Skeets, I have to agree with you 100%.
I think of the guys who lied about their age to join, and to see them walk out of a landing craft in waste deep water with enemy fire going all around. Then working on climbing up a cliff on a rope while the enemy is a hundred feet about you firing with a machine gun and cutting the rope your climbing on. (Can you imagine being sopping wet with salt water, wearing combat gear and walking, much less climbing a rope, and then being shot at while do it?)
Or the guys on Okinawa.
How about the guys in Korea fighting when the weather is -30. Ground is frozen and they can't dig a hole for protection. They actually piled dead enemy soldiers to get behind for a wind break. When they hiked out their boots froze to their feet. Often their boots were cut off, and many times their toes fell off! Some of those guys lived simply because it was so cold their blood froze when they were wounded, allowing longer to get to some aid.
I believe they joined up because their family and background taught them this country is more important then their individual life and they believed it so sincerely they acted on it.
There are very few, in my opinion, today with that same commitment. I believe you'd have to line up one hundred 17-20 years olds today to find two or three with the same fortitude.
But we've heard for so long now they died for our freedoms, so we can say what we want, do want we want, and protest any thing we dislike, destroy other's property...all in the name of freedom.
I think any level headed person knows when those guys were in those life and death stressful moments, they had no idea they were giving their lives for folks to burn a flag and speak against America....because they weren't!
The news media, years ago, was to inform. Now their position is to influence. If we listen long enough we begin to believe it.
I have a Mennonite friend who raises hogs. He has no TV in his house. He told me a few years ago he was away from the farm for a two week period. When he came back he couldn't believe how fast the young pigs had grown. He said they grew just as fast when he was home, but he didn't realize how fast that was until that time of absence.
He related, that is what is happening to America. We're in the middle of it and don't see the day to day minute changes. But if we could ever get back away from it, we'd see clearly what differences have happened.
If you've been in combat to protect the USA, you can protest all you want. If not YOU have not paid your dues...act like it!
