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.
Though Roosevelt had promised reinforcements, they never came, and in March Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to leave and go to Australia. Tom and the rest of those left behind continued to fight on. 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. Then their positions were overrun, and on April 10, 1942 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, they were starving and many were sick with malaria and dysentery. In short the provisions he ordered to be set aside were nowhere near what was needed, and the Japanese army 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. Nor were there enough trucks to transport all the them. So what came to be called the Bataan Death March began.
Tom was not one of the lucky few whose guards, realizing the situation, 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 have had shoes. Many didn’t and had their feet burned as they walked on the hot asphalt as it baked under the sun. At San Fernando Tom was pushed into a rail car with other prisoners.
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 marched 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 the 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.
Omerica
One of the biggest differences I have with President Obama is that I love my country, He does not. Now I am quite sure that he and many of his supporters would take great offense to that statement, but then they take offense to most everything they disagree with. It is one of the ways they attempt to suppress differing points of view. But their offense, does not change the truth of the statement, and it remains true and clear to any who care to see.
His campaign was all about change, and in his inaugural address he said “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America.” A dominant theme of his trips abroad has been to apologize for the country.
The simple fact is that you do not apologize for and promise to remake, something you love. When you remake something you change it into something different. Obama claiming to love America, is somewhat akin to a husband claiming to love his wife, but just wanting her to be someone else. So it is clear that Obama does not love the country I grew up in and wants to change it into something else. But it goes much deeper than just his words. It goes to the core values that define the country.
What is unique about America, and I would argue made us the greatest country the world has known, were the core values that have defined the nation since its founding. These values are called the American Trinity by Dennis Prager, and can be found on any dollar bill: In God We Trust, E Pluribus Unum, and Liberty.
When I was a kid, these values were celebrated. Today they are attacked, and at the core of Obama’s attempts to remake the country is the attempt to change these values. Rather than ‘In God We Trust’ which values the importance of religious faith without sectarianism, something that most impressed de Tocqueville, when he visited the young country, we have the attempt to impose a radical secularism which seeks to drive religious views out of the public square.
That E Pluribus Unum is under attack is clear from the fact that rather than being a core value of the country, to most it is just some strange words. It means, ‘Out of Many, One,’ and initially represented the 13 colonies becoming one nation but quickly became much more, the coming together of many people into one nation. It is being replaced by multiculturalism, where the many remain the many.
The final value, Liberty, would receive some lip service from Obama, but it is hardly a driving force for the change he seeks. Obama’s policies are driven by equality, not liberty, and the two are mutually exclusive. The more government seeks one, the less there will be of the other.
The country I love, the country that emerged from the revolution to become the greatest country the world has seen was defined by Liberty, E Pluribus Unum, and In God We Trust. The country Obama seeks to remake us into is defined by Equality, Multiculturalism, and Secularism. If he succeeds the only thing that would remain to make the transformation complete would be to change the name to Omerica.
Fairness vs Reality
In a post on the day of his Inauguration I said, “As for my expectation, what will the Obama presidency bring? The best I can say at the moment is: uncertain. I, like many others, am not at all sure what President Obama will actually do.” In a post a few days later, I said “So the sun is rising on the Obama presidency. As the literary detective Hercule Poirot often said ‘all will be made clear’ and clarity is a good thing.”
Clarity is a good thing, and 100 days into his presidency, things are now a lot clearer. But clarity is not always pleasant. Obama has filled in the details of “Hope and Change” with massive increases in government, massive increases in debt, increased government control over industry, in many areas bordering on nationalization, apologies to those abroad, offending some of our allies, reductions in our abilities to detect and defend against threats, and the use of government to attack political opponents, including the criminalization of policy differences, and most recently witch hunts. This is certainly change, but I don’t see a lot of hope here.
Now supporters of the President will undoubtedly take offense at this description (and that they take offense, as opposed to simply disagreeing, says a lot about them). Concerning spending and the deficit, during the Bush administration, the Democrats vociferously complained about Bush’s spending and his deficits. I agreed with a lot of their criticism, even if I did doubt their sincerity.
Though it is not a surprise, it is now at least clear that I was correct to doubt their sincerity. According to both CBO and White House data Obama will not only increase the budget deficit compared to Bush, he will increase it several times over the deficits the Democrats complained so strongly about . Problem: Bush increased the deficit; Obama’s Solution: vastly increase it even more. And he does this while claiming he will cut the deficit in half.
Obama’s claimed cuts are like a man with a $100 deficit promising that if he increases it an additional $200, in the future he will cut his deficit in half, leaving him only $150 in debt. Most would see this as increasing the problem. Yet Obama claims this as progress. Either he does not understand what he is actually doing, or he is being dishonest about it.
Now Obama and his supporters are quick to claim that this, like everything else, is Bush’s fault. It is true that Bush does share some responsibility, particularly for TARP in the closing days of his administration. Obama, like Bush before him, inherited a recession. Bush cut taxes, which got us out of the recession, and most of the years of the Bush administration were a period of economic growth, declining unemployment, with the stock market topping out at over 14,000.
Then in 2006 the Democrats won back the Congress, promising to fix things. While Bush was still president, he was also a lame duck with very little actual impact on the domestic front particularly with the Democrats in control of Congress.
What really caused the current problems was that the housing bubble burst. While the details are complex, the roots go back to housing policies enacted under Carter and Clinton and pushed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. While you would never know it from the media, it is just a fact that Bush and the Republicans repeatedly tried to fix these growing problems, but they were blocked by Democrats, who instead attacked those trying to point out the problems. The last major effort to avoid this crisis was in 2005. Once the Democrats won control of the Congress in 2006, any hope of averting it was gone. So while the claims that this was all Bush’s fault may play well to Obama’s media supporters, they don’t quite line up with the facts of what actually happened.
Now somewhat in their defense, most of the policies put forward by Obama and the Democrats have not had enough time to kick in yet. The Democrats must be included here as Obama’s management style is now also much clearer as well. He wants to make all the big decisions, and leave it to others to work out the details. This allows him to take credit for solving problems, without having to be responsible for any problem of implementation.
As for their policies, it takes time for the effect to show up in the economy. In fact it can take 12 to 18 month. So the fact that we do not yet see any effects of their changes in the economic data is to be expected, though the reactions of the market, which is always looking to the future, is not encouraging.
The disturbing thing is that, at least in an economic sense, there really is no mystery about what their policies will do. Massive increases in government spending will have some positive effect, but the net effect will be negative. In addition, when money is pushed into the economy in this fashion inflation follows, and the negative effects of inflation will far outstrip any positive effects of increased government spending. There is nothing magical about this. It is basic economics 101. Increase the money supply faster than the supply of goods, and you get inflation. Suppress the economy at the same time and you get Stagflation. In the last few months we have nearly tripled the money supply, and the economy is still struggling.
But this is one of the problems with Liberals. They seem to think their notions of fairness and equality trump economic reality. They are sort of like a person who believes that it is unfair that only birds can fly. For a short time such a person can ignore reality and indulge their notions of fairness, but before long the reality of the ground approaches. Obama and the Democrats are now indulging their notions of equality and fairness. Economic reality is not here yet, but it is rapidly approaching.
An Isaiah 5:20 World
When I was a new Christian, and a much younger man, there were passages in the Bible that did not make a lot of sense to me. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe them, but rather that I didn’t really see the need. Isaiah 5:20 was one of those. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Ok, but who would ever do this, I thought. Now doing evil I could see, as unfortunately there were far too many historical examples. But Isaiah is not talking about just doing that which we should not, but an intellectual inversion of morality, that was for me, incomprehensible.
But over the last few decades, unfortunately many of these passages have come to make much more sense, Isaiah 5:20 being one of them. At times I feel like Charlton Heston in the upside down world of Planet of the Apes, and want to scream, “It’s a mad house, a mad house.” One of those times was this week with the controversy surrounding the Miss USA pageant.
Now I am not a big fan of such pageants. I don’t oppose them; I just don’t care about them much one way or the other. But as I learned the details about the controversy I became very bother, because it was one of those moments of clarity where you see how bad things have really become, and how unless stopped they will get much worse.
The basic facts are that a contestant was asked for her thoughts on legalizing same sex marriage, and said that she believed marriage should be between a man and a woman. It was an answer that the vast majority of Americans would give, and one that even President Obama, and many democrats have given.
Yet Miss California was denounced and condemned for her answer, and lost. Shanna Moakler a co-director of the pageant applauded her for being “willing to miss out on the opportunity of being Miss USA, to stay true to her convictions.” But then she when all to say that, “we don’t hate her. But it puts us in a difficult situation because we do have a difference of opinion.”
Miss California’s crime was supposedly not her position, but her answer was “insensitive” and not “compassionate.” In short, she should not have inserted “her own personal politics into it.” Here is what she said,
“I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other, but in my country, and in my family, I think that I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”
The moral and intellectual inversion involved in the condemnation of this answer clearly qualifies this as an example of Isaiah 5:20. Consider the last part, that she should not have inserted her personal politics into the pageant. This complaint was made by the judge who asked her view about same-sex marriage. If her opinion on same-sex marriage did not belong in the pageant, then why ask for her opinion about same sex marriage? The judge who asked the question is a militant homosexual. Does anyone seriously believe that if her answer had supported same sex marriage this judge would have been “shocked” or that he would have posted the tirade against her on his web site? This tirade was so vile and disgusting, that the Host on CBS’s the Early Show had to caution him at the beginning of the interview that there show was a live family show.
Yet in the upside down Isaiah 5:20 world in which we live, vile and disgusting attacks on a woman who expresses biblical values are acceptable, even understandable. But saying that marriage should be between a man and a woman, well, that is just beyond the pale.
As a result, the world in which those with traditional values are allow to participate is a little bit smaller. Again I not a fan of such pageants so in many ways I don’t care. But I am a fan of liberty and freedom. I believe that true marriage is only between a man and a woman, not just because this is what the Bible teaches, but for a number of reasons independent of the Bible. More importantly, I believe the reasoning on this is so strong that given a fair and open debate the traditional view of marriage would remain the dominant position of society.
I also believe that this is why the minority that supports same-sex marriage is so intolerant of any contrary opinion. Their position is ultimately flawed, irrational and grounded in silly and false notions such as there is no real difference between men and women. In fact, the position is so weak that the only way it can survive is through the suppression of any contrary, that is biblical, views. That this minority controls virtually all the major media and pop culture, allows for this suppression.
And this is the true significance of the controversy at the Miss USA pageant for is shows how far this intolerance of biblical views has spread. The antipathy for biblical values is already in the movies, news, music, and most importantly the schools. The fact that the younger generations see no problem with same-sex marriage, is a testament to how successfully biblical views have been suppressed.
So now the suppression has expanded even further. In the name of tolerance and compassion, the expression of the biblical view of marriage can no longer be tolerated, and no compassion will be show for those who express such views. It is truly an Isaiah 5:20 world.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
More Praise for Preserving Democracy
A friend has posted some kind words about the book at : https://www.adaptitech.com/PreservingDemocracy/
