A spear in the heart
I watched American Sniper with my son today. Touching movie. Discussing the movie on the way home my son explained that he doesn't "wave the flag like you do." To make a long drawn out conversation short...
Thank you Mr. Paul, apparently my son is a dupe and I am an animal (my words, not his).
Thank you Mr. Paul, apparently my son is a dupe and I am an animal (my words, not his).
I have 3 sons. One is 52, one is 47 and one is 41 and they are at different stages. I think the gap between each of us is shrinking but I am still moving the bar.
I know it was a "war movie", but the one part that left me wanting more detail was the end, where Kyle abruptly from combat psychosis to a perfectly well adjusted guy. Not sure if Eastwood was trying to trim minutes or what, but documenting his recovery - even if all of 15 minutes of screen time - would have done a service, both to movie continuity and to the viewers to help them understand that process.
All in all - I give it 4.9 stars. :-)
This country killing soldiers by playing cowboys and Indians in Vietnam and the (not quite for my reason) protests against that war gradually transformed me into a lib. Of course my youth got all caught in the counter-culture movement unique to that time. (There's another one (a plain ole' culture movement?) via Internet and Facebook unique to this time).
I was heart-broken when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. I was itching to vote for his run for president since he was against the war.
I was drafted, placed in the Marines, listened to all the indoctrination at Parris Island and still remained a lib.
When our troops abandoned Vietnam to its fate, I was again a civilian. I hated all that useless loss but I was all "I told you so."
Then Jimmy Carter came along. I voted for him. Just those four years completely turned my thinking around.
I voted for Ronald Reagan twice for both his terms.
I hoped just four years of Obama would turn this country around. Maybe I should have taken the 8 years of "Teflon Man" Clinton more into account.
I have heard it said that, “If you are not a liberal at twenty I would say you had no heart. If you are not a conservative by 40 I would say you had no brain.” Unattributed, I believe it is a paraphrase...
It was first said by Francois Guisot, a French monarchist statesman:
“Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.”
(Said in reference to whether France should be a republic or a monarchy.)
It was later adapted by French Premier Georges Clemenceau:
“Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.”
In any case the America the younger generations see is not the one we knew. Still I wonder how much of the rest of the world he has seen and how much history revisionism he has been exposed to? How old was he on 9-11? Has he been exposed to places like Haiti or other really impoverished nations, or the brutality of places under Sharia?
There may yet be time. Patience and guidance on your part may yet change his perception.
Though I was never a Liberal in the modern sense of the word, I do remember how much the following quote from Twain struck me as accurate later in life.
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Mark Twain
The exact ages are not critical, but the premise is often true.
Your son is lucky. You are still around for him, and can expose him to different perspectives.
Best wishes,
O.A.
I think that was Winston Churchill.
That is what I thought and how I remembered it also. However, I did a search and found it was in question... C'est la vie...
Regards,
O.A.
I'm just kidding, right?
Maybe...
Now, with a total voluntary military, that is not the case. Individuals can decide whether to serve at 18 or older, irrespective of their ability to vote. The 26th amendment should be repealed.
From one father to another, I hope you find peace and happiness with your son.
We must take the joy we can find.
I can't imagine the suffering you must have endured. My problems are minor when compared to yours.
The following are some of my reasons for thinking Paul's military stance would be preferable. Just as the Democrats should not have a right to pick my pocket for welfare and social programs, the Republicans should not have a right to pick my pocket to go fight boogeymen all over the world. I should have a say in both. In other words, if charity should be voluntarily funded, so should the military. No one should have the right to forcibly take my money from me to support whatever pet cause they think is important, when I disagree. It's philosophically inconsistent and hypocritical to say you know how other people's money should be spent, but the other side doesn't.
Given the many examples of the government's corruption and waste that are frequent topics of conversation here in the Gulch, would you claim that we can nonetheless trust our government when they say another country is "bad" or a threat, and we should expend our money and blood attacking them? I don't trust that the government's chief motive is to protect the people. Have you heard of Operation Northwoods? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_N... At least a segment of our government wants war badly enough to intentionally attack the very people they are sworn to protect. They're willing to stage false flag attacks and blame a scape goat to justify war.
Ayn Rand wrote that the police and courts should be voluntarily funded. She and Ron Paul are in agreement about many things philosophically. Hopefully no one here would classify her as a "dupe," "illiterate," and "naive."
I apologize if you feel offended by my assessment but its my right to gather information, process it, come to my own conclusions and then call things as I see them without regard for other peoples feelings.
What Paul and Rand said is that funding -- both for charity and wars -- should be voluntary. This rests on the conviction that the person who earned the money is the best (and the only morally justified) person to decide how it should be spent. I'm sure you'd agree this rule should apply to YOUR money. Yet, unless you're a hypocrite, the rule must apply to others, too.
You say you disagree with voluntary funding, which means you believe money should be forcibly taken from all to fund the cause you favor: war. You must fear that the justifications offered for war would not be sufficient to convince enough people to fund it and/or volunteer to fight in it, if they were actually given a choice. So instead of viewing your fellow man as an end in himself, you see him as a means to your end. This is the rationale of dictators and mafiosos, and very much anti-freedom..
Are you going out and robbing people and sending the stolen money in to the government? If not, why not? If taking money by force to fund the military is acceptable, why use the IRS and the government as your middleman? If you have the moral right to steal my money to fund war, you might as well do it directly. In my view, theft is wrong, whether you do it directly or advocate for the government to do it for you.
I do not think anything Paul says/does is un-American or anti-American. He's just not always right and on some things his stances are ideologically dangerous. Isolationism is definitely part of it. Also an often overlooked element is the right of a people to trade in the world.
I do have a question about your feelings for your son. Would you really prefer for your son to be just like you? Do you wish he would join the military and go to a foreign land to potentially be wounded or die, or commit suicide when he comes home? We have all grown up with the idea that dying for one's country brings "honor" and "glory" - thanks to our government-funded education, and our culture's books and movies. But that seems cold comfort to the parent who loses a child in the types of war we're fighting today, in my opinion. But perhaps yours is different.
Life is a marvelous gift and so is liberty. There are those, like me, who would have taken and oath to lay down their lives to preserve what this country is supposed to be. The oath is still there but the country has changed dramatically within my lifetime. Still, there must be people of this this type to ensure that when the SHTF there people there, people of honor and conviction, to pickup the pieces and/or defend whats left until order is restored.
Either of my children can CHOOSE to serve in the military, as I have, or not without worrying about my love and support. I've recommend to both that they do not join ( if either did, to choose Navy (as I did) or Air force). Should THEY choose to go in then the consequences of their actions, like it was for me, is solely on them regardless of how I feel about it.
In this country military service is voluntary. "Cold comfort to a parent..." blah blah blah, its the young man or womans choice. If a child dies before a parent for any reason there is no comfort.
I am far from the bleeding heart when it comes to individuals choosing their destiny. Honor and country are worth dying for and a hell of lot more relevant than dying of a drug overdose, or DUI death, or dying from crime, or a car accident.....
I personally would be willing to lay down my life for freedom, or in defense of my loved ones. I would not, however, consider service in our current military to be concerned with those things other than nominally.
As for the rest...if you can see the decay, as I do, then you are knowledgeable enough to understand the myriad of ways to fight what is coming. If you are in this country and you see no hope in restoration or value remaining that could be redeemed then shrug.
While this country and its people are dishonorable, there is still a firm foundation to build on if we can scrape the shit off it and wash it down. That fight is honorable and worth dying for.
People only value those things that have come at a price, and voting is "too cheap." Freedom has also come at too low a price for most in the US who have it, and they seem to believe that it is free, it is not. It has been "paid for" by the blood of countless generations.
it really picked up steam when my generation became teachers, i graduated high school in 1959. i saw how my sister who became a teacher functioned. she would probably be angry if she read this as i never told her what i thought.
then of course the government decided that the students weren't doing well so they stepped in further than they already were and as things work with government intervention things got worse. all who think that things in general will get better in the usa are sadly mistaken. education wise we are a 3rd world country or worse. at least in the third world country the youth know how to survive even though they are basically illiterate. here the youth do not know what to do, accept ask for everything. depresses me to write in this subject.
I'm 39, Gen X, and I'm highly optimistic that even now people my age and younger reject ideological dogma.
I still have hope for the older siblings, and I continue to sow the fields with seeds.
Hang in there!
Oh, and I'm with LS - I don't understand your last line.
http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/25/john-...
Lots of quotes, variations and opinions; few good proofs.
And you can quote me on that... :)
I have had an extremely difficult time with my daughter as she seems to be growing up completely despising me for the very things that would be admired and appreciated by people on this site. I would try and chalk it up to a teenagers rebellion but she seems to have completely embraced her mom's (my ex-wife) way of thinking and view on life. To quickly describe that, my ex wife's mindset is very similar to Hank Rearden's wife and mother in Atlas Shrugged. As a result of all this I still hope that something changes with my daughter but I have had to accept reality that your family is a crap shoot as to how they turn out because you can really only have much influence if they have a mind that is similar to yours in the firs place. The Atlas movie did not go much into Rearden's family situation but the book was very helpful in helping me deal with this. It was fictional but shows reality. There were so many aspects of his relationship with his family that I can not go into them all but they help you understand and deal with the fact your hope and effort with your family can only go so far and in the end you just have to accept things the way they are and move on. But hey, if your lucky your son will go through some issues but end up much like yourself. That happens a lot too.
I am more than a little disappointed to learn that my son doesn't value this country as much as I do. Like Ron Paul, he is naive in his thinking on this matter AND will end up seeing his idealism decimated by the reality of the coming all-out culture war.
I do not want to open a pissing match with the Paulites and Libertarians on this site. This is why I kept things vague.
Even so, I am sorely disappointed, and even hurt to a degree, by my sons perspective.
I haven't seen the movie, though, and I don't get the Paul reference.