Why I Married a Military Man

I have rarely been so angry on my husband's behalf as I was when John Kerry made a gaffe-ish slip during his presidential campaign, insinuating that the average education and understanding of most military personnel was so low that they didn't really comprehend why or how they got out there in the deserts of Iraq.

The jokes that are so popular about how stupid Marines are; the Hollywood portrayals of soldiers being violent, thoughtless walls of meat; the media's refusal to tell the truth about the varied and vital work that our military members do every single day on nearly every continent on earth to protect America and better the world...well, I just lost my tolerance for all of it after Kerry's little "misstatement."

The fact is...men and women who volunteer for military service like that young man in the video (and like my husband) tend to be some of the most socially and politically aware people I have ever met. They know their history. They know what they're doing and why. They join up for all kinds of reasons. They have all different levels of formal education. They come from all over the country. They come from every racial, religious, and socio-economic background in our diverse population, and so generalizations are hard to make. In my experience, however, there are several common threads. Among them are patriotism, interest in government policy, a general knowledge of history, and a desire to protect the United States, its people, and its Constitution.

Military men are appealing for many reasons. They're strong. They're fit. They ooze masculinity and authority. The uniforms...c'mon, enough said. In addition to all that stereotypical stuff (which became stereotypical because it's true), military men have the added charm of being passionately driven in their need to defend and represent something larger than themselves. There is nothing sexier than a man with righteous principles who would literally die to protect you.

Just LOOK at this young man.

Does he seem irrational, unhinged, lost, out of touch, or uneducated to you? He sure as hell doesn't to me.

The next time you see the media run yet another story about the latest bag of ass soldier who did something illegal, stupid, or violent...just look at this video and remember that this man is what our military really looks like, and this man is the one the media doesn't think you'll tune in to see.

A Naive Notion

Representative John Conyers, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said last Friday:

“I love these members who get up and say, ‘read the bill.’ What good is reading the bill if it’s 1000 pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

Earlier in the month, Congressman Steny Hoyer actually indulged himself with a smug chuckle before expressing a similar sentiment in response to a pledge that was circulating through Congress urging legislators to commit to reading what they vote for:

“If every member pledged to not vote for [a bill] if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes.’’

Gentlemen…We aren‘t laughing.

As I stated in the letter I wrote to Congress on July 4th of this year, the American People have an expectation that people writing and voting for legislation in this country will be familiar with that legislation before they pass it. The reigning sentiment among our government leaders seems to be that “the folks” simply don’t understand how things “are done” up in Washington. Oh, but they have that backward. We are not naïve. The problem isn’t naiveté on the part of the American People. The problem is obtuse, arrogant elected leaders who’ve gotten too big for their britches. Ladies and Gentlemen of Congress, it is you who don’t understand how things get done out here.

We know that you can’t read a 1,500 page monstrosity filled with legalese that would make Einstein himself go cross-eyed if you are only given two days.

We know that you can’t read hundreds of pages of addenda that get added to these tomes on the day before a vote.

We also know that if these bills are too complex, lengthy, and esoteric for the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Majority Leader to understand, then something has got to change. It’s time to take a look at how you’re writing laws up there in D.C. instead of laughing at the people who elected you to do your jobs. It’s time for that transparency Speaker Pelosi promised us back in November.

Our expectations are simple:

1.) We want you to demand concise, honest, and effective bills.

2.) We want you to vote “no” on anything unreadable that comes to the floor.

3.) We want you to vote “no” on anything with hidden pork.

4.) We want you to vote “no” on anything with addenda attached so late that you did not have time to read them before the vote.

We want the dishonesty to stop. We want the usurpation of Congress’ authority that these monstrous bills represent to stop. How do you stop it? How do you change it? Easy. Vote “NO.”

Congressman Hoyer was wrong when he said there would be very few votes if legislators refused to pass bills without reading them. There would be more votes…more no votes. If you make it clear that you will not tolerate this corrupt form of legislation, you will begin--and quickly--to see better bills being written.

Legislation too complicated for the army of lawyers in Congress to comprehend is too complicated to be passed. Embrace that perspective or lose your seat. That’s the offer on the table.

If you cannot understand the bill, then either you are incompetent or the bill is a piece of garbage. If the first is true, then you need to get out of my capital building. If, as I suspect, the second is the truth, then you need to stand up do the right thing.

It is that simple.

The way you are doing things right now doesn’t work. Down here in the real world, we stop doing things when they stop working for us. We adapt and overcome. If you’re not up to the challenge of changing the broken system, then get the hell out our way.

The level of disdain--nay--the level of loathing that we, the American People hold for our Congress right now would be hard to overstate. Do you not understand that? Don’t you know what you look like to us? We loathe you. We’re not “irritated.” We’re not “confused.” We’re not just a mass of peasants stirring over issues we don’t understand. No. We hired you to do a job. Do it. Do it or get out.

It is not a lack of understanding that prompts the People to demand that you read the bills, Congress. If you want to dig in your heels, lift your noses, and refuse to accept the justice of what we’re asking you to do, then you better start padding your backsides because we’re gonna start tossing you out on them in 2010.

Twilight at Midday

Today, I got to experience a total solar eclipse (well...90%). At 11:00am, I walked out into my backyard with my camera. It was dark as twilight outside, but the light was wrong. Because it happened in late morning, we had an extended dawn, so to speak. It just never got light out this morning until the eclipse passed us by a few minutes past eleven. I took this picture, careful not to look directly at the white sun. The halo you see was outlined by a very defined 360-degree rainbow prism. You can't really make out the color bands in the photo, which is a shame. It was the most incredible thing I've ever seen in the sky.

Friends Who Hunt

During the 2nd day of Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings for the United States Supreme Court, America’s favorite Wise Latina made a telling comment. When discussing her disposition towards the Second Amendment, she defended her left-leaning stance by saying that America should know that she is not biased in her views of gun control saying, “…and I have friends who hunt.” You have got to be kidding me.

She’s got friends who hunt.

What on earth has that fact got to do with her disposition towards adjudicating gun control or with the spirit and intentions behind We the People having a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms? Well, I suppose if you want to argue that the founders stuck that whole gun thing into the Constitution with a primary goal of making sure we’d all be able to obtain venison or game birds to eat whenever we like, then it’s a salient point. Otherwise…well, let’s take a gander at otherwise, shall we? Let’s just start with the source material and look at the actual text of the 2nd Amendment in our Bill of Rights:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

What does that even mean? What exactly is a militia? What did the term “militia” mean back in the eighteenth when all the lads got together and put the Bill of Rights down on paper? What does the term militia mean for Americans today?

Starting with the simplest definition, we find that a militia is a group of citizen soldiers (civilians) from within the population as opposed to professional soldiers (military) who are trained and paid by the government to exercise its will. The purpose of militia groups, both in 1789 and today, is to take up arms to defend life, property, or country in the absence of a government military/police force to do it for them. If the government-sponsored military and police forces are too weak to defend the republic, militias can organize from within the populace to do that work for themselves. If the government-sponsored military and police forces become enemies of the populace through tyranny, then the people can form a militia to revolt and overthrow the tyrants. This second, revolutionary purpose is arguably the one our founders had foremost in their minds when creating the Bill of Rights. They had just begun a new country after fighting their own revolution against the tyranny of England. The precious value of a patriotic militia was fresh in their minds, and they wanted to make sure that this new government would never be allowed to prevent the people from having an ability to rise up again if necessary. Second only to the freedoms of speech, assembly, and the free expression of religion, our founders placed the right of private citizens to arm themselves at the top of their priority list.

Fast forward almost exactly 220 years to the present day. Today’s America has very little notion of revolution. Many of us don’t have an understanding of why the 2nd Amendment is even needed anymore. We don’t see any relevance of a right to own firearms in today’s society. Guns are dangerous. Gun crime is scary. It’s not like it’s the Wild West, anymore, when people needed to hunt for food and defend themselves from predators. This isn’t 1789. Back then…we get it. Obviously, people needed guns back then. Today? Well, today, we have a bunch of people, including children, dying in accidental shootings. Young men and innocent bystanders die all the time in gang-related gun violence. A lot of homicides are committed with guns. Many suicides are carried out with guns. A lot of violent things happen in this country at gunpoint. With all these horrible truths in front of us, how can so many people insist that we need to keep a legal right for private ownership of firearms? Don’t they see it? We can use tasers, pepper spray, kick-boxing classes, and home security systems for self-defense. We have 911, meat as far as the eye can see in sterile plastic packaging, and the most powerful military in the world. Police will protect your home, the grocer will supply you with meat at affordable prices, and the Marines don’t need militia support, thank you very much. Why in the hell would any sane American citizen want to own a gun?

We are, indeed, a cosseted bunch of folks. The idea of gathering your neighbors together and taking up arms against a tyrannical government is just not anywhere near the top of our consciousness as a society today.

…but it should be.

In 1929, Stalin implemented confiscatory gun control despite a constitutionally-granted right to bear arms in Soviet Russia. From that time until 1953 (when Stalin left this world and went straight to Hell), approximately 22 million civilians were executed in an extension of Lenin’s “Red Terror” campaign or died in the gulags. In addition to the millions of murders committed against this starving and impotent population, Stalin used their defenseless state to take their property, steal crops from the farmers, and instill a bone-grinding fear of the government.

The Nazis exercised gun control, as well, but they limited their scope. Though many groups were deemed “undesirable,” and suffered persecution under the Nazis, only the Jews were kept disarmed by Hitler’s regime. In fact, Germany was disarmed as a whole before Hitler’s ascendancy. It was done in a misguided attempt to prevent revolutionary overthrow of the lawful government. The result, as we know, was a bit contrary to the intent.

Turn on your television or Google “violence in Iran.” Go to YouTube and watch videos from Tiananmen Square in 1989. What do you see? Look hard. These are not tales of fiction. These things happened. Millions upon millions of human beings died violent, horrifying deaths in these events. What did they have in common?

What you see, Boys and Girls, is what it looks like when a populace is disarmed and then tyranny takes over. It is violent. It is terrifying. It is evil…and in every single example, you will find that the guys on the side of evil were the only ones with any guns. The people cannot effectively fight back. They cannot get out; they cannot change their government; and they are impotent to fight against it. Throwing rocks or standing in front of a tank may get your point across, but it cannot stop that soldier with a rifle or the gunner on that tank. There have been genocides and horrific human rights violations perpetrated against people by their own governments throughout history. You will almost universally find, among a host other similarities, that these tyrannical regimes disarm the populace before the violence begins in earnest. In contrast, during WWII, Japan attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor. Top military brass in Japan originally played with the idea of attacking the mainland, but Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto knew any such plan would end in failure. According to legend, Yamamoto told his officers:

“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”

Yamamoto san probably never actually uttered those words, but it’s an excellent illustration of the point, and it’s something to think about. Americans have historically been armed to the hilt. There have been guns in American homes since the first boat came ashore, and the English met with a bit more resistance when rounding up American rebels than tyrants suppressing a disarmed populace have generally encountered throughout history. It’s true that farmers are easy targets…unless they have guns and neighbors. In America, our farmers have always had guns…and so have their neighbors.

The concept of a well-regulated militia being necessary is neither alarmist nor outdated. A militia is not a group of twitchy conspiracy theorists making bombs in a cabin off the grid in Montana. The ability to raise a militia is one of the many methods provided for We the People in our Bill of Rights to keep our government in its place. America is a republic. In a republic, the government must remain subservient to the will of the people. Our ability to wave a gun around when the government gets lippy is essential to the survival of that basic principle.

You cannot say that you love the Constitution out of one side of your mouth while advocating for confiscatory gun control out of the other. There is a reason our founders made sure that the government would never be allowed to disarm us, and there is a reason they put it at the top of the list. I’ll give you a hint:

It had nothing to do with hunting.

John Kerry is an Asshole

The Boston Herald had this story today. I'm tellin' ya...this guy just keeps makin' America proud, doesn't he? Edit 07/30/09: The Boston Herald link went to paid archive access only, so I'm providing new links to the same story from other outlets.

L.A. Times Blogs

Newsmax

The Huffington Post

The basic gist is that during a conversation with peers (that's code for "very wealthy elitist snobs"), John Kerry was regaling them all with the "bizarre" tale of Governor Sanford's four-day disappearance early in the month. As we all now know, the governor was schtupping his extra-curricular activity down in Argentina while his wife and the kids got to wonder where he had run off to. Anyway, Kerry finished the conversation by saying, no doubt with that sneering attempt at a satirical smile on his face:

"Too bad if a governor had to go missing, it couldn't have been the governor of Alaska. You know...Sarah Palin."

I guess the frat boys didn't tell him that making Palin jokes is so last year.

I suppose we should be grateful he didn't make sex or retard jokes about her children or accuse her of felony fraud.

Words Matter

The summer before I began 10th grade, my family moved to the St. Louis area from Batesville, Arkansas. I was fifteen and from a small town. I was moving from a graduating class of 80-something students at Batesville Junior High School to a graduating class of more than 400 at Parkway South High School in Manchester, Missouri. I was scared out of my mind in the way that all teen girls tend to be at the prospect of sweeping change and fresh judgment from new peers. It was during this nerve-riddled year of my life that I studied English under Mr. Mike Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins taught us that words mean things. Like all great teachers, Mr. Hopkins loved his subject, and he taught us a new vocabulary word every day in addition to his larger lesson plan. My English class swiftly became the only place I felt comfortable in that first year, and I babbled and vented and over-participated in the class as a result. I don’t think Mr. Hopkins liked me very much, but I adored both him and being in his class. Now, at the advanced age of 34, I still remember his kind voice guiding us through poetry analysis, American novels, and the beauty of knowing “just the right word.” I sincerely hope that Mike Hopkins is still teaching because I credit him with being the first adult in my life to talk about the evil that can result from using the wrong words.

Today, America is using a lot of the wrong words. We label things incorrectly to make people feel better, to make ourselves look better, or--worst of all--to deceive others into going along with something they would object to if we labeled it truthfully. This column will serve to focus on one such false label: The Debate over Immigration. I contend that the current national dialogue being referred to as a debate about immigration is nothing of the sort. America is a nation of immigrants, and the overwhelming majority of Americans will tell you how much they love the diverse cultural, racial, and ethnic population of our country. We all either descended from immigrants or are immigrants ourselves, and we welcome all new immigrants with open arms. Very few Americans from any part of the political spectrum would disagree with me in this assertion or argue over any part of it. Immigrants are what we are. Immigrants are our history. America loves immigrants.

The current debate we’re having in this country is not about immigrants and it’s not about immigration. The debate we’re having in this country is about the 7-20 million aliens currently living in America illegally. The debate began as an honest discussion of what in the world we should do about all these criminals in our midst after the terrorist attacks in September of 2001. Sure, we’d talked about this problem before, but it became a front-and-center issue for many Americans for the first time after 9/11. What did illegal aliens mean for national security? What kind of strain were they really causing to our economy? What kind of human rights violations were some of these people participating in to get here? What was the real level of burden these people were placing on our police force and the criminal justice system? Who was hiring all these people? Who was hiding them? Why couldn’t anyone find them and make them go home? Why weren’t they availing themselves of the naturalization process to become American citizens? As a nation we asked all these questions, but we got very few answers. We called it a debate over border control and illegal aliens. As time went by, objections to the word alien arose, and we were told by the media to call it a debate over border security and illegal immigrants or undocumented workers. “Fair enough,” we said, and we changed these words in our discourse. The next step in this softening of the truth had us drop border security altogether from the title of our debate…and, in the end, we allowed the language to shift us so far off course that we don’t even call it illegal immigration anymore. What started as a debate about what we should do to combat the troublesome pattern of foreign individuals living illegally in our country and how we should secure the southern border…became a debate between those who are “pro-immigrant” and those who are “anti-immigrant.”

…and that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is where I have to draw the line.

This switch in terminology is not limited to any one party, faction, or segment of society. The mainstream media, bloggers, and even conservative talk radio hosts have adopted the whitewashed term of “immigration” as a substitute for anything that would accurately describe the substance of our national argument over these issues. It’s dishonest. We’re not talking about immigrants. We’re talking about illegal aliens. We’re not talking about race. We’re talking about national security and border control. We’re not talking about immigration reform. We’re talking about law enforcement.

Five years ago, the media would’ve referred to me as a person who wanted stronger border security and considered the encroachment of illegal aliens as an important domestic policy issue. Today, the media calls me anti-immigrant. My stance hasn’t changed. The issue hasn’t changed. Only the words have changed. The definitions of words are important. Language is communication and words are language. If we are to talk to each other about anything with any level of honesty, then we have to use the right words.

So why have the words changed? “Why” is the most important question anyone could ask in this discussion. Who wanted the words changed? Why did they want the words changed? Who is being shut down by the changing of the words? Who looks better when the lie replaces the truth?

Americans need to take this argument back. We need to sit and discuss these issues honestly. We need to refuse the false words and start using the truthful ones. I am the descendent of English, French, and German immigrants. Each of them became Americans and participated in the generations that brought our country into greatness. I am not opposed to immigration or immigrants. I never have been, I never will be, and I refuse to allow myself to be labeled as anti-immigrant.

I am anti-amnesty. I am anti-criminal. I am pro-law enforcement, and I am pro-border security.

What words describe you?

Regarding Sarah

I’ll start by disclosing that I am a season ticket holder for Team Sarah. I drank the Kool-aid and then I ordered seconds. I’ve held off from talking about Sarah Palin on this blog in the past because I didn’t see any point in it. There is another reason for my silence, too, and that is my general resolution to refrain from blogging when I’m angry. I try not to analyze things when I’m overly emotional. Whenever I talk about Sarah Palin, I get angry, so I’ve abstained totally from discussing her in public. Be that as it may, I do not see anyone else out there in the world of politics or government representing my opinions about Mrs. Palin today. No one in the media, apparently, sees this quite the way I do.

So yeah. It’s time. I’m gonna talk about Sarah.

Last week, Sarah Palin announced that she will step down from her position as the governor of Alaska. It is the overwhelmingly negative media response to this fact that prompted me to write about this today. Even on talk radio, all I hear is, “I cannot understand why she did this,” and “it’s a mystery to me,” or “I have no idea what she’s doing here.” I have three things to say in reply to all this hand-wringing and finger-pointing.

First, shame on the right-wing commentators who are dumping insult upon injury from behind a microphone. Today, I heard a chorus of obtuse arrogance like, “I get threats every day, and I didn’t quit,” or “You should see the horrible things people say to me, and you don’t hear me complaining.” If you really think your situation is analogous with Sarah’s, let me disillusion you. You don’t have your children being used as the butt of sexual jokes on national television, and you don’t have a list of frivolous ethical and criminal charges the length of your arm on your desk that keep you away from your microphone 3 days out of 5. In addition to these facts, most of you are multi-millionaires. The Palins are not. I don’t expect you to relate to the financial ruination this could bring to the Palin family, but it certainly should have occurred to you before you opened your mouths to call her a dirty quitter. There is no comparison that you can possibly make between the hate mail you receive and the untenable situation in which Sarah Palin now finds herself. She is not quitting because of the name-calling, the insults, and the hate mail. It is arrogance and deliberate blindness for you to behave as though she’s taking some sort of coward’s way out in all this. I expected that brand of filth from the left. It’s inexcusable coming from conservative talk radio, however, and I’m ashamed of all of you.

Second, Sarah Palin was very specific about why she stepped down. She stepped down because she was not able to do her job for Alaska in the current political climate, and she stepped down because her family was suffering terribly under the weight of the hatred they’ve been daily receiving since August 29th of last year. Her family has been excoriated in the press in a way that no politician’s family has ever been asked to endure before. Her husband Todd, her son Trigg, and her daughter Bristol have all been under a microscope filled with hatred and malignant cruelty the likes of which America has never allowed before toward the family of a candidate. It was beyond uncivilized. It has been barbaric. Yes, her family signed up for a campaign. They did not sign up for what they got. As to the accusation that Sarah is betraying the people of Alaska, I will remind everyone that spending the vast majority of her time with lawyers to combat frivolous lawsuits is not what the people of Alaska hired her to do. She’s not abandoning them. She’s doing the right thing by getting out of the way so that her distractions will not drag Alaska down with her. Her lieutenant governor is a competent and involved man who will ably carry on the administration’s goals. His name was on the ticket, too, you know. They didn’t just vote for Sarah. They voted for Palin/Parnell.

Third and finally, I’m hearing a lot of panic from the right about how this will damage Sarah forever and she’ll never get an opportunity to run for president with such a blemish on her career. That’s ridiculous. I read an article on the Laura Ingraham message boards today that was posted by another commenter there. The article, called “The Palin Potential,” was written by Dr. Jack Wheeler on Monday, and it discussed Nixon’s rise in the 60’s. Nixon’s career was over by 1963. He lost a presidential election to Kennedy in 1960 and then he turned around to lose the gubernatorial race for California in 1962. He was finished…totally irrelevant and irretrievably ruined in national politics. Then, he used his fame and ability to draw an audience to help scores of Republican candidates for Congress all over the country win or keep their seats in the next election. He went state-to-state delivering speeches, shaking hands, energizing the base, and gaining loyalty, respect, and favors from everyone in the party. The next time he put his name in the hat, you all know what happened. This game is not over. If Sarah wants to play the game, there is still more than enough room for her on the field. She has 15 months to get out there, draw in the crowds, help Republicans win back Congress, and learn the things she needs to know in national politics. She is neither down nor out in my book.

The sad thing is that in today’s cynical political world, no one knows how to recognize the truth when someone says it straight out. Sometimes, there’s not anything between the lines to read. Sometimes, there’s no grand conspiracy to sniff out. For most of us living out here in the unwashed mass, when we say something out loud…well, we mean it. Sarah Palin isn’t like one of you. She’s like one of us. It really can be that simple, Y’all.

For those, like me, who look kindly upon Sarah Palin, we see in her that “something different” we’ve been begging for since Ronald Reagan moved out of the big house. Palin is a true, capital-C Conservative. Her first allegiance has always been to her causes…never to her party. She is an American first, a Conservative second, and a Republican somewhere much, much further down the list. She is a poster child for average America. She is not wealthy. She is not an elitist fresh from the ivy-choked halls of a patrician university. She is committed to small government and willing to suffer the career consequences of remaining stalwart in that commitment (such as being called a “slut” on Letterman and being forced by conscience to give up her gubernatorial title amid accusations of having ulterior and mercenary motives). She is incorruptible in many ways because she can be held over the flame by neither money nor a desire to maintain her standing with the elite social class in Washington. She has never had either and consequently cannot be threatened by their loss. She doesn’t belong to the Beltway. She belongs to us. We love her strength. We love her principles. We love her background. And…we love that she is still green. We don’t care that she has a lot to learn because we know that she will learn it by the time we need her to know it. We see in her a woman untainted by the poisonous amorality and avarice of Washington. It’s honesty. It’s charisma. Together! When was the last time we had anyone trustworthy in D.C.? When was the last time someone who made the moldy machine nervous on both sides of the aisle stepped into the fore? She doesn’t fit. She doesn’t match. She doesn’t belong. And, yet, there she stands. This is what we see when we look at her, and her stepping down reinforces that for us plain, unwashed folks in the American trenches.

So for Rich Lowry, Juan Williams, Joe Pagliarulo, and even Laura Ingraham…stop being shocked and remember who we’re dealing with here. No one called Obama, Hillary, or McCain quitters for leaving-without-leaving during the presidential campaign. Politicians check out from their jobs without leaving anyone there to fill in for them all the time without being called on it. There are lame ducks all over Congress, and no one calls them names. Sarah Palin stepped up…and when the situation required it of her…she stepped down. It’s a fair ball, Ladies and Gentlemen. I’m just sorry that so many of you refuse to see it that way.