Our Poor Memories

PRAISE JESUS and THANK-YOU SO VERY MUCH. We are bad about history. God knows it. The Bible includes the phrase "This do in Rememberance of Me" likely because we would forget. I did poorly in history class in school so I won't even pretend to not rely heavily on the internet for names and dates and stuff.

It does burn me up to hear people forget significant events of the last decade, as we anticipate the upcoming election. That of course makes me think how many of the generation before me are biting their tongues over Eisenhower-Nixon era events that I am blase' about. (well not really, just for argument sake).

What is our motivation? Why are we Democrats, Republicans, Whigs, Independents, Politicians vs Statesmen?

While washing dishes, (yes Madge, I do have dishpan hands) a thought came to me that I can say with HIGH confidence. The sailors killed on the U.S.S. COLE were not expecting to get 70 virgins. They might have had some sense of duty to country, they might have hoped to use the G.I. bill to buy a house, maybe it was part of a plan to pay for college, or some combination of all of the above.

The Marines killed in the Beirut bombing, (plus Army, Navy, Air-Force in) Desert Storm, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia, had reasons to be there and while these are a broad spectrum of places, they were attacked due to a commonality of thought. I salute their defense of thought and a set of ideals, bound up in a FLAG.

This world is a place of war. As much as we would like to forget it, avoid it, write slogans against it, try to teach our children to "play nice", it remains.

While on the prison ERT team I was called up, to suit up, and load up. Along with the rest of the team I sat in the off grounds ready room in riot gear, having live 00' rounds in my 870 shotgun. We all tried to talk about ANY thing other than the obvious, and we waited. It was a great collective sigh of relief when the call came to "stand down". There were other days that repeated that sequence, and there were days with lesser events that did not involve guns but did involve contact with inmates.

More to the point, if it were announced that your local law-enforcement was going to turn in their side arms in exchange for swiffer dusters, would you sleep better at night? Would you breathe easier working all night at the 7-11?

God (Gen.9, Prov.20:26, 21:1, 29:4, Rom 13) and our Constitution establish government for the protection of its people. Now, whom do we trust to keep peace and execute justice? There is a lot of heritage and history to live up to.