They're Not Listening

“Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower

While home for a few days recently, I attended a city council meeting. After writing and encouraging people to stand up and get involved in securing their own freedom against the encroachments of the leviathan state, it seemed the right thing to do. I received further encouragement to get involved at the bottom of last month’s water bill, where the small print indicated that the city intended to raise the water rate by 20 percent beginning in October. Nothing like a quantum leap in the bills to get one motivated I guess.

At the meeting, we were provided with an itinerary of items to be discussed and presented to the council. The item that concerned the water rate increase was worded in legalese that was utterly undecipherable. Some discussion ensued regarding the wording. Evidently, there was fear among some in attendance that the proposition would permit future rate hikes without any warning being given to the public, thereby denying citizens the right to voice their concerns. As luck would have it, the city’s lawyer was in attendance and by the time he and others finished explaining the semantics of the proposition, we were even more confused than when they began. Shakespeare had the right idea when he wrote, “First we kill all the lawyers…”

The public was invited to address the council and I made my way to the podium. I explained that I do not speak legalese, to my eternal credit, but I do understand phrases like “20 percent increase.” “That is a whale of an increase,” I said, and then asked if anyone could enlighten me as to the reason for such a huge jump in rates. The answer, explained the mayor, was that an auditor had gone over the city’s books and determined that there was a substantial shortfall. If the rates did not go up by 20%, the city would be unable to pay it’s bills. I reminded the council that government, at all levels, is reaching further and further into our pockets and that at some point it has got to stop. I explained that, “When I have a problem with my own personal budget, I cut back on expenses. I don’t have the luxury of voting myself more money.” The response from the council was dead silence. They just sat there with the same blank stare I had years ago in algebra class. It was if I had spoken to them in Swahili and they didn’t understand and didn’t care.

Over the past few weeks I’ve watched as Americans from one end of the country to the other attended town hall meetings. People who have never been politically active in their lives stood up to express their concern with a government that is spinning out of control. Veterans who have laid their lives on the line to defend the Constitution are reminding congressman and senators that they too took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. I watched as elected representatives belittled their constituents, refused to take questions in some cases, and in one case even took a phone call in the middle of a constituent’s question. Watching those meetings, and then standing there looking at the vacuous faces of the city council, the same thought kept occurring: They’re not listening.

Last weekend over 75,000 people left their jobs, their home towns, their states, and traveled to Washington DC to make their voices heard. In the past, if a quarter of that number of people marched in support of abortion rights, or in protest of the war in Iraq, or in support of free false teeth for that matter, it would have been all over the major networks and page one news in the major papers. But when a huge number of people march in support of the same ideas that this nation was founded on (limited government, enumerated powers, individual freedom), the major media gives scant attention to it or ignores it completely. And what of our Community Organizer in Chief? He of the grass roots? He flew to Minneapolis, and didn’t deign to address these people even in his big speech to Congress a few nights later. They’re not listening. Those who remind government officials that it is the government that works for the people, not the other way around, are labeled as mobs, Nazis, racists, etc. Our elected representatives are making Marie Antoinette look like a populist!

Bill Buckley told the story years ago of a young man that was infatuated with a certain young lady. To woo her, he invited her to his uncle’s farm for dinner. Before the meal he gave her a tour of the property, insisting all the while that everything there actually belonged to him! “And that’s my barn over there,” he would say. “These are my chickens too.” And on it went until she had heard quite enough. In time they came upon a bull servicing a cow. “I think I’d like to do that,” said the young man. The young lady replied, “Well go ahead. It’s your cow.” Through interactions at all levels, we keep trying to tell our elected officials that America is our cow, but to no avail, they keep servicing us!

I have a feeling, however, that the adherents of big government are going to get a big surprise in the congressional elections of 2010. They’re not listening now, but they will then. After all, King George didn’t listen either.

They Started It. We Must Finish It.

"Yet, after each of our wars, there has always been a great hue and cry to the effect that there will be no more wars, that disarmament is the sure road to health, happiness, and peace; and that by removing the fire department, we will remove fires. These ideas spring from wishful thinking and from the erroneous belief that wars result from logical processes. There is no logic in wars. They are produced by madmen. No man can say when future madmen will reappear. I do not say that there will be no more wars; I devoutly hope that there will not, but I do say that the chances of avoiding future wars will be greatly enhanced if we are ready." General George S. Patton

I remember walking into the office that day in a very good mood. I had returned from a deployment to the Mid East only a few months earlier. It was a good deployment in which I had volunteered to fly on combat missions over hostile airspace because I‘m just weird like that. Having logged the time and put away the gas mask, I was happy to be stateside again. Plus, September 11^th is my son’s birthday. I was eager to meet him after work that night at Ruby Tuesdays.

I poured myself a fresh cup of Starbucks that I had brewed in the office and sat down at the computer when my best friend Bob Lee emailed me. Bob had retired from active duty while I was deployed, and it’s always good to hear from him, but this email was different. It was short and said that a plane had hit the world trade center and that I should watch the news. Reaching for the remote, I hit the power button and looked on while news anchors speculated that perhaps a small private plane had hit one of the towers. I was thinking that for a small plane, it had left an awfully big hole in the building when I saw something behind the new anchor’s head cross the screen. It was another plane and it went right into the second tower. In that terrible instant, I knew we were at war and that things would never be the same again.

As coverage unfolded, I began getting emails from military friends and family members across the country. There were reports of a bomb going exploding at the State Department. An explosion at the Pentagon. Planes unaccounted for after they had been ordered to land. Fighter jets were being scrambled in response. Some family members who lived in Virginia and had previously lived in the Washington DC area were emailing me news updates as they got them. One of their emails which became seared in my memory contained the simple words, “We are so scared!” With those words, my horror turned to anger. I had spent a great deal of time deployed in any number of unpleasant places, within missile range of Saddam Hussein as well as that weird little gargoyle in North Korea, and any number of bad actors in other places precisely so that my family and friends wouldn’t have to worry about such an attack on our own soil. The hours spent “sucking rubber” in gas masks, sweating like Tim Gheitner during a tax audit, looking to the sky to make sure it was a friendly jet approaching and not one that had a bead on my general location was done to protect the homeland, and yet the terrorists were here anyway.

After receiving an email containing roughly the same sentiment from Bob, I sent a message to my headquarters that they could consider me a volunteer to deploy and get back in the fight, and that furthermore, Bob was willing to return to active duty. Our chief wrote back a one-word reply. “Warmongers,” he wrote, meaning of course that he appreciated our volunteering. They didn’t bring Bob back on active duty, but I did get a six-month deployment out of the deal, which I’ll probably never be able to say too much about. But I like to think I might have helped in some small way.

This morning, I was on the road by 4:30AM, from Columbus, OH on the way to Battle Creek, Michigan. On Sirius Satellite Radio, I was able to listen to cable news coverage of the day’s commemoration of the attacks. It’s surprising how raw and vivid the memories are eight years later. The images of people jumping to the their deaths rather than being burned alive in those towers. The terror the passengers went through as their planes were flown into buildings in horrific explosions. Surely there were children on those planes. How unspeakable the fear that gripped them before their deaths! There was a major that I worked with while deployed whose brother was a fire fighter who died that day when the towers collapsed. I’ve seen some great officers, but I never saw one work so hard as that major. I remember hearing one of the calls to 911 operators that day. It was from a lady inside the towers. “I’m going to die, aren’t I,” she said to the operator. The operator said no, and tried to calm the lady. But few seconds later, the lady screamed, “Oh my God, I’m burning!” The line went dead.

In the days immediately after the attack, we expected follow on attacks. Our defense posture on base was beefed up to an all time high. It wasn’t a question of if, but when the next wave of attacks would come. When called, our forces dealt decisively with the threat, removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein from power. Stung by its inability to “connect the dots,” our intelligence service worked in earnest to expose the enemy’s plans for further attacks and disrupt them. We didn’t ever want to see our own citizens slaughtered again. We gained intelligence from wiretaps and other sources. We killed the enemy with manned and unmanned aircraft, with heavy weapons, small arms, and the overwhelming determination of free people defending their liberty. And we were successful. Not one attack has been unleashed on American soil since that awful day.

Our success has apparently also been our undoing. Just as wealth can breed laziness and sloth, success can breed complacence. Our enemies have not taken a holiday. They already hit us once when we were complacent, and they will do it again at the first opportunity. We have pledged to close the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay even as our Justice Department prepares to prosecute CIA employees who gained information about pending attacks and saved thousands of lives. Our commanders in Afghanistan prepare to request more troops to secure victory in that region even as Speaker of the House Pelosi indicates her unwillingness to support the generals’ requests. Iran and North Korea build nuclear missile threats, and so we cut back our missile defense. Illogic is called logic, weakness is called strength, vulnerability is called virtuous, and appeasement is called security. This crew would make Neville Chamberlain blush.

Meanwhile, the CIA reports that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave unreliable information when normal methods of interrogation were used. It was only after he was subjected to water boarding that he began to tell everything he could think of. In fact, reports are that after the water boarding, they couldn’t shut him up. He eventually gave lectures to CIA personnel on terrorist strategy, methods, and attack plans. This information has allowed us to prevent another wholesale slaughter of Americans on American soil and THIS, we are told by our new president, is immoral.

We are told that the interrogators tortured Mohammed and that we are better than that. Well, in the first place, it isn’t torture. Being trapped high up in the World Trade Center having to decide if you want to die by fire or jump to your death,…THAT is torture. Boarding a plane on a crisp Fall day and watching in helpless terror as you are flown to a fiery death,…THAT is torture. Having water poured up your nose because you orchestrated those deaths and know of plans to murder more people is not torture. In fact, it’s patty-cake compared to what I would do. But our new president’s refined sensibilities will not permit such muscular self defense. Left to my own devices, this Cajun would just as soon shove a spear up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s ass and feed his corpse to a Louisiana alligator. But no, we must do little more than threaten to withhold room service in order to gain life saving information. And when it doesn’t work and an entire city goes up in flames, we can put a sign over the rubble that says, “At least we didn’t water board them,” and sign it Barak Obama.

Today, the President spoke at a 9/11 observance at the Pentagon. “Mindful that the work of protecting America is never finished, we will do everything in our power to keep America safe,” the President said. Really? As usual, his words say one thing, but his actions show the opposite. A country music singer asks the question, “Have you forgotten?” Given the latest election results, I’d say a lot of us have. And I fear the next reminder could be worse than the last one. Some of us are waking up. Remember the major I wrote about whose brother was killed on 9/11? I recently saw him on national television, speaking out against our current policy of weakness and timidity. We are dismissed as mobs and idiots at tea parties and town meetings. Perhaps the ruling class in Washington should remember that it was just normal folks from “fly-over” country that commandeered that plane over Pennsylvania and prevented it from flying directly into the Capital Building in Washington DC. Those folks from the heartland who our president says, “…cling bitterly to their religion and their guns…“ saved the lives of the same Congress that now looks down its collective nose at us. Ordinary people, free people, met the challenge at the cost of their own lives. We the People can do extraordinary things. We should never forget this. We owe it to those we lost on 9/11 as well as our children and grandchildren who are depending on us.