Memorial Day *UPDATED*
Bookworm on May 25 2009 at 9:44 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
On Memorial Day, I can only say “thank you” to all those have given their lives for this country. Matt, at Blackfive, fleshes out what that really means.
UPDATE: Two things. First, Flopping Aces has a wonderful Memorial Day video that I know you’ll want to see.
Second, we went to the Memorial Day services as the Presidio in San Francisco. The turnout was small, but robust. Most interesting was the fact that last year’s MC shamed most of the SF Board of Stupidvisors into turning out for this year’s ceremony (or, perhaps, now that it’s Obama’s war, they support it). Anyway, ignoring San Francisco politics, it was a very beautiful service, in one of the most heartbreakingly lovely cemeteries in the world.
Related posts:
- Memorial Day
- This Saturday, take a stand against Arizona’s silly idea
- More on San Francisco, the City that used to know how
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15 Responses to “Memorial Day *UPDATED*”
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I got to thinking this weekend about the holiday and leadership and have concluded that before someone can become President and Commander in Chief, they should first serve their country in uniform before attempting to serve in a suit and tie.
I’d go for that. Should it also be required that the service be voluntary? I sort of think that as well. Even though, if we had some reason to initiate the draft again, as long as service is completed honorably, it’s honorable, and shouldn’t be diminished.
It would certainly separate the wheat from the chaff. Since the President thinks community service is a good idea, what better way than to serve, protect and defend in a variety of capacities and at the same time be a good role model.
It’s putting your money where your mouth is.
Kerry served this nation in uniform, got dishonorably discharged, and then got that discharge overturned by Carter.
This is no barrier to the corruption of American pillars of liberty and security.
I discern that the election of Obama was not due to his experience or non-experience in the US military branch. HIs election was due to the simple fact that the have nots have the power to steal power and money from the haves, so they might as well use it.
You are not going to stop the have nots from voting in more benefits for themselves, at the expense of taxes on the haves, by having Presidential candidates serve. Does not work. The system is at fault, because the system is supposed to be designed to take in corrupt and self-absorbed people like Obama and churn out loyal politicians and representatives. A system that does not do that, is broken.
There were traitors and evil collaborators in America’s Civil War and Revolutionary War. The system, however, worked, even if it still left evils untended like slavery or Democrat power locks on the South. Somewhere along the line, however, the US system became corrupted by the power mad and the megalomaniacs.
That should be people’s first priority. The US military cannot solve the American penchant for keeping power mad politicians in office.
The US military cannot solve the American penchant for keeping power mad politicians in office.
I wasn’t suggesting that a Commander in Chief, who first served in uniform, would be any better or worse, only that it set a good example. Otherwise, we will continue to have photos ops like “Skip Biden” giving commencement addresses to the Naval Academy.
The megalomaniacs are not limited to America and they are known by many names; tyrants, kings, supreme ruler of (fill in the country of choice). The more disturbing point is that we actual elect them every four years.
p.s. Your comments in post #4 were right on target, but I would still like to believe that the voters are ultimately the ‘barrier to corruption’… I just have no idea as to when and what it would take for the majority to grab their pitchforks.
Interesting Sadie. I just reflected and realized that Obama is the first President since FDR who did not have some form of military service. True, Reagan’s was a little different; and some people, but not I, would disparage G.W. Bush’s ANG service; but they all committed to serve in some form. Of course, FDR, Reagan and Bush all had Executive experience.
Although I believe that military service is beneficial for many young people, I don’t believe it should be a pre-requisite to be President. On the other hand, I have always thought that American voters would be wise to insist on Executive experience, unless a candidate has exceptional credentials of another type. I simply think that it is much too easy to hide amongst the crowd in the legislative branch.
Of course, this is all somewhat irrelevant to the problem of the day, because the country simply threw all good sense to the wind in 2008 when a charlatan sang his sweet song.
Executive experience seems like a fine idea.
Would this be the same group that threw good sense to the wind or thought Bernie Madoff was a great executive with financial flair. My point (sarcasm aside) is that the country has moved into a direction that asks few questions, knows less than previous generations and is far removed from living history.
My voice may be reflecting my age and reasoning believing that the ‘youth’ vote has inserted itself into politics via American Idol type of thinking to create their very own version of what a candidate should be.
They’re in for a rude awakening when they find out that sweet song was sung by Milli Vanilli.
Oldflyer, with all due respect, you forgot Clinton. Let’s also not forget that some of our worst traitors were Americans with military experience…Benedict Arnold, McClellan, Oswald…and some of us would add “winter warrior” Kerry to that list.
I don’t know if news of this has already been posted here: Book has a piece up at American Thinker.
How to Talk to a Liberal If You Really Want to Change His Mind.
Danny, I can’t believe that I forgot Clinton. There must be a psychological explanation.
No doubt that the military contains its share, if not more, of miscreants. Kerry is a an excellent example.
Just a note on the idea of military service for its individual benefit. In years past I have sat on more than one Court Martial in which the defendant upon being asked why he came in the Navy since he obviously hated it, replied…the Judge gave me the choice. Of course I wouldn’t know how many who were given the choice benefited from the experience.
Benedict Arnold’s treason, purely for personal grievances although he told himself it was because “America couldn’t possibly win the war against Great Britain”, was so spectacular that his name became a noun and a description for traitors: a benedict arnold.
It is indicative of our current social and education climate that we no longer call traitors “Benedict Arnolds”. We call them traitors or those engaging in treason, but treason has lost its meaning because if one cannot remember Arnold, one cannot understand the meaning of treason.
This is part of the Left’s 1984 style re-envisioning of the English language to define it only in terms that favor Leftist propaganda and ideology.
Of course I wouldn’t know how many who were given the choice benefited from the experience.
Most of those, I suspect, went into the Marine Corps. Even the judge would still give you a choice between Navy vs Marines. This tends to create a self-selection where the people without the necessary drive opts out for what they perceive as the “easy” solution, which inevitably means that they have set themselves up for failure irrespective of how “easy” it really will be.
Y…you’ll enjoy reading this, I think. Actually, it’s an heroic tale that should be told all of our young people, right along with the repetition of the story of Benedict Arnold. War does, indeed, test the caliber of a man’s character.
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2009/05/only-those-who-are-willing-to-die-are.html
Sadie,
As for military and the topic of leadership, I tend to think the aspects of leadership are best learned there if only because it is much easier to see good leaders vs bad leaders. Bad leaders get their people killed, they create a lack of discipline like Abu Ghraib, and they inevitably order others to do what they themselves refuse to do. Good leaders bring their people home alive, along with many many other facets.
In war, a Kerry can be spotted pretty fast. In peace, perhaps not so much.
Rules on Leadership
This is the link by NIck of RangerUp, former LT in the Rangers.
As you read it, you will notice elements most needed in a CINC or politician.
War is the most brutal and the most efficient (although only in the sense that it kills off bad leaders and promotes the good ones, at least those that survive the mistakes of their incompetent commanders) and best way to train leaders to the highest standard although not the safest way. And it is the only thing that can even make it clear to those living in the la la fantasy land of partisan self-interest, as well. For did not Leonidas make an example of himself to such a spectacular level that even the fractious and tribal Greeks were inspired?
but I would still like to believe that the voters are ultimately the ‘barrier to corruption’…
The voters as individual human beings do not make decisions in a vacuum. Their behaviors are affected by human social dynamics, propaganda, coercion, violence, self-interest, greed, etc. The political system of the US must be refined so as to promote good behavior by punishing through extreme prejudice bad behavior and rewarding good behavior.
Without the necessary societal context, laws, traditions, and philosophies (including religion) to tell people what actions they will be punished or rewarded for doing, the individual is nothing but a piece of flotsam drifting on the seas, moving where ever the waves carry it.
The voters are not, cannot, and has never been the ultimate barrier to corruption. And it does not even matter if most of them want to get rid of corruption, for corruption uses people’s good intentions as well as bad. What stops corruption is the rule of law, justice, fairness even so corruption on one side affects everybody and thus forces everybody to get rid of it. Overlapping protections that create a balance of power. To fight corruption using corrupt people, to fight greed using greedy actors. This is the best available given the fact that human vices cannot be eliminated, for it is part of human nature and human nature has never changed one iota.
Y…you’ll enjoy reading this, I think. Actually, it’s an heroic tale that should be told all of our young people, right along with the repetition of the story of Benedict Arnold. War does, indeed, test the caliber of a man’s character.
I never studied the Phillippine Campaigns as much as I did the Pacific or the Russian front in Europe.
However, I did know parts of it. And it was those parts that inevitably made me understand the horrible lie of the Left when they said that the “insurgency” in Iraq would defeat us because they were true “freedom fighters” and we were the “foreign invaders”. Americans, real Americans, have already proven to be better at insurgency and guerrilla warfare than the most evil and corrupt communist agitators. As we have already proven that we are the best at conventional warfare as well.
If our record on guerrilla war is sparse, it is only because we have had few opportunities to conduct them, for the need has not been either great nor plentiful given American advantages in numbers, tactical and strategic coordination, logistical manufacturing capabilities, and technology.
A guerrilla movement can survive, but it can never win without the backing of a conventional army that can defeat the enemy on the field in order to make that enemy retreat and give up ground and towns and people it controls.
This was the proof for why the Left lied. Because they knew the NVA only won in Vietnam because they made America forfeit, yet they claimed that guerrilla movements were invincible. They are not.
Part of the ability to detect lies is to know what has gone before. This is why people lacking in life experience are more susceptible to cons, cause they are naive. They believe what they shouldn’t believe, because they don’t know any better. They don’t know what to believe because they have not lived long enough to learn how to decide.