This was in my inbox this morning.
The Monsters and the Weak
by Michael Marks
The sun beat like a hammer, not a cloud was in the sky.
The mid-day air ran thick with dust, my throat was parched and dry.
With microphone clutched tight in hand and cameraman in tow,
I ducked beneath a fallen roof, surprised to hear “stay low.”
My eyes blinked several times before in shadow I could see,
the figure stretched across the rubble, steps away from me.
He wore a cloak of burlap strips, all shades of grey and brown,
that hung in tatters till he seemed to melt into the ground.
He never turned his head or took his eye from off the scope
but pointed through the broken wall and down the rocky slope.
“About eight hundred yards,” he said, his whispered words concise,
“beneath the baggy jacket he is wearing a device.”
A chill ran up my spine despite the swelter of the heat,
“You think he’s gonna set it off along the crowded street?”
The sniper gave a weary sigh and said “I wouldn’t doubt it,”
“unless there’s something this old gun and I can do about it.”
A thunderclap, a tongue of flame, the still abruptly shattered;
while citizens that walked the street were just as quickly scattered.
Till only one remained, a body crumpled on the ground,
The threat to oh so many ended by a single round.
And yet the sniper had no cheer, no hint of any gloat,
instead he pulled a logbook out and quietly he wrote.
“Hey, I could put you on TV, that shot was quite a story!”
But he surprised me once again – “I got no wish for glory.”
“Are you for real?” I asked in awe, “You don’t want fame or credit?”
He looked at me with saddened eyes and said “you just don’t get it.”
“You see that shot-up length of wall, the one without a door?
Before a mortar hit, it used to be a grocery store.”
“But don’t go thinking that to bomb a store is all that cruel,
the rubble just across the street – it used to be a school.
The little kids played soccer in the field out by the road,”
His head hung low, “They never thought a car would just explode.”
“As bad as all this is though, it could be a whole lot worse,”
He swallowed hard, the words came from his mouth just like a curse.
“Today the fight’s on foreign land, on streets that aren’t my own,
I’m here today ’cause if I fail, the next fight’s back at home.”
“And I won’t let my Safeway burn, my neighbors dead inside,
don’t wanna get a call from school that says my daughter died;
I pray that not a one of them will know the things I see,
nor have the work of terrorists etched in their memory.”
“So you can keep your trophies and your fleeting bit of fame,
I don’t care if I make the news, or if they speak my name.”
He glanced toward the camera and his brow began to knot,
“If you’re looking for a story, why not give this one a shot.”
“Just tell the truth of what you see, without the slant or spin;
that most of us are OK and we’re coming home again.
And why not tell our folks back home about the good we’ve done,
how when they see Americans, the kids come at a run.”
“You tell ’em what it means to folks here just to speak their mind,
without the fear that tyranny is just a step behind;
Describe the desert miles they walk in their first chance to vote,
or ask a soldier if he’s proud, I’m sure you’ll get a quote.”
He turned and slid the rifle in a drag bag thickly padded,
then looked again with eyes of steel as quietly he added;
“And maybe just remind the few, if ill of us they speak,
that we are all that stands between the monsters and the weak.”
Tag: liberty
One of my favorite online publications turns ten years old this month, The Patriot Post. (Formerly known as The Federalist Patriot, and for a long time before that, simply The Federalist.)
Publisher Mark Alexander has overseen a redesign of the publication’s web site, and it’s a big improvement over the previous design. You can now get notices of each new issue via RSS, and all issues since 2003 are archived online, with prior years to come.
A subscription to The Patriot Post is free, and the publication is solely supported through reader donations.
Jeff Harrell has a great piece which essentially asks the oppressed of the world what are they waiting for:
As long as amoral regimes wrap themselves in the cloak of legitimacy while permitting, sponsoring or even initiating guerilla and terrorist wars against their neighbors, citizens who are held captive by those regimes are going to die. They can choose to die as bystanders, to be numbered among the ranks of the unintentional dead, to be dismissed as collateral damage, or they can pick up a rifle and start a revolution and give up their lives fighting to free themselves, their families and their national brethren from the despots whom they presently protect and on whom they can blame all the death and destruction to which they’ve been witness.
It does not require much observation to understand that there is a large faction on this planet that lives only to see Israel’s destruction. But to stand up in public and declare that Hezbollah is anything but a terrorist organization demonstrates how this deep this hatred runs, and how oblivious to truth these minds have become.
I keep thinking no politician can be as looney as Howard Dean, but then George Galloway keeps popping up to snatch the title.
A Nation of Resolve
Two-hundred-thirty remarkable years have passed since July 4th, 1776–but what lies ahead for our liberty-blessed land? Let us take stock, at this anniversary of our nation’s founding, of how we started on our course as a nation, and whether we still possess the character of that free people our Founders envisioned us to be.
Read the Declaration again with a fresh appraisal, and note the measured tones of the stirring words that begin the treatise: “When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.”
“When…it becomes necessary…” Armed hostilities had commenced on 19 April 1775, at the battles of Lexington and Concord, and a year before asserting American independence, on 5 July 1775, the Continental Congress adopted the Olive Branch Petition, beseeching the British king for a peaceful resolution of the American colonies’ grievances. As with tyrants ever, the King declined the proffered peace.
The Founders further remarked on their natural hesitation to act boldly in severing ties to England: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” A second time in this passage, the Declaration signers contended they acted out of necessity.
The Founders described their entreaties to the British government: “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
Once more: “We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation…”
It is remarkable, indeed, how our nation’s character has changed. Upon deciding that independence was necessary, our Founding Fathers acted decisively. How often these days do we match such resolve?
Postmodern American man, steeped in moral relativism and doubtful of ascertaining truth, is a bundle of eclectic capacities and features—a far cry from the Founders’ notion of human nature. They believed that each individual human is created in the image of God, with the stamp of that divine impress best seen in the fact that each of us is a morally choosing being, fully capable of knowing and distinguishing right from wrong.
Our Founding Fathers thus treated liberty of conscience, most particularly in regard to faith, as central to the project of freedom: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” The Founders believed our lives are not vehicles of pleasure but have moral consequence based on our chosen path of conscience and that government should follow our lead.
So started the American Revolution, with this formal statement: “We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States…”
The signers concluded, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” The Founders forged the earliest temper of our populace on the anvil of freedom, and we diminish such courage and resolve at our own great peril.
These were men, “heroes and patriots” in Noah Webster’s words, intent on founding a country fit for citizens possessed of sturdy virtue, firm determination and sound judgment, and to inculcate within the new land’s citizens a resolve for liberty. This is the heritage we celebrate this Independence Day. Let’s live up to it.
—The Patriot Post, 06-26 Digest
I admit to having varied thoughts with regard to the free speech versus protecting our national emblem from being burnt aspects of the “protest” burnings of the American flag.
Men and women have bled and died for our flag, from the time when our fledgling nation did not have a single standard, but several, to the present day and the present conflicts of the Long War on Terror. Yet it was not a scrap of red, white, and blue cloth these men and women sacrificed, but what that cloth represents. For anyone to burn a flag of the United States of America, except as the proscribed method of taking said flag out of service, dishonors the memory of those men and women.
The other side of my mind, however, screams that the protest burning is the kind of freedom those sacrifices were made for. Quite the contest of ideals raging in my grey matter.
Yet another reason to love the Internet: if you wait long enough, someone’s going to come along and say what it is you want to say, only better.
Tod Lindberg:
To tell you the truth, I’m not that crazy about such a constitutional amendment, for the simple reason that flag-burning is unique in the annals of protest for the way in which it perfectly encapsulates what a jerk the person burning the flag is. It is auto-discrediting in a way that no placard or chant, however idiotic, can equal. To set fire to the national emblem of a country that allows you to say and do as you please, including burning the national emblem, is to make the point that your freedom is so visceral a part of your nature that you are oblivious to it. It doesn’t reflect well on you to be oblivious in this fashion, but it reflects well on your country for how deeply it ingrains the spirit of freedom into those lucky enough to live here.
That said, the last thing that a constitutional amendment banning flag-burning strikes me as is a slippery slope toward broader restriction on freedom of expression.
Besides, our nation has more important things to worry about, like stopping radical Islamists from popping a nuke in one of our major metropolises. I don’t think a majority of voters, while perhaps concerned one way or the other on the flag-burning issue, have it ranked as a high priority. It’s more of a “when the jihadists are all dead or in prison” sort of issue.
I’m sure, like Jeff and Mark Alexander, I fall in to a distinct minority of conservative-minded folks in that I do not approve of the line-item veto.
Jeff gives a great example of the sort of situation fiscal conservatives point to as their case for the line-item veto:
Congress has embraced the notion of passing ten-thousand-page omnibus bills that provide an appropriation for buying missiles, invest taxpayer dollars in education, reform the health-insurance, and by the way also fund half a dozen wasteful squanderings of the federal treasury. And if the President wants to veto it, he has to veto it all. Nuts, right?
As Jeff goes on to say, yes, it is nuts. But members of Congress need to stand up and defend their reasons for why they want these “wasteful squanderings” included along with the legitimate items in such bills. (Though I will quibble that the government has no business in the health insurance business, either.) Equally so, the President–and this is any president, not just the current one–should get the message out to the American people why he’s vetoing the entire bill, despite all of its good and legitimate items.
More communication is the key. As Jeff puts it, the American people need to be made smarter as to the machinations of their government. The two parties seem to enjoy playing politics, so why not extend that to budgetary items? If Congress sends you a spending bill with bridges to nowhere in it, you veto it, tell the American people you vetoed it because of the bridges to nowhere, and mention you’d be happy to sign it when it comes back without the bridges to nowhere within. Likewise, if Congress sends a spending bill without any largesse–stop laughing, this is a hypothetical after all–and the President still vetoes it, Congress has that handy two-thirds majority thingy from the Constitution.
Like net “neutrality” legislation, I think the line-item veto is a mountain that’s actually a molehill. We have more important areas to concentrate on, like keeping those who wish to kill us outside of our borders.
I love the build names for Ubuntu Linux: “Breezy Badger”, “Dapper Drake”. Are they all alliteral?
[Via Paul.]
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Though I don’t do nearly enough of either, I love hiking and camping, and could see myself as a flashpacker.
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Stephen H. Wildstrom has the latest idiotic move by the recording industry, which is suing XM Satellite Radio over its Inno portable receiver/recorder. Even though there’s no way to get the XM-specific music files off the Inno (yet), and despite the millions and millions of dollars in royalties XM already pays the music industry, the Inno is obviously a threat to the future of music as we know it and it must be stopped.
In other news, consumers welcomed more artists as the latter left the major music labels…
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Entrepreneurs should check out the WSJ’s StartupJournal.
I don’t need anything else special to remember my wedding anniversary. Circumstances of life dictated that forever shall the day of our wedding be shared with that of the invasion of Normandy, and the enormous sacrifice made there by so many. Yesterday marked the second anniversary of President Reagan’s passing, I can think of no better words to remember D-Day, than those spoken by him on the fortieth anniversary of the invasion:
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young that day and you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here?
We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love. The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge–and pray God we have not lost it–that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force of liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer… You all knew that some things are worth dying for.
It says a lot about our nation in that too few of us think about those who have given their lives in military service, much less participate in events to commemorate them, on Memorial Day. This was what ran through my head as we drove the Maine coastline today, noting the hundreds, perhaps thousands, on the beaches of York.
To honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, I humbly offer these words from one of our greatest Presidents:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
[With thanks to KnowledgeNews for the text of the Gettysburg Address.]