In Memoriam
The following men lost their lives in service to their country on October 16, 1985, while serving with the 26th Marine Amphibious Unit:
Lt. Robert Ledbetter, USN, Norfolk, VA
1stLt. John Wasko, USMC, San Diego, CA
1stLt. John Blee, USMC, Durant, IA
2ndLt. John Karner, USMC, Eagle, WI
SSGT David Jones, USMC, Beaumont, TX
SGT John Carney, USMC, Glendora, CA
SGT Dirk Witcher, USMC, BelAir, TX
CPL Larry Day, USMC, Peoria, IL
CPL AL Jones, Jr., USMC, Jamestown, RI
CPL Cliff Moyer, USMC, Cement City, MO
CPL Greg Reber, USMC, Auburn, PA
PFC Craig Carnley, USMC, Bay Minette, AL
PFC Michael Stuhlsatz, USMC, Millstadt, IL
PVT Purnell Jones, USMC, Milwaukee, WI
PVT Johnnie Young, USMC, Cordele, OK
Semper Fi! Rest in Peace.
Two Uncommon Scandals, One Common Theme
After 18 months of foot dragging, hemming, hawing and general evasiveness, the Obama administration finds itself being dogged by the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and 4 security personnel in Benghazi, Libya.
After years of foot dragging, hemming, hawing and general evasiveness, the Obama administration finds itself being dogged by the avoidable deaths hundreds, perhaps thousands, of veterans at the hands of the Veteran’s Administration.
Two terrible scandals resulting from the tragic and untimely deaths of people who dedicated their lives to protecting the American people and advancing American principles worldwide. Two examples of a presidential administration shamefully allowing American heroes to needlessly die. Two crimes that have at their heart, one singular thought process.
The scandal in both instances is not the cover-up. These crimes are heinous in their own right. These crimes are nothing short of murder, and directly attributable to inaction when direct action would have prevented those deaths. The cover-ups began shortly afterwards, when the President and his underlings realized they screwed up. Covering up a crime is bad, but understandable in these cases. Either instance would certainly be an impeachable offense. Either instance would result in multiple life sentences in a federal penitentiary for everyone involved. The cover-our-asses mentality spawning the cover-ups is almost justifiable. Anyone thinking the attempts at covering up is the real scandal needs a reality check.
The real scandal is that real people died simply because the President didn’t want to dedicate the resources needed to prevent those deaths. In the case of Benghazi, the President had made a major policy speech just weeks before – a speech in which he announced to the world that al-Queada was “on the run.” Having to send in a real security team because we knew al-Queada planned to assault our consulate, in celebration of the September 11, 2001 attacks, would have blown the lid off that lie. Ordering a rescue mission would have likewise told the truth to the lie. It was politically expedient to let a few diplomats and a retired SEAL or two die than risk re-election. In the case of the VA, we now know team Obama was told of the delays in receiving care before they even assumed office. After 5 years, the wait times haven’t improved. The backlog of cases awaiting determination hasn’t decreased. Both have grown exponentially, while VA administrators dummied records to try and make it look like they were doing their jobs. This, despite hundreds of VA activists (including yours truly) pointing out the VA’s systemic failures over the years.
Most damning, though, is the attitude that this administration has demonstrated throughout. It as an attitude that permeates the liberal mind, never really acknowledged but evident for decades. That attitude is one of general callousness towards those Americans whose preference is to serve their nation, to risk their lives and their futures so that the country’s civilian population might prosper and grow at home. Whether towards the military or the diplomatic corps, the attitude is, “Why?” It is the same attitude that led the Flower Children to spit on returning veterans of Vietnam and their children to protest military funerals a generation later. It is the same attitude that led John Kerry to toss away his medals in a pique of fit. It is evident in Hillary Clinton’s virulent attacks on the men who fought in Vietnam. Perhaps most obviously, it is exemplified by Barack Obama’s snide remarks about people “bitterly clinging to guns and religion.” and announcing that the era of “American Exceptionalism” is over – the last comment leaving unsaid, but understood, that he never thought Americanism was an exceptional ideal to begin with.
In that context, the callous disregard for the lives of the men and women who believe in their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution is understandable. Reprehensible, but understandable – in much the same way we strive to understand how the great mass killers of history justified their murders. The narcissistic, me first at all costs attitudes that allow people of above average intellect to justify the deaths of others as merely inconvenient casualties of a great political game goes far beyond high crimes and misdemeanors, though. It should lead to hundreds of counts of first degree murder, and for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Eric Shinseki, Eric Holder et al to be charged with anything less would be the greatest of all travesties.
Due us a favor, Mr. Obama and resign now. If you have any faith to your office and this nation (and not Indonesia, or Kenya, or some other God-foresaken rat hole), you’ll understand your inactions are tantamount to treason. As bad as Richard Nixon was, even he understood it was time to go.
It’s time to GO!
Does America’s Military Protect Our Freedoms?
I recently got into a bit of a Facebook kerfluffle. The reason is, I re-posted the following statement from a fellow veteran:
“This is how I feel when a civilian thanks me for my service and protecting our “freedom”. I do my best not to go high and right as I kindly explain to them “You’re welcome, however no one in the military is protecting your freedom. If they were, they would have cleaned out Washington DC years ago. How many “terrorists” have limited, restricted or taken away your Constitutional rights? The military may at times temporarily provide for your safety and security, but they don’t do shit to protect your freedom… Get my point”
I realize this POV is probably more than a little unsettling to most of you, so allow me to explain why there are quite a few of vets who feel this way.
Let me start at the very beginning. Every person who enlists in any military service is required to take the following oath:
“I,<state your name>, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
The bit about defending the Constitution, and bearing true faith and allegiance to it, would certainly make it seem like the enlistee was fired up about defending our liberties and freedoms. And most are. Yes, during my tour of duty I met plenty of people who initially enlisted for a variety of reasons, and those weren’t always the most altruistic. But it becomes nearly impossible to survive basic training without believing you’re putting yourself through hell for a damned good cause.
But you’ll also notice that the enlistee also swears to take orders from the President and the officers the President appoints over the enlistee. That makes virtually every military order also a political order. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s worked out well for most of our history. After all, there are plenty of republics that devolved into military dictatorship precisely because the military was not under control of the political institutions, or became factionalized under different political elements. The Founders were well aware of the dangers a politically isolated military would pose to a republic, and ensuring the military remained subservient to the political machinery was another genius stroke they had.
But the downside to this arrangement is what we’ve experienced over the past 15 years or so. The military has always been used by US Presidents as a foreign policy political tool (what exactly do you think Teddy Roosevelt was referring to as the “Big Stick”?). Throughout our history, though, most Presidents have used military action to either (a) defend or evacuate American citizens abroad or (b) prosecute actions against declared enemies of the US, which would also make them enemies of the US Constitution. But beginning with the Presidency of George W. Bush, America’s military was tasked with a new role: prosecuting military actions against…well, they still aren’t sure, really.
The ambiguity came after the attacks on September 11, 2001. Prior to that date, terrorists were considered criminals, regardless of where they hailed from. Even those sponsored by foreign governments, such as the group that went around bombing German discos in the mid-80’s. The response was unerring, and consistent: hunt and prosecute the terrorists legally while holding the foreign government militarily responsible. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush made a tenuous argument that the government of Iraq was responsible and invaded. But rather than hunt down the remaining members of Al-Qaeda for legal prosecution, we also invaded Afghanistan, also on the tenuous precept that their lack of a stable government allowed the terrorists to establish a de facto government.
At the same, a series of civil liberty circumventing statutes were passed and signed into law: everything from the Patriot Act and “enhanced interrogations” to warrantless wiretapping and travel restrictions were enacted. These were political decisions, which have not had political consequences for the enactors. Indeed, President Obama has actually curtailed civil liberties even further and set the table for his successor to all but abolish the Bill of Rights, should he choose.
The military, being under the control of the body politic, has had virtually no choice but to snap to and salute as these abuses take place. Their only alternatives are to either raise concerns about the political situation or mutiny. The first option, historically, has never been met by the public with much sympathy. Not that there haven’t been quite a few courageous officers who’ve tried to question under what authority the President and Congress are deriving their extra-constitutional powers, but these men and women were quietly shown the door. These people understand the military is no longer defending the Constitution, but instead defending the political process that is allowing the Constitution to be shredded bit by bit.
As for a mutiny, that remains highly unlikely. The idea of armed soldiers marching on Capitol Hill and the White House remains unfathomable to not only most Americans but most of the Americans in uniform. Again, it would be bucking nearly 240 years of history and tradition. Of course, the Romans couldn’t imagine a military leader crossing the Rubicon with an armed legion – until they clamored for Julius Caesar to do just that.
I wonder: how close are we to an armored division crossing the Potomac?
The Inequity of Equality
Courtesy Patriot Update
There’s been much talking about how “unequal” things are for “ordinary” people. The President, and the President’s political party, started the kerfluffle during the 2012 elections. But recently, as the Affordable Care Act continues to prove it’s about anything but either affordability or health care and Mr. Obama’s foreign policy initiatives crater; as congressional democrats find themselves unable to find a positive message to coalesce around and as the economy continues it’s non-recovery recovery, the talk of “inequality” from both leftist politicians and the media has reached a new crescendo.
The left went agog with the election of Bill deBlasio in New York City, who campaigned on a theme of ending economic inequality in the nation’s largest city. Leftists, and their allies in the democrat party, believe that by highlighting the basic reality of capitalism they have a permanent winning issue. But other than Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), no democrat has attempted to lend any sort of intellectual credence to the argument that rich people want the rest of us to be poor. Not even the leading leftist economists, Paul Krugman and Robert Reich included, have been able to demonstrate how that works, exactly. As for Mrs. Warren, the reality is that once you dive into her work, you soon discover that she is perhaps the most crass political animal to come out of her party since Bill Clinton. While she mouths the platitudes, she actually doesn’t have a single policy idea to “make capitalism fairer for the typical American.”
The French Revolution, founded on the ideal of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” quickly devolved into the bloodbath known as the Reign of Terror. Some people were definitely more equal than others, as the French sent over 17,000 of their countrymen to have their heads liberated via the guillotine.
Anyway, we already know that Mrs. Warren is more a symptom than an exemplar of her party’s cynical politics. While they’ve all seemingly abandoned the DLC positions embraced by the Clinton administration, the reality is most haven’t . That includes Mrs Warren, Mr. Krugman and Mr. Reich. But there is a very large, core group of true believers who unabashedly embrace the culture of class warfare. If you’re one of those, feel free to stop trolling now. Nothing I’m about to write will change your closed minds; feel free to re-read Das Kapital and ignore such trivial matters as world history and human nature. But if you are one of those people who gets queasy about the type of all-out class warfare that the President and his minions, in seeking electoral glory are pushing us towards, I recommend you read on.
This is not the first time in either modern or ancient history that the “ordinary” people (which is to say, those without extravagant wealth) have felt that the current political and economic system failed to adequately represent their interests. The watchword over all of these movements is typically “equality.” Translated into today’s political parlance, “equality” as applied by the left means that each of us should have no more, nor no less, than anyone else: either in terms of net financial worth, political influence or social standing. This has been the aim of those hard-core leftists for well over a century. A very succinct statement of their goal is found in John Lennon’s Imagine:
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world
The simple beauty of the position is, quite frankly, you need to be a heartless bastard to be against the idea of ending hunger, homelessness, hopelessness, and all the other downsides to the human existence.
This is the trap that libertarians and conservatives alike have fallen into: by allowing liberals and progressives to dictate that they (and their discredited systems) are for ending those inequities, we’ve become the faction that cheers them. Ironic, really – we’re the group that decries repression, yet in popular mythology we’re responsible for oppression. This isn’t our generation’s fault – the shift in public attitudes began late in the 19th century – but it is up to those of us alive now to begin the return to understanding the difference between equality and inequity.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall on November 10, 1989 marked the end of the Soviet Empire, but unfortunately not the end of Marxism. That discredited political theory, with its misbegotten idea of equal outcomes for everyone regardless of ability or talent, continues to infest the minds of progressives the world over.
The time has never been more critical than now for those who know the difference to remind the world that there is no way to guarantee equal outcomes without destroying society. The world imagined by Orwell in 1984, Huxley in Brave New World or Rand in The Fountainhead is closer than we realize. We understand that such an outcome will mean the beginning of a new Dark Age – similar to the one that encroached the Western world after the fall of the Roman Empire and lasted for a millenium. A new Dark Age might not last for untold centuries. Although science and technology would stagnate, the weapons left behind by our civilization have nearly unimaginable destructive power. Unchecked by a societal desire to learn and advance, those weapons will be left under the control of despots – leaders who will have both the will and the means to use them.
These are serious matters and engaging the public in a way that leads them to understand that liberty does not necessarily mean personal gain is the lynchpin to preventing the general collapse of society. The modern liberal probably does not realize the grave danger they, and their political and economic philosophy, pose to civilization. Most sincerely believe that not only are all men created equal, but that must necessarily also mean all men are entitled equally. I won’t go into the reasons we know this is a fallacious argument: that while we may be born with equal rights, we aren’t all born with the same drive, determination, talents and skills. Or that success is defined in different ways by different people (which, on its very face would make defining equality impossible).
Rather, let’s focus on how we win back the conversation. To do so, we need to understand why there is a sort of magnetic pull for the liberal argument of a guaranteed outcome. Why claptrap like Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century and former SCOTUS Justice Stevens’ Six Amendments are heralded as the intellectual tomes of our age. And why Marx’s Das Kapital is still revered on campuses.
The answer lies in the fundamental fact that libertarians were not forceful enough in the days after September 11, 2001 – and the conservatives, always the stronger political force on the right acquiesced too readily to the neo-conservative ideology. It began what has become a nearly two decade long descent into the twin hells of restricted liberty at home and hopeless intervention overseas. And still today, there is strong pull on the right that insists on doubling down on those failed policies – the entire failed concept of government it represents. It is not truly conservative in nature; it is a belief that government can hold the solutions to our problems, if only properly applied. The philosophy espoused by these devotees gave us the bloated federal government and 12+ years of continuous warfare we live with today. The drain on the treasury, the reapplication of resources away from private investment and the crush of new regulations directly led to the financial collapse of 2008 and the lessening of American influence. In the six years since, the application of liberal political theory by the current administration has had the exact effect anyone with a quarter-brain predicted: continued economic decline and lack of economic security for most of countrymen.
This is where we need to make our case to restore the American Dream. To many of our fellows, the American Dream is dead. Many of our youth do not see an America where they an achieve based on skills or merit, but only one where the determining factors to economic or professional success are cronyism and discrimination. It is in this environment that otherwise insane arguments such as punitive taxation and retributory discernment gain credence. Equally concerning is that the same social powers now see the entire notion of personal responsibility as a quaint relic of past centuries. After all, they tell us, your failures aren’t your failures – they are the result of a system that’s rigged against you.
Modern Cuba is a society where the equality argument has come to fruition. Everyone (except for those in the upper echelons of government) is equal: equally miserable.
I read and hear politicians and scribes on both sides of the political aisle lamenting the pessimistic attitude that permeates our civil life. Yet they fail to understand that the reason for that attitude lies not with the ineffectiveness of their treasured government programs, but rather with the very existence of those programs. You can’t tell a man that he’s deserving of everything that everyone else has, regardless of his means to pay for those things, maintain those things or even comprehend the value of those things without being able to deliver on the promise. That’s where every redistributive model falls flat: it is impossible to give everyone everything. That is the great inequity of the liberal equality argument – it leads people to believe in something that is non-existent. It holds the ultimate societal good, as that which is unattainable.
The results of this drivel can already be seen and felt in our political discourse, in the palpable anger being stoked by the leftists. As our President and his party continue to pit the factions (rich vs. poor, black vs. white, welfare recipient vs. working) against one another, the nation becomes further fractured.
The conservative movement forged by the likes of Buckley and Goldwater reached its zenith with the election of Ronald Reagan to the Presidency in 1980. Do not believe the liberal rewrite of history that is taking place now. Reagan did not win by dividing the nation into rival factions, by demonizing certain groups or by scaring the pajamas off the American people (that happens to be the “progressive” playbook, as written by Lenin, fine-tuned by Alinsky and run to perfection by Obama). Reagan, rather, was an affirmative candidate and President. “Morning in America” wasn’t just a campaign theme, it was the way he governed and the way he presented the idea of America, not only to Americans but to the world. He could do that, because the conservative movement he led was not led by the neo-cons who later come to dominate the right, but one founded on the idea that in order for a man to succeed (however he might define success), in order for him to have the best chance at utilizing his God-given equality of opportunity, was the same idea that founded the nation in the beginning. The idea that not only Christian Conservatives but Libertarians could unite behind.
That is the same message that conservatives and libertarians need to unite behind now, if we are to save our country and the principles it was founded upon. That a man cannot be equal to another without opportunity, and that opportunity does not come from government. Opportunity comes from freedom, from liberty and from our Creator. We need to forcefully, continuously and repeatedly deliver that message. We must remind the American people and the world that men are not slaves to their government, the government is their slave. Many of us remember the famous line from Reagan’s 1981 Inaugural Address, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” But perhaps more important to our present circumstance is this passage from the same speech:
“America must win this war. Therefore I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.”
Many of the same problems we faced at the dawn of the 1980’s we now face 35 years later, and for many of the same reasons. Let us dedicate ourselves now, my friends, as the conservatives a generation ago did. Let us be the shining beacon the the hill for both our Nation and the World.
Guest post from James Patterson
My thanks to “AGUYWITHCROHNS” for letting me guest post on his website. I have had severe Crohn’s Disease for over 47 years with many surgeries, emergencies, medications, complications, emotional upsets and other issues that go along with living with a chronic disease for decades. I have learned and developed various tools to handle both the physical and emotional/mental symptoms. Recently I compiled some of this information and wrote a book about it titled “Living with the Bully of Crohn’s Disease” that is available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats. My hope in writing the book was that others could learn from my experiences; both the mistakes I made and the good choices that helped me to heal.
I thought I would use this blog opportunity to write about one statement I hear discussed by many fellow Crohn’s patients. It is “I wish things could get back to the…
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Political Baseballs 