It Takes Courage

We laid the body of Staff Sergeant Casey Crates to rest today. He was killed over Memorial Day weekend when the aircraft transporting him to a reconnaissance mission in Iraq crashed, killing all aboard. His mother, a widow, accepted the flag with grace and dignity... and strength beyond what I could have summoned.

Hers is the kind of strength that made this country great. The kind of sacrifice without bitterness that marks a patriot. Casey's Mom knows that freedom is not free. She knew it before, but now she knows just how much it costs. She knows because she's footing the bill. Casey's dad died a few years ago, he and Casey are buried side by side in a country cemetery south of Tacoma. A lonely woman will probably visit that place many times before she is called home. That kind of life takes courage.

The ancient Greeks concept of the soul was that it was the sum of thought, learning, capability, character or lack of it, and your attitude and fortitude.

Casey Crates was a superlative professional.
He always wore a smile.
He was fearless.
He was a mission hound. (Was always willing to volunteer)
He loved and took good care of his mother.
His soul was full of the qualities we refer to as virtues.

According to Romans 13, God made civil government his Agent of Wrath to punish the wrongdoer. Casey Crates was an Agent of Wrath and he had the soul of a warrior through and through. His body lies in the ground, but his soul has joined with the risen warriors. God loves warriors because God is a warrior. And the war between Virtue and Evil continues to rage. We do not pronounce judgment on the enemy, that's God's job. Our job is to set up the meeting.

So all of us Agents of Wrath will lock away and treasure the memory of Casey Crates. We will strap on our assault gear, communications gear, and our body armor. We will fill our magazines with ammo and we will sight in our lasers and optics. We will leave the relative security of our compounds with death in one hand and courage in the other and we will hunt down the evildoer in whatever hole he's hiding in that we may deliver him up for judgment.

More of us will lose our earthly bodies in this fight. Those that live will savor life and treasure the service of those that gave all. And for those of you that might want to say anything negative about Casey's sacrifice, this country, it's flag, or my President on this day, better not do it where I can get to you... because I'm in a foul mood. I resent the fact that Casey's been taken away but Alec Baldwin continues to vex us. A hundred hollywood phonies couldn't begin to tip the cosmic scales when assayed against a Casey Crates.

It takes courage to continue the fight, especially when the fight will go on for a long time.
On days like this, it takes a lot of courage.

An Interesting Question

Reading here, I found this assertion.

Our problem is that we don't really learn from history. George Santayana said that "those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." The philosopher Hegel said, "What experience and history teach us is this: that people and government never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it." Or as Winston Churchill said, "The one thing we have learned from history is that we don't learn from history."

The refrains that are often heard are: "It can't happen here," or "Our country is different." But the reality is that nations are born and die just like individuals. Their longevity may exceed the average person's lifespan. But the reality is that nations also die.

History has shown that the average age of the great civilizations is around two hundred years. Countries like Great Britain exceed the average while other countries like the United States are just now reaching the average age.

Each of the great civilizations in the world passed through a series of stages from their birth to their decline to their death. Historians have listed these in ten stages.

The first stage moves from bondage to spiritual faith. The second from spiritual faith to great courage. The third stage moves from great courage to liberty. The fourth stage moves from liberty to abundance. The fifth stage moves from abundance to selfishness. The sixth stage moves from selfishness to complacency. The seventh stage moves from complacency to apathy. The eighth stage moves from apathy to moral decay. The ninth stage moves from moral decay to dependence. And the tenth and last stage moves from dependence to bondage.

These are the ten stages through which the great civilizations have gone. Notice the progression from bondage to liberty back to bondage. The first generation throws off the shackles of bondage only to have a later generation through apathy and indifference allow itself to once again be enslaved.

The "interesting question" is: What does the "post-American geopolitical landscape look like?"

There is no doubt that our power is waning. Collectively, we spend far more time tanning and getting our nails done that we do in repairing things. Frivolous pursuits do not build national power. Innovation and exportable goods do. We are percieved as force for morality in an ever-shrinking span of influence. Hollywood will tell you that it's because of our imperialist-militarist behavior, but that's not really it.

It is an "anything goes" moral-relativism that has offended the world the most. Most cultures find narcissistic self-indulgence to be offensive, and the nit-wits of moral relativism are as narcissistically-self-indulgent as you can be. They march through the great capitals shouting: "Forego no pleasure unless it be the result of virtue. Nothing is offensive except for virtue." The rejection of real virtue isolates America far more than any other behavior.

Can a great civilization survive? Maybe, but not in the hands of the ignorant masses. Selfish masses cannot be relied upon to make the hard choices. It is demanding ambitious investors that make nations great. It is those that forego ease and frivolity to toil on farms and in laboratories, the shopkeeper that makes goods available through investment and the engineer that correctly calculates the bearing span that sustains the traffic on a bridge that makes goods cheaper than if they had to be ported by ferry.

I don't believe in a master race, but I believe it is possible to develop a master culture. It's ironic that it can't happen in a safe and serene world. We will develop a master culture when it becomes the only way to survive. We'll make the lazy starve until they produce. Those without the will to earn their way will die off.

I know this all sounds a bit like Friedrich Nietszche. But there's a great deal of benefit in having enough adversity in your life. That which does not kill you, makes you as hard as woodpecker lips.

I'd like to stop the decline of the West, but I don't have the charisma to capture the hearts and minds of the ignunt masses. Perhaps Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishburne can save us.

I Used to Write a Blog

Now I try to keep up with a farm full of weeds, and spend 55 hours a week at work. It's a great job though.

During the recent media dance around the man known as "Deep Throat", we were all reminded of the liberal bogeyman known as the "White House Enemies List". What kind of mind lists enemies?

If you have an enemies list, you've been too busy making enemies.

Hopefully, that doesn't need to be explained.