I served 10 years in the military, stateside and overseas, so I appreciate the sacrifices and dedication of the men and women in our armed forces.
However, military service is NOT a free pass for irresponsible behavior that undermines our country or our nations security--even when the irresponsible person "means well" or the behavior is "sincere." Military service does not place a person or their actions above scrutiny or criticism when those actions warrant it.
As Todd Epp points out at SD Watch, George McGovern fought in World War II, flying bombing missions over German targets. I'm grateful for McGovern's military service and his defense of our country and of freedom. But do past acts of service to ones country mean that everything someone does is patriotic? Or even in the best interest of the country?
Benedict Arnold, Aldridge Ames, and Robert Hanssen, to name a few, were all men who served their country and worked in the agencies responsible for defending her. Yet they are not known for all that they did for America, but for what they did against her.
I'm not saying McGovern's actions are on a par with the treason of these men. I'm making the comparison that they all served their country, but it was revealed that some of their actions undermined their country. Should we give them a pass on undermining the country because at some point they served the country? Of course not.
There are any number of people who, for whatever reason, served their country and then ended up going wrong: George McGovern, John Kerry, and even John McCain to a degree.
Where McGovern has gone wrong is in many of the things that Sibby recently pointed out: a host of socialist policies that not only undermine the health and productivity of our nation, they violate both the spirit of the American way (self-determination, freedom, independence and personal responsibility) and the limited-government and limited-power Constitution that is the highest law of our land.
McGovern was also wrong to undermine his country in the war in Vietnam. I understand that socialism is a close-cousin to communism, but the enemy we fought there was brutal, ruthless, and bent on world domination ("We will bury you"). It was not a stupid war, but a war fought to protect our ally from communist bloodshed and oppression, and to stop the communist machine of domination that was rolling over country after country. It was a war America lost not because our military lacked strength or valor, but because weak-willed self-loathers like McGovern put their Leftist agenda ahead of what was right and ahead of our country (just as many are now doing with Iraq). It was fought in a thoroughly screwed-up manner (overly restrained, micro-managed, LBJ's "graduated response" as opposed to our bomb-them-until-they-surrender approach in WWII, without the will to clearly win), but it was a war for the right reasons that needed to be fought--and should have been won.
In the early '70's, McGovern called for reducing our military budget by over 1/3 during a war, and literally giving the taxpayers money away to people. He called for a "guaranteed minimum wage" (which is outright Marxist wealth redistribution of the highest order) and the unnecessary and socially destructive Equal Rights Amendment.
As for his social work against hunger, I suppose you could give him points for intent. But the best way to reduce hunger would be working to set people free from the oppression of totalitarian governments, Marxism and unproductive socialism. The only thing is, since WWII McGovern never wants to tackle totalitarian governments, and works to promote Marxist socialist policies everywhere he goes. So he's fostering what he claims to be fighting.
No wonder that in his 1972 bid for the presidency, McGovern only got 17 electoral votes from the two most liberal enclaves in the country: Massachusetts and Washington D.C. Even his home state of South Dakota rejected his pacifist, socialist agenda.
McGovern's military service is to be respected. But it doesn't give him a free pass for undermining his country during wartime (sorry about my blatant patriotism; I'm just old fashioned like that) and undermining his country by advocating greed, class envy and policies that weaken what has made America great.
Patriotism is an everyday kind of thing. You don't do something once to earn the mantle. You have to keep on loving your country, defending her against all enemies foreign and domestic, and upholding the laws and values that make America the unique wonder she is in order to maintain the title of patriot.
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Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Military Service Isn't a Free Pass.
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7 comments:
Yes, how dare George McGovern try to help children and poor people. He should hang his head in shame.
He can help them all he wants...if he pays for it himself. He can even spend other people's private contributions to help the poor if he wants to (though, as I said, opposing tyrants and promoting the free market would be the best way to reduce poverty).
He does not have the right to reach into another person's pocket, with the government as his thug, and give their money to someone else without the consent of the first person. That's called legalized plunder, or legalized theft. It's immoral and it's un-American.
So helping to feed hungry children is unAmerican now. Got it.
Anonymous: I can tell you have no interest in facts or truth (I'm not sure whether you're just dense, or have no interest in understanding), but I'll go ahead and answer a fool one more time.
Helping to feed the hungry with your own money is a wonderful thing to do. Taking someone else's money without their consent and giving it to someone else is immoral and un-American.
I don't know. Personally I'd rather see my tax dollars go to hungry kids than the President's immoral war in Iraq that we shouldn't have gotten into in the first place.
Until we work out a system were Americans can choose where their tax dollars go, we'll just have to disagree on what's important to spend that money on.
One more thing: believing that using tax dollars to help people is unAmerican doesn't make it a "fact." It's your opinion.
My opinion is based on fact, not feelings as yours apparently is. My "opinion" is based on the U.S. Constitution, which is the highest law of our land, and what outlines the type of government we have--which is a limited government.
What that means is that if the Constitution doesn't specifically grant a power to the government, then the government can't do it (see the Tenth Amendment for an illustration of this).
The founders who wrote our Constitution, created our government and led our nation in the early years reiterated this "opinion" several times so that it should have been clear to us:
A wise and frugal government...shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. – Thomas Jefferson
Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. - Thomas Jefferson
"The Constitution allows only the means which are ‘necessary,’ not those which are merely ‘convenient,’ for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before observed" (said of the General Welfare Clause) - Thomas Jefferson, 1791
With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. – James Madison
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. – James Madison
(And if he still hasn’t made himself clear…) Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. – James Madison
We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. — Congressman Davy Crockett
"I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity," adding that to approve such spending "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded." - President Franklin Pierce in 1854, vetoing a bill intended to help the mentally ill
"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit." -- President Grover Cleveland vetoing a bill for charity relief
Private individuals can and should give of their resources and help others of their own free will.
Government, however, has no Constitutional authority to reach into one person's pocket--with the power of the IRS at their back--and give that money to another.
If you don't like what the Constitution says, it can be changed through an established amendment process. But the Constitution shouldn't just be ignored.
To ignore our Constitution is un-American.
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