Wordmasters - Memorial Day Edition

Many of us shed tears today in thankful remembrance of the sacrifices of those who’ve kept our nation free.

On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a mighty nation!
~Thomas William Parsons

With the tears a Land hath shed Their graves should ever be green.
~Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Many of us are renewed in our vigilance and commitment to never sqander the freedom bought so dearly.

The brave die never, though they sleep in dust:
Their courage nerves a thousand living men.
~Minot J. Savage

They are dead; but they live in each Patriot’s breast,
And their names are engraven on honor’s bright crest.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Who kept the faith and fought the fight;
The glory theirs, the duty ours.
~Wallace Bruce

We have a sacred responsibility to those who died on our behalf and thsoe who serve in harm’s way today.

They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation.
~Henry Ward Beecher

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
~Woodrow Wilson

We honor and salute each new generation who picks up the banner.

Perform, then, this one act of remembrance before this Day passes - Remember there is an army of defense and advance that never dies and never surrenders, but is increasingly recruited from the eternal sources of the American spirit and from the generations of American youth.
~W.J. Cameron

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
~John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address Washington, D.C. January 20, 1961

We will never be without heroes.

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.~ Joseph Campbell

The purpose of all war is ultimately peace.
~Saint Augustine

Wordmasters

These words are more true today than ever before:

Fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.

War is cruelty. There’s no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over.

War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say give them all they want.

If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.

This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.
-General William Tecumseh Sherman

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Our Senate is contempleting rewarding those who knowingly and ceaselessly break our laws. As lawmakers, they have very little reverence for the laws of the land, and since they fail to uphold them, they are certainly not qualified to change them.

“Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap — let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; — let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.”

-Abraham Lincoln, Lyceum Address, January 27, 1838

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“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

-Barry Goldwater

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Today, I’ve been contemplating the bastardization of our national anthem and the fact that it’s going to be played at sporting events and in schools. Has anyone even noticed that such an anthem excludes the very people for whom it was written - Americans! I swear to G-d, the day that song is played in my childrens’ schools is the day I pull them out.

It’s also occured to me that very soon, my taxes will be paying for the thing I hate most - AMNESTY. The 1986 failed amnesty cost American taxpayers $78 billion in services and benefits, or about $26,000 per legalized immigrant. We American citizens already work for the American government until May to pay our taxes. As millions of illegals enter the mainstream, we’ll see our indentured service to the government increase. American citizens will become slaves to a system of public assistance and support for the poorest of Mexico and other third world nations.

I’ve also been stewing over the loser attitude of our loser President who says that there are just too many illegals to bother deporting any of them. “It’s just impossible”, he’s opined. To hear an American - supposedly the “leader” of our nation - whimper that we cannot do the right thing because it’s impossible is beyond tragic.

I started the Wordmasters feature to showcase my favorite quotations. Our regular readers will have noticed that I have a particular penchant for quotes of wisdom and wit by my hero, Winston Churchill, the punchy witticisms of Mark Twain, and the wry observations of Ronald Reagan. A while ago, while browsing Amber and Chaos, I came across another quote by Winston Churchill that immediately went into my collection. Considering the times we live in, it is as good a time as any to recall these masterful words:

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
- Winston Churchill

We’ve sat still for far too long. Twenty years ago, in 1986, we were quiet and just took it. The two decades since has seen compromise after compromise. Is the time already past when victory for our sovereignty and American way of life was sure, and not too costly?

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In honor of the third anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom…

“No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

- Ronald Reagan

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Only the dead have seen the end of war.
-Plato

From General Douglas MacArthur’s speech: “Duty, Honor, Country“.
(Thanks for the link, Joe!)

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This following quotation always makes me grin. It’s a truth for all ages - just change the name of the country… :D

It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.

–Ronald Reagan

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“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid”
– Ronald Reagan

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“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

- Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004)

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Beware; lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.

- Demosthenes

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Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exist because of their silent consent.

–Bruno Jasienski (Yasensky)

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To add to the discussion on appeasement that I am hoping to provoke below, I’m featuring three quotations in this edition of Wordmasters.

No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.
–Dean Acheson

I cannot tell you how important it is that we non-Mulsims never bow to the religious strictures of Islam, either by censoring our free press or conceding societal restrictions to the Islamic faith.

You may gain temporary appeasement by a policy of concession to violence, but you do not gain lasting peace that way.
–Anthony Eden

There is no non-violent way to deal with terrorists. To think otherwise is foolish - and deadly.

The idea of reasoning with terrorists without force or with appeasement is naive, and I think it’s dangerous.
–George Allen

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I nominate this quote as the perfect American slogan in the GWOT:

“Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don’t ever apologize for anything.” –Harry S. Truman

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Why do I do what I do? Why get myself all torqued up over issues of national security, war, terrorism, politics, and cultural decay? Because I have a deep respect for the lessons of history, and nothing is more frustrating than to see the approaching doom of avoidable errors and monumental misjudgments. I’ve written quite a few posts about what our posterity will face if OUR generation hides its head in the sand and fails to deal with our enemies here and NOW. Our Little Leaguers, ballerinas, soccer stars, techno geeks, Boy and Girl Scouts…will eventually face a ruthless enemy who is today incubating in daily violence, mayhem, and the philosophy of death.

At the crux of the American Revolution, our Founding Fathers had a very firm grasp of their responsibilities to posterity. It is my hope (and personal determination) that our generation will not fail in its duty to our successors.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geograhy, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

-John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams (May 12, 1780)

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