I want the pink with pink handle. They need to add a black handle too.
Oh, and as you can see from the umbrella image… WordPress makes using images in my blog easy! Something I’ve been wanting to do for ages! Yay!
And for Tora. Lub ya!
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Which brings us to my request; Time and time again throughout history, we have been told as a nation that we were the problem with the world. Before America even was a nation, in 1775, and throughout the revolutionary war, 66% of the people living in America told Washington and those that thought like him that he was the problem… he was selfish, a malcontent and a trouble maker. How dare he demand to live free of what he called “oppression,” when the British Empire provided so much? It was true that people who lived in America then had the highest standard of living of anyone on Earth, save Britain, and many were complacent and happy to have what they had. How dare George Washington claim that there was more? What an arrogant ass, he was.
In the late 1930s we were told by our fellow American citizens that Hitler was Europe’s problem and we should stay the hell out of it. How dare we be so self-centered as to think America, which was already suffering, was somehow responsible for a problem half way across the world? We had our own problems and it wasn’t America’s job to interfere and butt-in. Live and let live, we should do, we were told. No one would bother us as long as we didn’t bother them, and if they needed a little appeasement to make them stay away, that was good policy. Only arrogant Americans would believe that our role in the world was to act as the global police and arbiter of all that is right.
In the 1980s we were told, again, by our own citizens, that we would be the cause of the destruction of the Earth. As our silly, crazy, idealistic actor of a president ramped up our nuclear arms and spoke out against the rising tide of communism we were again told that we were flexing our American muscles where they didn’t belong, that we should live and let live and allow the world to work out its problems on its own and if we would just mind our own business everyone would get along better. Talk was the answer, not deployment of nuclear missiles aimed at the Soviets from Europe. Only arrogant America would have the audacity to believe all people on Earth deserved and wanted to be free.
Today, we sit at the precipice of another global struggle. Many of you believe that the War on Terrorism is nearing an end but the truth is the exact opposite. We are at the beginning of a very long, hard struggle, just like the cold war, which actually began in the early 1950s and didn’t end until the early 1990s. Then, like now, there were missteps and mistakes and then, like now, the battles, literal and figurative were worth it.
Through all of our history, beginning before we even had a history back in 1775 and continuing until today, one thing has remained constant. One thing has separated the United States of America from all others. It would be easy to say that the thing that has made us great has been our vision, our desire for liberty, our perseverance, or any other handful of buzz-words that are thrown around whimsically at cocktail parties, but those things are all too simplistic and complicated at once. Whether it was 1775, 1941 or 1989, we were right each time and all the other countless times I didn’t mention when we, as a nation, stood up to evil and oppression and demanded that it stop, whether here or abroad. The one thing that remained constant through all those times and allowed us to be proven right was our bravery, provided by the United States military.
America haters claim wrongly that we have done nothing more than bully people into our way of thinking. This type of rhetoric is profoundly stupid on two fronts; first of all it presumes that people don’t want to be free but more importantly and more insulting, it denies the courage, leadership, commitment and sacrifice provided by the millions of amazing men and women who have given up everything to provide not just this nation but this world, with so much of what it has today.
Any schmuck can talk a good game… without the force to back it up, he’s just another schmuck. Our military has provided that cover for many a schmuck over the decades, and more importantly has won doing so… and has thus provided all that you and I have this holiday season.
Were it not for those who died, you and I would not have the opportunities we do today. Sure, we worked individually for our achievements, but what would that have mattered in a communist or Nazi run nation had our nation not prevailed previously?
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America is the richest, freest greatest nation in existence and even if you think you don’t have a lot, the fact is that if you live in America you have more than most, not because we took it or deprived it from others, but because we created and defended the greatest system on the planet which continues to provide countless opportunities to thrive, by any definition, to everyone here.
So my request to you is this; somewhere, somehow this holiday season take a moment. Remember not just all those that came before you to provide you with all that you have and will have, but most notably, remember those that right now are thousands of miles from home, away from their families, defending us. Remember too, that they volunteered. They raised their hands and said “I will,” when someone asked who will defend this nation from current and future threats?
We are forgetting already as a nation that a war rages half a planet away and it’s a war that our neighbors, brothers, co-workers and sons and daughters are fighting… because they asked to go. Politics have no place during the solitude, just listen to your heart; the courage and selflessness of all those who serve and the people in their lives can’t be unheard.
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The funny thing is that I already know what I’ll hear. Simultaneously as I sit on the back deck of my over-priced home filled will possessions that will someday wind up buried in a landfill, drinking an overpriced alcoholic beverage, petting my overpriced dog and holding the hand of my wife which bears and overpriced ring, there will be a U.S. soldier in Iraq. He will be taking a moment to himself as well. As he sits in the very bowels of Hell on Earth, knowing that at any moment an I.E.D. could be headed his way in a nation that Fred Flintstone would find to be barbaric, arcane and pre-historic; this soldier will look to the sky and give thanks. He’ll be there with nothing, yet he’ll feel like he has it all for one reason; he is an American solider, doing his job as asked, and when he’s done he will either have died dying for what he believes in, or he will come back home to the greatest nation in history, knowing that he played a part in preserving that legacy. That’s what makes them heroes; they have no idea how great they are and don’t want to be told it either.
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Take a moment. Do it for the troops, even though they’ll never know. Do it for me, just because I asked. Most importantly, though, do it for yourself. A brief respite from being told how rotten your country is might just remind you how great the people that serve it are.
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Oh my gosh, this is soooo cute!
