J.B. Shurk (American Thinker) — Your sacrifice is not forgotten.
***
“Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It’s been that way all this year. It’s been that way so many times. All of war is that way.”
Those words are from Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Part of Hemingway’s gift was his ability to convey deep emotion in simple language. In five short sentences, he tells the story of any soldier who has ever found himself in harm’s way.
Facing death is a strange thing. You know that the smallest action you take will affect the rest of your life. On the other hand, it’s just another Wednesday, and you are only one man whose life will be mostly lost to time.
How can moments become so critical when our lives are already so short? How do you eat, drink, sleep, and say, “Hello,” to those around you, when any of those actions might be your last? The simple things become profound, perhaps, because we realize for the first time why the simple things matter most.
Veterans Day is an important holiday. It affords us an opportunity to recognize American servicemembers who all understand what Hemingway meant. The combat veteran knows what it feels like when each step carries danger. But members of the military who did not directly engage in combat still know the cruel uncertainty of war.
War is more than fighting. It is technical knowhow, strategic planning, preparation, and logistics. You can put together the meanest, toughest, bravest platoon of warriors known to man, but if the people supporting their communications, transportation, gear, and real-time movements in the field aren’t up to snuff, that platoon will suffer.
And just because their physical bodies might not be exposed doesn’t mean that the systems engineer, drone operator, artilleryman, airman, supply specialist, and mechanic don’t carry the weight of life or death decisions on their shoulders. What those servicemembers do each day affects not only the rest of their days but also the rest of the days of every person who depends upon their work.
Veterans Day is just one day in all the days that will ever be. But it’s a chance for us to recognize the courage and sacrifice of our countrymen who got up each day not knowing if that day would be their last — and did so, again and again, so that other Americans would never experience the bewildering uncertainty of war.
That’s sacrifice. There is nothing so noble or heartbreaking as the sight of a man laying down his life for another.
We tell these adventurous war stories of those who fought, and perhaps died, in past conflicts. All cultures have done so throughout human history. The Celts and Vikings had their bards. The Ancient Greeks had their poets. For better or worse, Americans have Hollywood.
Those stories never get war right. They depict scenes of triumph and glory. They celebrate bravery. They honor heroic deaths. But they don’t tell society what sacrifice entails. They don’t expose the thoughts of young boys preparing to die in foreign lands far away from their families.
Why not? Perhaps because the cost of war is so immense that the truth would be painfully shocking. How do you convey the torture felt by grieving parents who will never touch their child again? How do you calculate the loss that ripples through time when a young man’s death means that his children and grandchildren will never exist? How do you explain that war means soulmates will never meet and that lifetimes of happiness will disappear like a hazy dream? How do you express to the ignorant that war means every single day determines all the days to come?
Sacrifice. Do the youngest generations even know what that word means?
When I see Antifa scum defacing and toppling statues of American soldiers, I see the most entitled people on the planet. When I see Black Lives Matter looters and arsonists ripping off stores and burning down neighborhoods, I see brainwashed and selfish wastes of space who have no idea what their ancestors sacrificed for freedom.
Democrats in the United States and leftists throughout the West all demand what is not theirs. They demand money, homes, healthcare, phones, food, and clothes in return for doing nothing of worth. They demand respect that they have not earned. They demand other people’s things, hopes, and dreams without putting in the work. They demand that everyone else sacrifice for them.
However else we got to this terribly dangerous moment in history when Western civilization is at risk of erasure, the me-me-me generations were incubated in schools and communities that never taught the meaning of sacrifice.
If you give everybody an “A” in class and disparage merit as a malady associated with “white supremacy,” you teach entire generations that hard work is beneath them. If you demonize past generations and teach students to hate their nation’s history and heroes, then they never learn to appreciate all that has been given to them.
Today’s youngest generations are all prancing around between third base and home plate as if they had hit a baseball five hundred feet past the centerfield wall. They do not realize that they would have been tagged out before getting halfway to first base had so many generations of American veterans not sacrificed their lives so that today’s idiots could twerk, complain, and demand. These are not serious people.
I know that Marxist-globalists, communists, and other assorted leftists feel that their power over the West is ascendant. Wall Street, the City of London, the World Economic Forum, and Establishment globalists in Europe and the Americas believe that they can remake the world into a totalitarian surveillance state in which national borders do not exist and human serfs are forced to do exactly what elite oligarchs demand. That’s a pretty frightening picture of the future.
But I just don’t see it working out for them. Because the leftist-globalist model runs on demands, while the fight for individual freedom always runs on sacrifice. The leftist-globalists say, “You will do this, or we will kill you.” The freedom fighter says, “I will sacrifice my life so that the next generation knows freedom.”
The Americans who fought and died during WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Global War on Terrorism, and all the forgotten battles in between didn’t sacrifice their lives for a globalist system in which a governing cabal from D.C., the U.N., the U.K., and the E.U. could rule over a culture-less blob of territories whose people share no history or common bonds. The veterans who survived those wars did not return home to demand that techno-fascists impose a totalitarian panopticon infused with medical apartheid, two-tiered “justice,” censorship, and the criminalization of dissent.
American veterans fought for each other, their families, the country, and freedom.
Would leftist-globalists sacrifice for any of these things? I don’t think so. They hate their families, the country, the Bill of Rights, and even each other. They are miserable people who can’t be bothered to give up their seats in a train car so that an old woman or pregnant mother might sit down. They have never had a day that would determine all the days to come. They spit on sacrifice because they have been given everything.
Veterans, I humbly ask you to perform one last service in your remaining time on Earth. Find members of the youngest generations and tell them why you fought. Remind them why your friends died. Explain to them the true cost of freedom. Warn them that if they choose to defend tyranny in the global wars ahead, real patriots will put them in the ground.
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[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
***
“Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It’s been that way all this year. It’s been that way so many times. All of war is that way.”
Those words are from Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Part of Hemingway’s gift was his ability to convey deep emotion in simple language. In five short sentences, he tells the story of any soldier who has ever found himself in harm’s way.
Facing death is a strange thing. You know that the smallest action you take will affect the rest of your life. On the other hand, it’s just another Wednesday, and you are only one man whose life will be mostly lost to time.
How can moments become so critical when our lives are already so short? How do you eat, drink, sleep, and say, “Hello,” to those around you, when any of those actions might be your last? The simple things become profound, perhaps, because we realize for the first time why the simple things matter most.
Veterans Day is an important holiday. It affords us an opportunity to recognize American servicemembers who all understand what Hemingway meant. The combat veteran knows what it feels like when each step carries danger. But members of the military who did not directly engage in combat still know the cruel uncertainty of war.
War is more than fighting. It is technical knowhow, strategic planning, preparation, and logistics. You can put together the meanest, toughest, bravest platoon of warriors known to man, but if the people supporting their communications, transportation, gear, and real-time movements in the field aren’t up to snuff, that platoon will suffer.
And just because their physical bodies might not be exposed doesn’t mean that the systems engineer, drone operator, artilleryman, airman, supply specialist, and mechanic don’t carry the weight of life or death decisions on their shoulders. What those servicemembers do each day affects not only the rest of their days but also the rest of the days of every person who depends upon their work.
Veterans Day is just one day in all the days that will ever be. But it’s a chance for us to recognize the courage and sacrifice of our countrymen who got up each day not knowing if that day would be their last — and did so, again and again, so that other Americans would never experience the bewildering uncertainty of war.
That’s sacrifice. There is nothing so noble or heartbreaking as the sight of a man laying down his life for another.
We tell these adventurous war stories of those who fought, and perhaps died, in past conflicts. All cultures have done so throughout human history. The Celts and Vikings had their bards. The Ancient Greeks had their poets. For better or worse, Americans have Hollywood.
Those stories never get war right. They depict scenes of triumph and glory. They celebrate bravery. They honor heroic deaths. But they don’t tell society what sacrifice entails. They don’t expose the thoughts of young boys preparing to die in foreign lands far away from their families.
Why not? Perhaps because the cost of war is so immense that the truth would be painfully shocking. How do you convey the torture felt by grieving parents who will never touch their child again? How do you calculate the loss that ripples through time when a young man’s death means that his children and grandchildren will never exist? How do you explain that war means soulmates will never meet and that lifetimes of happiness will disappear like a hazy dream? How do you express to the ignorant that war means every single day determines all the days to come?
Sacrifice. Do the youngest generations even know what that word means?
When I see Antifa scum defacing and toppling statues of American soldiers, I see the most entitled people on the planet. When I see Black Lives Matter looters and arsonists ripping off stores and burning down neighborhoods, I see brainwashed and selfish wastes of space who have no idea what their ancestors sacrificed for freedom.
Democrats in the United States and leftists throughout the West all demand what is not theirs. They demand money, homes, healthcare, phones, food, and clothes in return for doing nothing of worth. They demand respect that they have not earned. They demand other people’s things, hopes, and dreams without putting in the work. They demand that everyone else sacrifice for them.
However else we got to this terribly dangerous moment in history when Western civilization is at risk of erasure, the me-me-me generations were incubated in schools and communities that never taught the meaning of sacrifice.
If you give everybody an “A” in class and disparage merit as a malady associated with “white supremacy,” you teach entire generations that hard work is beneath them. If you demonize past generations and teach students to hate their nation’s history and heroes, then they never learn to appreciate all that has been given to them.
Today’s youngest generations are all prancing around between third base and home plate as if they had hit a baseball five hundred feet past the centerfield wall. They do not realize that they would have been tagged out before getting halfway to first base had so many generations of American veterans not sacrificed their lives so that today’s idiots could twerk, complain, and demand. These are not serious people.
I know that Marxist-globalists, communists, and other assorted leftists feel that their power over the West is ascendant. Wall Street, the City of London, the World Economic Forum, and Establishment globalists in Europe and the Americas believe that they can remake the world into a totalitarian surveillance state in which national borders do not exist and human serfs are forced to do exactly what elite oligarchs demand. That’s a pretty frightening picture of the future.
But I just don’t see it working out for them. Because the leftist-globalist model runs on demands, while the fight for individual freedom always runs on sacrifice. The leftist-globalists say, “You will do this, or we will kill you.” The freedom fighter says, “I will sacrifice my life so that the next generation knows freedom.”
The Americans who fought and died during WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Global War on Terrorism, and all the forgotten battles in between didn’t sacrifice their lives for a globalist system in which a governing cabal from D.C., the U.N., the U.K., and the E.U. could rule over a culture-less blob of territories whose people share no history or common bonds. The veterans who survived those wars did not return home to demand that techno-fascists impose a totalitarian panopticon infused with medical apartheid, two-tiered “justice,” censorship, and the criminalization of dissent.
American veterans fought for each other, their families, the country, and freedom.
Would leftist-globalists sacrifice for any of these things? I don’t think so. They hate their families, the country, the Bill of Rights, and even each other. They are miserable people who can’t be bothered to give up their seats in a train car so that an old woman or pregnant mother might sit down. They have never had a day that would determine all the days to come. They spit on sacrifice because they have been given everything.
Veterans, I humbly ask you to perform one last service in your remaining time on Earth. Find members of the youngest generations and tell them why you fought. Remind them why your friends died. Explain to them the true cost of freedom. Warn them that if they choose to defend tyranny in the global wars ahead, real patriots will put them in the ground.
Tweet
Continue reading...
[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
