First, let me say that I have had, and continue to have,
close and dear friends on the other side of the political spectrum from me. I
believe that they have sound beliefs and honest convictions. For example,
concerns about the unbridled growth of government are valid, I believe. Also, I
have found, during my professional career, that if one’s job is to write
regulations, one tends to write regulations, whether they are needed or not. On
the other hand, most agree with me that the climate is changing and that we
need to address the issue.
So, we have many reasonable things to discuss rationally over
a friendly beer or cup of coffee.
That stops, though, at some point. If one belongs to a
political party that dishonors the military service of brave shipmates of mine
like John Kerry or John McCain, then we have a problem, and I feel that I must
acknowledge that, as I acknowledge the mendacity of my liberal colleagues who
dishonor the brave police officers of our country.
I don’t support the morality of what John Kerry and John
McCain were doing in Vietnam. Yet, while they were doing it, I was in the same
military, doing exactly what my country told me to, at the same time, and close
to the same place. I don’t support the morality of what my country had me
doing, but, like those two heroes of mine, I did it because my country asked it
of me. I didn’t think up the Vietnam War. Neither did John Kerry or John
McCain. The Vietnam War was thought up by men who valued real estate above honor—men
like Robert E. Lee. It was prosecuted by people like myself who believed service
to their country shouldn’t be questioned.
So the two sailors did their duty. One survived the experience of war and went home. One had his plane shot
down. Both then
achieved their moments of greatness. John Kerry spoke out against sending more of
America’s finest young men and women to die in an unjust war. “How do you ask a
man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” he asked.
John McCain spent five and a half years being brutally treated
in a prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam. At one point therein, he was
offered the opportunity to go home, due to the fact that that he was the son of
an admiral who served honorably in “the good war.” The publicity would have
greatly enhanced the international status of his captors.
“No,” said John McCain, “Not unless you release the other
prisoners as well.”
Vietnam veterans have become used to, over the years, a lack
of gratitude from their country for the service to it during that miserable “police
action.”
None were ready, however, for the sight of a political party
saying that John Kerry and John McCain were deserving of shame for their
service, Kerry because he spoke “truth to power,” and McCain because he was “shot
down.”
I hang my head in shame over this. We all should.
I’m not asking my friends on the other side of the political
divide to abandon the valid beliefs of their party. I’m asking them to root out
the evildoers who have taken it over. Replace the odious serpents that have
hijacked the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower. As
the greatest of them said, “We are not
enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained
it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory,
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union,
when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
It’s only a small step from the wrong side to the right side
of history. Let us all believe again in honor above party, and let’s all go home
together.
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