5-29-2017 Thomas Jefferson and the Debt of Memorial Day
The world has turned over many times since the days of my youth. To say things are different now is but to comment on the reality of time. Time does not change things, but ideas do. Ideas are a form of philosophy in that they require serious thought and often monumental effort to drag them from the gray matter into actual material reality.
Ideas/dreams are of the same stuff. The truth is, bad ideas are as real as good ones, the difference being the bent of the person having the ideas. Hitler’s idea of a “good” world was far different than the ideas of Moses or Jesus Christ. The ideas of Marx, while different on the surface than Hitler’s, were the kind of ideas that lead to the enslavement of all except a select few, the qualifications of the select few liable to change on the whim of Hitler or Marx. You get the idea.
One of my earliest memories is of Sailors coming home from Japan to Bainbridge Naval Training Center to the thankful, joyful and praising crowds, our version of New York’s ticker tape parade. Often as I was being led down a street by a big sister or my mother, afraid to let go as I may just take off running up to a soldier or sailor and thank them for their serving America.
We were taught in 1st Grade, that our military men and women were the salt of the earth and we would do well to enlist when the time came.
By the time, I reached my late twenties, soldiers, sailors and other branches of the service came marching home from Nam, not to ticker tapes and cheering crowds, but name calling, accusations of war criminal, and being spat upon as they walked the street. Had military personnel changed? Had the enemy become more honorable than the storm troopers of Hitler, Hirohito? Basically, the change was found in our institutions of learning, elementary, high school and most definitely college level.
Even in the early Post Nam days, a creeping form of agnosticism, even atheism was flooding our land of the free and home of the brave. We had long forgotten the advice of President Kennedy and demanded our supposed rights. And here we be in the year of our Lord, 2017. The so called Puritan Work Ethic, which is simply a biblically based method of civilization, has long been cast aside. Consider this from Thomas Jefferson:
“There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.” We owe a big debt!
Copyright © 2017 Larry Lilly
IT work by Oral Deckard
YOUR EMAIL addy will not sold or given for any reason!
The world has turned over many times since the days of my youth. To say things are different now is but to comment on the reality of time. Time does not change things, but ideas do. Ideas are a form of philosophy in that they require serious thought and often monumental effort to drag them from the gray matter into actual material reality.
Ideas/dreams are of the same stuff. The truth is, bad ideas are as real as good ones, the difference being the bent of the person having the ideas. Hitler’s idea of a “good” world was far different than the ideas of Moses or Jesus Christ. The ideas of Marx, while different on the surface than Hitler’s, were the kind of ideas that lead to the enslavement of all except a select few, the qualifications of the select few liable to change on the whim of Hitler or Marx. You get the idea.
One of my earliest memories is of Sailors coming home from Japan to Bainbridge Naval Training Center to the thankful, joyful and praising crowds, our version of New York’s ticker tape parade. Often as I was being led down a street by a big sister or my mother, afraid to let go as I may just take off running up to a soldier or sailor and thank them for their serving America.
We were taught in 1st Grade, that our military men and women were the salt of the earth and we would do well to enlist when the time came.
By the time, I reached my late twenties, soldiers, sailors and other branches of the service came marching home from Nam, not to ticker tapes and cheering crowds, but name calling, accusations of war criminal, and being spat upon as they walked the street. Had military personnel changed? Had the enemy become more honorable than the storm troopers of Hitler, Hirohito? Basically, the change was found in our institutions of learning, elementary, high school and most definitely college level.
Even in the early Post Nam days, a creeping form of agnosticism, even atheism was flooding our land of the free and home of the brave. We had long forgotten the advice of President Kennedy and demanded our supposed rights. And here we be in the year of our Lord, 2017. The so called Puritan Work Ethic, which is simply a biblically based method of civilization, has long been cast aside. Consider this from Thomas Jefferson:
“There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.” We owe a big debt!
Copyright © 2017 Larry Lilly
IT work by Oral Deckard
YOUR EMAIL addy will not sold or given for any reason!
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