My Vietnam by George Bush

Everyone has his Vietnam. And what is Vietnam but a tale of
dashed hopes. Consider some private citizens.

Paul Gaugin sailed to French Polynesia in search of an elusive
paradise. And died of frustration. That was his Vietnam.

Andre de Sarto, the faultless painter, turned thief and lived a
tormented life. Because he married the wrong woman. It was his
Vietnam.

Because he wanted to write the best Scottish poems, Robert Burns
trekked away his life in search of Scottish folklores. A certain
Vietnam.

Consider these public citizens:

Czar Nicholas of Russia loved power so much. That led to his
death and that of his family. Another Vietnam.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s ambition did him in, in Waterloo. It was
his Vietnam dance.

J.F. Kennedy’s Cuban dream failed at the Bay of Pigs. Some
Vietnam.

And then enter Richard Nixon. He went to the real Vietnam and
fought an endless war. His Secretary of Sate, Henry Kissinger,
did a stylish exit and got away with a Noble Peace Prize. Yet,
Nixon had his Vietnam.

I went to war in Iraq after GOD sent me a vision of a brave new
world; the vision of a better democracy. Since Adam. Since the
Greek city-states. Since the great Roman Empire

But with about 2,000 American Marine coffins, unending violence
in Iraq, and without a definite exit strategy for the American
forces, I begin to think that this is my Vietnam.

Please tell it to no one. Because they all have their Vietnam.

ARTHUR ZULU is an editor, book reviewer, and the author of
CHASING SHADOWS! and HOW TO WRITE A BEST-SELLER. For his works,
professional services, and free helps for writers, goto:
http://controversialwriter.tripod.com Mailto:
controversialwriter@yahoo.com Web search: Arthur Zulu

Survivors

“In all your getting, get wisdom. Wisdom is the principal thing.” In all your giving, give wisdom. Wisdom is the greatest of gifts. Let us daily increase in wisdom, love, gratitude, reverence, healing, peace, joy, happiness, laughter and prosperity.

A great warrior nation, born in bloodshed, grows by bloodshed and in spite of bloodshed. It excels in bloodshed and develops the physical power to destroy the planet many times over. I think of blood covenant. Abraham with his Creator and Jesus with His followers. We can see the bloodshed of war results in blood covenants between survivors. Victors assist the vanquished. Today, every living being shares a common bond. We are all survivors, from long lines of survivors.

Some have survived by martial superiority. Some have survived by covenant, contract and treaty. Most have survived by wits, luck and choosing wisely from perceived alternatives. Whether survival is a result of competing or cooperating successfully, choosing appropriately to the situation has become imprinted in our genes. Congratulations survivors!

We use time to mark our progress. More importantly, we use time to identify and understand the natural world of cycles. From nano-seconds to great ages, sunrise to sunset, we observe and expect repetition; the primary learning device of all creation. We plan a day or year based upon our understanding of relatively short cycles. To receive maximum benefit from short cycles, we need to know and understand the great cycles.

We call the long cycle’s ages. The Machine Age reluctantly gives way to the Information Age. The Piscean Age (Jesus to now) violently gives way to the Aquarian age (next two millennia) which character is science and brotherhood. The Age of Man (Adam to present) gives way, kicking and screaming, to the millennial Kingdom Age. (Peace, order, planetary restoration.)

Every age is chaotic in transition, often violently challenging survivors. Tradition becomes all which helped our ancestors survive. Progress struggles to get free of tradition. Three or more simultaneous age changes point to trouble times three. Survivors will be culled. The wheat separated from the chaff and the tares. Those who hold violence in disdain will hire those who do not, to secure life and property. What could possibly go wrong?

The soldier does not make the ultimate sacrifice when she comes home in a body bag. She makes the ultimate sacrifice when she takes the loyalty oath, subverting self interest for a cause. Any cause. A slave contract is drawn so the soldier does the will of her commanders as long as required. Should the commanders be fools or traitors, the soldier cannot judge. She can only obey. Greater love has no person than to lay down her life for her professional superiors. Does love and nobility trump wisdom? “Wisdom is the principal thing.” Is it too late to choose wisdom and a comforting, comfortable future of positive, personal security in the midst of violent chaos? Not while we yet breathe survivor breath.

About the Author

Freelance writer published in newspapers and many websites.

Your Right Not to be Offended

Every time you turn around today you are almost sure to offend someone. In our land of victimhood it has become difficult to avoid saying or doing something which will cause someone else to feel bad or put upon or irritated.

The events of September 11, 2001 have created a whole new group of people to be offended. It is nearly impossible to criticize the terrorists, (all Muslims), without evoking an outcry from secular and religious organizations ready and waiting to impart their own brand of political correctness. The question is; how are the terrorists supposed to be identified? They are of different nationalities so that won’t work. They come from different cultures, so, ditto. Their family histories vary widely. In fact, the only common threads are religion and a hatred of America and Americans.

Well funded organizations have sprung up, like mushrooms around a cow flop, that have no function other than to pander to the offended. It has become a cottage industry for the disaffected. Search the newspapers, electronic news media and the Internet for a person, preferably famous or at least wealthy who has made a statement that can be construed as anti-anything and find some person or group who doesn’t like it and WHAM!, instant lawsuit.

It wasn’t always that way, of course. In the past, if somebody said something about you that you didn’t like you would reply in kind, punch the rascal in the nose or swallow hard and take it. That was before the recent proliferation of parasites, (Oops! beg pardon; lawyers) that now infest the land.

Attorneys aren’t solely to blame,of course, they’re just the primary financial beneficiaries. There are also a couple of generations of government school graduates who have no clue about what the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means or how it should be applied.

The point is; you don’t have a right not to be offended. You can shun the offender, rebut him, make fun of him or even risk prosecution by responding physically, but you shouldn’t be allowed to use the police powers of the state to keep him from being offensive.

The current rush to enact “hate crime” legislation is a dangerous first step onto the slippery slope of criminalizing thought. Just as the NAZI Gestapo or the Soviet KGB or the Red Guards of Communist China or the Taliban kept their populations under the dictatorial thumb, there are Americans who think it right and proper for the government to control the thinking of its citizens.

Among the worst of the “Offend nobody” groups are the various anti-defamation associations, homosexual advocacy groups, college professors and some religions. They have perverted the free speech clause of the First Amendment to employ the police powers of government to criminalize utterances that they deem to be insulting or skeptical. They want to use the law to prevent the very critical speech that the First Amendment was written to protect.

The university campus, once the bastion of free thinking and nonconformity has turned into a semantic gulag where every spoken word is parsed and sifted to find any kernel of offense. The jackboots of the Gestapo have given way to the designer sneakers of the language lurker, hiding in plain sight with ears aflutter to catch any hint of speech that might ruffle sensitive feathers. Once admired as purveyors of truth, even at the risk of censure or worse, professors and administrators now act as commissars of correctness.

Of course the political tone of the speech has assumed supreme importance. If it endorses sexual, environmental, socialist, artistic, pacifistic, anti-capitalist or any of a panoply of leftist opinions it is acceptable, nay celebrated. If on the other hand it has any hint of conservative, pro-business, individualist tarnish it must be rooted out and destroyed. Any wonder that the graduates of these institutions see the First Amendment as a one way street, designed to protect their opinion and repudiate those with which they disagree?

A recent example of this kind of idiocy is the proposed 9/11 memorial statue of three NYC firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero, based on a photograph taken at the time. The three are all white but the PC manics have decided that the statue must be politically correct and multi-cultural, so two of the white faces have been replaced with black and Hispanic ones. These folks have come to the conclusion that fact and truth must be subordinated to their opinion of fairness and inclusion. The firefighters have taken the position that the statue should reflect reality and so the statue will probably never be made. Instead, some bland, meaningless monument will rise and the forces of darkness will have prevailed yet again.

The new airport screening posses have raised the idiocy to a whole new level. The screeners are instructed to avoid any hint of racial or cultural profiling to the point that they have to aggressively select those who are obviously not of the Middle Eastern or Arab or Muslim persuasion. This leads to the absurdity of little old white-haired Caucasian grandmothers, red-headed children and blond businessmen being vigorously searched while swarthy, Middle-Eastern appearing men are subjected to only a cursory inspection. Can it be that our whole government, our whole society, has become so racially paranoid that we will risk death and destruction through terrorism rather than risk offending someone? Are we really so brain-dead that we accept the ignorant, stupid, uneducated and arrogant to do the important job of screening airline passengers? It would appear so.

All you have to do today is identify yourself as a member of one minority group or another and you are on your way to being protected from offensive speech. The truth or falsity of what is said means nothing, as long as you can show that your feelings have been hurt you will find advocates ready and willing to smite the perpetrator and hopefully get you (and them) some money.

America is going to have to make some serious decisions soon. Is keeping people from being offended more important than protecting free speech? Can a minority rule the majority through misapplication of Constitutional principle? Will expressing unpopular opinion become a criminal act? Is a criminal act committed while asserting an opinion worse than a criminal act committed while remaining silent? The answers to these questions will determine whether we are to remain a free nation or not. How will you answer them?

© 2005 Charles Stone, Jr.

Born: Buffalo, NY 8/7/42

Graduated: Williamsville Central HS 1960

Military Service USAF 1/27/61 - 1/4/65 Missile mechanic, 3 years in Germany.

Computer School, Buffalo, NY 1967.

Worked as a computer programmer, programmer/analyst, systems analyst, DP manager and consultant from 1968 - 1990

Became disabled in 1991

Currently living in Kissimmee, FL

Interests: politics, motor sports, history (mainly military), Web surfing, talk radio junkie.

Member of the NRA.

Favorite TV shows: CSI, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, Nova.

Favorite radio program: Neal Boortz

Political leaning: libertarian, Constitutionalist, individualist.

Supported and campaigned for Harry Browne in 1996 and 2000. Not sure I’d do it again.

Published in: Bureaucrash, Sierra Times, The Libertarian Enterprise, Free Market Net, We Hold These Truths, The Informed Volusian