JDs Bunker

I would lay down my life for America, but I cannot trifle with my honor. – John Paul Jones

On August 28, 2010, a man many of us are still trying to figure out who is clearly a media and marketing genius, Glenn Beck sponsored a rally at the Lincoln Memorial. He called it the Restoring Honor rally – a return to Faith, Hope and Charity (or Love). Many Americans attended. We will never be able to settle or agree on an actual number of attendees. So let’s just agree that it was a multitude and each of us can assign to that the number that pleases us.

I was not able to attend, but I did hear much of it on television. The message I heard was that we can only restore our national honor by retuning to our Christian roots. What one hears often has much to do with where one stands in life. What message did you hear and what does it mean to you?

To me, the message I heard means that we must put our Faith back in God. Faith that He will do what He told us He would do and Hope that we as individuals and as a people will make it to salvation and the promised eternal life in Heaven. When Faith and Hope are realized what remains is Love – the constant in Christianity. (Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ ; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. – Luke 10-27 (NIV); And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. – 1 Corinthians 13:13; We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. – 1 Thessalonians 1:3)

I am neither theologian nor preacher. That is simply my understanding of the Christian trilogy of Faith, Hope and Charity (or Love depending on your interpretation). I thought that it was important to try to place it in the Biblical context from which it comes. The bottom line is that if you are not prepared to discuss yesterday’s message from Mr. Beck in that context, then you probably will neither understand nor accept it. Or conversely, I am standing all alone out in left field.

What exactly is honor? Years ago, I wrote the following:

Honor is a code we live by. It encompasses all our values and all that we do. When honor is a value, it means we will do what we say and live by the values we express as ours. It means we live by a code of dignity, integrity and pride. It also means that our personal integrity is maintained without any legal or other obligation. A code of honor is an uncompromising commitment to a way of life. – The Three Meter Zone

In the context of yesterday’s rally, if we are to restore our honor we must first decide what makes up the code by which we live. Our “American” code can be wrapped in one predominant phrase. In God we trust. If we truly believe that then Mr. Beck’s message is on target. If we claim that we are Christians, as statistics show the majority of Americans do, then we indeed should live by the values encompassed by that claim. Or, we should agree that we are not Christian.

Only God knows whether Mr. Beck’s message will have any resounding influence over the direction of our country. Time will tell.

Al Sharpton has accused Beck of trying to hijack the civil rights movement. That is a statement that will cause your drink of diet Pepsi to exit through your nose. Imagine the “Reverend” Sharpton accusing anyone of trying to hijack the civil rights movement.

Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, honor is not fitting for a fool. – Proverbs 26:1

What you can count on in the coming days is for that theme to be picked up by the liberal media, most of which view Christians a bigger threat than terrorist Islam. What else you can count on are senseless arguments about how many people actually attended, etc. All of it with the purpose of distorting or deflecting the conversation toward something other than the true message. You can also bet that public relations firms are collecting big fees as I type this for telling scared to death politicians how to spin their message so that it sounds like they were actually standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 2010 offering up a hearty Amen.

Vietnam veteran Dave Roever gave the closing prayer for the rally. He said to know what 8/28 really means, read Romans 8:28.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose. – Romans 8:28 (NIV)

God has blessed America. I agree with Mr. Beck. It is now time for America to bless God through our Faith, Hope and Charity.

© 2010

What does America value?

Absurd proclamations are common these days. Often, the justification for them is a declaration that they represent our deepest held American values. Sound familiar? They declare this so emphatically that it puts the timid on the defensive and garners cheers from the sycophantic ignorant.

Who among us could possibly stand in opposition to anything that is born of our most cherished, deeply held American values – whatever they are or however they are defined? Who does not fear being labeled intolerant or declared disease ridden by a phobia of some sort should we demonstrate the audacity to question what those values really are or express disagreement with their self-proclaimed defenders?

That fear of labeling is why the most prevalent modern American value is political correctness. It is a value for certain. It is also a national suicidal tendency. But, it is just one.

Values are not just flowery phrases dropped into a conversation to justify ones position. Values are what drive us. Values equal action. What we know or think we know transfers to our hearts – how we feel about things – and that translates into our actions. So when most of us are declaring that something is an American value, all we are doing is sharing what we personally value and adding to it a little hope that everyone views the world as we do. That is why it is important to understand what it is that you value. What drives you? Only when we honestly understand ourselves can we ever hope to put our finger on what America values.

God given freedom and constitutionally protected rights are supposed to be the shield that protects us from a potentially tyrannical or abusive government that might try to take them from us. Our conflict is not that complicated. People, who wish to fundamentally transform our country and try to redefine our deepest held values, use our freedom and rights as weapons against us rather than as a shield of protection for us.

Do we value the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Is it a value of ours that all men were created equal? Do we value God given freedom that was endowed to us by our Creator? We think we do. We claim to. But do we really? Is what we value defined by the rights guaranteed to us by the United States Constitution as citizens?

Is the right to life an American value? If it is an American value, could we ever say that pro-choice is the opposite of pro-life? Is individual liberty an American value? If it was, would there be 30,000 people nearly rioting in Atlanta trying to get an application for government provided housing?

Is it an American value that we were all created equally? If it was, would we more than 200 years later be fighting for equal outcomes? The good Lord placed us all here. We arrived with nothing. We will take nothing with us. Each of us chooses the path taken between arrival and departure. Our national focus does not seem to be on the creation.

I saw an ad on television this morning. It was a collection of people billed as national religious leaders. I must say, however, none of them were familiar to me. Basically the ad supported the ground zero mosque. Their position was that everyone should be allowed to pray. No one can argue with that deeply held American value. I am just curious about where this group of “national religious leaders” have been for all of these prayer banning years. Where were they recently when a group of students, in silent prayer, was kicked off the steps outside the Supreme Court of the United States?

When the press uses a constitutional right to pursue a political agenda, like the Journolistas, or when papers publish documents that endanger people and our national security is the right being used as a shield to protect those who exercise it or as a weapon?

The establishment clause clearly has the purpose of protecting the Church from the state and not the other way around. Its sole use for many years, however, has been as a weapon to expel any vestige of Christianity from public view. Not Islam, Buddhism or any other religion.

The protection of these freedoms and rights is so deeply ingrained in American society that we are slow to acknowledge it when they are being used against us as weapons to a devastating effect. It is time to say stop. There is a fundamental transformation that is needed in America. It is the one that draws a clear distinction between protecting rights and abusing them. Only when we can do that as a nation, will we know what America values.

©2010

There comes a time. A point where the lingering thoughts you have held on to internally lest you offend friends and fair weather acquaintances must be cut loose. You know that you must rid your conscience of them otherwise your silence propagates the problem plus there is always the potential that your head might explode.

Our country is being led by a comic book character. He never existed until he was written into the story line to deliver a well-practiced speech at a national political convention. Oh, it had all the right words in it and sounded just swell, but for some reason it lacked the feel. It lacked heart. At least there is little proof of his existence before that speech as his handlers have spent millions to keep a lid on anything that might crack that window and reflect a little sunshine onto his past. He is a creation. He is the work of others and was drawn into our lives one story panel at a time until several issues later on a bleak morning in America, he became our President.

But, as usually happens with a bad script where the final episode was not written before the story was put into production, this one too is starting to take unintended turns. The most obvious is that although he appears in every panel of the comic book strip, his substance is as thin as the multi-colored pages on which his image rests. It is his creators and behind the scenes handlers that we should fear. Desperate people who want to keep their political power will take desperate measures. They will write dangerous maneuvers into the script to save their faltering figure head. They must find a way to salvage his legacy. Iran may want to duck.

His youthful communist and Muslim indoctrination is now well-documented. It is rare that one travels very far from life’s influential years and its influencers. That probably explains the relationships of today. A bigoted America hating “preacher”, the self admitted communist and terrorist in whose home his political career was launched, and other assorted communists, hippies and members of Students for a Democratic Society who surround him and are now charter members of his czardom. It likely explains his globetrotting apology tours. Probably explains why he was first out of the gate to state that a local police force acted stupidly while urging Americans not to jump to any conclusions when a Muslim nutcase screaming Allah Akbar shot and killed 13 Americans at Fort Hood. Of course questioning any of this does result in one being labeled a racist by his script writers. Everyone cowers at being called a racist by racists. It is a strange phenomenon.

Stupid starts to add up on you after a while. The apology tours were not good. Americans are like anyone else, they look for a leader who will stand up for them, not apologize for them. Spreading the wealth, we are not a Christian nation, when life begins is a concept above his pay grade, we are one of the world’s largest Muslim nations, bankrupt the coal industry, clinging to your guns and bibles, looking for some ass to kick, plug the damn hole…

Is the President nearing his jump the shark moment? He has traveled so far to the left that his typically professional left, as Mr. Gibbs refers to them, is now on his right. His polls are in the toilet. Congressional polls left the toilet long ago and are heading for the sewage treatment plant. The political future, if you can trust the political prognosticators, is not too bright if you are a Democrat. Now Mr. President has put his Presidential, and de facto Democratic, seal of approval on building a symbol of Islamic conquest at ground zero. America was once again flipped off and gut punched by a cartoon character.

When popularity has peaked and ratings are nearing toilet bowl ring level, jumping the shark to either raise the ratings or make them even more irrelevant cannot be too far behind. The question is can we survive it?

I am curious. Has anyone seen Colin Powell?

© 2010

According to the handy look up program attached to my word processer, tolerance is the acceptance of differing views of others such as in religious or political matters and fairness toward people who hold these differing views.

It is also the act of putting up with somebody or something irritating or otherwise unpleasant. I could make quick work of compiling that list. I am sure you could as well.

Have you noticed? The intolerant label rolls freely from the mouths of the world’s most intolerant. Much the same as racist, sexist and homophobe labels shoot forth from the mouths of the world’s most bigoted. I have often been accused, along with most people who hold similar views as mine, of being intolerant. I assure you that I am. Some things demand intolerance. Drunk drivers for one. Then there is the small issue of incompetent leaders who tend to steer a country as erratically as a drunk might. Or, oddly enough, intolerance of people who want to kill me in the name of their god.

When the ACLU attacks every vestige of Christianity, is that a demonstration of tolerance? Just curious. I am sure that they will contend that they are not intolerant of Christians, only that every trace of Christianity must be restricted from public view. Their approach emphasizes a freedom from rather than of religion. More accurately, freedom from Christianity.

I am sure that you are following the story about the mosque that Michael Bloomberg, The Most Tolerant Mayor of New York adamantly supports? A mosque at ground zero has nothing to do with reaching out to Americans and healing the hurt from the attack that took three thousand innocent lives all in the name of Islam. No, it is an Islamic symbol of conquest not unlike the mosque that sits on theTemple Mount.

More innocents were just murdered by tolerant Muslims. They were members of the International Aid Mission providing medical care to remote villages. They were unarmed doctors and nurses from a Christian medical team, six Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton. Lined up and executed.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told the AP that they killed the foreigners because they were “spying for the Americans” and “preaching Christianity.” In a Pashto language statement acquired by the AP, the Taliban also said the team was carrying Dari language bibles and “spying gadgets.”

Islam is the most intolerant group on the planet. There is no radical Islam. There is no moderate Islam. There is just Islam. Christians believe that you can choose Christianity or not. That is why God gave you the free will to choose. Islam believes that you can choose Islam or death and the locations of their mosques do not change that tenet of their law. They brutalize women. There would not be enough stones in Hollywood to meet their demand. They execute homosexuals. They kill their children in the name of preserving family honor. They forbid conversion to any other religion. They believe Sharia should be the law of not just Islam, but the world. As an American, fools like the Most Tolerant Mayor Bloomberg insist that I must be tolerant of this. Just so the Mayor understands I am also intolerant of fools. Especially the ones who hope the alligator eats them last.

When Christian churches dot the Islamic countryside and Christians are not lined up and executed in Islamic countries just for being Christian, then you may raise the topic of tolerance with me again. Until then, I must say that I am content to be intolerant.

I just added another item to my list under he might be a closet Muslim. It is right beneath near prostration before the King of Saudi Arabia, we are not a Christian nation and we are one of the largest Muslim nations. He said those things, not me. Why is it my President, who never hesitates to mention how stupidly a local police department acts, has not made a statement about this issue? Americans were murdered at this site Mr. President. All of them killed in the name of Islam. Can you suggest to them that maybe they should locate their mosque elsewhere, like maybe Saudi Arabia?

Are you keeping up with the extravagant trip that you purchased for Lady Michelle and her rather large entourage? If you want to see what she’s been up to, it might be a good idea to scan the European papers. This interesting paragraph was in an article in Spain News Paper El Mundo.

Michelle Obama vacation in the Costa del Sol – English Translation, Spain News Paper El Mundo
Several Arab royal families also spend their summers in Marbella for many years. Thus, there will be a meeting between Michelle Obama and Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, governor of Riyadh and brother of the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, while another meeting is shuffled from the first lady with the owner of Málaga CF, billionaire businessman, son of Qatar’s Interior Minister and member of the Qatari royal family, Abdullah Al Thani.

I had not heard that she was meeting Arab royalty on her trip. Of course I typically rely on American Media. Reckon she covered her head? Suppose she asked them about that old mosque issue? Or told them how proud she finally is of America?

Be tolerant Americans. Right up until the day that there is no more America.

© 2010

It is entertaining. Frightening, but still entertaining in a sick sort of way. That is, living in a country where our fate rests on whether we will be kicked to death by a herd of braying jackasses before we succumb to the antics of an errant herd of pachyderms. I do not wish to insult the animal kingdom or PETA, so to be clear it is political animals to which I refer. These beasts inhabit the District of Columbia and none of them were harmed in the production of this essay.

Other than being certain that we have the best Congress that special interest money can buy, we still wonder how they came to be in positions of power in a nation where the people supposedly get to choose their representatives in government.

Once you stop banging your forehead against the desktop, it is not too difficult to figure out why. Excluding cranial rectal inversion syndrome as the cause, we also have a unique ability to focus on the unimportant in America. The important stories in the news are Lindsay, Mel, Chelsea, Mrs. Sherrod, and the President is on The View. If that is what is in the news, it must be what is important. At least that is what is important to the Tingles Matthews branch of the American news media, which is most of it. They would prefer that you focus on such inanity rather than on the problems of the day. For if you learn about the real problems, their façade will begin to crumble. But, they know that a large majority of Americans still tune in to the Tingles news service nightly broadcasts and trust that they are getting what is important. The day the media discovered that it could drive the American conscience and affect political outcomes and then chose to follow that path, freedom was lost. Honest brokers of facts are hard to come by. Everyone has their biases. Even me. I have disdain for purposeful idiots and liars.

In the news, for example, Christians and Christianity are frequently beaten to death. Figuratively of course. Tingles et al will never challenge Islam in such a manner although it is the antithesis of all that they purport to stand for. For practitioners of Islam, it is not just a religion, it is the religion. No other allowed or tolerated. It brutalizes and subjugates women and executes homosexuals. It is their economic system. It is their law. But, what the heck. This is America. Let them build their monument to conquest at ground zero. Maybe I will go scout out a good location in Mecca to build a mega Christian Church. I am sure the religion of peace will understand my peaceful outreach. But wait, am I even allowed near Mecca?

Have you paid attention to what is happening in Afghanistan? Casualty rates are on the rise. I am missing that steady drumbeat from the Tingles news service lamenting the waste of lives. It proves a point. To them, and the politicians they promote, it was never about the lives of American Soldiers. Period. If it was, you would hear it louder now than ever. Afghanistan is the war they wanted, or so they said. Now we have the leaked secrets. Soon there will be revelations of government and political malfeasance. Then many will decide that we can no longer support a corrupt South Vietnamese Afghan government and Tingles media will start singing louder each day that is time to quit the fight. And we will sometime right after Walter Kronkite stands in a street in Kabul and declares the war is lost.

Has anyone heard whether Lindsay was paroled yet?

©2010

I am curious as his image is circulating around the Internet atop an article that I wrote four years ago.
It is, no doubt, the creation of an Internet nitwit. I am not sure if the photo was added before or after another, or maybe even the same, Internet nitwit decided that it would sound better if I was identified as a Marine Corps Sergeant Major. For the benefit of a great orator we all know about and in deference to my Marine Corps Brethren I emphasize that the correct pronunciation is core not corpse.

I do wish that whoever did it had selected some square-jawed, rough and ready warrior looking type instead of another pudgy middle-aged bald guy. If anyone knows this man, who was apparently speaking at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C. please inform him that a lot of anger and language of the type that cannot be shared in a family friendly environment has been directed toward the author of that article –me. Now all of the foul mouthed nuts out there believe I look like him. Sorry, there is only room, food and ammo enough for one JD in JD’s Bunker. Good luck to you bald guy. I do not know whether a Semper Fi is appropriate or not, but keep your head down brother and your powder dry.

The unauthorized editing of On Your Hands, most prominently redubbed by those unauthorized editors as the Axis of Idiots, changing me from a retired Army Command Sergeant Major into a retired Marine Corps Sergeant Major, and putting some bald guy’s photograph above it is simply proof that you must take everything you see or read on the Internet with the proverbial grain of salt – or in my younger out of control days with 3 fingers of Old Number 7. In a glass, no ice.

I started thinking about this when Journolist was exposed by the Daily Caller. Journolist, if you somehow missed the story, was a list serv with a membership of liberal journalists that collaborated to use the media to advance their political ideology and support the campaign and subsequent presidency of Barack Obama. This is a sorry collection of schools of journalism educated slugs. They do not deserve the freedoms to which they were entrusted and that others have sacrificed to ensure they kept. Now you should know why all of the left leaning media talking heads always sang the same lyrics. They all collected their sheet music from Journolist. If the communists who are trying to take control of our country are successful, it will be this collection of useful idiots that cries the loudest, but no one will be able to hear them.

I am no journalist. I write what I think and share my opinion. People read it and accept it or not. It bothers me when someone, for whatever their purpose, takes the liberty of altering what I write. It is dishonest to intentionally alter another’s words. Without integrity, everything else crumbles. However, I chalk my experience up to my gullibility and as a hazard of writing and publishing on the Internet.

It concerns me much more and it takes dishonesty to a new low, however, when the controlling media, those who do lay claim to being objective journalists, collaborate to mislead a nation in order to support a political ideology – a freedom (of speech) destroying ideology. Keep that collaboration in mind with all of the news that you hear reported or that you read. Many of us accepted that objective news reporting went out the window about the time Uncle Walty pronounced our defeat in Vietnam. Now we have the hard proof of it.

Check your overhead cover, refill your sandbags, check the wire, check the dead space…

© 2010

And you will see the Balkans.

I just finished an amazing visit with two strikingly beautiful young ladies. They are my Granddaughters. Liv is 5 and Mia is 2. That explains why nothing has appeared on this blog for two weeks. I believe that when my time has passed and I am on the death bed, I will not be wishing that I had spent more time blogging or with my head buried in some political news site angered by the latest failures of America’s political ruling class.

Children teach us a lot. They remind us, often painfully so, of what we have become. They help us comprehend the message in Matthew 18:2-6 (NIV) when Jesus told his disciples “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Children make us long to return to the place where worldly influences have not yet pounded us into the dirt, turning us into something we do not even recognize in the mirror. Something we once observed, but took an inner oath to never become. We must look at our country with a similar perspective. We need to shake off all of the other worldly multicultural and moral relativist influences and return to our basic guiding principles.

As Liv grabbed my hand and said come on Grandpa, no one had ever told her that the Barf-a-Whirl just might make Grandpa lose his oatmeal. I did not tell her either. If I suggested to her that it might make her ill, then it may have. There we went, whipping and spinning. She was throwing up her hands screaming and laughing while Grandpa grinned through clenched teeth, thankful that he did not yet require dentures. Liv was fine when the ride stopped. Grandpa was a little wobbly.

America, nearing the end of a dizzying ride, is wobbly too. Actually, there is no longer an America. She is splintered. Instead there is an Africa America, an Asia America, a Mexico America, a Euro America and, a You Name It America… The people who wanted to see an end to America have practically succeeded. From the Whitehouse on down through the ruling class line, the emphasis is always on what divides us rather than what unites us. It is on ethnic or some other identity like Gay America rather than on the Christian principles on which our nation was founded and by which she is blessed. If we are nothing more than a collection of ethnic or other identities then it becomes status quo to discount an opposing voice as racist, sexist or homophobic. That is the approach of imbeciles who cannot defend their defenseless positions.

I find it rather comical when the pundits lament that we are transforming into European style secular socialism, although that is what most of them seem to pine for. I hate to disappoint them, but we left that train stop quite some time ago. Our bullet train is speeding past Hugo’s Venezuela with non-stop service to Uganda via a scenic detour through the Balkans. Although, it could be argued that the Balkans was our first stop on the drive to become a third world nation. Do you think that our Balkanized identity nations will ever live in peace and harmony? The ruling class will provide us with new sheet music that is supposed to guide us along, but there is no chance that we will ever be harmonious.

Hanging out with toddlers, you might find yourself watching a movie that otherwise might not have made it up to the top of your viewing list. Sitting in the recliner between two beauties, I got to watch Horton Hears a Who. It was again quite educational. I did not, repeat, did not tell my Granddaughters that the mouthy mother kangaroo bent on destroying the clover on which sat the speck on which Whoville existed bore a striking resemblance in appearance and character to Nancy Pelosi. I also did not tell them that all of the Who’s screaming unheard at the top of their lungs, “We Are Here!” was remarkably similar to the healthcare debate. We just giggled and ate ice cream. I did raise an eyebrow when Mia, the 2 year old, jumped down only to return with Curious George in a head lock. The Who’s were finally heard and they survived to prosper. Recalling the famous words of our President when he said that he was looking for some butt to kick, I suggested that next we watch Kung Fu Panda. Mia responded by yelling Hiiyeeaa! and hitting me in the head with a cardboard wrapping paper tube.

Before the United States of America can right herself, she must return to the Judeo-Christian principles that guided her through infancy – the principles that made us the most prosperous and free nation in the history of the world. We will be held accountable for how we bring up our children. We will also be held accountable for the America that they inherit from us or if there is an America left for them. We can save our country from destruction only when we make sure the ruling class hears us loud and clear and our one vote in November is too late to start.

© 2010

Nostalgic moments seem to be coming at me more often these days. I do not believe it is a sign of aging. I am still a juvenile in the eyes of some of my more senior acquaintances. Maybe it is an anxiety state. Maybe it is a manifestation of a fear of what might be slipping away from us. Leaving us with only memories of the land of liberty. Perhaps it is because those of us with memories, self-included, are not standing up and speaking out forcefully enough. There is a reason for that too I expect.

It is a self-inflicted slipping away. It is self-inflicted because we insist on proving that we are the tolerant and accepting group of people that we are always accused of not being. It might be time for us to point fingers back in the other direction and ask why it is that you cannot accept who I am and what I believe? Is it because you, Mr. Atheist et al are an intolerant lot? Surely that cannot be.

Are you growing tired of the insinuation that you are a rabid proselytizer because it just happens to become public knowledge that you are a Christian? Then they want you to shut up and get into those now vacated closets. What do you call it when atheists insist that you accept their premise that nothing follows this life? Is that not atheistic proselytizing? The meaning of proselytizing after all is an attempt to convert someone to a religious faith or to a political doctrine. There is much of it going on in our world. If one looks at our shrinking Churches and the state of our government, he can only conclude that the atheist, moral relativist, homosexual, anti-free market, anti-personal liberty etc. proselytizers are winning. Apparently, watching our country’s transformation into something not recognizable, unless you are familiar with Sodom and Gomorrah, is preferable to being labeled intolerant by the most intolerant people imaginable.

It would have been late August or early September 1958. That is when my 5 year old self began the first grade at Wyoming Grade School. It was a one story wooden school house holding grades 1 through 8, and a couple of years later only 1 through 6. We never had a kindergarten. I was allowed to enter the first grade at age 5 because I would turn 6 in September.

I have a rather vivid memory of my first school day. Before we went into the school house, we were gathered by class in front of the building. The first thing we did is recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Granted, not a first grader among us had any idea what was happening, but we learned from watching “the big kids” to place our hands over our hearts and in a day or two of school, we mastered the words. After the pledge, we sang, “My country tis of thee. Sweet land of liberty. Of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died. Land of the Pilgrims’ pride. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.” After that first time outdoors each classroom day began the same way, except that inside the classroom it was common to also add The Lord’s Prayer.

Can you imagine the law suits if any of that happened within a mile of a public school today? A cross-dressing drug dealer has a better chance of getting into your child’s classroom today than does the pledge to our flag, a song of pride in our country and most assuredly God.

They took prayer away from our schools in 1962. They gave us Woodstock in 1969. We gave them the country in 2008. Because we are tolerant here in the former land of liberty.

©2010

What does your heart tell you?

This weekend, we will gather with friends and family and fill up backyards and picnic grounds. Smoke from barbeque grills will waft through neighborhoods. Distinctly American food will cover the tables. Hamburgers, hotdogs, baby-back ribs, corn on the cob, baked beans, potato salad, watermelon and ice-cream. A lot of fun will be had.

Americans will once again enjoy their gift of freedom and their lives of abundance. When the sun sets on the land of the free, crowds of perfect strangers will stand together and watch celebratory fireworks displays. Together, they will ooh and ah to the visual gratification of brilliant, but momentary, flashes of exploding fireworks. What will they feel in their hearts? When the fireworks end, there will be a dash for the parking lots so as to get home ahead of the traffic. As fast as this day wrapped in red, white and blue arrived, it will be gone. Like Christmas, the true meaning and purpose of it likely not considered.

With bellies full and senses satisfied, the populace will grudgingly concede that the holiday is over and tomorrow will be just another hum-drum day of drudgery. Another day spent doing the job, if they are among the group fortunate to have one, which feeds the family and provides the economic fuel for our country.

Will the meaning of this day cause a fireworks display in their collective hearts? Will there be an internal and thankful celebration of Independence Day? Will we collectively have given any thought to the real meaning of this day? Will it inspire us to grab hold of all that is good about the United States of America? Will we insist that no man may take from us what God has provided?

How long has it been since you have read the Declaration of Independence? It may be the appropriate time for it. And contemplate its meaning. What does it mean to you personally? If you do that, it may light the fuse to that internal fireworks display. Written in the classical English of the day, one often has to pry out the meaning of the words. You may not read it as I do or take away from it the same meaning, but give it your own try. It is difficult to defend, or if you are so inclined to attack, what you do not comprehend. I can remember shying away from reading the Bible in my younger days because I knew that when I opened it up there would be a big finger in my chest reminding me of my shortcomings. I assure you, it is more akin to a fatherly arm around your shoulder. Read our founding document with that thought in mind and add some urgency to the words.

I find the statements in the document incredible. It declares right up front that all men have a separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of the nature’s God entitle them – separate from, but equal to every other man. In other words it describes individual liberty. It repeats that thought again when clearly declaring that these laws of nature to which we are entitled manifest in the self-evident truths that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.

The signers declared unequivocally that the unalienable rights to which all men on earth are entitled are the laws of nature, the laws of nature’s God, endowed to us by our Creator. Our Creator who is also nature’s God. They declared that the unalienable rights to which men are entitled came with God’s creation and are not any creation of man. With that opening statement the founders set the corner stone to our national foundation.

It goes on to explain that governments are instituted amongst men with the consent of the governed for the purpose of preserving these unalienable rights. The government that we form and the people we select from among us to govern have no purpose other than the preservation of our rights. Whenever the government becomes “destructive of those ends”, in other words when they attempt to remove rather than protect those unalienable rights, then it is our right to send them packing.

…when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security…

The signers of the Declaration of Independence affirmed their belief in their purpose with this closing statement.

And for the Support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.

The United States of America is the only country on the planet founded on the principle of God given unalienable rights to which men pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to protect and defend. Nowadays, we can barely find men who are willing to make the following pledge to these enduring principles.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Whenever you feel like asking God to bless America, think of the freedoms and abundance that we are allowing to slip away. Then remember that God has blessed America. Maybe it is high time that we returned that blessing.

© 2010

I have had some time to digest all of the spin on General Stanley McChrystal’s lapse in judgment. I am reading now that conservatives are lamenting that he was a political liberal and that he banned Fox news from his headquarters. That he might be a political liberal should not surprise anyone. Politically liberal Commanders in Chief are prone to appoint Generals who share their political views. This is not about political leanings. It is about leadership. It is about leadership failure and on more than one level.

Soldiers like to complain about things. Usually their complaining is limited to their own circle of influence. Privates complain to other Privates. We used to kid that if Soldiers were not complaining, they were not happy. Within General McChrystal’s circle of staff, some grumbling about issues would be expected. Anything else would mean a leader who was surrounded by non-thinking yes sir men, which is certainly more dangerous than grumbling about methods. It is when the grumbling makes its way outside the circle and especially when it makes its way outside the organizational family that it is serious. It is a leadership failure and a symptom of bigger problems.

If General McChrystal had a subordinate commander or members of the commander’s staff publicly criticizing his leadership or the prosecution of the mission he would have pounded that commander into the dirt. His duty would require that he do it because such conduct destroys unit cohesion. Without a cohesive effort, missions fail. When he and his staff became publicly critical of the Commander in Chief, it was to the same affect. The General knows this. He is after all a General and would have known that his actions would lead to his becoming a dirt dart.

Why did he do it? The answer to that question is at the root of everything. There has been much conjecture, but only the General and maybe his closest staff can provide the answer. You will not hear those answers, however, until the retirements are final and the first pension installments are deposited into the bank. There is certainly evidence of a low level of confidence in the President and his staff and a high level of frustration with the mission.

There has been concern expressed about the Rules of Engagement (ROE) with the enemy for the Soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. In a nutshell, they dramatically increase the danger to our Soldiers while having the opposite effect on their battlefield enemy. I was always curious about whether they were actually General McChrystal’s ROE. Talk is they were and I have no evidence contrary to that, but I am a cynic and leaders do not generally endanger their Soldiers with unnecessary rules. There is precedence for politicians becoming overly involved in such matters. Vietnam.

There is a problem with operations to win hearts and minds. There is no question about the importance of gaining the support of the indigenous population in defeating an enemy. You can find accounts of us fighting hearts and minds battles in Vietnam. We would go into villages to help them by day and the Viet Cong would come back and kill the village leaders by night for accepting that help. It led to the expression of the time that said it is only when you have them by the balls that their hearts and minds will follow. That was the Viet Cong approach. Until we are prepared to seek out the enemy wherever he is and destroy his will to continue the fight, we will not win any hearts and minds. Instead, prepare for the video feeds of helicopters evacuating the embassy.

According to the media, firing General McChrystal was the President’s Truman moment. They likened it to Truman firing MacArthur during the Korean War. There is no comparison. MacArthur publicly opposed President Truman’s policies. The same media and politicians, who publicly savaged General Petraeus as “Bush’s General”, are now insisting that the President’s putting him in charge of the Afghanistan war is a stroke of leadership genius – brilliant. I am grateful that I do not have to live inside of any of those duplicitous minds.

If General Petraeus does not get what he needs and if he is bound by politics rather than the principles of war and if he has the same indecisive and dysfunctional leadership he too will fail. Most sadly, the United States of America will fail.

© 2010