Threat to Democracy

 

The Colonel is a threat to democracy.

Yep -- you read that right.  In fact, the Colonel is required by the highest law of the land to act, indefinitely, against the sedition that is democracy.

It's quite simple to understand, actually.  Yet, it's only understood by a small few.  The Constitution of the United States of America -- the supreme law of the land -- stands in defense against the free practice of "democracy" in the Republic that constitution established.  

Nowhere in the Constitution is the word "democracy" found.  Nowhere.

Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence does the word appear.

Don't take the Colonel's word for it.  Google it.

You see, the founders of our Republic -- yes, imperfect men -- established a representative republic with safeguards to limit the intrusion of government into the rights of that republic's states, citizens, and legal residents.  Though imperfect, our founders were, by and large, classically educated. Their study of history informed them that of the various forms of government, one of the most destructive of the rights of minority opinions, religions, and ethnicities was a pure democracy.  Their study of history also showed them that democracies always devolve into dictatorships.  

So, the founders who crafted the Constitution, did so mindful of the inherent dangers of democracy, and built a form of republican (little "r") national government with citizen -- and state -- representation.  Per this federal constitution, and each state's differing versions, the federal and state governments of our Republic would be officiated by citizens chosen by their fellow citizens, but those citizens would be protected from the capricious rampages of pure democracy. 

The first ten amendments to the original Constitution -- known colloquially as the Bill of Rights -- enshrined specific, but not limited, rights of the people, and the sovereign States (see the 10th Amendment), of these United States against abridgment by the government and the whims of a majority in a democracy. 

Okay, the Colonel knows that he's in danger of losing the attention of the Bama and LSU fans at this point, so he'll get to the point.  

Anyone who swears an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States is a threat to democracy.  

Anyone who blindly defends democracy, in contravention to the Constitution, is an enemy of the Republic.  

    

   

Rebel's Rules

In no particular order of importance or inspirational catastrophic event; and with no claim of originality nor exclusivity:

1.  Tractors don't swim. (Don't ask.)

2.  Loving a woman is like paddling a canoe in a stiff breeze -- both require constant attention, a little bit at a time.  

3.  First reports are nearly always false, but perfect intelligence is unattainable.

4.  That which does not kill you, may make you a cripple.

5.  E-mail kills.  The spoken word is thin as air, the written word is always there. 

6.  The speed and accuracy of an electron is inversely related to the urgency of the task involving the electron.

7.  Power tools don't discriminate.

8.  Low-information voting is not an exclusive province of either end of the political spectrum.

9.  "Please" and "Thank you" are power words.

10.  Trees and trucks are mortal enemies.

11.  Give a man a 4WD truck, a length of chain, and a chainsaw and he will play, not-so quietly, by himself for hours.

12.  Any store that doesn't sell duck calls and stink bait is a waste of bricks and mortar.

13.  Eating during hours of daylight is a sign of weakness.

14.  A mug of strong, hot coffee fuels inspiration.  

15.  Never trust a man who wears a hat indoors.

16.  Never trust a man who wears his hat backwards -- fashion statements are for women.

17.  Never trust a man who doesn't carry a pocket knife.

18.  The bigger the knife the smaller the man.

19.  Never underestimate the destructive potential of a squad of Marines, a three-year old grandson, or a six-month old labrador retriever.

20.  Empires that build walls aren't empires for much longer.

21.  The larger the known universe becomes, the greater God is.

22.  Gardens cause weeds and trailer parks cause tornadoes.

23.  Perception becomes reality.

24.  The best ideas in any organization usually come from the ranks.

25.  An organization is as great as the leader says.

26.  Hope is not an acceptable course of action.

27.  Training is everything and everything is training.

28.  Meetings that last longer than 15 minutes usually devolve into pole vaulting over mouse turds.

29.  Executive actions are indicative of legislative paralysis.

30.  No such thing as an "over-built" bridge.

31.  Change is a dragon; fight it and be eaten; ride it and live.

32.  The line beyond which a word or idea is considered "politically incorrect" incessantly encroaches on common sense and freedom of expression, and is destructive to society-binding customs, courtesies and traditions.

33.  Political correctness is antithetical to diversity.

34.  Pity the man who has everything to live for and nothing worth dying for.

35.  February is twenty-eight days of being pecked to death by a duck.

36.  Never pass up the opportunity to allow someone else the opportunity.

37.  Republics either continue to expand, or contract into irrelevance.

38.  Chewing gum is the devil.

39.  The highest responsibility of the government of a free people is to stay out of the way of the people it serves. 

40.  Limited war limits the possibility of a satisfactory outcome.

41.  Covering wood grain with a coat of paint is a crime against nature.

42.  Nothing calms the soul like a bird at your feeder.

43.  Men and women are different for a reason and equal by reason.

44.  No such thing as a fair fight.

45.  Nothing good happens after midnight, unless you're at home.

46.  Sleep is the reward of the righteous.

47.  One man's music is another man's noise; share accordingly.

48.  There's no such thing as a free lunch, a deep discount, or a pet rattlesnake.

49.  Wherever you go, that's where you are.

50.  The smartest man in any room is the man looking for the smartest man in the room. 

51.  The Pepsi Rule: Drinking more alcoholic drinks in one sitting than you would drink non-alcoholic drinks is alcohol abuse.

52.  A long walk alone is therapy for a frantic mind.

53.  Righteous indignation is a dish best served rarely.

54.  A license to drive should not be issued to anyone without a full-time job.

55.  Never pass up the opportunity to catch the buck.

56.  The "perfect" leader would have perfect subordinates.

57.  Boredom is God's call to prayer.

58.  Understand the present by knowing history; understand history by knowing geography.

59.  Climate and culture are not static.

60.  A man who makes long lists of sophomoric sentences has far too much time on his hands.       

The Colonel's Cabin on Lake Brenda

The Colonel is building a cabin.

As he, and several of his immediate family and not-so-immediate friends, have toiled on the project for the past several months, said project has been identified, mostly by the Colonel, as "The Colonel's Cabin on Lake Brenda."

The name is, frankly, meant more as irritant than identifier.

The Colonel's winsome bride -- the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda -- takes issue with the name.  Honestly, she takes issue with the entire project.  Several months ago, she caught the Colonel drawing up plans on his project clipboard.

"What are you working on now, Knucklehead?" The Colonel could tell that Miss Brenda was genuinely excited about the Colonel's newest building plans, because she was standing with her hands on her hips and scowling at the Colonel in that loving way she always disguises her excitement over the Colonel's newest building plans. 

"The Colonel is planning on building a cabin down on Lake Brenda," the Colonel answered, not looking up from his architectural labors.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," Miss Brenda intoned in her special way of disguising her excitement over another of the Colonel's unending building projects -- you know: hands on hips, scowl. 

"But," the Colonel responded, "what else am I going to do with all that lumber in the solar kiln?"

"That's not what I'm talking about, Knucklehead.  I wish you wouldn't refer to yourself as 'the Colonel.'  It's like fingernails on a chalkboard every time I hear it."  

"Oh, Sweetie!  The Colonel just adores the way you lovingly disguise your true feelings.  You are SO funny!"

"Okay, Knucklehead.  Whatever.  Now, what is it you're planning on building?"

"Gonna build a cabin on Lake Brenda."

"I really wish you wouldn't do that."

"Why not?  It'll be fun. Besides, there's a couple dozen logs at the sawmill waiting to be cut and there's no room left in the solar kiln.  Gotta do something with the lumber."

"That's not what I'm talking about.  I don't think you can seriously call that mud puddle down there a 'lake.' And, I'm not too keen on it being named after me."

"Well, 'Lake Brenda' wasn't the Colonel's first choice, either.  But, you didn't like it when I tried to call it 'Colonel Rebel's Reservoir.'  And, you refused to let me call the dam 'the Colonel's Causeway.'"

"Whatever.  Just don't refer to that scum-covered waterhole as 'Lake Brenda' in public.  It's hard enough holding my head up in town after the Memorial Day speech you gave last year.  You're lucky you haven't been sued for slander."

"What part of the speech was 'slanderous'?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe when you called the Mayor a 'woke revisionist'."

"Well, she is!"

"You are incorrigible!"

The Colonel was stunned by the word.  "Wow!  Great vocabulary word, Sweetthing! And, not only did you use it correctly in a sentence, but you also correctly identified the Colonel's greatest character trait."

"Well," Miss Brenda replied, "let's not get on to the subject of your character.  I don't have my Funk and Wagnull handy."   

"Wow!," the Colonel exclaimed.  "You are on fire!  A great vocabulary word and a 'Laugh-In' reference!  Oh, how I do love our witty repartee!"

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. You know you love it, too."      

"No.  Thank you for not referring to yourself as 'the Colonel.'"  

"Oh. Pardon the Colonel for his lingual lapse."

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda let out a long, low sigh in that way she feigns exasperation with the Colonel, when he knows she is really just disguising her inexpressible love and admiration. 

"Well," she asked finally, having exhausted her feigned exasperation disguising her inexpressible love and admiration, "why do you need a cabin?

"Need?  The Colonel doesn't 'need' anything.  He just wants to build a cabin."

"Well, Knucklehead, your cabin is going to need a bed.      

 

Passing Away

The Colonel is a patient man. Advanced age does that to a person.

There was a time when he was the pure, living definition of the word: impatient.  Back then the Colonel had time for neither physical nor philosophical dawdlers.  You either got with his program or you turned in your Colonel's Club membership card and suffered disenfranchisement of any of the rights and privileges thereunto pertaining. 

As you can imagine, the Colonel was a lonely man.  The Colonel's Club was less a club and more a one-man band whose beat paced his marching only.  But that didn't keep him from beating the drum loudly and expecting all within earshot to fall in line behind and get in step.

The vigor with which the Colonel wields his mallet has lessened over the years.  And..., he doesn't care nearly as much about the fact that nobody is marching in step behind him.  But, there have been some interesting additions to his parade of late -- stragglers stepping off the curb and closing the wide gap behind.

Take, for instance, the Colonel's stance on the National Football League.  Now, football is the Colonel's favorite game.  Right behind football on the Colonel's list of favorite games there's...  Nope.  That's it.  It's football and nothing else.  

Baseball?  The Colonel would rather watch slug races.

Hockey?  Yankee fistfight.

Soccer?  Egregious waste of a football field.  

Basketball?  Nap time.

The Colonel believes that the game of football is a successful life's perfect metaphor.  Teamwork.  Controlled violence to achieve dominance over a likewise violent competitor.  Combined arms approach to the battlefield.  The muscle-memory value of repetitious training.  Snap deviations when the plan isn't working.  It's all there.   

So, for the Colonel to completely stop watching the NFL nearly two decades ago...  Well, that tells you a little something about what he feels about the situation.

The Colonel stopped watching professional football when it started becoming more about the players than the team.  The Colonel despises Fantasy Football -- the root of all rot in the NFL, in his not-so-humble opinion.

And, now that the NFL has become more a showcase for petulant players' social justice (a term that is about neither the good of all society nor about real color-blind justice) platform, than about a city's or region's pride in it's TEAM, the trickle of disenchanted fans turning off the NFL has become a torrent.

The Colonel says, "Welcome aboard."

There's also something else the Colonel wants to say but he won't...

He shouldn't...

Wouldn't be polite...

Might upset somebody...

Oh, well.  He can't restrain himself.

"What. Took. You. So. Long!!!" 

Did you really believe -- twenty years ago -- that professional football would weather the glorification of individuals over team?  That the NFL would be better for it?  Really?  

So, it actually took entire groups of individuals (can't really call what the NFL fields, teams, anymore) putting a rapist's name on their helmets and disrespecting the hundreds of thousands of American fighting men and women -- of all segments of the most diverse society on the planet --  whose mortal remains were honorably and respectfully covered by the flag during whose anthem they kneel, to make you walk away in disgust.  Have you really not been disgusted before now?  Really?  

At some point in the not too distant future, our nation will be at war with a near-peer competitor who will pose a truly existential threat.  The All Volunteer Force (actually the All Recruited Force -- there is a significant difference) that has provided forces with which our Republic's political leadership (the Colonel uses that term as loosely as a baby's diaper deposit) has dallied in limited objective (read: non-decisive) military adventures abroad over the past half century will not be sufficient for that fight.  When real war comes to the heartland -- the fight with a near-peer competitor will see physical effects across the fruited plains -- every citizen and temporary resident of our Republic will suddenly find themselves deeply involved.  

Think the Wuhan Virus pandemic has been disruptive?  You ain't seen nuthin' that will compare to entire regions of our great nation engulfed in kinetic warfighting effects.  

The NFL will cease to exist.

It already has, as far as the Colonel is concerned.                  

  

The Great Shagginess

The Colonel hasn't been out in public much lately, but current photographic evidence perused on social media indicates that it has gotten a little shaggy out there.  

The Chicom Cold has shuttered our barber shops, and we've become so starved for any novel stimulation, intellectual or not, that head hygiene and grooming experimentation has become a widespread epidemic...

...too soon?

    

And..., the Colonel has to admit... he's become part of The Great Shagginess.  

There once was a time that the Colonel's haircut motto was "once a week, whether needed or not."  In fact, early in his career as a ruggedly handsome soldier of the sea, he bought a set of electric hair clippers and began cutting his own hair (or, at least what was left of it due to early onset follicle failure) every Monday morning shortly after reveille.  Set on the lowest level, the Colonel's clippers cropped his blond mane so tightly against his shiny grape that on sunny days he was occasionally buzzed by search and rescue helicopters.   

That $20 investment paid for itself in the first month.  The Colonel has been plowing the savings on barber shop visits (and comb purchases) back into his gunpowder addiction ever since.  He hasn't counted either recently, but the Colonel is relatively certain that the number of hairs left on the top of his brain housing group are greatly outnumbered by the lead launchers in his gun safe.

It occurred to the Colonel the other day that he had the wherewithal to be of service to his fellow man and do his part to fight back against the scourge of The Great Shagginess.

The Colonel's best friend -- the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda -- came looking for the Colonel the other day,

"There you are, knucklehead," she cooed, finally finding the Colonel sitting in a chair at the end of the long drive winding from the Big House down to the county road.

(Some may think her tone was more condescending that coo, but most don't know the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda like the Colonel does.  One man's condescension is another man's coo.)

"What are you doing?  And, why do you have your generator down here."

"Silly dear," the Colonel cooed (the Colonel doesn't dare condescend to the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda), "they won't run without electricity."

"What won't run?"

"These," the Colonel answered, holding his hair clippers aloft in his palms as if presenting an offering to the gods of shorndom.  

"Your hair clippers?  You haven't touched those in over two months?  Why are you cutting your hair down here at the road?"

"The Colonel is not cutting his own hair, dear."

"Well, why not?  You're starting to look like you just staggered down out of the mountains at the end of a long winter."

The Colonel ignored the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's lack of geographic knowledge -- there's not a mountain anywhere near staggering distance from his vast land holdings here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere.  Instead, he addressed her query regarding his operational pause in the grooming standards attack, 

"Haven't had a reason to get a haircut or shave, lately.  You know the Colonel only shaves when he goes to church, and we haven't been allowed to meet in person for the past two months, so..."

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda stood in front of her man with her arms crossed in that endearing way that the Colonel knows means that she's trying very hard to fathom the depths to which her love for him dives.

"I'm trying very hard to remember why I love you," she stated in the matter of fact way she reserves for the moments when she attempts to control her emotions.

The Colonel was beginning to grow uncomfortable with his bride's struggle to find the right words to express her love and admiration for her man, "That's okay, dear.  The Colonel knows you love him.  But, as important as that is to you at this moment, there is a much more important mission on tap."

The Colonel stood and gestured to the scrap of plywood propped up by a feed bucket at his feet.  In the Colonel's practiced military all-caps he had printed,

FREE HAIRCUTS

The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda looked at the sign and then back at the Colonel.  The light in her eyes dimmed ever so slightly as if something in the very depths of her soul had just been placed on life support.  She uncrossed her arms and let them fall to her sides in the dainty way that the Colonel knows means she is surrendering to his superior logic and intellect.

"Knucklehead, you aren't a barber.  You can't give haircuts without a license."

The Colonel raised his right index finger in his time-worn signal that he is about to achieve and maintain argument superiority, "Don't need a license -- ain't chargin' nothin'.  Besides, it's a free country."    



       

Shocked and Delayed

The Colonel begs permission to interrupt your holiday festivities (Merry Christmas, by the way) with this important announcement:

December 31, 2019 is not (the Colonel says again, NOT) "the last day of the decade."

The Colonel knows this comes as quite a shock to many of you recovering from other shocks received lately.

Some of you were shocked to find that, despite the fulfillment of your congressperson's pre-inaugural impeachment promise, Donald Trump is still ensconced in the Oval Office.  Understanding just a little bit of our Constitution would have insulated you from that voltage.

Some of you were shocked to see that a college football team, from another state, to which you rabidly claim allegiance -- even though you've never been within 50 miles of the campus, wear a Walmart-bought affinity T-shirt, and proclaim "We whupped y'all!" after every win -- didn't make the play-offs this year.  Don't worry, Bama Bandwagon Boors, there's still a few LSU T-shirts left at your local Wally World -- Chinese sweatshops are crankin' 'em out faster than you can ask, "Siri, where is Baton Rouge?"   

Some of you (like the Colonel his own self) were shocked to see that Ole Miss, whose administration has been so active in the erasure of any name, monument, or tradition that even remotely infringes on the tender feelings of whiny social justice warriors and tyrannical political correctness priests, would, after dismissing one coach for "indiscretions" and his successor for "failure," hire a new coach for whom those characterizations are career hallmarks.  

The Colonel will admit that he is responsible for his own exposure to the voltage in this case -- he started to care about Ole Miss again.  Bad habits are the hardest to break. 

Some of you were shocked (as was the Colonel) to hear that the new "sixth" branch of the military services -- the Space Force -- would fall under the Department of the Air Force.  Hello?!?  Anybody whose ever watched an episode of Star Trek knows that Space belongs to the Navy.

Plus, the Department of the Navy already has experience with managing rouge elements it knows absolutely nothing about.

Looking at you, fellow jarheads.


Fear not, gentle readers, the Colonel is getting to the point of this prattle.

In introduction of that point, a history lesson.

The year was 1999.  As that year drew to a close, breathless (and brainless) commentators, prognosticators, and charlatans began an ever-increasing drum beat of retrospection and prediction regarding the impending end of the millennium.  There was just one little problem.

They were a whole year early.

The second millennium -- the second set of one thousand years, as established and counted by Christian societies (and a Roman emperor) --  actually ended on the 31st of December in the year of our Lord 2000.  January 1, 2001 was the first day of the new millennium.  

Shocking!

Here's even more shocking news:  Each decade ends in a year with the numeral 0 (not 9) at the end.

The Colonel knows that some of you are skeptical of his claim.  So, try this.  Take out ten one dollar bills from your wallet and place them on a clean, flat surface proximal to the reach of your arms.  Grasp the stack of bills in one hand and count them out as if you were paying yourself one dollar for each year you lived this decade.  One dollar for 2011, one more for 2012, and so on.  When you get to 2019, how many one dollar bills will you have counted out?

C'mon, this is easy math -- even for the Colonel.  Doesn't even require taking off your shoes.

The answer is: NINE.

"But, but..., Colonel," you argue, "you started the decade at 2011.  That's a trick!"

Yes, yes he did. And, no it's not a trick, because the first year of the present decade was 2011.

Okay, the Colonel knows this is hard to take at face value.  So, let's try this experiment with the same parameters, but in a different setting.

Let's imagine that we are shepherds working on the outskirts of a wide spot in the road south of Jerusalem, called Bethlehem.  We had a life-changing experience ten years ago, and we have accounted for the passing of the years since by numbering them as each began.  For example, one shepherd says to the next, "We are in the first year AA (after angels)".  We are at the beginning of the tenth year since that startling night.  What year is it?

For the LSU and Bama grads struggling with this, there's a not-so subtle clue in the eighth word of the second to last sentence above.

For the rest of you, congratulations for saying the correct answer, "Ten" out loud and startling those around you (even though your shame if caught reading the Colonel's drivel probably means you're sitting somewhere alone).  

Now let's assume that we shepherds only get paid at the end of each decade.  The not-so bright shepherd (you know, the one wearing the "Feel the Bern" tunic) announces at sundown of 31 December 09, "See y'all (well..., he is from south of Jerusalem) later.  I'm headed to town to collect my wages."  He shows back up at camp at sunrise on 1 January 10 after having made a trip to town to see the boss and complains bitterly to the rest of the lads (and lassies) that "I worked the whole decade of the 00's for that scrooge and he only paid me for nine years!"  

So, what do the rest of us do?  Does the old retired centurion stand up and bellow, "Follow me boys (and girls)!  We're on strike!  Let the boss tend his own stinkin' sheep!"   

Or, do we shake our heads at the utter stupidity of the members of the DSJ (Democratic Socialists of Judea) and go back to poking sticks in the fire?

See, there is no year 0 in our modern calendar.  It begins as 1 A.D. (or C.E.).  So, in the first decade A.D., only 9 years had elapsed at the end of 9 A.D.  In the first century A.D., only 99 years had elapsed at the end of 99 A.D.  In the first millennia A.D., only 999 years had elapsed at the end of 999 A.D.  In the second millennia A.D., only 1999 years had elapsed at the end of the year 1999.  

So, the current millennium did not begin on 1 January 2000.  It actually began on 1 January 2001.  And, the current decade did not begin on 1 January 2010, but 1 January 2011, and will not end until midnight on 31 December2020 / 1January 2021. 

Here's where the Colonel has to admit that what he just told you may not be 100% true.

For about 1600 years the western world marked the passing of days and years using a calendar commissioned by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.  This Julian Calendar began each new year on 1 January, but during the medieval period western Europe, Britain in particular, began to begin each year in the middle of March (for various reasons associated with either solar cycles or religious holiday associations).  The Julian Calendar did account for the scientific fact that the earth revolves around the sun every 365 and almost a quarter days (365.24 to be more exact), by adding an extra day to February every four years.   

The problem with this quick fix was that over centuries that .01 day (roughly 11 minutes) error added extra days to the actual count of days elapsed.  By the middle of the 16th Century A.D., that .01 day error had badly un-synced the human calendar and actual solar calendar.   A calendar commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII (no relation to the Colonel) in 1582, attempted to correct the flaw in the Julian Calendar.  The Gregorian Calendar included a more accurate calculation that added an extra day to February in years divisible by four...

...unless the year is also divisible by 100.

The Colonel ain't makin' this up, and it gets even more complicated.

If the leap year is divisible by 100, but also divisible by 400, the leap day is added anyway.  

Makes the Colonel want to watch "Catch 22" and "Monty Pithon's the Holy Grail" again.  For the umpteenth time each...

Viewed as a nefarious "Papist Plot" in many quarters, the Gregorian Calendar was not uniformly adopted across the western world.  By the time Britain (and her far flung colonies) got around to adopting the Gregorian Calendar (nearly two centuries after its introduction), the British Empire's calendar was out of sync with the rest of the western world by nearly two whole weeks.  

An act of Parliament adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, and the British had to jump from 2 September to 14 September to adjust to it.  

The Colonel kids thee not.  

While lots of British subjects were unhappy with the loss of those 11 days for a variety of reasons that you can well imagine, Ben Franklin is reported to have remarked favorably about the idea of going to bed on the night of the 2nd of September and not having to get out of bed until the morning of the 14th.  

The Colonel kinda knows the feeling -- when he hit the rack last night he was 22.  When he woke up this morning, the Colonel was four weeks shy of his 64th birthday.

And, if you think that the calendar we are using today (it's the Gregorian Calendar, by the way) is keeping perfectly modern track of time..., well..., you're wrong.   The eggheads that make their living studying the numbers tell us that, if we keep the Gregorian Calendar until then, by the year 4909 (in which the Colonel might not be still be pestering you with his posts) a twenty-six second error per year will result in the Gregorian Calendar being one full day ahead of the solar calendar.
    
Anyway...,  the Colonel's bottom line, regardless whether we've kept track of the actual count of days elapsed since the inception of the Julian Calendar (and it's minor Gregorian modification), is that all of you breathlessly celebrating that "last" this and that "of the decade" are a year early.

The Colonel thinks he'll settle the matter in his own life by burning all the calendars within reach of his frost-nipped and tendinitis-ravaged finger tips.

Oh, and a year-long nap might be in order, as well.

See you next decade!        


                     

Stand and Be Remembered

Photo by Jeff Widener; AP

Of all of the images of all of the revolutions (successful or not), the one that remains foremost in the eye of the Colonel's military mind is of an unarmed Beijing civilian stopping a column of tanks in the vicinity of the city's central Tiananmen Square.

The standoff actually occurred the day after the Chinese authorities had used tanks and armored personnel carriers to literally crush a student-led pro-reform protest movement that had occupied Tiananmen Square.

The movement was not spontaneous.  Revolutions (and counter-revolutions) rarely are.

Fifty years before, another revolution had culminated at Tiananmen.  On the first of October in 1949, one of the most ruthless in a long line of ruthless Chinese tyrants -- Mao Zedong -- stood on the ramparts of the Tiananmen Gate to Beijing's ancient Forbidden City and proclaimed an end to the civil war that had pitted his forces against the pro-western Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai Shek.  In the civil war's wake the People's Republic of China (PRC) emerged with Mao's Communist Party at its all-powerful head.

Over the next 25 years, Mao's internal policies and campaigns were responsible for the deaths of as many as 70 million Chinese.   

The first thing Mao did was fundamentally transform Chinese society, by executing one million landowners and redistributing the land to farmers.  Those who favor the socialist tenet of wealth redistribution in our Republic today, have murderous Mao as their patron saint.

Next, Mao purged his own party of any he deemed "rightists."  Led by Mao's future successor -- Deng Xiaoping -- the "Anti-Rightist"campaign resulted in the executions of half  million and  the social and political isolation of a million more whose power and influence were seen by Mao as a threat to his vision for China. 

The "Great Leap Forward" and the "Cultural Revolution" campaigns that followed were designed to both "purify" the communist ideology of the PRC and catapult China's economy from its primarily agrarian foundation to an industrial powerhouse.  The central government redirected farmers to factories -- crops failed, millions starved to death.  Those who would transform our Republic's economy from decentralized capitalism to state-planned socialism have Mao's excellent examples to follow.  

At the height of Mao's political correctness campaign, which he called the "Cultural Revolution," his student-led para-military "Red Guards" roamed the cities, attacking any who were deemed politically incorrect or anti-Maoist.  Mao used the Red Guards to help wipe the cultural slate clean -- the crazed children were cynically steered by their "educators" to attack and destroy any vestiges of pre-revolutionary China.  Statues of famous Chinese ancestors were torn down.  Shrines and cemeteries were desecrated.  Millions were killed or sent to "re-education" camps that made Hitler's work camps look like Club Med by comparison.  George Soros' paramilitary ANTIFA and the self-appointed priesthood of political correctness and social justice on today's American college campuses have the Red Guards as a model. 

When Mao Zedong died in 1976, he was eventually succeeded (after an intra-party power struggle) by Deng Xiaoping.  Deng, who had led Mao's ideological purification programs, seemingly reversed Maoist course and embarked on a number of economic reforms designed to decentralize market planning and allow capitalist activity in industry.  But, Deng refused to allow any discussion of political reform.

Introducing capitalism in a tyrannically socialist society is like raising a tiger cub in an apartment -- the big cat may not be living in a jungle, but it's still a tiger.  By the end of the decade, Deng's capitalist tiger cub was a roaring adult, ushering in a rapidly increasing standard of living and a burgeoning urban middle class.  Foreign investment -- prohibited under Mao -- exploded under Deng, and with it came increasing exposure to the cultural and political freedoms enjoyed by the non-socialist world.  Educational institutions, which had withered under Mao, sprang to life under Deng, and students (many allowed to study abroad for the first time in 30 years) were exposed to radical professors who taught the natural rights of man and democratic ideals still anathema to the PRC's ruling elite.

As Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese politburo kept a tight lid on political dissent, the children chaffed and yearned for freedom.  A student-led reform movement blossomed into a full-blown revolt by the beginning of 1989.  By the end of May, the world was transfixed as CNN beamed images from Tiananmen Square as tens of thousands of protesters unveiled their 10-foot tall "Goddess of Liberty" modeled on America's Statue of Liberty.

Then the troops moved in.  

As many as a thousand unarmed young people were killed on the 4th of June as divisions of the ironically misnamed People's Liberation Army cleared the square.  Scores of civilians (many parents of the children in Tiananmen Square) were shot as they streamed toward the square to reinforce the protesters. 

By the morning of the 5th of June -- 30 years ago, today -- it was all over but the recriminations.

As a column of tanks attempted to leave the city center, a lone man in a white shirt, armed with nothing but shopping bags, stood in the middle of the broad avenue.  First pictures show him standing there well before the tanks roll into the frame.  He remains stock still as the single file of 50-ton armored vehicles roll up to him.  

He could easily have been another of the hundreds of unarmed civilians hundreds killed in the massacre.  

What prevented the lead tank commander from effortlessly running him down? 

Was he shocked, disgusted, or traumatized by the events of the night before?

We'll never know.

But, we do know that he was unwilling to add this one more man to the tally.  He even tried to steer around the civilian blocking his way.  The standing man simply stepped over and blocked the tank's path.

Then, the man climbed up on the tank.  The hatch opens and a discussion ensues with the tank commander.

The Colonel can guarantee you that the discussion was not a pleasant one for either man.  It almost certainly wasn't about the price of tea.

We'll never know what was said, but the Colonel believes that the standing man was appealing to the tank commander to lead his unit in support of the political reform protests.

Standing man climbed back down off of the tank and resumed his position front and center blocking its path forward down the avenue.  

He stood alone.  

Thousands of civilians were gathered hundreds of yards away, but not one joined him.  

Eventually, two men ran in, grabbed the standing man, and hustled him off and into the crowds.  To this day, no reliable information is available to identify the man or verify his fate.

Eleven years after the event -- in November of 2000 -- the Colonel stood in Tiananmen Square.  He was on a short vacation tour to Beijing with the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda at his side.  Despite her pleading to behave himself, the Colonel couldn't help but ask the young Chinese lady serving as their tour guide / minder,

"So, Li, what happened here in '89?"

The Colonel kids thee not, her response was, "Nothing."

But then, stealing a furtive glance in the direction of the nearest squad of soldier's on the square, she added quietly, "Some criminals occupied the square for a few days and the army came in and moved them out."

The Chinese authorities still tightly control the history of the crushed reform movement.  Any media that would show pictures or contain discussions of the truth is heavily censored.  

It is politically incorrect to study history in China.           

  

Without a Clue

The Colonel is one Mississippian who is glad that the Union was saved.

He is an American, a citizen of the United States, and proud of it. 

But, more than pride, the Colonel feels an overwhelming sense of gratitude and privilege that he was born in the greatest, most free nation the world has ever seen.

He can make that judgement and feel that way about it because he has seen the rest of the world up close and personal.  We Americans take for granted the freedoms and opportunities about which the vast majority of the rest of humanity can only dream and for which they yearn wistfully.

The Colonel knows in his heart and head that if the Confederacy had won their independence 150 years ago, there today would almost certainly be no American superpower.  The world would be a far different one without the great nation that emerged from the crucible of civil war cleansed and re-united.  The dark ages that followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire would have have looked down-right bright and cheery compared to the darkness of a 20th Century without the United States.        

In the early days of his adulthood (and he self-refers as an adult with respect to age alone), the Colonel swore an oath of allegiance and defense to the Constitution of that Union — one to which he is bound until death. He likes to think that he would have remained loyal to that oath had he been a commissioned officer in the US Army in the spring of 1861. 

Had the Colonel been a student at Ole Miss then, he would almost certainly have joined the University Greys and gone to war as a Confederate -- almost every student did.  And, here’s the thing — he wouldn’t have had a clue about what he was really doing. Most young men don’t get a clue until late in their twenties. 

In distant retrospect, historians casually ascribe noble social and political motivations to the boys who go off to war.  The grim, nasty, horrible, stinking battlefield truth is young men don't go to war for some politician's agenda. They join, and remain in, the ranks, not out of any sense of higher purpose -- except for one... 

Each other.  

Their letters from camp are filled with yearning for home and lots of reference to the the nobility of their "cause," to be sure.  The Colonel knows, because he has penned hundreds of letters home, that what a soldier writes home is most often what he believes those at home want to hear.  But, what they don't put in writing is the one thing they find the hardest to put in words -- their love of their comrades in arms.

It is for each other, that young men fight.  Trust the Colonel on this.   

In the early years of the last century, as the American South crawled out from under a heavy blanket of bitterness and defeat to join the new day of American exceptionalism, the one over-riding emotion remained a great sorrow for the boys without a clue who had marched off to the stirring tunes of "Dixie" and the "Bonnie Blue Flag" and disappeared forever.  Southern boys without a clue  fell on battlefields and died in diseased camps far from family and loved ones who waited and watched in vain for their return.  

A southern boy without a clue who died on the battlefields of Shiloh, Antietam, or Gettysburg was often left on the field where he fell as his surviving comrades yielded the field to northern boys without a clue.      

Northern boys fell too, of course.  But, in victory, their remains were far more often buried and marked honorably.

A southern boy's grave was often a mass interment without any identifying markings.

When someone without a clue looks at a war memorial -- from any war -- what they often default to is their bias regarding the righteousness of that war.  But a war memorial is not a celebration of the war or its "causes."  A war memorial immortalizes the names of the mortal boys without a clue who advanced into the blazing guns -- not in response to a politician's speech, but in loving response to his comrade's simple "let's go."  

A vocal minority of the current crop of children -- young men and women without a clue -- matriculating at Ole Miss, stirred up by self-appointed social justice priests masquerading as teachers -- who themselves have not the first clue regarding what it means to serve in the ranks -- are agitating for the removal of the war memorial that stands prominently at the center of the campus.  

These same self-appointed social justice priests masquerading as teachers have been at the forefront of a decades-long insurgent campaign to strip the University of Mississippi of any reference to the history of the school that they deem -- in their infinitely tyrannical socialist, politically correct wisdom -- not progressive. 

Mascots, flags, and songs have fallen to their zeal to rid the world of anything they feel -- emphasis on the unlearned concept of "feeling" -- is offensive.  

Now, they find a memorial to southern boys who died in a war they didn't start offensive.  

They have crossed a line on the other side of which stands one infuriated United States Marine Colonel. 

They claim that the "cause" for which they marched and died was not just, demonstrating in their self-righteous, virtue-signally fervor that they have not the first clue about justice.  

The Colonel denounces them with every fiber of his being.  Were he still prone to the profanity that marked his former lack of self-discipline and resistance to the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the Colonel would easily make this post one that would make Patton's ghost blush.  

The statue on the campus of Ole Miss makes no claim as to any righteousness of the cause for which the Mississippi boys marched to war. It simply memorializes those who died and are mostly buried in unmarked (sometimes mass) graves far from home. 

The statue on the Ole Miss campus was paid for and erected, not by politicians, but by mothers and sisters whose last sight of their boys was their butternut blending into the ranks of their brothers.  Those mothers and sisters had no marked grave to visit.  We today have only this memorial to remind us, not of the cause, but of the effect of war.     

Leave the memorial alone — remember boys without a clue.

Free the Children

The Colonel is an abolitionist.  He fervently hopes that he will live long enough to participate in the coming war to free the children, and the subsequent "reconstruction" of states found in rebellion to the Constitution.

In 1860, the people of the United States elected Abraham Lincoln to the office of President.  For several decades prior to his inauguration, the issue of slavery had divided the nation culturally and politically.  Generally speaking, the largely agrarian southern half of the nation viewed slave labor as an economic necessity -- particularly on large acreage plantations.  The much more industrialized (and rapidly becoming more so), and small farm dominated northern half of the nation, which benefited from massive European immigration flows to its manufacturing centers, was far less economically dependent on slave labor.

As the Republic grew, adding new states whose clout in Congress affected the balance of political power, legislative compromises kept a rough political balance between "slave" and "free" states; but the inhumane practice of chattel slavery remained a belying blight on the moral standing of a nation that professed the God-given rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" to "all" men in its founding documents.

As abolitionist fervor grew in the northern states and the southern states felt their 10th Amendment rights ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.") under threat, and sectional tension increased, "slave state" politicians (most of whom were slaveholders -- as opposed to the vast majority of their constituents) saw secession from the Union as the only means of maintaining their socio-economic status quo.

"States Rights!" was the secessionist battle cry.

Of course for the states in rebellion, "states rights" ultimately meant a state's right to maintain the institution of slavery.  The southern canard that the Civil War was fought for "economic reasons" and was "not about slavery" fails to admit that the South's "economic reason" was slavery. 

"Free the slaves!" was the Union battle cry.

But..., not necessarily at first.  "Preserve the Union!" was actually the initial battle cry, reflecting the main war aim of Lincoln and company.  It wasn't until several early battles, far bloodier than anyone had imagined, presaged a long war that would have a far greater cost in men and material than anyone had imagined, that the necessity for wrapping the Union cause in religious fervor became evident.

Abolitionist sentiment, whipped to a religious fever pitch from Northern pulpits, soon became a far more palatable reason for continuing the horrors of war than merely preserving the Union.  The Battle Hymn of the Republic, with its stirring abolitionist themes, actually didn't make an appearance and gain any usage until well into the war    

"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.

       As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free..."

                                                    

In an article "Did Religion Make the American Civil War Worse?" published in August 23, 2015 edition of "The Atlantic" Allen Guelzo wrote,

     "If, in Jefferson’s words, the Constitution had erected a 'wall of separation' between the church and the federal government, there was no corresponding wall between church and culture. Closed off from making policy, churches organized independent societies for Bible distribution, for alcoholism reform, for observance of the Sabbath, and for suppressing vice and immorality. And, they grew. By the time the French liberal Alexis de Tocqueville took his celebrated tour of the United States in the 1830s, he was amazed to find that while 'in the United States religion' has no 'influence on the laws or on the details of political opinions,' nevertheless, 'it directs the mores' and through that 'it works to regulate the state.'"

Guelzo's premise (based in part on books by Harvard president Drew Faust, and Yale’s Harry Stout) was that religious fervor in the mid-1850s was a major contributor to the unprecedented carnage wreaked by the Civil War and that the United States' war aim of preserving the Union, if not initially driven by religious zeal to right a moral wrong, came to that notion as the only way to justify continuance of a war whose horrendous human toll was orders of magnitude beyond what had been expected at its outset.  Guelzo warns,

"A nation guided by realpolitik knows when to cut its losses. A nation blinded by the moral gleam of a 'fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel' and charmed by the eloquence of a president with an uncanny knack for making his assessment of political problems sound like the Sermon on the Mount, obeys no such limitations."

In other words, a sense of a particular immorality, especially a wrong against humanity, buoyed by religious standards and proscriptions, becomes not just casus belli ("cause for war" for you LSU grads), but ultimately the force that propels one side so imbued to victory, no matter the cost.              

In this, the Colonel thinks, is a warning of things to come in our Republic.  

The Colonel believes that a great moral question -- greater even than the inhumanity of slavery which divided our Republic in the early 19th Century and led to the greatest loss of life of any war in our nation's history -- divides our nation today.  He speaks, of course, of the issue of killing a child in the womb.  Just as slavery set afire the hearts of the religious 150 years ago, today's commercialized killing of defenseless children is kindling a like flame.  The Colonel knows; it burns in his, and not much stirs the cold, flinty cinder that passes for a heart deep in the military recesses of his chest.

The Colonel believes a Second American Civil War is all but inevitable.  The sides of the conflict are setting up much like they did 150 years ago.  "States' rights" will again be the secessionist battle cry.  "States' rights" meaning the right to maintain the legality of the commercialized procedure that kills an innocent and completely helpless child in the womb, without limitation.  

Apologists for the procedure that ends an innocent and completely helpless child's life misappropriate the term "slavery," referring to a woman "inconvenienced," "punished," or "handicapped" (their very own words) by carrying an "unwanted" (again, their words) child to full term as a "sexual slave."  Imagine Lincoln's or Martin Luther King, Jr.'s reaction to such a comparison. 

Apologists for the procedure that ends an innocent and completely helpless child's life hang their legal hats on the "settled law" (their words) of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.  In Roe, the majority (in a 7 - 2 decision) ruled that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to end an innocent and completely helpless child's life, but that the state's interests in regulating the procedure that ends an innocent and completely helpless child's life -- the woman's health and the innocent and completely helpless child's viability -- were limited to regulation of the procedure that ends an innocent and completely helpless child's life to the third trimester of pregnancy.

There was a similar law-settling U.S. Supreme Court case prior to the First American Civil War.  In the 1857 Supreme Court case, Dred Scott v. Sandford , the majority (in a 7 - 2 decision) ruled that people in the United States who had been imported as slaves or were offspring of slaves, whether free or slave, were not American citizens and could not sue in federal court. The Court ruled that Congress lacked power to ban slavery in the U.S. territories, and that the rights of slaveowners were constitutionally protected by the Fifth Amendment because slaves were categorized as property.   

In other words, men and women of African descent were NOT afforded the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  A clearly outrageous claim, since repudiated by a catastrophic war and amendments to the Constitution.  What was "settled law" precedent by an overwhelming majority of the United States Supreme Court, was swept aside in a tsunami of blood and humane reason buoyed by religious belief in the sanctity of all human life.  

Never mind that most Constitutional jurists and scholars believe  that Roe's constitutional underpinnings are fabricated out of the thin air of convenience rather than any studied jurisprudence.  No, we are to accept it as "settled law" and an enshrined right simply because it has been on the books for two generations.

By that reasoning, the heinous and inhumane institution of racial segregation should still be accepted practice.  In 1896, the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Fergusson the majority ruled (7 - 1) that, in accordance with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment (the very same Constitutional Amendment from which the 1973 session of the Supreme Court drew a hitherto unknown right to privacy on which to base a woman's right to a procedure to end the life of an innocent and helpless child), states could practice racial segregation of public facilities as long as the denied race had access to roughly equal public facilities of their own.  

Outrageous, no? 

And yet, Plessy was the settled law of the land for three generations.  The "separate but equal" precedent of Plessy was unanimously (9 - 0, for you LSU grads) overturned by the Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.  

That's right, segregation was settled law for fifty-eight years.  

Frankly, the Colonel can not fathom the depths of depravity one must go to place an innocent and helpless child's right to life below that of a man's right to drink from the water fountain of his choice. 

So, here's what the Colonel believes is on the horizon for our Republic:

As more and more judges and justices are appointed to the courts of our lands based on loyalty to the Constitution instead of subversion and perversion of its protections of liberty (of all persons) and prohibitions of government tyranny, the injustices and harm done over the last half century by judges and justices legislating from the bench will be overturned and reversed as surely as Brown overturned Plessy.

This, of course will not sit well with those who prefer personal convenience over constitutionality.  The Colonel refers to those socialists who couldn't care less about the Constitution and who have congregated in a minority of states that are increasingly hostile to the federal government's enforcement of the Constitution in matters of life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness for its CITIZENS.  When Roe, and other cherished socialist decisions, are challenged and lost, the socialist legislatures of those states will take more and more anti-federal steps, the likes of which will make the current anti-federal sanctuary laws look like child's play.  

The federal government's hand will eventually be forced. 

Federal troops will be sent to restore constitutionality.

Don't think it can happen?  Look at Little Rock, Arkansas in 1956 or Oxford, Mississippi in 1962.

What's the worse case scenario?  Socialist-governed state secession from the Union.  Want to talk about precedent?  Try Fort Sumter and the next four years of carnage on for size.

The official United Nations estimate of the death toll of the legal Atlantic slave trade in the 18th and 19th Centuries is seventeen million.  That number eclipses the loss of life during the First American Civil War by over 20 times.  

Nearly fifty million innocent and completely helpless children have lost their lives to the legalized and, shamefully, commercialized practice of abortion.  That number eclipses the loss of life in all of America's wars by nearly a factor of 40.

The Colonel is okay with a Second American Civil War to free the children, and the subsequent reconstruction of the socialists found in rebellion to the Constitution.  It's what he is trained for.   Heck, it's what he swore a solemn oath to do.  But, if you aren't trained or sworn to that end, perhaps there's another way.

How about we compromise?

What if instead of the federal government subsidizing the commercial killing of innocent and completely helpless children, that money was instead set aside to fund the adoption of those children by people who desperately want them?

Might just derail the coming train wreck that will be the Second American Civil War.  

Of course, that would ruin the chance for the Colonel and his kind to march into secessionist territory and stand on the necks of the rebels.  But, that's the nature of compromise.