Memorial Day
Tom’s father had died a couple of years earlier in an accident, leaving a wife and four children. It was the middle of the depression and times were tough. Tom, being the oldest, worked while finishing High School, to help make ends meet. After he graduated, he joined the military, and after training he was sent to Nicholas Army Air Field in the Philippines. There he did what most military people do: perform their normal jobs while periodically being interrupted by various drills.
Tom could see the approaching storm that would become WWII and mentioned this in his letters home. He wrote of how they had received a shipment of fighters, but that they were in crates and needed to be assembled. They were still assembling them when the war started on December 7,1941. The Japanese invaded the Philippines the next day. Tom and the rest of the troops, along with their Filipino allies, fought valiantly. With their base destroyed they, retreated to Bataan.
Roosevelt promised reinforcements, so they struggled to hold out till they arrived. In March Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to leave and go to Australia. Tom and the rest of those left behind continued to fight on, till they could be reinforced. But in the end, there was no way to win. The promised reinforcements were never sent; food and ammunition ran out; and the Japanese force was too strong. Yet still they fought to hold out. Then their positions were overrun, and on April 10, 1942, exhausted, starving, wounded and sick (most had malaria and/or dysentery), they surrendered.
But as horrible as their ordeal had been, the worst was yet to come. The Japanese commander had ordered provisions be set aside for the expected 25,000 prisoners. But he was unaware that the real number of captured Americans and Filipinos was more than 75,000. Nor was he aware of just how bad their condition was. They had held out as long as possible and so when they did surrender were in very bad shape. In short the provisions he ordered to be set aside were nowhere near what was needed, and the Japanese army command structure did not allow for questioning orders, even to correct mistakes in information.
To make matters worse the Japanese viewed surrender, whatever the circumstances, as a dishonor. Thus it did not matter how valiantly they fought, how long they had held out, or how low they had been on food and ammunition, they had surrendered and did not deserve to be treated honorably. Since there were not enough trucks to transport all the them, what came to be called the Bataan Death March began.
Tom was not one of the lucky few whose guards, realizing how inhumane the situation was, just let their captives go. Even though he was sick, he was forced to march the 30 miles in the blazing hot sun to the rail center. Most had no food or water for the march. There was no stopping, and many were beaten. Many just died on the road; others were shot if they did not keep up. If Tom was fortunate, he would have still had shoes. Many didn’t and their feet burned as they walked on the hot asphalt as it baked under the sun. At the rail head in San Fernando Tom and other prisoners were pushed into a rail car with.
Because of the large numbers of prisoners, they were packed in as tightly as possible and in the hot sun, the metal walls of the cars burned unprotected skin. Many lost consciousness from the sweltering heat of the boxcars. Others suffocated in the cramped space. Yet they were packed in so tightly, the unconscious and the dead remained standing until the cars were unloaded at Capas.
Tom survived the trip to Capas. From there Tom was once again forced to march the last eight miles to Camp O’Donnell. Suffering from sickness, starvation, and exhaustion, Tom only lasted five days in Camp O’Donnell, dying on May 18th, 1942. He was 22 years old. Later Private Thomas A. Hushbeck would be posthumously awarded a Purple Heart.
When people ask me what Memorial Day means to me, I think of my Uncle Tom, even though he died thirteen years before I was born. For me it is his holiday, but not his alone. There were the eight who died on Lexington Green in that first engagement of the Revolutionary war, and all the others who came after them to secure our independence, along with those who gave their lives in the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, The Vietnam War, Gulf War I and now the war on Terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, just to name the major conflicts.
Whenever there was a need, Americans like my uncle Tom have step forward, knowing what may happen. Like my Uncle Tom, many have paid the ultimate price, so that we can live in freedom. Many may consider “Freedom is not Free” a cliché, just another slogan for a bumper sticker, but the cost of our freedom was paid by my Uncle Tom, and all the others who have in the past, or will in the future give their lives in defense of this country. It is for them that we fly the flag on this day. It is because of them we can enjoy the time off and relax on this day. They have given all that they had, and suffered in ways we can never imagine so that we might live in freedom. So while I enjoy the day, I will remember them. For they deserved to be honored. and remembered.
A Letter to the Blue Dogs
The following is an email I sent to my Congressman, and the 58 Blue dogs democrats, you can do the same Here.
I write to ask that you stand for the constitution and vote against Obama-care. You may think that if the bill passes, the issue will fade away, but if that is what you think you are wrong.
If the bill becomes law, the opposition will only grow, especially as more and more details of the bill come out, as will the details of the deals made to get it passed. The battle to keep it from passing, will become the battle to have it repealed. Blocking the implementation of Obama Care will be the central issue for the election in 2010, and then its repeal will be a major issue in 2012.
If it passes with your support, I will do as much as I can to support your opponent. I will do as much as I can to support efforts to challenge the bill in the courts. And I will do as much as I can to support efforts to have the bill repealed.
Vote against Obama-care.
The Pequod Party
I have no idea whether the Obama care will pass, but either way I am sure that it will not stand. Of course, if it goes down to defeat, it will be dead, and the political costs of pushing it will be so great that no rational politician will attempt it again for quite some time.
If it passes, that will not be the end of the process as many Democrats hope. Rather, it will be the beginning of an even larger conflict; a conflict that will last at a minimum well into 2013. If it passes, the bill will have been passed against the clear will of the majority of the public and by means that are at best highly questionable, and probably flat out unconstitutional. Regardless of what any court will rule in the numerous lawsuits that are already being planned, the process will be seen by most people as a subverting of the democratic system of government in order to get around the will of the people.
At the end of the movie Tora, Tora, Tora, dealing with the successful attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto, the Japanese admiral says, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” While it is doubtful that Yamamoto actually said those words, they accurately describe the American people’s reaction to the attack.
What Obama’s Ahab-like obsession in pursuit of health care has done is to once again awakened the American people and the passage of the bill will likewise fill them with a terrible resolve. I do not pretend to know how that resolve will manifest itself, but it will manifest itself. It is for this reason that I am sure that when all is said and done, Obama-care will not survive. This is still a government of, by and for the people, and the people will not be ignored. The only question that remains is while Obama may be obsessed like Ahab, will the Democratic Party become the Pequod Party?
Obama’s Deficit
Obama has announced his budget for 2011 and he is proposing to spend $3.83 Trillion. To many this is a meaningless number, but to put this in some sort of context consider that the 2008 budget was a mere $2.9 Trillion. The intervening years had TARP and the bailouts, but those are over. This budget reflects the new base level of spending. Yet at $3.83 Trillion, this represents a 32% increase in just 3 years. This is not just an increase in spending, this is an explosion, and one guaranteed to reduce people’s standards of living. There is simply no way that the economy could ever catch up with such an huge increase for this is the new baseline from which government will grow even further. As such it marks a permanent decrease in people’s standard of living, or at least those not lucky enough to have government jobs.
This will be paid for with a record $1.56 Trillion deficit, which in and of itself should be a cause of great concern. Just a few short years ago Democrats were warning us of the dangers of deficits 1/10 this size. One could have a serious debate over whether the government could safely handled the pre-Obama level deficits, but not deficits at these levels, which risk currency collapse and hyper-inflation.
So while people are struggling, the best case scenario is that they will have to tighten their belts even more so government can live large at our expense. As for the worst case, well, let’s hope it is only the best case…
Obama and Scaling Back the Federal Bureaucracy
President Obama and the Democrats may be setting the nation up to accomplish something conservatives have been advocating for decades, the scaling back of the federal bureaucracy, and on a scale more massive than conservatives may have even wished. This is not, of course, Obama’s intention. Far from it. Nor will it be for the reasons or in a fashion conservatives wanted. But it may very well be the result of his heretofore unimaginable budget deficits and the looming short falls in Social Security and Medicare.
It is hard to believe that only a few short years ago democrats were railing about the deficit spending under George W Bush. Personally, I and many other conservatives agreed with them, and excessive spending was a significant factor in the Republican’s loss of Congress in 2006. But while we agreed that spending under Bush and the Republican Congress was excessive, it was still hard to take the Democrat’s complaints seriously. After all, many conservatives characterized the Republican spending as Republicans acting like Democrats. I was firmly convinced that if the Democrats regained control, spending and therefore deficits would go up, not down.
Still in my wildest dreams, or nightmares, I did not imagine the deficits would rise to the levels they are now. I thought they might go up some, maybe 10% – 50%, but never did I imagine they would go up 3-4 times. Last year’s budget deficit was 1.42 trillion, This year’s is projected to be 1.35 trillion. That is $4,500 for every man woman and child in the country, and that is just one year. That means in just the last two years the Federal government has saddled the average family of four with over $36,000 in debt.
This just cannot go on. Even if the President’s projections hold up, after 5 years the deficit will still be $480 billion, well above the norm that Democrats were railing against just a few short years ago. But some budget experts see Obama’s projections as wildly optimistic and “most budget experts see deficits nearing or exceeding $1 trillion each year over the next decade once tax cuts and other policies are factored in.”
The cost just to service this rapidly growing debt is likewise growing. Combine this with the fact that within a few years the surplus generated by Medicare and Social Security will change to a deficit, and the Federal Government will have to start redeeming all those IOUs it has been filing away and there is going to be a huge money crunch.
Future Presidents and Congresses will not really have a choice but to drastically scale back or even eliminate a whole range of federal programs. Sure they can, and undoubtedly will, raise taxes, and a lot. But taxes depress the economy and thus there is a limit to how much money can be raised.
Programs such as the National Endowment for Arts and Public Broadcasting are sure to go. There simply will not be enough money. But those will be just some of the visible casualties. There are hundreds and probably thousands of smaller programs buried in the budget that are also certain to go, scarified to feed the ever growing debt. Even if the current deficit is finally brought under control, there will still be the ever increasing burden of Social Security and Medicare as it falls deeper and deeper into the red, and demands more and more IOUs be repaid.
Eventually even departments will be drastically cut back and perhaps even eliminated. First in line will be the Department of Education, which was only created in 1980. But other departments will take serious hits as well. So will the states, as monies to the states are cut back as government continues to strain just to meet the demands of the debt, Social Security and Medicare.
So the Democrats under Barack Obama may be setting up the country for the paradox of the both the largest increase in federal spending, and the greatest cutback in federal programs in our history. Anyway you look at it, it will not be a pretty sight.
