Happy New Year 2019
I truly do consider it a privilege to know and study history, especially that of this free republic. So watching that freedom unwind can be discouraging to say the least. Over the Christmas holiday, my family and I spent some time outdoors on our property enjoying a few cocktails next to a roaring fire. I thought about those less fortunate and those who sacrificed much, even unto their last full measure that I might enjoy these things. Nevertheless, it was getting late and folks began to head indoors for warmer temps and more comfortable chairs. I remained a bit longer however, stoking the fire and thinking…
The cold air and warming flames gave me to ponder winters like that of 1777 at Valley Forge and how excruciatingly difficult it must have been for our revolutionary predecessors. I considered my own expensive winter coat and boots and remembered reading how General Washington’s greatest concern that winter was not necessarily just the frigid cold and lack of adequate winter clothing for his beleaguered army, but also utilizing the not fully vetted inoculation process for smallpox. You see, his men were dying by the dozen every day from the scourge and he feared the Continentals would be so badly depleted they might not have been able to take the field in the Spring. I wondered, what measure of courage was necessary to face such unrelenting misery and uncertainty? What level of selflessness did one need possess to overcome the odds of possibly never seeing their family again, with only the solace of knowing their efforts were party to a greater good? And then it came to me, the answer to what’s ailing our nation today. FINALLY, I believe I can put our current national posture in its proper perspective. But it may not sit well with some of you. It will require soul-searching to be sure…
Simply put, the United States and more specifically human freedom are worth fighting for, always have been, always will be. We saw it at Valley Forge and Trenton and we saw it at Antietam and Gettysburg. We saw at Belleau Wood and Marne and again on D-Day and in the trenches of the Korean peninsula. We saw it in the jungles of Vietnam and we know it today as the war on terror continues, while our police officers stand in our defense every day in the streets of America’s cities and towns. We see men and woman of this nation, all colors, creeds and professions, putting aside their politics and personal lives to stand for something they knew/know to be greater than themselves.
The problem today however, is that some (not all) of this “millennial” generation haven’t been taught the value of freedom, or of a nation founded on the premise that all are born free with a right to pursue (their own happiness). Moreover, absent the greatest generation as living proof of the sacrifice often necessary to preserve the freedoms we enjoy, many millennials are actually learning (being taught) to resent the very system and platform which enable their voices of dissent, to individualize and identify only as victims of some manufactured wrong or offense. An entire sub-culture of anti-Americanism has taken root, fostered and validated by way of politics, so-called higher education and a complicit news media. Truth is now hate-speech and facts optional if they do not support a carefully cultivated narrative of revisionism. Worse yet, there is no tangible enemy to fight as at Bunker Hill or in Fallujah, no physical enemy to engage. There are only the most dangerous of all enemies, those being ideology, indoctrination and ignorance. (The three “I-s” as I like to call them). These are truly dangerous times my fellow Americans and the history I love tells me this is how nations fall. As a young man who would be president once suggested in an early political speech, “Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide.“ Who was he??
There is hope though. Americans have always risen to the challenge of defending freedom first, here in our own country and around the globe. We’ve always been able to find ourselves in our God and resurrect the truth from the ashes of human ignorance. The only difference I see today is there is no margin for error, no back-up plan. Eight years of a grossly ideological and unapologetic president, whose only apparent goal was somehow to punish his own country for its success, as well as the more recent exposure of our leaders in Washington to the light of their collective oaths, combined with the handing over of our true history to all the wrong voices, only to see it manipulated and revised according to the book of political correctness, have left us with little in the way choices. Thus, my son and his generation will be charged with a task greater than all put to those before them, to defend and preserve an idea, against a steadfastly determined albeit ignorant adversary, with only truth as the weapon we provide them…
And it will likely be they who must be prepared to sacrifice it all for the sake of their children’s America… Here’s hoping and praying for a more civil and truthful 2019…
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