The monuments in Washington all seemed false in the cool morning mist. They were big and white and extravagant, yet the tourists cheapened them somehow as they gawked, took photos, and scurried to the next place on their list of things to see. Their attention seemed to focus on what things were rather than why they were. The scene was a poor example of Americana. Even Honest Abe seemed to frown from his throne. Of all the walls of stone only one seemed real.

This wall's long black marble slices into the ground. On it are engraved fifty-eight thousand American names from an undeclared war that no one wants to remember in the jungles of a country half a globe away. There are no ornate scrolls or stenciled directions, no fancy faded pieces of parchment, no self-serving sentiments, just names.

There's also a statue some distance away. Three bronze soldiers stare into the wall, waiting for word of their fellow soldiers, or perhaps morning their loss. The soldiers don't talk; they simply stare. They are all just boys, most of them only six years older than I was then: nineteen.

Under the statue-soldier's gaze, an elderly man lagged behind a tour at the wall. He caressed it and knelt to leave a single rose at its based. He sobbed. He had difficulty standing up. A nearby park attendant helped him and asked, "One of yours, sir?" The old man shook his head and replied, "Not just one of them. All of them."

I penned those words in the fall of 1989... 20 years ago.

They are an excerpt of a story I authored as an 18-year-old college freshman. It was based upon a trip to Washington D.C., and to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, simply known to all as The Wall. It is fictionalized, but only just. To this day it remains one of the most emotional places I've ever visited.

At the time, Vietnam was our most recent "major" conflict, though I know all wars are major are those who fight them. We were still several years away from the first Gulf War, and more than a decade from 9/11 and the wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq that we still fight today.

I'm met dozens of veterans since that time, from World War Two, Korea, Vietnam and our current wars. I've tried to thank them for their service, but mere words always feel inadequate to capture the gratitude I feel for all they have sacrificed so that I can live in a land of freedom and liberty.

I've tried to explain the sacrifices they've made as best I can to my older daughter. I've told her some of what I know about my Uncle Bobby's war in Korea, where he had the harrowing duty of splicing damaged communications lines for forward observers while in combat. I tried to tell her of how her grandfather—who we buried just before last Veteran's Day—stood guard against saboteurs in the wet salt spray as victory ships burned from to the torpedoes of German U-boats off the Carolina Coast.

I've told her what I know of some of our local heroes that I know she's heard of and seen, and of those who quietly walk among us with little recognition at all.

Today is the day we thank all veterans who have served this nation and who put their lives on the line to preserve our way of life.

Words are not enough, but all the same, thank you.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:32 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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I just wish that Fox News had embargoed the story of the visit and honored the former President's wishes of keeping the meeting secret.

I would imagine that visiting the families of servicemen killed and wounded is among the most emotional experiences that any President will encounter, and the fact that George and Laura Bush took the time to be with those impacted by Major Hasan's jihadist rampage says quite a bit about their character.

I hope the visit was able to provide the families and those wounded with some inspiration and comfort.

President and Mrs. Obama are due to make an appearance at a formal memorial service tomorrow. I suspect they will spend time with the troops as well.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:20 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Obviously, Roman Polanski must direct.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:33 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Über liberal Gore Vidal takes the disgusting practice of blaming the victim to the extreme, outrageously calling the 13-year-old rape victim that Roman Polanski drugged and brutalized, "a hooker."

Quick, someone award him a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:35 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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So sayeth Gallup:

Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009, confirming a finding that Gallup first noted in June. Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.

Let's keep those percentages in mind the next time we see a heavily-slanted poll that significantly under-samples Republicans and over-samples Democrats.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:08 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Look closely, and you'll see James O'Keefe, the filmmaker who nailed ACORN for supporting child sex trafficking, wearing a pimp suit once again... and dancing.

Badly.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:18 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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It's the only thing she's ever posted online that was worth the amount of time it took to understand it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:41 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Progressive bloggers pushing for the adoption of the LGBT agenda President Obama said he would implement on their behalf have now been given the cold shoulder by the White House. Once they complained that Obama failed to live up to his campaign promises, they were summarily dismissed by the Administration as part of "the internet left fringe" that needs to "take off their pajamas."

The reaction to the betrayal is as you would expect, with lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I guess it isn't quite so funny when the real teabaggers are dismissed just as easily as those smeared as such.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:07 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Democrats in the media and in politics have so over-used cries to racism in an attempt to marginalize legitimate opposition that the word has rapidly lost the stigma attached to it. Indeed, in the context of the political blogosphere, bloggers on the center-right have been using the term self-referentially as a sarcastic bit of snark to the constant knee-jerk claims of racism they know will radiate from progressives.

It's a shame the left has decided to make such reckless use of the word in an attempt to stifle opposition, because when real racism occurs, calling it out with the level of derision it deserves becomes that much more difficult.

This is real racism.

When you walk into the Georgia Peach Oyster Bar in Paulding County, you feel like you've walked into a different era.

Behind the pool tables stands a mannequin in a Klu Klux Klan costume, but it's what's outside of the Patrick Lanzo's restaurant that has some people angry.
Lanzo put up a sign that reads "Obama's plan for health-care: N*&%*r rig it."

Keep that link bookmarked, lefties. The next time you feel the urge to tar someone as a racist as a catch-all smear, you can use that as a touchstone.

Sadly, labeling people such as Lanzo as a racist simply isn't the pejorative it once was, thanks to those who have turned the label into a joke.

Update: Another Black Conservative is on the same wavelength.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:29 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Apparently, the Obama's questionable taste in art includes a penchant for frauds.

Alma Thomas' 1963 "Watusi (Hard Edge)" is unmistakably a knock-off of Henrí Matisse's 1953 "L'Escargot." No, I'm not an art buff, the symmetry is uncanny, and forms a near-perfect overlay.

In other news, Michelle Malkin is plagiarizing my original.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:12 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Obviously, they chose to forget the IQ displayed by Duke University's Gang of 88, but overall, I agree with their assessment.

I've been working in the Research Triangle Park most of my adult life and have worked with and for some brilliant companies (including my current employer), and advanced degrees are commonplace. Combine that with the overall culture and climate, and it's a tough place to bet against.

That said, their methodology is questionable, even as it is flattering.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:53 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Loyal Bloomberg employee John McCormick certainly knows who signs his paycheck. McCormick's article Chicago Violence Haunts Obama as Gun-Control Backers Left Cold laments the fact that when U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder meet with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley today, they won't be able to blame Chicago's most recent and high profile youth death on firearms.

Honor student Derrion Albert was beaten to death with splinted railroad ties on September 24 by other youths in a crime that was captured on cell phone video and broadcast around the world.

Gun control vultures are predictably dismayed that they cannot use Albert's young corpse as a prop:

Some gun-control advocates question the administration's timing as Duncan and Holder arrive after a highly publicized beating that didn't involve a gun.

Missed Opportunities

"Where there have been opportunities for the president to speak out about the issue of firearm violence, he has missed any number of opportunities," said Thom Mannard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.

Doing so in the Albert case "provides the cover" to address youth violence without confronting the gun lobby, said Mannard, whose group's board of directors included Duncan until he left for his current post.

Groups like the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, the Violence Policy Center and the Brady Campaign have a structural flaw in their basic underlying philosophy. They have deluded themselves into thinking that a banning a device (a firearm) will somehow mitigate the cultural problem of violence in certain groups. It doesn't work that way, as Derrion Albert's death at the hands of an angry mob of his peers so readily proved.

A subculture that accepts, embraces, and glorifies violence in their entertainment (music, video games, television shows, movies, etc) unsurprisingly develops and nurtures individuals and groups that accept, embrace, and glorifies violence in the real world. Individuals so desensitized to violence find it socially acceptable—in many instances expected—to affect violence upon others with found objects, homemade weaponry, or their fists and feet.

Put bluntly, most pay lip service to the idea of quelling violence, but none are willing to face the fierce opposition that will arise when the offending subcultures are named, nor are they willing to face the economic backlash of taking on industries that make billions profiteering off the glorification of this lifestyle.

Such reflection is necessary for change, but interests that thrive of the status quo—Hollywood, record companies, clothing manufacturers, professional victims advocates, politicians, lobbyists, etc.—have no motivation to cut their own profits merely because urban youth are killing themselves in neighborhoods they will never visit.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:14 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Ann Althouse saw Michael Moore's new movie.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:36 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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A Chicago television station has been forced to pull a story that many of Chicago's residents don't want the 2016 Olympics in their city. I'd be more worried about Chicago's residents if I was an Olympic athlete or spectator.

From 2000-2008 there were 4,855 homicides in Chicago, though there have been just 285 so far this year.

Hope and Change! And a more fitting logo:

"We'll send one of ours to the podium. We'll send one of yours to the morgue."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:38 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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"Two wrongs don't make a right."

That childhood admonition stuck with me over the years, and was the first thought to pop into my head when I read that an infanticide practitioner by the name of George Tiller was gunned down in a Wichita, KS church this morning, and that a suspect was in custody.

I'm finding it harder than normal to find sympathy for this murder victim, but with reason.

He was a man who killed babies the age my daughter Kate was when she came into this world. To me putting a baby to death is simply unimaginable and tragic, and it makes him a monster. I cannot imagine the kind of man who would do such a thing, or easily imagine the circumstances in which such an act could be justified if the baby wasn't an immediate and life-threatening medical risk to the mother, but I do try to remind myself that it isn't my place to judge what happens to him, or his soul.

If you believe in God, you know that either Tiller is forgiven for his sins, or he is damned for eternity.

Sadly, there are some small-minded people who find a bit of satisfaction in the thought of an abortion doctor burning in Hell, and think that the only think wrong with this scenario is that the other few doctors nationwide that still practice this barbarity aren't also in morgues.

I don't think they grasp that the murder of this physician is merely the last tragedy of a life tragically led, and that politically-motivated murders rarely accomplish anything more than throwing away two more lives (that of the the victim and the murderer) without coming a single step closer to resolving the underlying disconnect that leaves the sides so far apart.

George Tiller was a monster. So is his killer. Neither should be made into martyrs or heroes, as it is quite clear that neither man was.

Simply pray they both find forgiveness, and hope that when our final day arrives, we find forgiveness as well.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Non-partisan, and designed to honor those who have honored us with their sacrifices.

Let Matt explain it to you himself, and then join up.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In the interest of "going Galt" I've done away with my spellchecker. From now on, all typos are to now to be considered subversive activities.

Someone infomr DHS.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:37 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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6 people, presumably students, have been arrested protesting Virgil Goode's speech against illegal immigration at UNC-Chapel Hill. They seem to be every bit as tolerant as the Carolina blue fascists that violently ended Tom Tancredo's attempted speech last week.

The Daily Tarheel covered the speech via Twitter, and described juvenile protesters that simply don't understand that the freedom of speech hinges on the free exchange of ideas, not drowning out those that oppose your own.

It's a sad commentary on the state of education and intellectual discourse at Chapel Hill, but sadly a kind of intellectual bullying that has become a favored tactic on the political left.

A protestor at the Tancredo event sums up the thuggish behavior with daring honesty when she admitted, "I don't believe a lot of change in this country have come through debating and being happy and talking to people."

Presumably one day in the future this protestor or another one like her will brag about having the university with the cleanest-burning ovens.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:42 PM | Comments (25) | Add Comment
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Pseudo-environmentalists are celebrating Earth Day today, a day "a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment."

Uh-huh.

My company is celebrating Earth Day by passing out compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) light bulbs to all employees. As you may imagine, I am absolutely thrilled that they are attempting to introduce fragile glass tubes containing poisonous heavy metals into my home. After all, mercury worked so well for Jeremy.

Like Doctor Sanity, I see Earth Day for what it is, a political machination more than an environmental one, and so I'm hardly surprised to see President Obama burn thousands of gallons of jet fuel to take a junket to give a short speech in Iowa supporting his plan to wreck capitalism with a so-called "green economy" that will cost American jobs and cause fuel prices to soar for all Americans during a down market without actually benefiting the biosphere.

Today is Earth Day, they tell me. Today I should appreciate the environment.

Maybe it's simply a sign of how I was raised, but pretty much every day is Earth Day. We cut off the lights when we leave a room. With the exception of the baby, we take showers instead of baths. We grow some of our own vegetables and spices, and hand weed and use organic remedies to minimize pests instead of using chemicals. Given more time, I'd even provide more "green" meat for my family, hunting and fishing to harvest those other meaty emitters of greenhouse gasses and biowaste for the children!

But Earth Day isn't about protecting the Earth for many of those involved. It's about regulating and controlling people, especially people that they find objectionable.

Thanks, but I'll pass.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:23 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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I guess late is better than never, so here's notice that there will be a tea party protest at the State Capitol in Raleigh, NC on Saturday, March 21.

Raleigh will also be one of the sites for a nationwide tea party on April 15.

You can find out more about both events at RaleighTeaParty.com

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:40 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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