National Pride

January 2, 2007

Yesterday I attended the ceremony of religious profession of my daughter. She made her last set of temporary vows prior to be making her final vows to be a Carmelite Sister for the Aged and Infirm. The permanent vows will be made at a Mass ceremony to take place at the Motherhouse in Germantown, New York next month. Yesterday’s ceremonies took place at the nursing home and convent where she’s stationed in Bayside, New York.I managed to find a parking space around the block on this warm rainy day behind a ranch wagon that was obviously owned by a marine. Boldly and proudly emblazoned on the back of his ranch wagon were the words, "Once a Marine, Always a Marine." This has generated a number of thoughts in my mind since seeing that. My first reaction was to say, "You betcha - you are a marine and always will be and will always have every right to be proud of it."Whatever happened to the sense of pride of country that permeated our culture that prevailed in other years? Between the quisling entertainment industry and a media which is more of the propaganda ministry for Al Qaeda than it is a news reporting industry we’ve got more and more people running around like dogs with their tails between their legs. What Hollywood needs is another George M. Cohan and others like him.We get a daily dose of, "Bush has a 34% approval rating." Every car bombing in Iraq gets publicized by the media free of charge for the terrorists within hours after it happens. Comments about the President’s approval rating don’t necessarily mean he’s wrong. It could mean that 66% of the country doesn’t see that we’re in the throes of a new world war. Anyone who doesn’t believe that should bring up the interview on the internet of Osama Bin Laden by a reporter in the Sudan in 1998 where Bin Laden explained the worldwide holy war he had planned to cleanse the world of the "infidel." If that wouldn’t revive memories of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the plans he had to rule the world nothing would. The Bin Laden interview could help people make sense of why radical Islamic terrorists are carrying out their atrocities in London, Indonesia, Spain and other places if they don’t have their heads completely buried in the sand.In the Bin Laden interview that I am citing, he tells of how the terrorists don’t have to defeat the adversary on the battlefield and that it’s only necessary to inflict enough casualties to destroy their resolve. With the help of the media cheering the terrorists on it certainly could be harder and harder to convince him he’s wrong. He used the example of what happened in Somalia in the early part of the ‘90's.In just about every war this nation was ever involved in the nay sayers were quite shrill and outspoken. Less that 20% of the available manpower fought the British in the Revolutionary War. In the War of 1812 Connecticut wanted to secede from the Union. The cry for an end to the Civil War and sentiment to defeat Lincoln for reelection and Elect McClellan in 1864 almost succeeded except for a key battle won by the Union that turned the tide of the electorate in Lincoln’s favor. If McClellan had been elected he wanted to come to an agreement with the South that would have split the Union into two nations. Who knows what the repercussions would have been over the long term if that had happened.The so called 34% approval rating of Bush being driven by the liberal media wasn’t much different than what they were giving Reagan over his Strategic Defense Initiative program. And when President Ford pardoned Nixon saving the country from the gore of a media circus they practically wanted to scalp him. History has proven that Ford and Reagan were right and history will write kindly about Bush too. True leaders don’t rule by poll taking or what the price will be that they have to pay politically. They simply do what they know is right.