Friday - September 11, 2009

Our Legacy 

Two hundred years ago, the Irish statesman, John Curran, said, "God hath vouchsafed man liberty only on condition of eternal vigilance; which condition if he break it, servitude is the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." That was only two hundred years ago.

Our own old New England and Virginia and Carolina fathers knew that three hundred years ago, which was why they came here and founded this country. And I decline to believe that we, their descendants, have really forgotten it. I prefer to believe rather that it is because the enemy of our freedom now has changed his shirt, his coat, his face.

He no longer threatens us from across an international boundary, let alone across an ocean. He faces us now from beneath the eagle-perched domes of our capitals and from behind the alphabetical splatters on the doors of welfare and other bureaus of economic or industrial regimentation, dressed not in martial brass but in the habiliments of what the enemy himself has taught us to call peace and progress, a civilization and plenty where we never before had it as good, let alone better. His artillery is a debased and respectless currency which has emasculated the initiative for independence by robbing initiative of the only mutual scale it knew to measure independence by.

William Faulkner, "The Duty to be Free" January 26, 1953

Today I will be driving to Houston to my Marine infantry battalion to participate in my monthly drill. We're training to deploy to Afghanistan in about a year. It gives me great satisfaction to be doing that today. I will never forget the animals that murdered so many of our people eight years ago nor the animals that still vow to destroy more of us. I hope to help stop them.