LeatherneckM31 is on the road again… this time for the somber duty of helping carry one of my good friends to his final rest.
Darrel passed away suddenly after a remarkable battle with complications of H1N1.
He was a great American who couldn't have been more patriotic if he’s served in uniform.
More about Darrel another time.
Today was a non-stop moving experience for me. I spoke at the traveling Vietnam Veterans Memorial “Wall” in Childress when I had the privilege of meeting Gold Star parents who lost their sons in the last year.
It is difficult to see that star lapel pin and find it incomprehensible how they are able to go on.
I rewrote a lot of my speech after the shootings at Fort Hood; I’ve been as angry as I can remember being in the last several years because it is this simple:
Fifty-four soldiers were shot and 13 died because a diversity-deluded, politically-correct United States Army allowed a committed terrorist into its midst and refused to arrest and prosecute him, despite a wall of evidence of his traitorous behavior…. because he was a Muslim.
So it has come to this…. we are so cowed by our government that we don’t even bother to avenge our dead sons and daughters when our own government allows them to die.
Anyway… I had requests tonight for the speech which I offer here, rather than sending it separately to those who have requested it.
And…
so it came to pass on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the guns fell silent.
In honor of the and of the Great War and to recognize our nation's veterans, we have gathered this evening; I'd like us to keep our youngest veterans foremost in our minds for the next few minutes.
Americans are a caring people who zealously guard and protect our children until that day they volunteer to protect us. The strongest Americans protect the weak, the capable protect the incompetent, the young protect the old and the brave and willing even protect those unworthy of their sacrifice.
Today I assure you that America's best and brightest can be found in Afghanistan, at 75,000 feet, near the Arctic Circle and under the sea at this very moment—and not at Harvard or Yale, and seldom… in the Congress of the United States.
We need these young men and women who have ridden to the sound of guns, who have borne the battle to take the reins on the domestic front and not allow the destruction of our beloved country from within. They have learned to lead and to follow and we need them for the coming fight.
Our way or life, our society, our very nationhood is in great peril; we face nothing less than the death of deliberative democracy because sinister forces within this country threaten to succeed where imperialists, Nazis, fascists, communists, and psychotic radical Muslim mass murderers have not.
Our founders… just 56 patriots… knew in their wisdom that this day would likely come, and they cautioned future Americans to recognize and defend against all enemies—foreign and domestic—and that we would prevail only if we adhered to the simple principles they set forth.
Jefferson warned... The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. He did not mean only those in the military, he did not mean only in time of war.
He meant … especially in times of real or imagined peace…. for peace is not simply the absence of war, peace is dictated by the terms of the victor.
Despite our great military power and responsibility, we as a society have little tolerance for a large standing army that is equipped as it needs be, paid as it needs be, trained as it needs be and supported as it needs be because we lose our national focus and forget Jefferson's simple admonitions.
This is a recipe for disaster for a society which professes a desire to remain free.
And yet…. just days ago the an Islamofascist terrorist—a Muslim, born and bred here, a traitor within our own military—struck out soldiers because our government did nothing, despite knowing that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was the enemy and had ample evidence to have jailed him a year ago.
Thirteen of our best paid the price…. Not primarily due to terrorism—but because our politically-correct, “diversity-at-all-costs” government, including our highest military commanders, despite all bloody evidence to the contrary, refuse to act like we are at war.
Like a bitter slap across the face, grieving Fort Hood families heard the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. George Casey that he was more worried about Muslims than the dead and wounded, say:
“Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”
George Patton, is not turning in his grave…. He is screwaming to high heaven.
On Veterans Day, Memorial Day we express our thanks to our service members for their service.
Too often we are found struggling to our feet after being sucker punched.
It happened on December 7, 1941, which forced us into the bloodiest war in world history; we fought, we won, yet it only took five years for us to grow lazy and fat on our hard-won peace and prosperity.
And in early 1950s hordes of Chinese and North Korean Communists poured across the 38th parallel slaughtering thousands of South Korean and American troops before we could react… our "peacetime" soldiers didn't even have cold weather gear.
More recently, and despite repeated intelligence warnings and attacks on our military, our Foreign Service officials, and our embassies in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s … despite the clear and present danger of Islamofascist terrorism… we continued our slumber.
And only a year and a half into the new millennium… we once again paid in blood; suffering the worst enemy attack on our soil since the American Revolution.
Yet we are supposed to learn why they hate us.
It doesn't matter why, they do; they only question to be answer is how many will we have to kill to end their desire to slaughter us?
And yet… there is little debate that as a nation, despite the initial outrage, the fervor following September 11, and with our troops in the field, taking casualties…. we somehow lost interest in our own survival.
We have allowed our great country—forged more than 230 years ago by courageous, well-armed men willing to sacrifice their blood and fortune—to fall into complacency, our populace willing to be seduced by the slow creep of incremental socialism.
Two hundred and thirty-four years ago we refused to pay a British tax on tea and a penny tax on every document printed in the Colonies, known as the Stamp Act; we considered both to be oppressive. The slogan heard everywhere in the Colonies was "No taxation without representation".
Despite that rich historical example, what have we become? What have we allowed? And what has a modern day, oppressive government done but enslave us through taxation?
Now more than half your annual earned income goes to various levels of governments which grow fat, powerful and no longer accountable to the electorate.
Our legislative branch is comprised of 535 elected representatives. Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven of them are millionaires.
That’s 44 percent– compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall. Sure some inherited wealth, but how did the rest become millionaires on a job that pays $170,000?
As a result, the members of Congress are now over-paid and under-worked; they are arrogant, blind to our peril and deaf to our demands… and even to our outrage.
Yet between 1789 to1855, members of Congress received only a per diem (daily payment) of $6.00 while in session. Members began receiving an annual salary in 1855, when they were paid $3,000 per year.
How did we possibly survive as a nation with temporary help in Congress?
Very well, as it turned out.
Our founders never envisioned or wanted a permanent political class; federal office was designed for citizen-politicians who would serve a term or two and then return to honest and most of all, more productive labor.
Davy Crockett said it best after two terms in Congress… “you may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas
Now these supposed public servants treat us with contempt and disrespect;
Some have called for our defeat in this war, they voted against the very funds necessary to protect and arm our troops in harm's way and have even slandered our sons and daughters as "Nazis, communists, terrorist and murderers."
Would our grandparents have tolerated that for one minute?
We have been repeatedly told that we are at fault for all the world's ills, that we are arrogant, that we have too much, use too much.
We have been told that …. we’re going to have to make sacrifices, we’re going to have to "change our conversation, we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history and we’re going to have to move to a different place."
We are scolded that we must "fundamentally change"… and therefore apologize, ask forgiveness—even from our enemies.
To this I do not say "no"… I say HELL NO!!
….. a resounding "no" from millions of voices that must be heard in the Halls of Congress and penetrate the arrogance of the Oval office.
We have heard quite enough of what others think is wrong with America… those summer soldiers and sunshine patriots who are free with criticism, and are more likely to agree with our enemies and ridicule our patriots.
We are accused of being bitter…… that we cling to our God and our guns.
Bitter…? Hardly, we won freedom's lottery…. We're Americans.
Do we cling to our most gracious God and our guns?
You damned right we do… guilty as charged; we are the same now as when 13 colonies were birthed in an explosion of freemen's will and courage which wrought liberty and justice for all.
We patrol our borders to keep people out…
Much of the rest of the world patrols its borders to keep people in.
I have never heard of someone trying to swim to Cuba from Florida.
I can immigrate to England or Germany, but I can never be English or German; yet everyone legally here has the opportunity to become an American and live in the greatest country in the world.
What then, I ask, needs to be fundamentally changed in America?
We follow a simple rule…. "Love your country, fear your government."
And now in America, an admitted Muslim traitor, an avowed jihadist, is allowed to walk free, but soon you will be jailed if you refuse to buy government health insurance.
We are Americans.
We do not aspire to be “part” of the United Nations as some of our politicians insist we must.
We already have all colors, all races, all nationalities, and all faiths… we are a United Nation, a pristine model for the world.
We already have the kind of “diversity” that has made us not just the best, but the best of the very best.
We accomplished long ago what the UN never will.
It doesn’t make a damn that we can’t ballet dance like the Russians or exist on a bowl of rice like the Chi-coms;
it doesn’t matter that we can’t cook or surrender was well as the French….
We don't know foreign languages or teach them to our kids… we don't because the only time it comes in handy is when we find ourselves overseas having to manage large numbers of POWs.
We are at home in the purple mountains’ majesty and we reap the fruited plain;
We stand up when Old Glory comes into view; she leads us forward and covers our military caskets as we wipe a tear from our eye.
Our beloved flag provides the only color on the moon's silent and monochromatic gray landscape.
We love our land not for what it can do for us, but for what we can do to protect it, save it for those who follow.
We are as tough as the New York streets and as old as the hills; we can somehow coax a crop from the sandy soil of North Texas, and we harvest the bounty from two oceans
We drive on the correct side—the right side—even our freeways are conservative.
We can build your barn, and put out your fire; we can drink oceans of beer and can still dance ‘til the sun comes up.
We are Paul Bunyan, Casey Jones; and we are John Henry—that steel drivin’ man.
We invented baseball and basketball and football (real football) and left all the other games for the rest of the world, then we kicked their ass in those games whenever they think them up.
We’re Jim Thorpe, Mickey Mantle, Wilt Chamberlain, Bart Starr and Babe Ruth.
We’re a 30 mile-an-hour leeward wind filing our top’sail 10 hours out of Nantucket; we’re Mach 2.5 at 100,000 feet and climbing; we bowl 300 games…. while our inferiors insist that there is no such thing as "perfect".
We can turn a clean double play and film a Night at the Opera.
We’ve been to Casablanca and the Merry Old Land of Oz.
We are Greg Peck and John Wayne, the Andrews Sister, Glenn Miller, The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy, Kathryn Hepburn and General Jimmy Stewart.
We have seen the whites of their eyes, we have crossed Travis’ line in the sand, we have died at Bunker Hill and advanced into a hundred other climes and places where we could take a gun.
We are beautiful, we are profane, we can ride farther and shooter better than anyone else in the world.
We are kind and gentle people who believe that God made man, but Sam Colt made them equal.
We’re your best friend and your worst enemy… the world’s 9-1-1.
We control the land, the sky, the oceans and space…..
The rest we really don’t care about…. we know our limitations.
We are winners, we are warriors, we are the best there is and the best there ever was and the best there will ever be.
We kick ass and take names….. and if you run…. you’ll just die tired.
We are the Texas two-step and the Tennessee waltz; we are the City of Angles and the Grand Canyon, the hot dog the Philly cheese-steak.
We have counties the size of countries; we dominate our hemisphere, yet do so peaceably
We cherish our 1927 Model T as much… perhaps more... than our 150 mile-an-hour Corvettes.
We're not much for fancy food like you see in the big cities of the world… where the price is high and the plate looks pretty empty.
We shuck oysters, dig for clams, dive for crab and stalk the great elk to 10,000 feet just for the chance to match our marksmanship with his great God-given cunning.
We're Tex-Mex and cabbage pockets, massive steaks and peanuts in a bottle of RC cokecola.
Hot tamales and cold watermelons; smooth maple syrup and chicken and dumplings simmering on grandma's stove.
We thank God, not science, for our spacious skies and amber waves of grain.
We are shoulder to shoulder, nose to the grindstone, the proverbial early birds who invented the better mouse trap as well as ice cream cones, artificial hearts, the telegraph, the telephone, television, polio vaccine, atomic energy, computers, machine-guns, the automobile, the light bulb, submarines, space craft, national parks, revolvers, potato chips, the radio… everything from supermarkets to Scrabble.
We watch out for our neighbors and take in the stranger down on his luck; we don't just adopt children from our own country, we accept those from every other culture, faith and background in the world…. and send them food, clothing and money if we cannot.
We cherish and demand much of our children; we protect our women and sacrifice for tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come…..
We do so, that others yearning for liberty… those generations yet born…. can one day join us here in this shining city upon a hill which beckons all freedom-loving people…
.... and to this end, we mutually pledge to our nation and each other, our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
For ours is the greatest boast in all the world…..
WE…. ARE …. AMERICANS.
Yeah, spawn of Maverick.