REAL American Idols

Medal of Honor recipient Audie Murphy on the cover of the July 16, 1945 edition of Life Magazine

A couple of days ago, the Wall Street Journal published a wonderful Memorial Day piece by columnist Peggy Noonan titled "Those Who Make Us Say 'Oh!': A Tribute to America's War Heroes, Past and Present". I was particularly struck by an observation she made concerning the people Americans consider heroes these days:

More than most nations, America has been, from its start, a hero-loving place. Maybe part of the reason is that at our founding we were a Protestant nation and not a Catholic one, and so we made "saints" of civil and political figures. George Washington was our first national hero, known everywhere, famous to children. When he died, we had our first true national mourning, with cities and states re-enacting his funeral. There was the genius cluster that surrounded him, and invented us—Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton. Through much of the 20th century our famous heroes were in sports (Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, the Babe, Joltin' Joe) the arts (Clark Gable, Robert Frost) business and philanthropy (from Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates) and religion (Billy Graham). Nobody does fame like America, and they were famous.

The category of military hero—warrior—fell off a bit, in part because of the bad reputation of war. Some emerged of heroic size—Gens. Pershing and Patton, Eisenhower and Marshall. But somewhere in the 1960s I think we decided, or the makers of our culture decided, that to celebrate great warriors was to encourage war. And we always have too much of that. So they made a lot of movies depicting soldiers as victims and officers as brutish. This was especially true in the Vietnam era and the years that followed. Maybe a correction was in order: It's good to remember war is hell. But when we removed the warrior, we removed something intensely human, something ancestral and stirring, something celebrated naturally throughout the long history of man. Also it was ungrateful: They put themselves in harm's way for us...

I have always found this to be one of the most insidious and damaging effects of New Left nihilism. A people who no longer appreciates the honor, courage and sacrifice of the men and women who defend them, is a people on the slippery slope to ruin.

The stories of the incredible men Ms. Noonan highlighted in her article should remind us that these heroes still walk amongst us today. One of these men is David Bellavia, the author of House to House: An Epic Memoir of War. To this day, when I read the narrative of Sergeant Bellavia's exploits in Iraq, I cannot help but go "Oh!".

It is a shame that men like Mr. Bellavia, and Medal of Honor recipients Jason Dunham, Ross McGinnis, Michael Monsoor, Michael Murphy and Paul Ray Smith are not household names, and it is a mark of everlasting infamy on our worthless mainstream media that it has done nothing to inform us of the heroism of these brave men who put their lives on the line to defend our country. The men and women who defend us are the real American Idols, not the singers, athletes, entertainers and phony politicians that the New Left deems appropriate for us to admire.

In Remembrance...

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

November 19, 1863

KILLING THE GOLDEN GOOSE

Genetic science has confirmed something common sense has told us all along. Humans are not born equal, but instead are born of infinite variety in potential talent and potential fortune. If this variety and potential is not suppressed, it produces a wide range of benefits to all. There is hardly a better illustration than The United States of America. Born of frustration over taxation without representation, the 13 original British colonies successfully rebelled and went on to create a society where individual competitiveness, ambition, integrity, and hard work counted as much or more than social or economic position artificially supported by autocracy.
The form of democratic republic we devised unleashed the greatest explosion of inventiveness, resource development and continental expansion ever witnessed. People of various backgrounds were for once freed to be self-reliant. It was far from easy. Mistakes were made, fortunes won and lost, wars declared, promises broken, land taken from natives, land purchased from foreign countries, lands developed under great danger and sacrifice. There was piracy, murder, and all the usual skullduggery of flawed human beings.

But there were also a significant number of not-so-flawed citizens of more honest and compassionate character who risked all to expand industry in the East and build new societies out West. These were the hard working farmers, ranchers and private entrepreneurs that utilized the free competition of capitalism not as a tool for suppression but as a tool to uplift and improve the health and freedom of all. That is what gave this nation the courage and strength to survive two world wars and many smaller wars and expand from 13 colonies to 50 states of industrial and scientific capacity never accomplished before in so short a time as 230 years. Our general standard of living became the envy of the world. Our generosity was felt in many less fortunate countries. We were even willing to share our gift of freedom and prosperity with legal immigrants.

So why would anyone want to kill this golden goose that laid so many golden eggs and shared them around the world? Well it might be understandable if people of other countries let envy motivate their desire to bring us down a peg and it might be understandable that external tyrants gathering sufficient power would want to defeat us and include us under their domination, but what about our own citizens? Why would any American want to destroy his or her own golden goose?

It is conceivable that some Americans are so convinced that America in its current form is evil enough that they would want to destroy it or drastically change it. This is true of dedicated communists who hate private initiative and capitalism. It is also true to a certain extent of extreme socialists, but of the more moderate socialists and so-called "leftists" there seems instead to be a desire to eliminate competition as "unfair" and a general reluctance to recognize that variety in human accomplishment produces beneficial progress. These "social progressives" view self-reliance and rugged individualism as "dangerous". They view laziness as a "misfortune" worthy of recompense out of the public treasury, and most particularly they view stultifying government bureaucracies as far more qualified to run peoples' lives than the people themselves. In short, they believe in a form of bureaucratic tyranny. They would confiscate the golden eggs and then choke the productive goose to death with taxes and blame everyone but themselves for the ensuing economic disaster.

JUST SAY NO TO SHARIA

Finally! In the wake of Britain's capitulation to Sharia, U.S. Congressman Tancredero has actually introduced a bill, The Jihad Prevention Act" which would bar the entry of foreign nationals who advocate Sharia law. The bill would also make the advocacy of Sharia law by Muslims already in the United States a deportable offense. Sharia law is based on the Islamic religion, but in itself it is political and not religious. Therefore banning Sharia law would not violate religious freedom.

Why ban the advocacy of Sharia? In short because it is a completely autocratic set of Islamic laws whose advocates wish to make the law of our land; replacing our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and all the rest of our laws that guarantee separation of Church and State, Freedom of religion and speech, and other individual liberties.

Are such advocates now in the United States? Yes, and more arrive every year, both legally and illegally. If we allow such advocacy, it will be pushed in our civil laws and in Madrassas (Islamic Schools) that already exist here. The advocates would begin by demanding that all Muslims in America be allowed to use their own courts, have their own jurisdictions, and Make Sharia supercede our civil laws when it comes to Muslim accountability. Something similar to this has already been proposed in Britian. Their obvious goal would then be to undermine laws for non-Muslim Americans and eventually take over all of American law.

Congressman Tancredero's bill would nip all that in the bud. It is a bill that deserves the full support of all Americans. It is time we call a spade a spade, stop appeasing Islamic demands, and stand up for our way of life that we have fought so hard to preserve down through 230 years.

Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian who suffered from the Islamic terrorist attacks in Lebanon, has this to say about standing up to the Islamofascists,

"If we don't win the war against Islamofascism other issues won't matter at all.

We won't have an economy to worry about.
We won't have equal rights for all.
We won't have our cherished freedom.
And we will live under Sharia Law.
We Must Win This War
The enemy loves death -- far more than we love life.

The enemy uses children as human bombs, mothers as suicide bombers, men driven by the glory of death and the promise of eternal sexual bliss in heaven...and martyrdom on earth. This is the enemy reality: murder and death of "infidels" by any means for the glory of Allah".

We Will NEVER Forget

Putin on the Blitz: The First Warning Signs of Russian Revanchist Activity in Ukraine

In today's Wall Street Journal, Leon Aron, the director of Russian studies and resident scholar at the American Enterprise reveals that the Kremlin is already laying the groundwork for expanding its revanchist aggression into Ukraine. On September 5th, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vladimir Ogryzko accused the Russian consulate in the Crimean capital of Simferopol of distributing Russian passports to the inhabitants of the peninsula. Leading up to its invasion of Georgia, one of the first things the Kremlin did was issue Russian passports to the residents of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, so as to provide Russia with an interventionist excuse of protecting its compatriots when it later manufactured a pretext for invading the two breakaway regions and Georgia proper. Seeing as how this formula worked so well in the Caucasus, it's little wonder that Russia would follow it in Ukraine, as well. Mr. Aron reveals how a repetiton of the Georgia scenario could play out in Ukraine:

...Moscow-funded, and perhaps armed, Russian nationalists (or the Russian special forces, spetznatz, posing as irredentists)...could declare Russian sovereignty over a smaller city (Alushta, Evpatoria, Anapa) or stretch of inland territory. In response, Ukrainian armed forces based in the Crimea outside Sevastapol would likely counterattack. The ensuing bloodshed would provide Moscow with the interventionist excuse of protecting its compatriots - this time, unlike in South Ossetia, ethnic Russians.

Of course, with 14,000 naval personnel based in and around Sevastapol, the Russians could simply seize the city along with the Crimean Peninsula and dare the U.S. and the West to do something about it, just as it did in Georgia.

Clearly, the Russians have begun setting their revanchist plans for Ukraine in motion. Now that the writing is on the wall, the question before a fractured Ukrainian government and its Western allies is whether or not we will act in time to prevent a repetition of Russia's bloody revanchism in the former Soviet republics?

For Kiev, Washington and Brussels, it's now or never.

The Conventions Are Over and the Polls Are In: John McCain Surges Ahead of Barack Obama

John McCain's run for the White House is turning into the greatest political Lazarus story in American history. It could be all over but the cryin' for the Obama campaign...

USA Today: McCain 50%  Obama 46%

Gallup: McCain-48% Obama-45%

Zogby: McCain-48.8%  Obama 45.7%

Rasmussen: McCain-48%  Obama-47%

That's an 8-11% swing in McCain's favor since the end of the DNC.