RUTHFULLY YOURS

Today is Veterans Day  honoring men and women who have served in the U.S. armed forces. In an era where too many military leaders in every branch of armed services are more consumed with politics and p.c. culture than national security, I turn to General Douglas Mac Arthur’s magnificent farewell speech to West Point on May 12, 1962.

As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, “Where are you bound for, General?” and when I replied, “West Point,” he remarked, “Beautiful place: have you ever been there before?” 

No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this, coming from a profession I have served so long and a people I have loved so well. It fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honorº a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code — the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the animation of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal, arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always.

“Duty, Honor, Country” — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

Now there is a question that has occasioned a furious debate.
First, there are too many invidious Holocaust metaphors. Dr. Fauci, for all his undebatable flaws is not a Nazi, lock-downs are not concentration camps, masks are not yellow badges, and the jabs are not poisonous gas as some overwrought opponents have posted.
Other opponents, respected friends among them, cite statistics that are fatuous at best. The average daily death rates in America range between 7500 to 8500 per day. To attribute thousands of deaths to vaccinations in seniors with complications from adult-onset illness is needless scare mongering.
During the HIV epidemic many epidemiologists dismissed vaccines and focused the research on therapeutics which proved very effective. We should have done the same, but the media and too many politicized health professionals detoured all the legitimate research and statistical evidence of the efficacy of many drugs.
I respect skepticism about a new modality in vaccinations that were developed at Mach speed. Weighing the risks, I took the recommended doses of vaccine. The cases and mortality subsided. Whether it was herd immunity, natural immunity, or the vaccines, is something we will never know.
Histrionics and conspiracy caterwauling only muddy the waters and, alas, there is no real science to follow. rsk

It is astonishing that not one of all those pseudo conservative pundits and legislators who piled on Donald Trump has shown any contrition. On the contrary, over at National Review they crow with self-importance:
“The pandemic coincided with a mainstream-media embrace of anti-journalism that obscured the truth. NR never bought into it.”
What they did buy into was unrelenting and vicious and anti-journalism attacks on Donald Trump.
Bruce Thornton sums it up: rsk
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/goldberg-variant-trump-derangement-virus-bruce-thornton/
“It’s also peculiar that those “many on the right” were not concerned about Biden’s obvious cognitive impairment and endorsement of every lunatic progressive idea, like the Green New Deal that he has spent the last nine months trying to turn into law. All that evidence from last summer of his mental confusion and current radicalism apparently was dropped down the same memory hole as Trump’s many achievements.”

On October 12, 2000, jihadists exploded a  boat alongside the USS Cole—a Navy Destroyer—as it was refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden.

The blast ripped a 40-foot-wide hole near the waterline of the Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring many more.

President Clinton called the perpetrators “hate filled cowards” and vowed that the incident would not deter his efforts to seek peace between Israel and Yasser Arafat…..rsk

Much is written below on Attorney Genital Merrick Garland’s gratuitous and insulting decision to have the FBI investigate parents who protest against indoctrination, woke policies and Critical Race Theory disguised as education, likening them to ‘domestic terrorists.”

Like other efforts which led to political victories,  dissident parents should coalesce behind a new movement named My Child, My Choice!

Has a nice ring to it……rsk

I have a young neighbor- a  student at a prestigious college who is really sweet and friendly and voluble. She described her classes on American policies: “like, capitalism, like instituted, like racism and like slavery, for like, a million years.”

She told me that she was hoping to spend a semester abroad and like, she would like learn another language.

I think a semester abroad should be mandatory in Venezuela or Cuba for woke students. And they could add Spanish to their rather pathetic knowledge of English syntax and vocabulary.  Wouldn’t that be like really cool? rsk

When the established government does not recognize dissidents and calls them “domestic terrorists” and limits their speech, controls the media, alters the language, denies legitimate history, trashes tradition and culture, erases national borders, blurs the role of the military, destroys the canons of education, science and medicine, and uses the powers of government to spy on its citizens- that is an insurrection. rsk

Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s speech to the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., May 12, 1962:

“And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment;º but you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.

Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men’s minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation’s war guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice. Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government: whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as firm and complete as they should be; these great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.”

“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. “Psalm 137

There was once a political power house known by both advocates and antagonists as “the Jewish vote and lobby.” It was respected and courted by legislators and politicians of both parties. How did their agenda get derailed into supporting only left-wing causes? Why has their right hand lost its cunning? Why do their tongues cleave to the roofs of their mouths instead of loudly denouncing a growing State Department push to roll back the American Embassy move to Jerusalem and reduce American presence there to consular status?

There is an old saw that states “silence is golden.” It is so when speaking offends and hurts. But silence is immoral when it fails to confront growing and increasingly violent anti-Semitism even when it is disguised as “tough love” on Israel.

RSK

Tonight begins a new year 5782 for the Jewish people. It is observed with reflection on a tragic history, pride in survival and achievements, and, of course delicious and savory food. This year there is also foreboding occasioned by the steep rise in overt antisemitism in America, the best and brightest corner of the diaspora.

It is demonstrated in the libels against Israel and actual violence against American Jews, particularly those in Orthodox garb. It is prevalent in the media, the academies and in the corridors of power, specifically in the Democrat party, whose grandees ignore and paper over the overt bias.

I am an optimist by nature so I will hope for a better year that restores patriotism and pride in America’s exceptionalism and legacy, and for the safety of Israel and people of good will all over the world. As we always abbreviated in the Bronx: “A happy and healthy……” rsk