Flag Raising Remembrances

The iconic image captured by Joe Rosenthal on the summit of Iwo Jima's volcano, Suribachi, stirred a nation and remains the most ubiquitous symbol of American warrior heroism. 

Seventy-four years ago today, four days after storming ashore across fire-swept beaches, a Marine patrol reached the top of the lone mountain overlooking the tiny Japanese-held island astride the American axis of advance to Tokyo. The Marines raised a small American flag. It was replaced shortly thereafter by a much larger flag, the raising of which was caught on film by both a motion picture cameraman and in a snap-shot by Rosenthal. 

The photographic record of the event, including a staged picture of Marines cheering the flag-raising was sent back to the United States and Rosenthal figured that picture would be the one that would make the papers, not the one of the second flag-raising. But, there was something about the almost accidental picture that captured the imagination of everyone Stateside.

The Colonel has heard many speakers try to explain, some very eloquently and convincingly, why the now-famous image has so ingrained itself in the American psyche. Suffice to say, there are certain elements of the picture that lend themselves to tradition, legend, and example. Study the picture and you will quickly see that none of the flag-raisers' faces are discernible -- it is an "everyman" image into which any American can impose his or her self. 

More, every member of the flag-raising team is either in the act of an important function of the mission, or attempting to contribute -- there are no bystanders. None of the group are doing anything particularly heroic--yet, they represent an entire generation of heroes.

The thing the Colonel likes most about the image is that the men are raising and honoring the symbol of our nation. They aren't draping themselves in the flag. They aren't using it for their own purposes of personal aggrandizement. They aren't imposing themselves in front of it. There is a striking sense of humility and subordination of self to the best interests of the nation for which that flag stands. The flag is not perfectly displayed, it's staff has not reached it's pull upright potential -- much like the nation for which it stands.

The Colonel has a painted reproduction of the Iwo Jima Flag Raising in a place of honor on the wall of his study. It was a gift from a team of Marines he had been privileged to lead for three years, from 1990 to 1993. One of those Marines, Master Gunnery Sergeant Vickers, was the artist. It is a most prized possession, among a collection of many prized possessions from the Colonel's active duty career as a Marine.

The Colonel feels a profound sense of sorrow for those Americans whose most prized possessions do not include a representation of the symbol of the nation that has made possession of personal property such a cherished right.

Liberty Loves Company

The Colonel is not a big fan of walls and fences -- they tend to limit the freedom of both physical and spiritual movement within as well as without.
   
It will be no surprise to the half dozen regular readers of posts hereon (who prove by their persistence not so much loyalty as a complete lack of any other use of their valuable rod and cone time) that the Colonel is, among other things that set most folks' teeth on edge, an unapologetic proponent of a revival of the strategic movement that is the second most important reason for our Republic's greatness.

The first most important reason for our Republic's greatness is, of course, the remarkable form of limited government, with expansive protections of individual and state rights, guaranteed by our Constitution. 

The second most important reason for our Republic's greatness, and the spiritual renewal for which the Colonel calls, is expansion.

Expansion is as much a spiritual concept as it is a physical requirement for greatness.   

Were our ancestors as timid and cowed by tyrannical governments as we  -- more concerned about what the dictatorially bureaucratic few allow than by what the God-given rights of man demand -- the United States of America would never have become the greatest nation the world has ever seen (the Colonel has seen most of the other candidates for that laurel either personally or by historical study and can easily attest to our Republic's place at the top of the list).  Had 18th Century Americans obeyed the restrictive dictates of a distant king, they would have remained huddled behind the Alleghenies.  They would have exhausted the resources on the Eastern Seaboard and then stunted both physically and spiritually. 

Our ancestors did not remain huddled behind the Alleghenies.  In fact, well before they officially declared independence, they openly disobeyed that distant king's royal decree that they remain so huddled and headed west.  They crossed the physical wall of the  Alleghenies -- free rangers determined to live free and prosper.

Funny thing about freedom -- it breeds a desire for more of it.  Once a man shakes off the shackles of fear of the unknown, declares his independence of the bureaucratic boundaries imposed upon him by other men, and claims his God-given birthrights of life, liberty, and property, he becomes a truly FREE man.

Free men don't depend on government for their bread.  Free men  collectively agree to limited government in order to provide a level economic playing field, infrastructure, and liberty to earn their bread.  

Free men collectively agree to maintain a common defense against entities that would restrict their freedom.

Another funny thing about freedom -- it breeds a desire to share it with others.  Liberty loves company more than misery does.  A company of free men may share hardship and deprivation, but they will never count it as miserable.  This old Marine infantryman knows a little about voluntary shared hardship and deprivation and he retains only the fond memories of free men toiling to maintain freedom for their families and countrymen, and toiling to secure the freedom of others whose tyrannical governments deny it.  In that there is no real misery.

Today our Republic is embroiled in the myopic inward-focused politics of grasping for a larger slice of the power pie.  It's what happens to all empires when they cease expansion.  An inward focused empire erects walls to protect the power pie.  One power-seeking political faction builds outward-facing walls to maintain the power status quo ("we got ours; get your own").  Another power-seeking political faction builds internal walls to restrict individual freedom ("you got too much; you gotta share it").

When a nation thinks there's only one pie -- forgets or forsakes the ingredients for baking more pies -- it loses the spirit of liberty.  Our nation has lost the spirit of liberty.

When the greatest nation on the planet loses the spirit of liberty, the rest of the world suffers.  The greatest gift a free people give to another people is the ingredients to the freedom pie.  We've forsaken the ingredients for our own unrestricted freedom pie bakery, and worst still, are refusing to share it with others. 

What our nation needs is a return to the ideal that liberty loves company. 

That's why the Colonel is an unapologetic American Expansionist.  He believes, without a shadow of a doubt in his military mind, that the American form of government is the greatest, most liberty-protecting, freedom pie baking form of government the world has ever seen.  He believed that fervently in the halcyon days of his young adulthood when he swore a solemn oath backed by his very life to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic."  That fervor has only grown with time, and he is no less bound by that oath today than he was at 18.

The Colonel believes with every fiber of his being that our Republic must continue to expand if it wants to endure.  

There's a very good reason, the Colonel believes, that the founders of our Republic did not choose to name the new nation rising from the spiritual revival of liberty, the United States of North America.  There was no intent to restrict the blessings of liberty. Certainly not to the eastern seaboard of the North American continent.  Frankly, there was no intent to withhold the blessings of liberty guaranteed by the Constitution to anyone, anywhere.

Article IV, Section 3.1 of the Constitution of the United States, ratified by the original 13 States, specifically foresees the expansion of the Republic -- with only internal limitation as to geographic location: 

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."

States have been Constitutionally admitted to the union of the original 13 States that were physically separated from the then-contiguous states of the Union -- California, Hawaii, and Alaska, for example. 

Other sovereign nations have been Constitutionally admitted to the Union as states -- Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii. 

Most of the current states Constitutionally admitted to the United States subsequent to the original 13 were people living in territories claimed by the United States as a result of occupation following hostilities with other nations -- France, Great Britain, Spain, etc.  The United States still possesses territories liberated and seized as a result of hostilities with Spain -- Guam, American Samoa, and Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific; and Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean -- all of which could Constitutionally be admitted as states.  

Parenthetically, the Colonel believes that no such Constitutional right of statehood belongs to the District of Columbia, as Article I, Section 8.17 of the Constitution makes clear: "The Congress shall have Power To… exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such Dis­trict (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Con­gress, become the Seat of the Gov­ernment of the United States…"  Indeed, Madison, the chief architect of the Constitution, wrote in the Federalist #43 that,

"The indispensable necessity of compleat authority at the seat of Government car­ries its own evidence with it. It is a power exercised by every Legislature of the Union, I might say of the world, by virtue of its general supremacy. Without it, not only the public authority might be insult­ed and its proceedings be interrupted, with impunity; but a dependence of the members of the general Government, on the State comprehending the seat of the Government for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence, equally dishonorable to the Government, and dissatisfactory to the other members of the confederacy."

So, no statehood for the federal District of Columbia.

Statehood, then, for the other U.S. territories if they so desire?  The Colonel says, unequivocally, YES!  And, by logical extension, statehood for future territories in the Americas, or elsewhere,  liberated from tyrannical governments unable or unwilling to guarantee their suffering citizens their God-given rights of life, liberty, and property. 

Our Republic was not founded to be static -- neither physically nor spiritually.  Liberty loves company.  Loving your fellow man means sharing the ingredients of the liberty pie with him.  The Colonel knows of no other constitution in the world that produces a liberty pie as sweet as the one to which he has pledged his own sacred honor.    

What is the logical, honorable extension of the Colonel's argument?

Expansion of the Republic.  We're not the United States of North America.  From the Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, we should be the United States of America!     
       

   

                    

             

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.