It is the habit on the Memorial Day weekend to thank uniformed men for their sacrifice. Sorry! None of this meaningless jabbering. I thank all the Ramos’s and Compeans of this nation, who stand on this country’s soil and defend their countrymen from the detritus of mankind.
My sympathies go out to Americans who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations. I’m sorry they’ve been snookered into living, dying and killing for a lie. But I will not honor that lie, or those who give their lives for it, and take the lives of others in America’s many recreational wars. I mourn for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.
I am sorry for those who’ve enlisted thinking they’d fight for their countrymen and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars. My heart hurts for you, but I won’t worship at Moloch’s feet to make you feel better.
I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war. I grew up in Israel, so I honor those men who stopped Arab armies from overrunning our homes. In 1973, we came especially close to annihilation.
UPDATED I: THE SIX-DAY WAR: Another just war. I was one of the many small kids you see in a bunker in the footage here. From that shelter, to the sounds of artillery on the Jordanian border (back then every Israeli resided on some hostile border) we listened to the infamous (lying) Cairo Broadcast, a snippet from which you can read below.
“The existence of Israel has continued too long. We welcome the Israeli aggression. We welcome the battle we have long awaited. The peak hour has come. The battle has come in which we shall destroy Israel.”
UPDATE II: DYING FOR NOTHING. “Eight US soldiers killed in Afghan blasts,” via Jihad Watch. US General David Petraeus, more appropriately once dubbed General Betrayus,” has offered assurances that recent casualties are “because of the ‘progress’ made in ‘important areas’ since last year.”
Evidence to contradict his theory (mounting body count) is brought as evidence for his theory (we’re “winning”). How can the good general lose a debate?
Here’s what Betrayus will never say: Afghans (who’re mostly Muslim) have more of an affinity for the Taliban than for the Wilsonians who’re attempting to westernize them. This is why it is not uncommon to hear of an Afghan policeman opening fire on his American “colleagues” during a joint operation. Just the other day, on April 27 to be precise, as Times Of India tells it, “nine Americans—eight troops and a contractor—were killed by an Afghan officer who opened fire at a Kabul military training centre.”
Be they pundits, politicians, government watchdogs, and other dogs (no offense to the canine community), most “critics” of our ever-accreting Nanny State don’t pose the right questions. This is because they appear to lack the requisite philosophical (constitutional or other) and logical frameworks. Unless these players begin directing the arrows in their quiver at the philosophical issues—what is the proper role of the state in this republic, RIP—we will be left with the silly, “To Spend of Not to Spend” debate. (Lackluster logic is harder to fix.)
One example is this Drudge headline (click “Go Back One Page” to view actual headline): “FEDS SPEND MILLIONS STUDYING SHRIMP ON TREADMILLS?? ‘GELATIN WRESTLING’ IN ANTARCTICA??” All the screeching CAPITAL LETTERS and question marks in the world will not fill in the blanks: Is the objection to this particular spending based on considerations of frugality? Or is Drudge’s outrage over the flouting of the Constitution by Feds? A better headline would begin to steer the Idiocracy in the right, critical direction.
The founders bequeathed a central government of delegated and enumerated powers. Intellectual property laws are the only constitutional means at Congress’s disposal with which to “promote the Progress of Science.” (About their merit Thomas Jefferson, himself an inventor, was unconvinced.) The Constitution gives Congress only 18 specific legislative powers. Research and development spending—even for crucial matters as “Jell-O wrestling at the South Pole” and the “shrimp’s exercise ability”—are nowhere among them.
Rights and the Constitution aside, once we we begin to focus on the right issues and questions, the right answers will be likelier to present themselves.
Take the fuzzy discussion facilitated by Neil Cavuto, today, with two mushy-headed women about the right of a school to fine parents for pupil tardiness.
Lis Wiehl, a lawyer no less, was of one (mushy) mind with the other guest, a mother. Both believe that it’s simply unfair, in these tough times, for schools to penalize busy parents when kids are late for school.
The question here is, of course, not only about pedagogic purview; it’s about individual responsibility. Kids of a certain age ought to be responsible for their actions. Teachers are supposed to be able to enforce minimal attendance standards. If a child in high-school is tardy, he or she ought to be punished, not his parents.
But pedagogues, parents, pundits and most politicians are all-over-the-map—incapable of articulating the simple issues at hand. If thinking is so disordered and illogical, solutions will be no better. (In the last example: teachers should wait for better economic times before they fine parents for the actions of their kids.)
UPDATE (May 27): STATE DEATH SQUADS. With grim determination William N. Grigg dogs the perps in Police State America. Here they are breaking and entering and, then, killing the occupant of the invaded private property. Look at the goons! Talk about “The Myth of Posse Comitatus.” What is this if not the deployment of the US military against the people?
A YouTube poster appended an excerpt from our dead-letter Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The speedy execution of Jose Guerena (“it’s complex,” say officials) was mislabeled by our official cognoscenti. FoxNews bobbleheads debated whether this bloodbath amounted to the use of excess force, and entertained an apologist for the SWAT fucks who shed tears over the split-second decisions these, our great defenders, undertake in the course of defending us against alleged tokers.
The only relevant debate here is: whose property is it anyway? Does a man have the absolute right to defend his abode from invaders whomever, however? The only answer: “YES, YES, YES.” If you’re vaguely compos mentis, this is the only debate you should dignify.
[For those of you who await the weekly, WND.COM column: it will be back next week. I’ve been under the weather.]
Navy SEALs are incredible specimens, both intellectually and physically. Every interview, over the past few days, with members of this elite unit, has demonstrated the superman qualities SEALs possess. They even look like cut-out images from an episode of “The Unit.” It’s a shame that these magnificent men must place their skills at the service of the state. I suspect, however, that if you are SEAL material, you don’t have many options.
American men have endured decades of emasculation—legal and cultural—in civilian life. Hobbies and work that require such a perfect amalgamation of mental and physical prowess, as being a SEAL demands, are hard to come by. Or are illegal. These men are … manly men; they are chivalrous and disciplined. These qualities are penalized in the feminized workplace culture that has been crafted by the feminists manning Human Resources (Y chromosome carriers included). Frankly, manly qualities are being bred-out of men.
(HR makes my contact behind enemy lines—the American corporation, which works a lot like the US State does—take “Diversity” tests and PC quizzes to keep him in-line.)
Punish a little boy time and again at school for “Bang-bang you’re dead,” of for playing “Cowboys and Indians,” and then teach him do so to his own tyke—and you get generations of girly-boys (down to the fussy sounding falsettos with which many heterosexual men now speak).
I even wondered in “Manly No More,” whether it was possible that “the feminization of society over the last 20 to 30 years is changing males, body and mind. Could the subliminal stress involved in sublimating one’s essential nature be producing less manly men?”
In any event, if one were so endowed, where could a man find private-sector work or hobbies that allowed him to put into practice the skills he would use as a SEAL? That is, without being arrested by the powers that be, or sent to de-Nazification camps/programs (Dr. Phil, anger management, etc).
Although Demi Moore kept getting in the way (and blocking views of Viggo Mortensen), I watched “G.I. Jane” many times over for the impossible training. Of course, not even Amazonian women should be considered for this kind of Special Operations team where, esprit de corps is everything. Fortunately, “G.I. Jane” was just fiction; women are precluded from the Navy SEALs.
UPDATE I (May 8): I think Robert G., below, has been reading and contributing to this (moderated) site long enough to know what a traditionalist means when she points to manhood. Mr. Glisson’s mentors are certainly of a piece with the manhood described. But there is more.
I was referring to something else SEALs seem to possess. We’re talking here about different expressions of manhood. However, the culture has prohibited open discussion of the things my post addresses, very specifically. These are a combination in some men (and certain women too) of qualities that make them scale mountains as the explorers of old did, take to the seas to discover new places, and slay dragons, to use a metaphor.
Have we forgotten the superman (one among a few hundred kids) who graduated with us, and who managed, with equal easy, higher math (in my days they divided us into groups according to ability), marathons, while charming everyone around him with his drive and decency? I remember the specimen! And I am not going to pretend he didn’t exist so as to make everyone feel better. I am quite able to live with the reality that I was not of that species; others prefer to deny that there is such a specimen.
Mr. Glisson seems to want me to say that such supermen end up as killers for the state. As a young girl who partook of the mixed-sex scouts in Israel, I remember so well our 16-year-old group leader. A mere boy, who, when we were lost in the scrubby mountain range of Israel’s tiny interior, in temperatures of 120 degrees, with one water container per child—how with absolute cool, this boy navigated back to base, using the primitive navigational instrument of the day—the compass—sans cellphones and 911 helis hovering above.
On his back he carried the kids who passed out for lack of water. He was already about 6 feet and 3 inches tall. I was but 12, but I recall looking at his face to see if I should be fearful. His young face reflected the enormous responsibility he had undertaken—and was given. But by looking at him, I also knew he’d get us back to base. I even recall his name: Avner.
Doesn’t any one remember that kind of kid? Serious, studious, focused—nothing he couldn’t do??? I doubt these types are allowed to flex their mental and physical muscle to the fullest these days—and certainly not in the repulsively politicized, feminized scouts. The Avners of today, if they persist in contributing to society to the fullest—in the scouts, for instance—would be programmed not to show superior skill (lest stupid, fat kids be made to feel bad); not to comfort sad kids, not to mentor kids like themselves, in case he risked transmitting and excess of machismo competency. Blah, blah.
UPDATE II: rch’s note: It’s succinct, apolitical, and to the point; as you would except from One of These Men. I’m proud to know him too. Enough said.
UPDATE III: Mr. Glisson and I always have a good dialogue; between us we get to the soul of the subject. Each SEAL is an individualist, capable of becoming a leader at the drop of a hat. It is sad that this kind of core character is under assault. This pushes men—whose biology and mentality craves the excitement and the challenge—to serve the state.
“… By the estimate of “Yahoo! Search Trends,” teens ages 13-17 … made up 66 percent of searches for ‘who is osama bin laden?’” “The figures give a revealing insight into the lack of current affairs and general knowledge among teenagers,” quipped the Daily Mail’s correspondent.
The twits were indeed atwitter:
Tara: I’m probably retarded for asking this, but who is Osama and why is it good that he died?
Cory: Who is Osama and why is it important we killed him?
Shawn: who is Osama Bin Laden? Is he in the band as well?
Reptilian brains like these took their spring-break behavior to the streets when the news about bin Laden’s demise broke. They too are who we are.
Why not own our atavism? There will always be a marginalized, underbelly of genius and ingenuity in America. But for the rest, we have morphed into a militant, mindless people.
In its clodhopper’s traipse around the world, our military has caused the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, squandered trillions of our debased dollars, destroyed at least two countries, and crippled the American economy. Had the ‘Pac Men Of The Universe’ undertaken and achieved a precision operation after 9/11—it would be worth celebrating. But not now.
Conga lines of jubilant Americans must, by sad necessity, give way to welfare lines. If recent news reports are to be believed, one in seven Americans stands in-line for food stamps from the government.
That is now the alpha and omega of American life. …”
