I can remember living briefly in Orlando, Florida, and watching a non-amusing TV news piece done inside of a shopping mall on the Monday observance of Veteran’s Day. The news crew had found random school kids wandering the mall on their day off and asked them WHY they had the day off from school. Only one in every eleven kids knew why they had the day off from school!?
What does this say? Perhaps the type of parents that use the mall as a proxy childcare service for their school kids are of sufficiently lower class and intelligence that they are more likely to raise ignorant kids. Perhaps the schools themselves could have helped by preempting the previous Friday’s tolerance-and-sensitivity (read muzzle-straight-males) assembly to instead spend an entire day learning how every freedom we in the US enjoy (including holding ridiculous school assemblies) is only because of the American soldier and sailor (and their supporting cast). Perhaps the kids have simply succumb to parentally enabled self-absorption in sufficient quantities to preclude any comprehension apart from instant messages and ringtones.
I say that if you’re a teenager and you don’t know why your off from school on Veteran’s Day, then you should have to show up for school anyway… and clean erasers or something. And, so help you, if you’re a school kid who has been brainwashed by the leftist adults in your life, and you think soldiers are “murdering, savage, terrorist butchers”, and you don’t think the entire country owes every freedom it has to our military heroes past and present… then I have a special treat for you - you will spend the entire 24 hours of Veteran’s Day (observed) reporting to every American Legion post in your area to clean their toilets with a toothbrush.
I may be a little hardcore in my patriotism… but really, is there such a thing? True patriotism (not nationalism or imperialism) is the lifeblood of a safe and healthy nation. We can either protect what we have, knowing how much it cost us, or we can sit back and watch it erode in a sea of historical ignorance and lost perspective.
I recently enjoyed dinner with a good friend… we were former classmates, cadets, and then Army officers. He spent over a year in the sandbox. I shared with him how I had just heard that a fellow classmate we graduated with and was commissioned with (and who had reached the rank of Major) was recently murdered by a roadside bomb. It’s a reality that military personnel and families know well… but that snotty school-kid peace activists know nothing about the significance of.
But today, the fact is that many World War 2 vets are passing away every day. I’ve played taps at their funerals. I’ve heard the rifles salute the fallen. These are citizens who take with them to the grave more wisdom and perspective than I can imagine. I can only hope that we as a nation absorb as much as we can from this dying generation of heroes.
Happy Veteran’s Day. Find a vet near you who may not have many years left and thank them from the bottom of your heart.
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What do they say in Guiness commercials? Oh, yeah. BRILLIANT!! Lay out the facts for all to see, I love it.
It truly is a sad condition in our nation when we don’t appreciate sacrifice. As for the lies about our troops being butchers, anyone who believes that should read Tom Clancy’s book, Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces. As for a perspective on regular soldiers, read Norman Schartzcopf’s autobiography: It Doesn’t Take a Hero. He lays out some of what went so wrong in Vietnam, which really propogated the stereotype of butcher soldiers. That, and the media reporting the incidents that do happen are ____ed (insert four letter word here) up and blow everything out of proportion.
WTF! You mean today isn’t the official first day of Christmas shopping? I ran by the mall (to bring some lunch back to work) and based on the number of persons present, and all the Christmas decorations, you could have fooled me. I sure didn’t see any flags or anything around.
I wonder why the VFW or American Legion don’t put a folding table down at the mall and have a few guys sit there so you can shake your hand today. I would have enjoyed that. And it would have been nice if all those kids who didn’t know what was going on had to actually ignore a real veteran when they were out playing today. If those Salvation Army bell ringers can annoy me (not there is anything wrong with the Salvation Army but that bell isn’t exactly subtle), having a veteran on Veterans’ Day give you the what-for for not knowing your ass from a hole in the ground should be okay.
I try to make it a habit to at least say thanks to anyone who has served or is serving my country in such a fashion. My son is among them - he’ll be in Kuwait (at least) in January. So thank you - I appreciate your contribution to my freedom and safety.
Grandpa E nearly invaded Japan (Thank goodness to the A-Bomb he didn’t) Gandpa T nearly went to Korea, he stopped in Japan to serve as a prison guard at a military establishment. I think his company was later mauled pretty badly. My Uncle Alfonse was on a bomber, shot down and killed in WWII, my dad was in the Navy on board the Landing Ship Dock (LSD, stop snickering) USS Hermitage. Uncle Rolly was in the Battle of the Bulge, and my brother is currently attending the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. I’m proud of my family’s military tradition, and I believe I’m going to carry it on by being a war correspondent, and an embedded journalist.
That would be cool… if the VFW or Legion set up tables in the mall on or near Vet’s Day. That’s a great idea. See, that’s something you’d have to trick those guys into doing… because they’d never seek any recognition like that no matter how badly we’re looking to give it.
Do you consider the war to be protecting our freedom?
Love your blogs by the way, your way of thinking definetly doesn’t line up with the stereotypical soldier.
@ Jack Vandan :: I find it an intuitive necessity to actively seek and destroy those who have declared my destruction a pathway to virgin-heaven. Now on the chessboard of world politics we can argue the merits of whether or not rook to H4 is a win-enabling move… but the concept of winning holds.