They Deserve Better

I usually post a new blog on Sunday evening, but I just couldn’t force myself to write and when I did, it was angry—much too angry to post on a blog I allow the whole world to see. So I started thinking about what had me so angry on Sunday and I can emphatically state what I was so angry about is the continual barricading of our National Parks

(and to the governors who have opted to open those parks on state funds, thank you! because they are OUR parks), our National Monuments (thank heavens there wasn’t a tarp big enough to cover Lady Liberty or the Washington Monument),

our National Battlefields (Political Statement following: THIS is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they broke free of the chains of tyranny and unfortunately exactly what the Southern States feared in the aftermath of the American Civil War), and our National Memorials (so believe me when I say the irony of 80 and 90 year old men and women having to break down barricades to visit their own Memorial was not lost on me).

I found myself thanking God that my Daddy did not live to see his own government resort to such petulant, churlish, and frankly childish behavior. Good grief, I have an eight year old grand-daughter who doesn’t throw tantrums on this kind of scale! And I didn’t dare call my mother because she thinks all of this is a good idea. (Please insert eye-rolling here…) To this day, I don’t understand my mother’s political leanings.

It was the barricading of the Memorials that sent me over the edge and had me screaming in frustration and anger at the television set. The National Mall in Washington D.C. was closed to everyone, except for a rally supporting amnesty for illegal immigration, at which point the barricades were removed for the day. Yet, when the WWII veterans arrived at their Memorial, they were barricaded out. Barricaded out of an open air memorial that was paid for with private donations, maintained with private donations, and built to honor the sacrifices of the men and women who paid for that memorial in measures much too full and far too dear. Barricades were nothing for these men and women. One old veteran said when he was told the Memorial was closed, “The beaches at Normandy were closed, too.”

God LOVE our veterans!

The men and women of our military are beyond a doubt second to none. They willingly don the uniform, knowing that when they signed that contract with our government to serve our nation, they in effect, signed a blank check for any amount, up to and including the ultimate sacrifice. Those men and women of “the Greatest Generation” knew what the stakes were—defeat tyranny or allow the world to slip into the stranglehold of fascism. That was an unacceptable proposition to them and they set about to deliver freedom, knowing full well what the cost could be. They died on the beaches of Normandy, on the sands of Iwo Jima, in the snow at the Battle of the Bulge, in the depths of the jungles while being forced to march to Bataan…and for our own government to so disrespect these men and women in this fashion is beyond the pale.

And, for people like Bill Maher to ridicule these men and women, saying that no one called them “the brightest generation” I have only one thing to say to you, sir. You owe those brave men and women, those men and women who bled and died to preserve your freedom to be a complete and total ass, a very deep and sincere apology. Were it not for those men and women of “the Greatest Generation” you would not be here today.

The people of this country deserve better than the dysfunctional government we have now. The Greatest Generation deserves better than they have been treated by the very government they fought to preserve. Our veterans deserve better.