Category Archives: Nationhood

For The Love of A Brother-In-Arms, And ‘Big Brother’ Be Damned

America, BAB's A List, Ethics, Fascism, Military, Nationhood, War

Robert Glisson rides with the ““Patriot Guard Riders.” I do not identify with the military mission, but who can fault the humanity of the effort?

For The Love of A Brother-In-Arms, And ‘Big Brother’ Be Damned
BY ROBERT GLISSON

The late October morning sky over northern Oklahoma is overcast as you follow the bikes in staggered formation, onto the Air Guard base. They make a circle and line up on each side of the exit concourse behind the guard shack that splits the exit from the entrance. The rumble of Harleys in neutral is heard, as the heavy bikes are backed to the curb, nose pointed toward the exit at a forty-five degree angle. Silence returns as one by one the kickstands drop and the riders unhorse.

Ride Captains in maroon caps begin passing US Flags on eight foot PVC shafts to the riders quietly. Two lines of scruffy men and women dressed in black leather or dark waterproof raingear line themselves ten feet apart smoothly, quietly on each side of the street, forming a corridor of red-white-and blue a hundred and twenty feet long. Hardly a word is spoken, as the flags begin gently waving in the cool damp fall breeze.

Two Senior Ride Captains begin an inspection walk inside the corridor of proud, straight figures. Many of the men and women have lost the battle with gravity and the razor; but, the grip on the staff is steady, the eyes focused on a point a thousand yards away. Satisfied that the formation is ready, the SRCs walk back slowly to the line’s tail, stopping at each flag to personally thank the rider holding the flag for his or her time.

The backs of vests and jackets of the riders carry multiple Colors, insignia and rockers; American Veterans MC; American Legion; The Priesthood; Christian Motorcycle Association; Faith Riders; Mongols Vandals; Outlaws; Forgotten Few. Some are loners- no colors, no rockers, nothing to show any association or organization or location; but, all are part of the Patriot Guard Riders at this time. Patriot Guard Riders in Oklahoma do not wear colors and have no identification insignia. PGR in other states do wear colors; for states membership is free; 264 K members at this time, not all attend missions.

It begins to rain lightly, fingers get colder and stiffer, but the line holds steady. An Air Force lieutenant exits the Administration building, speaks briefly to the captains and returns to his warm office. “The Angel Flight (Plane carrying the soldier’s body) was delayed in its take-off from Dover AFB. They will be at least fifteen minutes late.” The line of men and women holds. Twenty minutes later, “The flight is delayed due to the heavy cloud cover over the country. It will be another fifteen minutes.”

The line holds quietly, no one complains.

The PGR line remains still and quiet in the drizzle as the Airmen jostle into position to form another honor line. A sergeant with the Air Guard News appears with his camera. The PGR has stood for approximately an hour so far. “The plane is now on the runway, the Military Honor Guard is transferring the coffin to the coach. They should be here in fifteen-twenty minutes. Ten minutes later the rain slacks off and riders can now hold their head fully upright without having to blink away the rain.

The procession stops just pass the line and before the exit unto the city street. Young Airmen quickly come, take the flags from the riders. Bikers now freed, hasten to the waiting wet bikes, brush off the seats and mount up, denim against wet leather. The air is filled with the sound of motorcycles forced into a hasty warm-up by their owners. The V-Twins respond eagerly. Within moments the line of flag-carrying motorcycles is moving up past the coach into lead position. The law enforcement vehicles will take a position at least five hundred feet ahead to protect, but stay apart from the procession. Without a word, the bikes roll out onto the wet pavement, wet flags attached to the rear, trying to wave in the dismal, damp air as they begin a forty mile highway escort, taking a fallen warrior home.

Another day, servicemen and women exit an aircraft and walk through a double line of flag-bearing PGR to welcome them home or, if leaving, walk through the same line to board a plane to their duty station. Older PGR Captains, assume the position of fathers to reassure the serviceman’s wife that the separation is only temporary and that their husband will return, just as they did long ago.

This is the Patriot Guard Riders, a volunteer group of citizens, mostly ex-military and motorcyclist but not necessarily either one. The PGR is formed to support veterans. Originally formed to shield the family of soldiers killed in action from protestors at funerals, it has grown to honor and respect all veterans and servicemen. Non-political, it contains men and women of all political, religious, and opinion stripes. Ex-service salute, civilians place their hands over their hearts, all show respect.

It is said that the US is the only country to have barn raisings. I can’t say that for sure. But I can say that the volunteer spirit in the United States is second to none. Most of this country was built by individuals working with other individuals long before governments were formed. Some feared that without the draft, there would be no military. They missed the spirit of the people who love their country and countrymen. The Patriot Guard Riders is only one organization among many. Habitat for Humanity is a ‘barn raising’ group of volunteers that now covers the world. The Red Cross, Salvation Army, and the Southern Baptist Disaster Crews: These are but a few organizations that reflect the ‘Spirit of America. There Civil War Enactors, Single Action Pistol associations, the clubs, Masons, Rotary, Lions, Moose, Eagles, Knights of Columbus, etc. It is that American spirit that says “Get up, make a difference.”

It is the true spirit of this country.

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Robert Glisson is a retired Oklahoma Probation and Parole Officer, fiction writer, vineyard worker (you don’t own it, it owns you), amateur wine maker (you have to drink your mistakes, whoopee), and biker by choice. He is also a longtime reader of Barely A Blog. Robert served in the US Navy between 1960-1964, inactive reserve 65-66- 66-68.

UPDATED: Mitt Romney: Elements Of A Tragic Figure

History, Literature, Morality, Nationhood, Politics, Pop-Culture, Republicans

Mitt Romney embodies some, not all, the elements in Aristotle’s definition of a tragic figure:

* Character must be a person of stature. (Check)
* Character must neither be totally good or totally evil
* An error of judge or a weakness in character causes the misfortune. (Check)
* The character must be responsible for tragic events.
* Action involves a change in fortune from happiness to misery. (Check)
* Subject is serious. (Check)
* Tragic hero is of noble birth and displays a nobility of spirit. (Check)
* Protagonists pitted against forces beyond their control. (Check)
* Struggles courageously until his fall. (Check)
* Though defeated, gains a measure of increased wisdom.

Mr. Romney’s election concession speech speaks to these tragic elements, especially this man’s abiding faith in “this great nation.”

I so wish — I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different direction, but the nation chose another leader. And so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him and for this great nation.

UPDATE (11/7): We “left everything on the field,” Romney said, adding “we have given our all to this campaign.”

This comports with the prototypical Greek tragic figure who “struggles courageously until his fall.” Meantime, the snake in the grass coiled and hissed and spat venom, all the way to a victory.

Enoch Powell At 100

America, Britain, English, IMMIGRATION, Literature, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Race

Enoch Powell’s famous, much-maligned “rivers of blood” speech has devolved over the years to suit Powell’s adversaries. Delivered in Birmingham, in April 1968, notes The Times Literary Supplement, the famous segment read as follows:

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. . . . To see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.”

The TLS’s welcome, if marginal, mention of Powell is on the occasion of the publication of Tom Bower’s “balanced critique of Powell’s rhetoric”: Enoch at 100: A revaluation of the life, politics and philosophy.

Helped along by oodles of ignorance, the “foaming Tiber mutated over the years to ‘rivers of blood’, notionally streaming through British cities as the tide of immigration rose unchecked.” (TLS)

As Bower points out, “the official figure for immigrants at the time was relatively small”:

“only 7,000 males every year”, but “the government did not announce that annually a further 50,000 dependants of established immigrants were also entering Britain”.
Powell’s fear was less of immigrants as such (though his “Rivers of Blood” speech contains passages about “negroes” which might land him in [a British] court today) than of a breakdown in “social cohesion”.

“Repeatedly,” it is observed in this TLS editorial, Powell “pointed to rioting in American cities, then at a fearful pitch. Why was Britain inviting the ‘tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence’ of the country?”

Stupidly, the TLS editor joins in blaming Powell’s “oratory” for making “immigration a taboo subject by silencing even reasoned opponents of immigration and multiculturalism who feared being tarnished as racists.”

From the fact that “plain talk about the topic is rare, even dangerous,” the TLS concludes that Powell is at fault.

Oh my!

I do like what Saul Bellow said about the “intractable phenomenon” in the US: “we lack a language in which to talk about it.”

IT being unfettered immigration, also known as “The Suicide of the West.”

Still, I’m pleasantly surprised that the TLS (July 6, 2012) made even marginal mention of Enoch at 100. Surprised because the TLS, once so objective and rigorous, is tilting to tinny, lefty, obscurantist postmodernism. (To modify a Joan Rivers witticism, Why would you want to reproduce a rash?)

That’s one way to reduce circulation, and suck the joy out of English literature (“the English-speaking people” is a concept TLS reviewers now routinely mock or “deconstruct”).

Let’s Break-Up And Break Free, Says BAB Contributor

America, BAB's A List, Federalism, Founding Fathers, History, Liberty, Nationhood

Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli has an Independence-Day message of freedom: Let’s break-up and break free. If you haven’t gotten his drift, on this Independence Day—Dr. Pauli recommends doing away with the supersize version of the United States of America, as this will do wonders for liberty. Hear hear! (Myron’s bio is below. It’s packed with his usual flare. Perhaps Myron’s highest achievement, however, is his teenage daughter. Dr. Pauli is the most devoted single dad I know.)

DO WE NEED TO HAVE A “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”? Of course, our Founders asked questions like that – but nowadays, to ask is even borderline treason making one a racist, terrorist, or psychotic. So much for the Land of the Free. But I will ask it anyway!

Other Empires have devolved – USSR being the best recent example. I don’t want to get caught up in detailed nuances but it can be done – so we can have 20 to 50 “countries” instead of one. OK – the 2 Dakotas and Montana can be the Republic of Northland. It will not be a superpower – but not everyone has to be #1. The Danes, Swiss, and Costa Ricans sleep soundly even if China, France, and Israel have more powerful armies. Is China about to invade Northland, anyway?

In fact, the “Federal” Government of the 1787 Constitution was not created (dismissing the Articles of Confederation as more of a Congressional coffee klatsch) to ward off imminent attack from Frederick the Great. Much of the impetus came from the corruption and ineptitude of the 13 states which quickly slid into “banana republic” governments. The soldiers of the Continental Army were stiffed and would have staged a coup if not for General Washington. Fiat paper money was shoved into circulation (sounds like today!). Debts, foreclosures, and contracts were negated by demagogic mobs that controlled the local legislatures. If someone in Rhode Island owed money to a creditor in Virginia, forgetaboutit!

If, when debts were not repudiated, gangs like Shays Rebellion put pressure to do so. Goods flowing from Maryland to New Jersey risked getting the “TSA treatment” from goons in Pennsylvania or Delaware. It was with that mess in mind that people like Franklin joined up with quasi-monarchists like Hamilton and supported a national government with LIMITED powers to restrain the states from the hanky-panky they were sliding into. An indirectly elected national government with limited powers could serve as a check-and-balance on the two-bit state demagogues. Franklin recognized this in his famous 17 September 1787 speech – that it would serve the cause of liberty for some time until the people will have grown corrupted.

Even 100 years after, advocates of limited government had a champion in Grover Cleveland, but by 1896, there was an electoral choice between the Plutocratic Imperialists of McKinley and the Currency Debasers of Bryan.

The country has grown but government has grown more and liberty has shrunk. The price of keeping Wyoming safe from an invasion from India currently includes SWAT teams raiding chemo patients for pot plants and bureaucrats from 3000 miles away scanning algebra test scores.

If we did break up, we run the risk of DC turning into Zimbabwe and Mississippi becoming Klan land, but there might be some restraint on the states due to economic competition. If Texas and North Carolina wanted racial, second-class status for Asians, their universities and engineering companies would become a laughing stock. The higher Massachusetts raises taxes, the more people would emigrate to New Hampshire.

But it might not go all that smoothly. What would prevent a combination of Mexico and California from invading an Arizona that attempted to enforce immigration restrictions? Would a power-hungry New York megalomaniac (Bloomberg) attempt to coerce Connecticut as well?

The danger is not as likely to come from China or India or Russia or some bucktoothed Afghan Pushtuns, but from North American Huey “Kingfish” Longs.

Franklin supported the Constitution, but warned that it “can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” One can also add Jefferson’s quote: “experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

The TSA, the SWAT Teams, the endless undeclared wars, the out-of-control deficits, the drones and constant surveillance – this was not forced on us by Germans or Martians but what WE HAVE DONE TO OURSELVES. Local corruption might be preferred to national or international corruption, but it is still evil.

So my preference is summed in one word – small may not always be beautiful, but it’s better for liberty.

**
MYRON PAULI, Ph.D., grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism.