Gay Pride at the Expense of Military Pride

The beginning of the End

            In a few days another Gay Pride parade will take place on the streets of San Diego. What makes this one noteworthy is the prominent presence of active duty military members gleefully celebrating their lifestyle with other members of their community. What matters not is how Americans see this. What matters most is how our enemies will view it.

I fear we have given a gift to Hamas and Al Qaeda recruiters that they could not have dreamed of. America is already seen as weak and decadent, this will convince foreign fighters that the formidable American military – arguably the most powerful fighting force in history – is decaying from the inside. In this case, they might be right.

Taps for the Death of Military Tradition

The Army I knew is gone. The Army that gave my parents a way out of poverty in the cotton fields of Mississippi and Tennessee is no more. The Army which gave me a tour of the world, which let me see other cultures and learn other languages, is gone. I opened my social network pages yesterday and my heart broke.

Change has come quickly to the military in recent years. Changes not designed to enhance the war fighting capabilities; no that’s too expensive. These changes are meant to remake the entire military culture. Rather than have an Army that is ready to protect and defend the people of America, it has been made over to reflect the cultural vision that politicians want to impose on the American people.

The Roots of Change

Some changes are good. Desegregation in the military was a good thing. But many of the changes now in progress have a dubious benefit for the country at large and seem to be headed in the direction of less liberty for all to the benefit of a few.

It is hard to pinpoint exactly when these changes occurred. One could argue that it began with President Truman signing executive order 9981 in April of 1949 but that was the end of a process that began years earlier during the manpower shortages of WWII.

Perhaps the original question of Blacks¹ serving in the American military actually arose during the Civil War. In the earliest conflicts service from Black freemen and bondsmen was accepted without question. An estimated “5,000 Blacks” fought for American independence from England. The Civil War was the result of social questions about the humanity of Blacks living in American and the inhuman treatment they endured.

Several all-Black units served with distinction on both sides during that war. When that conflict ended many freed Blacks found a new live out on the far frontier with units such as the 9^th and 10^th (Horse) Cavalry Regiments. The Buffalo Soldiers left a legacy of bravery throughout the West and overseas when they served meritoriously in the Spanish American War.

Despite their record of achievement, White officers were reluctant to give them credit for their service and White society was equally reluctant to recognize those who had given so much for their freedom and independence. It took decades of work, patience and sacrifice before Blacks were able to force the issue to the Oval Office. Truman’s signature was the culmination of 85 years of toil. And it set in motion the social changes that eventually led to the Civil Rights Movement that finally granted full legal status to Black Americans.

Riding the Wave of Change

The role the military had in catalyzing change in America has not been lost on social engineers. From the early 70s throughout my own twenty year career and up into current times, those who would change America often test their techniques and tactics (with overt political support) on the people in America’s military. If you sit through yet another sexual harassment lecture know that those programs were developed a quarter century ago and refined painfully on captive audiences in uniform. I can tell you from personal experience that what they had in the beginning was crude, annoying and tedious—much like being forced to watch Soviet-era propaganda films – with no subtitles.

The main theme of the social engineering in the military has been to redefine what it is to be a man. The big pro-homosexual push in the uniformed services advocated by President Obama fits nicely into that agenda. Only men were targeted because the assumption was that everything wrong with society stemmed from inherently aggressive male tendencies. If that could be changed then society in general would benefit – and be more peaceful, I assume.

The fallacy of this was those same aggressive male tendencies are precisely what is needed when fighting a war. A unit must be aggressive to achieve its objectives in the face of determined enemy resistance. If you are facing dozens of enemy fighters who are dug in using civilians as shields, do you want to follow Alpha-males like Gunny Highway (played by Clint Eastwood in HEARTBREAK RIDGE) or do you want to follow Beta-males like Captain “Hawkeye” Pierce (played by Alan Alda in the television series M*A*S*H)?

Despite many sound arguments in favor of maintaining an aggressive edge over our enemies—arguments I made myself—the social engineers were determined to complete their pogrom. These liberated feminists and their Beta-male allies have forged ahead unabated. I assume they think that if Americans stop being to aggressively brave our enemies will do the same and world peace will reign.

Implied Weakness and Implications

Action in and around Afghanistan seems to prove that is not going to happen anytime soon. Any sign of weakness in our soldiers, sailors and airmen is seen as a motivating factor for our enemies in the Islamic world (also in foreign capitals like Beijing and Moscow; our true competition). Thus we have given a gift to the jihadists with our latest social experiment.

Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell may have been the right thing to do. I do not have the historical perspective to judge that and I am not serving on active duty so I cannot gauge the effect of the executive order. Despite the heated debate, that was an internal issue. The overt actions of the Department of Defense as evidenced in this article changes things dramatically.

The Army is going against the established tenet of avoiding political posturing by making this change.  It is likely the other services have issued similar orders permitting active duty servicepersons to wear their uniforms publicly as part of Gay Pride parades. The article calls this an historic event. The Gay service people are ecstatic over being able to show their pride in their orientation and military service. “Defense Secretary Leon Panetta vowed in a video message to remove as many barriers as possible to making the military a model of equal opportunity …” and has committed to making the changes directed by President Barack Obama.

I am left with the question of how this will appear to our enemies. Islam expressly forbids homosexuality and the penalty is death by stoning, though most are merely publicly hanged. The national attention desired by Gay activists will happen. Media outlets from coast to coast will carry the San Diego parade live and in endless repeats for days while pundits debate the wisdom of the decision.

What concerns me is how it will play out on Al Jazeera.  As I said at the beginning, America is already seen as weak and decadent, this will convince foreign fighters that the formidable American military – arguably the most powerful fighting force in history – is decaying from the inside. Fighting American soldiers is tantamount to suicide, now, but if you believe that the will of Americans is waning, you start to believe you can win. That is a dangerous thing for our fighting forces on the ground.

Personally, my pride in the nation remains strong and I believe it will recover from the damage inflicted by these short-sighted, wrong-headed social engineers. However, for now, my pride in my service is diminished and tarnished by this shameful disrespect for those who came before. Perhaps in a few years it won’t matter, but today, it does, to me.

1. I choose not to use the politically correct term “African American” because it is historically inaccurate for most of our purposes. Without the luxury of full citizenship few Blacks could be considered “American” prior to 1967.

Note: in searching for relevant images for this blog I used the BING search engine. I input “Gays in the military” and set it for images. It returned about 70% Gay porn and images of naked young men mostly out of uniform. When I changed my filter to moderate to remove those image options, BING returned – nothing.

I got much more acceptable results when I switched to GOOGLE.

Bring My ENTERPRISE To Life!

The First Mission

On July 4^th, 2033 the world’s first starship orbits high above the East Coast of the United States.  The president stands in front of a crowd of the invited guests and dignitaries from around the globe.  One of the banks of cameras feeds his image in direct communication to the tiny bridge module.

Captain John Forrester tries his best to look like the calm military man he has cultivated in a distinguished career but everyone knows the excitement he has jumping inside of him.  Most of the world is standing idle watching the interchange on televisions, phones and virtual screens everywhere at once.  They are waiting for the historic moment when a living man, a crew of 57 men and women, sail out of the Solar system for the first time.

The speeches end and the applause dies down.  With one final salute to the screen, Captain Forrester sits down, looks to the emblem welded to the wall; with a small wink to the past, he says, “Engage.”

Dreamers find a way

Seems like a fantasy, doesn’t it?  Something fan boys and geek girls have dreamed about since James T. Kirk passed into syndication five decades ago.  But some people here and now, in the real world are not willing to let that story sit on faded pages anymore.  A vision of independent development is growing on the Internet and the stars are moving closer to mankind than at any time before.

Build the Enterprise is a focal point for that energy.  People around the world long for the far frontier and frankly, governments and space agencies have let us down. After an incredible decade plus of heady achievement the United States and Russia got bored.  Neither side saw any value in continuing their expensive space programs when down to Earth problems seemed more pressing.

However, the populations of many countries did not share in that sentiment.  As one of those children of the Space Age I fully expected to have bases on the Moon by now and possibly on Mars.  I even hoped the process would have become efficient enough so that ordinary people like me could have a chance, no matter how small, of going up there.  Our government let us down.

The Tower of Babel

The book of Genesis in the Bible tells of an effort by mortal man to build a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens.  The Lord came down Himself to see the tower and declared that “ the people are one and the all have one language and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them (Gen, 11:4-6).”

Language is the key.  Language is the spoken expression of culture.  Today English is the uniting language; more precisely, the American language is the common language of commerce, science, art and culture.  It is the primary language for one nation to communicate with another and the most commonly used second language for people of the 200 nations and thousands of cultures.  American English draws the people of the world together.

And why should it not?  America is a country built up of the melding of diverse immigrants from around the world drawn to its shores by the common dream of liberty and self-realization.  America has spawned most of the great innovations of the past century and it has done so through the efforts of Jews, Italians, Germans, Russians, Poles, Africans and Asians as well as too many more to list.  The aggregate effort combined with opportunity and freedom makes anything possible.  The computer you are reading this on is proof of that.

President Kennedy proposed the preposterous goal of landing a man on the Moon during this decade (the 1960s).  The entire world scoffed, but gasped in awe and fear as the American people achieved his goal—on time.  Imagine what we could do now, with today’s technology if given one uniting purpose.

To the Moon and Beyond

Captain Forrester gazed down on the North Polar Region of the Moon. Not even three hours have passed since he left Earth orbit and he has been here 20 minutes already. The Apollo 11 mission took 88 hours to make the same journey.  Forester’s ENTERPRISE had not used more than 10% of thrust for this historic leg.

Below him four passengers disembarked.  The crew shuttle Armstrong and the cargo shuttle Aldren released on schedule.  Their business on the Moon would take another week as they assembled the first long-stay module that would be the core of the first Lunar Base.  They would fly back to Earth on their own when the mission ended.  No one gave voice to the fear that the ENTERPRISE’s mission might fail and the shuttles were designed to self-return for that contingency.

Be that as it may, ENTERPRISE had business with other planetary bodies.  Losing the shuttle cut their mass by 20 percent.  The trip to Venus would be with a faster, more nimble ship.  Gravity pulled and the stars beckoned.

Another twenty minutes passed before the shuttle announced safe touch down on the surface. Free of back stop duties, ENTERPRISE turned her nose sunward aiming for the “second star to the right, straight on past morning.”

Nothing they propose will be withheld from them

The government let us down.  President Obama killed the space shuttle program and slashed budgets for future space manned missions to nothing.  He intended to use the power of his office to keep man tied to the ground.  He did not reckon with the power of the America people.

Innovators like Burt Ruttan have found many ways to get around government reticence.  Wealthy dreamers like Peter Diamandis fund competitions to explore space through the private sector.

Firing most of NASA’s rocket scientists didn’t kill progress either.  Just the opposite; firing them flooded the market with thousands of the brightest minds in the nation now free from government restraint and bureaucracy.  They can pursue long held personal projects in private labs and can profit from any patents generated by their work.  Enlightened self-interest is the impetus behind many great inventions.

Man will get off this one planet because he dreams of doing so.  Trusting corporations to provide the change was as fruitless as leaving it in the hands of bureaucrats.  Many dreamers and innovators from around the globe will contribute to the effort but as usual, the bulk of the effort will come from the American people.

Nothing unusual there; Americans are used to leading the way.  Two generations have passed since the last Apollo mission returned from the Moon.  Meanwhile the rest of the world is engaged in a race to go there and the leaders are nearly a generation away still from being able to mount a successful mission—this despite having access to far more powerful computers and better rocket technology.

That old scientist might have been right after all.  If not for the American people, the trip to the Moon really would have been a century away.  Perhaps Captain Forrester will be able to watch the winner of the Silver Medal race to land on the Moon – from somewhere beyond Pluto.

This We Will Defend

Americans have no idea what their rights are and from whence they come. The most educated of the population will say our rights come from the Constitution. Few of them can tell you with any certainty what those rights are beyond “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” For the majority of Americans it is enough to say “I’m free.”

However, it is necessary to be clear what that freedom entails. I am free to swing my arms around but not in a space occupied by you. I am free to walk where I choose except where someone has locked the door on their property. Freedom is limited. No one has absolute freedom to act as they please when their actions impact another.

I am compelled to say that again because a large segment of the American population is apparently ignorant of those limits. The Occupy Wall Street crowd and their hundreds of spin-off groups have forgotten that individual freedom is limited by the freedom of others. The 1%, the top 10% or even the top 25% are not fodder for the lazy and indigent. People who work hard, build businesses, and employ their neighbors at a decent wage and pay taxes are “pursuing happiness” while enhancing life for others.

The protestors are mostly college-educated people who want to pursue happiness as well but at other people’s expense. History and civic responsibility are apparently no longer a part of college curricula. The crime of it all, they want to employ the power of an over-reaching government to take away the prosperity of others – all under the supposed guise of Constitutional rights.

I understand this about the Constitution - it is merely an old piece of paper. The Constitution does not give us the right of Religious freedom; neither does it ensure our liberties of any kind. Our history has shown that we only have those rights for which we are willing to stand. For without blood on the line, the Constitution is merely ink on the page.

In Boston, ordinary men stood and died facing overwhelming military superiority. In Valley Forge they stood shoeless in knee-deep snow. In France they waded ashore in the face of withering machinegun fire. And in Korea they drew the line against tyranny.

Americans have relied on the judicial system to define liberty for us. Lawyers in court have to tell us precisely how far our reach can be and just how much of our neighbor’s land we can cross before it is a crime. In the earlier days of the nation such limits were clear and easily defined. We did not need seven volumes of civic ordinances to tell us to respect our neighbors; we only needed one – the only volume most courts in the nation owned until the 20^th century.

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor,” (Exodus 20:17 NIV). “‘Cursed is anyone who moves their neighbor’s boundary stone.’ Then all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’ ” (Deuteronomy 27:17). That was it; plain and simple – and intuitively clear without lawyers.

But it takes more than lawyers to mess up a great nation; it takes judges. Judges in many roles and in many robes all the way up to the Supreme Court do their part to keep law out of reach of citizens. Judges like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who no longer respects the Constitution even as it is her sacred duty to uphold the document crafted so long ago by men much wiser than her and tempered in blood through the ages. Justice Ginsburg does not see the relevance of a document written without consulting women. She missed the part about them each consulting God. They don’t teach that in Law School.

Nothing the protestors or the professional classes can do can destroy freedom. Legislators and jurists combined with the lazy and indigent cannot put an end to this noble experiment. It is the unconquerable will inside the American body that gives liberty, it is the willingness to face enemies abroad or at home that ensures freedom; even if that enemy is in the White House. No man can take from us that which we will not give. We only need decide to stand.

 

Justice Ginsburg photo courtesy of: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/lists/ig/Powerful-Women-of-the-Decade/Ruth-Bader-Ginsburg.htm

Michael Moore courtesy of his friends at www.CNN.com