacco, canned vegetables, molasses from a barrel, hardtack for the sailors.

Josh Slocum

The docent, a gentleman in his 80s in natty tweed, conducted me to the back room where the barber shop is preserved. Beyond that is the small tavern room where men would come after work to drink ale and rum while playing cards.

Beyond that is what may be one of the most perfectly preserved and extensively stocked apothecary shops (a forerunner of the drugstore) in the United states. Look at these cabinets full of what must be almost the entire range of patent medicines sold in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century.

Josh Slocum

And that lamp is one of the best-preserved examples I have seen of the most sought-after and expensive kerosene lamp of its day (I’m a collector).

The Angle Lamp was so named because it placed the wick burner at an angle, rather than vertically. Combined with the specially shaped milk glass shades, the Angle Lamp was the first oil-burning lamp designed to throw light downward and outward. It became a mainstay of workshops, where good lighting was a necessity.

The docent told me the museum officials had no idea of the lamp’s history or its place in commercial lighting, and they were delighted to note down more detail about a part of their collection. That’s another charming aspect of the Shelburne Museum; the people who work and volunteer there love what they do and are happy to learn as much from visitors as they teach.

And wouldn’t you like to get your hands on some of the remedies that can no longer be legally sold?

Josh Slocum

A doll's house

Do you have girls who love dolls and life in miniature? Be sure to take them to the third floor of one of the last buildings on the path. The exhibit of dollhouses and dioramas is magical.

Here’s the lobby in one dollhouse set up as a late 19th-century hotel.

Josh Slocum

Some of the others are so detailed you could fool yourself into believing you were looking at a full-size room.

Josh Slocum

No collection of doll-related ephemera would be complete without That One Cursed Doll, and the Shelburne does not disappoint.

Josh Slocum

Good luck sleeping.

De gustibus

Your correspondent finds it difficult to write a column without finding something to mock, and fortunately Mrs. Webb provided for this with her collection of Impressionist paintings. The main home on the property features at least two Monets, and I’m here to tell you they look worse in person than they do in museum catalogs.

I mean, look at this:

Josh Slocum

My friend is an artist who made a beeline for the Monets. We stood in front of this representation of some primitive huts, and she didn’t say anything. I did.

“Well, it’s s**t, isn’t it?” I said.

“Yeah. That’s really ugly,” she replied.

Not all fine art is actually fine. Sorry.

But noblesse oblige is very fine indeed. It is, in fact, noble. Without the Mr. Carnegies and Mrs. Webbs, our country would be impoverished in beauty and the ability of the public to experience it. It takes robber-baron levels of wealth to collect, to curate, and, eventually, to bequeath to the public examples of the finest uplifting, aspirational, and enchanting machines and objets d’art that show the best of what man and woman can create.

This is something only the rich can do for us. Let’s hear it for Mrs. Webb.

'American Idol' winner Hannah Harper stuns in Grand Ole Opry debut — with the help of a very special guest



Talk about a full "circle" moment!

"American Idol" winner Hannah Harper hit a magical milestone last night, when she made her debut at Nashville's historic Grand Ole Opry.

Harper’s audition quickly became one of the 'American Idol's' most viewed moments in its 24-season history.

"What an overwhelming honor it is to step into that circle that carries so much history, legacy, and heart within country music," the 26-year-old mother of three posted on her Facebook page shortly after the appearance was announced.

Sharing 'String Cheese'

The "circle" refers to the scuffed six-foot circle of maple and oak stage taken from the Opry's original home at the historic Ryman Auditorium and installed at the new, bigger venue the Opry built in 1974.

And when Harper walked out onto that circle last night, it was both the start of a new phase of her career and a beautiful reminder of how it all began.

Shortly after beginning her set, Harper launched into a rendition of "String Cheese," her self-penned song from her viral "American Idol" audition video. As she finished the first verse, she was joined on stage by another "Idol" winner turned country star: Carrie Underwood — one of the "Idol" judges who helped propel Harper to victory.

Ode to motherhood

Harper's journey to the Opry stage began with a childhood immersed in the bluegrass gospel music that has captivated her family for generations. Harper began singing and songwriting at just 9 years old, but she didn’t become a household name until February, when her "American Idol" audition went mega-viral.

Performing “String Cheese” — a heartfelt ballad about the grueling reality of postpartum depression and the beautiful, fleeting days of motherhood — the Missouri native moved "Idol" judge Carrie Underwood and the rest of watching America to tears with her soulful voice and deeply personal lyrics that seemed to silence the anti-natalist noise of our time.

In a matter of days, “String Cheese” racked up millions of views and peaked at No. 14 on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart. Harper’s audition quickly became one of "American Idol's" most viewed moments in its 24-season history.

On May 11, to the surprise of few, Harper was crowned the winner of "American Idol" Season 24, making her the first female country singer to win the show since Underwood’s victory in 2005.

RELATED: ‘String Cheese’: Why an ‘American Idol’ audition is making millions of moms cry

Disney/Eric McCandless

Grateful and grounded

Harper's performance was part of the “Opry 100” celebration during CMA Fest week. The show also featured Underwood, rising country-pop star Avery Anna, and more artists.

Days before the "Idol" finale, Harper revealed in an interview with Country Now that an Opry performance has long been the pinnacle of her dreams.

“The Opry is the goal. … That’s the biggest stage in country music in my eyes, the most honored, and it would just make my whole life to get to perform on that stage,” she confessed.

The Opry performance also marked the official launch of her “String Cheese Tour,” set to run through November 14, with concerts scheduled across the U.S.

But despite her blooming career, being a mom remains this rising country star’s deepest commitment.

Harper — who has consistently described motherhood as her “biggest ministry” — expressed intentions to bring her husband and three sons along on the road.

In post-win interviews with Lyndsanity and Parade magazine, she recounted advice she had received from Carrie Underwood about installing baby cribs on tour buses and the importance of balancing stardom with family.

“Carrie just wanted to make sure that I kept a hold of the grasp of reality once everything settled down and just made sure to still focus on the priorities, which is my kids and my husband,” she told Parade magazine.

My new hack for a long, healthy life? Getting married



Admittedly, planning a wedding is a strange time to start reading cancer research. The seating chart had 17 unresolved feuds in it; the oncology journals felt like lighter reading.

Until they didn't.

Public health researchers call this 'social monitoring.' In practice, it means someone loving you enough to be annoying about your symptoms.

A recent American study, drawing on more than 4 million cancer cases, found that adults who never married face considerably higher cancer rates than those who did. Never-married women saw rates dramatically elevated. Never-married men weren't far behind.

The gap widens after age 55, which is when a lifetime of accumulated habits, poor decisions, and missed appointments begins sending invoices.

Settling for less?

Marriage rates in America have fallen steadily for decades. What was once expected is now optional — and sometimes viewed with suspicion. The language around "settling down" carries a faint odor of defeat, as though building a life with someone else were a concession rather than a choice.

The cultural conversation, meanwhile, circles endlessly around diet, exercise, and whatever superfood is currently being flown in from a distant rainforest. Billions flow into wellness industries. Podcasts dedicate entire seasons to optimizing sleep. And yet the data keeps returning to something far less marketable: whether you have someone in the next room who gives a damn.

The researchers are careful to avoid claiming that a wedding ring makes tumors vanish. But the pattern holds and appears across most major cancer types. Cancers linked to smoking, alcohol, and infections showed the biggest gaps between married and never-married adults. That concentration is telling. It points at behavior, environment, and the kind of low-level interference that only someone who genuinely cares about you will bother to sustain.

Buddy system

A man living alone can ignore a cough for months. A wife will drag him to a doctor. A woman juggling everything on her own might postpone a checkup indefinitely. A husband will plead, push, insist, and escalate if necessary. Public health researchers call this "social monitoring." In practice, it means someone loving you enough to be annoying about your symptoms.

Then there's the physiological cost of chronic loneliness. Without someone else setting the rhythm, sleep suffers, meals become erratic, and the basic architecture of self-maintenance gradually gives way. A person alone sets his own standards, and standards, without a witness, tend to decline. Freedom looks like a luxury until it tips into neglect.

The research on loneliness as a health risk has been mounting for years. Chronic isolation produces measurable changes in stress hormones, inflammatory markers, and immune function. The body registers abandonment, and it responds accordingly.

Previous generations were hardly models of healthy living. They smoked heavily, drank liberally, and regarded dietary advice as a personal affront. The average mid-century American male was not tracking his resting heart rate. Yet many of them were embedded in something we have spent decades dismantling: long marriages, tight families, a reliable social unit that caught problems early and addressed them without being asked. The neighbor who checked in. The sibling who showed up uninvited. The spouse who had the kettle on before the door had closed behind you.

Noticing matters enormously.

RELATED: Aging is inevitable — catastrophic decline is not

The author with his mother and grandmother. Photo courtesy of John Mac Ghlionn

The cure of community

Cancer rates in younger Americans have been climbing. The old assumption — that serious disease waits its turn at the end of a long life — has expired. It is arriving earlier, frequently without warning, and the reflexive response has been to scrutinize diet, sleep, and screen time. All valid. All insufficient on their own.

There are complications worth acknowledging. Marriage has its limits as a medical intervention. As Tina Turner and Johnny Depp demonstrated at considerable personal cost, not all marriages are protective. Some are so destructive that they make solitude look like sensible doctor's orders.

Nevertheless, the directional evidence holds.

Knee-deep in wedding planning, I keep returning to what this whole undertaking actually represents. Families reactivate. Old friendships resurface. Obligations form. The ceremony is a public declaration that someone will be watching, intervening, and on occasion refusing to let you get away with things.

The vows carry legal and emotional weight. They're also a mutual surveillance agreement, entered into willingly, which turns out to be rather good for your health.

We've built an entire cultural vocabulary around independence. Self-optimization. Personal growth. The solo journey. These are not entirely worthless ideas, but they have crowded out an older and more durable understanding. Humans aren’t built for sustained isolation. The people around us, intrusive and imperfect as they are, perform functions that no app, no routine, and no amount of cold-plunge evangelism can replicate.

A culture that treats relationships as provisional and commitment as one lifestyle choice among many is making a collective wager. The evidence suggests the odds aren't favorable. In ways we're only beginning to quantify, permanence appears to be protective.

‘Pride Month’ Is Proof That Institutional Neutrality Is A Lie

Entities like MLB will either be dominated by what is true, good, and beautiful, or they will succumb to the type of sinful lies parroted during 'pride month.'

Want to be a man of action? Start a family



Do you matter? Does what you do matter? Are you doing anything at all? Does your will have any impact on the world? Are you living with vitality?

Or are you just a hamster on a wheel in a little cage in the back of a middle school classroom thinking you are doing something when really you are just wasting your time here until lights out?

Because we can all do it, we forget that it’s special. It’s so ordinary, we forget it’s extraordinary.

To answer the first question: You do matter, and what you do matters. It doesn’t matter who you are; you matter, and you have an impact on the world. Maybe it’s a big one, or maybe it’s a little one. But even something as simple as saying good morning and smiling to the cashier who rings up your pack of cigarettes and full tank of gas is some kind of something or some kind of impact on someone else’s world.

Hamster wheel

But are you living with vitality? That’s not quite as simple. That bit about the hamster wasting time dinking around on the wheel — that’s certainly a depressing scene, but it’s a feeling all too common in a world in which many of our physical needs are satisfied whether we really do anything at all.

Everyone matters in our world, and everyone matters to someone. That’s a fact. But everyone doesn’t feel like they do, and many don’t feel like they are living a very vital life either. The hamster-wheel job that’s stable and hard to lose, the climate-controlled car that tells you when to slow down. An uneventful and seemingly predictable life finished off with some controlled simulated struggle at the gym three nights a week without an end, a shock, or a surprise in sight.

Some people dull the pain of the malaise with drugs, others zone out with Netflix or the internet.

Family matters

Still others seem to think that the only way to feel alive in our age is by seeking out extremes: dangerous travel, feats of endurance, and any other pursuit risking life and limb.

Fine for those who have the opportunity, I suppose. But honestly, vitality can be found much closer to home.

The real truth is that the most vital thing you can do in the year 2026 is something that just about everyone can do: raise a family.

Falling in love, getting married, having children, and raising a family is the last real, and completely real, thing on planet Earth.

It doesn’t matter if everything becomes entirely fake. It doesn’t matter if everyone has fake jobs, if no one owns anything for longer than six months, if all the food is processed, if all the appliances are designed with planned obsolescence in mind, and if AI takes care of just about all our needs. The entire world could be completely fake. But one last real thing will remain: family.

And it is the realness of the family that matters and that makes it so vital. When we raise a family, we are completely crucial. Our decisions determine real-world outcomes, both short term and long term. The family is not a theory or spreadsheet. It’s not a surrogate activity that stands in simply for the sake of simulating some kind of other struggle.

The family is real.

RELATED: Why I'm not worried about AI 'replacing' me

Universal Images Archive/Getty Images

Royal reproduction

A looming intuition in our postmodern, anti-vitalistic ennui is the feeling that we don’t have any control. Our health insurance policies, our jobs, the new charges that don’t make any sense on the phone bill, the screwed up politics, the fact that you can’t even talk to someone who speaks English on the phone anymore when you need something fixed, and that nothing seems to last very long either, and no one cares.

But of course, there is one domain where we are monarchs no matter how lowly our job or how faceless the large systems that govern our society may be.

The family.

A mother is a queen, and a father is a king. What Mom and Dad say goes. Mom and Dad don’t answer to anyone. They don’t need to ask permission, and they won’t be reprimanded by HR. When you are a parent, you are a monarch of a micro-kingdom. That might sound weird, but that’s the way to think about it. You dictate the religion, the calendar, the diet, the schedule, the language, the attitude, and everything about family life.

Dynasty building

It’s here, in this domain, where the most potent and impactful kind of vitalism still lives and will always live. Cultivating new life is the definition of impacting the world and the future. Yes, your kingdom might be small, but your impact is total, and it’s all yours.

Your vision is what matters. You are in control. What could possibly be more vital than conceiving children, naming them, raising them, teaching them, and then eventually sending them off to do the same things with the tools and ways they learned from you? You are creating a dynasty.

Because we can all do it, we forget that it’s special. It’s so ordinary, we forget it’s extraordinary. We might devote so much time and energy to thinking about money, influence, stability, the markets, the Middle East, geopolitics, sports, and work, but by far the most real and most vital thing you can do in 2026 is a seemingly most ordinary thing.

Raise a family.

A Return to Proper History

"Too often academic treatises these days are insufferably 'woke' or even unreadable, thanks to their postmodern jargon," explains the author of this refreshingly countercultural work. "This book, by contrast, consists of old-fashioned, meat-and-potatoes history." After lecturing on European history at UC Berkeley and Penn, Professor Walter McDougall is clearly exasperated at the way his craft has been wrecked by what he lists as "postmodernism, deconstructionism, critical race theory, radical feminism, and 'wokeness' in general."

The post A Return to Proper History appeared first on .

The Empathy Justice

When asked what he was looking for in a Supreme Court justice, then-president Barack Obama famously observed, "I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes." He said it, of course, in the context of then-judge Sonia Sotomayor, but reading Peter Canellos's recent biography of Justice Samuel Alito (Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement), one can't help but wonder if it's Obama's "empathy standard" that makes Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito so great.

The post The Empathy Justice appeared first on .

‘Godball’: Are outspoken athletes Christianity’s most powerful evangelists?



Christian affiliation in America has been in steep decline for decades, with church attendance falling and nearly 30% of adults religiously unaffiliated.

Pew Research Center has argued that there is “no clear evidence of a religious revival among young adults,” but sports fans might reach a different conclusion when tuning in to post-game interviews and press conferences, where they frequently hear athletes boldly professing their faith and giving glory to Jesus Christ.

‘You’re not alone in seeing it, and you’re not alone in recognizing that it is a revival.’

While Pew’s latest polling shows that the long decline has only plateaued, New York Times bestselling author and sports journalist Steve Eubanks believes there are undeniable and meaningful signs of revival, particularly among athletes.

Teed up

In his forthcoming book, “Godball: How Athletes Are Saving Christianity,” which releases June 9, Eubanks takes a deeper look at the faith resurgence sweeping America and how these outspoken athletes have become Christianity’s most powerful evangelists.

“I don’t think I would have noticed it if it hadn’t been for the event that you and I talked about three years ago,” Eubanks told Blaze News, referring to a 2023 incident in which the leading golf publication he then worked for attempted to censor his interview with professional golfer Amy Olson. When Global Golf Post refused to run the piece unless Eubanks removed Olson's references to her Christian faith and pro-life views, he “resigned on the spot.”

At the time, Eubanks told Blaze News that widespread leftist bias had created a “sad state of affairs” for journalism.

But now Eubanks says the experience had a silver lining: showing him that outspoken Christian athletes like Olson were more common than he realized.

“I thought, ‘Wow, for an athlete to say something like this is extraordinary,’” Eubanks told Blaze News.

“Well, then I started paying attention, and I thought, ‘Maybe it’s not that extraordinary; maybe it’s something that’s happening every day, and I just hadn’t noticed.’”

Jesus first

Combing through press conferences and pre- and post-game interviews proved his hunch correct. More and more athletes seemed to be using the spotlight to profess their faith, sidestepping questions about athletic performance to give thanks to Jesus and share the gospel.

“It’s a huge movement now,” Eubanks declared. “Really, it’s a revival.”

RELATED: Exclusive: Golf writer says staff 'went ballistic' over story on pregnant golfer's pro-life, Christian views — and outlet's higher-ups refused to run it

Steve Eubanks. Image source: Steve Eubanks

When asked why athletes tend to be more outspoken than other public figures, Eubanks pointed to the confidence that comes from succeeding in “one of the few meritocracies left.”

Leaderboard

Sports also instill a willingness to resist the herd, Eubanks said.

“From the time they were 7 or 8 years old, they were the leaders of the teams,” Eubanks said. “They had been told by the coaching staff, ‘Look, you’re the person who has to step up.’ And it’s a natural extension of that.”

Eubanks asserts one of the main reasons these athletes are speaking out now is tied to the COVID lockdowns. He highlighted that an athlete’s career is significantly shorter than most other professions and that, during the lockdowns, everything they had dedicated their lives to was put on hold for an uncertain, lengthy period.

“I just think COVID radicalized these kids,” he stated. “Those people realized that their entire lives could be taken away from them in an instant and that it was important for them to stand up for the things that were really important and to go ahead and make these proclamations of faith.”

He argued that athletes have become the “cultural drivers” of American society, more so than artists and musicians.

Bad bets

Eubanks hopes that church attendance, particularly among young men, continues to grow, but expressed concern about one emerging threat within the sports community that could impact the current Christian revival.

Image source: Steve Eubanks

“If there’s anything that could derail it, it is the sports gambling,” Eubanks told Blaze News. “It can compromise the integrity of the sports themselves.”

He detailed how throwing a game used to mean deliberately manipulating the entire outcome, but recently, some athletes have been indicted for allegedly engaging in spot-fixes, rigging small moments, such as a specific baseball pitch, for prop bets.

Eubanks also noted that the barrier to gambling has been substantially lowered, from having to seek out a local bookie to using your phone to place numerous bets in seconds.

“It’s almost the slot machine effect. There’s just enough bells and whistles to keep you engaged and to keep you throwing money down the rathole,” he said. “There’s a huge, huge addiction problem out there with this that we haven’t recognized yet, but that could really derail this revival movement in my eyes.”

RELATED: When Archie Comics found Jesus: Strange artifacts from a once-Christian culture

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

Walking the walk

To sustain and grow the revival, Eubanks believes athletes must become more vocal about their faith and take a stand against immoral practices in the sports industry, including opposing sports betting and the playing of songs with obscene lyrics at stadiums and arenas.

“In order to walk the walk, you’re eventually going to have to stand up and say, ‘This is not right; we shouldn’t be doing this,’” he said.

Eubanks hopes that readers of “Godball” understand this revival movement is significant and expanding. He also aims to inspire young athletes to express their faith publicly, which could spark a domino effect of fans being drawn to Jesus Christ.

“There’s an entire legion of people out here who are seeing exactly the same thing. You’re not alone in seeing it, and you’re not alone in recognizing that it is a revival,” he stated.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

D-Day drama ‘Pressure’ celebrates forgotten values



The new movie “I Love Boosters” asks us to root for thieves who steal designer clothes sans regret. Next month’s “Carolina Caroline” follows a pair of adorable, lovestruck thugs who swindle strangers for cash.

Whatever happened to actual “good guys”?

‘When he looked into the eyes of the 101st division, he took the time to ask their names, to shoot the breeze about fly fishing and their girlfriends.’

Look no further than “Pressure,” a new World War II saga based on incredible true events.

Extraordinary heroes

Honor. Loyalty. Courage. Heroism. The ability to make a tough decision and stand by it, no matter what. No victim complexes or complaints about rough childhoods. Just extraordinary heroes taking history into their hands.

It’s one reason we still can’t get enough of World War II films. Those qualities are front and center in this well-told tale. And it helps that the premise behind “Pressure” will strike audiences as unfamiliar, even shocking.

Rain day

The most consequential battle of World War II almost got rained out, a story that proves a snug fit for America’s 250th birthday.

Brendan Fraser stars as Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander ready to storm the beaches of Normandy and liberate northwest Europe. That risky plan required an assist from Mother Nature.

Would the forecast allow for a massive amphibious assault? Or should the Allied powers wait a few days, even weeks, jeopardizing the element of surprise in the process?

Andrew Scott of “Fleabag” fame plays James Stagg, the meteorologist brought in to advise Gen. Eisenhower on the best path forward. He predicts that conditions will turn D-Day into a disaster. Is he right, or does the existing weather expert (Chris Messina) have the right forecast?

Earned respect

Fraser, the “Whale” alum who once again changed his physique to play “Ike,” told Align why he admires the man who not only helped win the war but later became a two-term U.S. president.

“He was an excellent communicator; he was a diplomat of sorts,” Fraser said. “He conducted military operations over dinner tables. Apparently he was very funny and charming at them. ... That’s a form of communication too.”

There was a method to his unorthodox ways, the Oscar winner said.

“He did all this because he cared intensely about the troops’ well-being,” Fraser said. That extended to bonding with the men facing daunting odds of survival, especially in the D-Day invasion.

“When he looked into the eyes of the 101st division, he took the time to ask their names, to shoot the breeze about fly fishing and their girlfriends. He was respected because he earned it. ... It was almost like a secret weapon in the operation,” the actor noted. “They wanted to please him, and they knew what they were up against.”

RELATED: 'Call Sign Courage': One soldier's fight against creeping Marxism in the military

Root/Cause

Historic battle

Director Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” captured the early stages of the Normandy invasion without flinching. It’s one of the goriest war sequences ever shot, showing how soldiers ran toward a wall of bullets that took hundreds of lives in a flash.

“Pressure” doesn’t attempt to out-do Spielberg’s version, but the film shows how the beaches were quickly stained a deep red color.

“It was no secret that they were going into a bare-knuckle fight with a chainsaw,” Fraser said of that historic battle.

The project gave Fraser, now gearing up to shoot another “Mummy” film with co-star Rachel Weisz, an appreciation for Ike’s role in history.

“He was the type of leader who did not want to punish his foe, his enemy. ... He didn’t let him off the hook, either. ... He partnered with them, neutered them that way, and made them accountable,” he said.

Little-known perspective

Fraser’s co-star, Irish actress Kerry Condon, gets a less splashy but still consequential role in the war drama. She plays Captain Kay Summersby, Gen. Eisenhower’s loyal aide.

“She brought the emotional intelligence when the men were struggling,” the actress said of her role, including a critical subplot involving Stagg’s pregnant wife. Summersby would later move to the U.S. and become captain in the Women’s Army Corps.

Many moviegoers may not have realized the role weather played in the D-Day invasion. Count Condon among that group.

“It was shocking to think it was one person who changed the course of history. ... That’s why I wanted to do [the film]. It’s a very interesting perspective on World War II.”

What’s the Deal With Iran?

With skirmishes breaking out around the Persian Gulf and a memorandum of understanding allegedly making its way to the president's desk, the Middle East is teetering between a new round of fighting and an uneasy peace. As of this writing, the terms of this MOU are not fully known, but reportedly for 60 days Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the United States lifting its blockade and allowing some oil sales.

The post What’s the Deal With Iran? appeared first on .