E pluribus unum, a Latin phrase meaning “out of many, one,” is part of the Great Seal of the United States. It has been imprinted on most U.S. currency to acknowledge the “melting pot” of America, where people from diverse backgrounds come together with a common bond.
Well, at least they used to.
One of the many gifts we have received from liberals is multiculturalism, a product of worshiping at the altar of diversity, a kind of antidote for E pluribus unum that divides us into ethnic pockets. The very notion that immigrants should be required to learn English and assimilate would now cause an epidemic of apoplexy on the left, which of course includes the mainstream media horde – you know, the ones with a faint and dissipating memory of what “journalism” means but which labor to spoon-feed your daily dose of propaganda disguised as news.
What passes today for conventional wisdom in America bears no resemblance to apparently obsolete attitudes of responsibility, patriotism and duty to country. New generations are balkanized into competing subsets of hyphenated Americans – the American part not so important of course – with flavors of grievances encouraged by the entitlement and victimhood they have been taught. Just don’t ask them to spell “Constitution” or to recognize any of the real principals of the founding of this country other than the part about racist white men.
And so we have Black Lives Matter, a “movement” born of the lie in Ferguson, Missouri, which first gave birth to the similar lie, “Hands up – don’t shoot!” That BLM promotes the murder of cops and calls “All lives matter” a racist statement should tell you all you need to know. Well, that is if you are old enough to not have been immersed too long in the Kool-Aid.
Unless you cling to outmoded-American ways of thinking, maybe you are simpatico with the people in Charlotte who flock in anger that one of their own race was killed by police. Whether he was a thug or not doesn’t matter, of course, whether he had a gun and refused to follow police orders doesn’t matter to them, either, and even if police did something wrong, allowing the justice system to follow its course is unthinkable among racist and adolescent mindsets that demand instant gratification. And so they gather in anti-police actions, riot, burn, and maybe rationalize some looting to take some good stuff.
What’s even worse is the reaction in the media, government officials and black community “leaders” begging for calm, calling for “understanding and healing” of the anger these victims feel, maybe some more apologetic sensitivity training of police officers, when what is really needed is swift incarceration for those breaking the law by their lynch-mob actions.
Especially stupid is the mainstream media’s cherry-picking stories to feed the echo-chamber aimed at you to emphasize the desired narrative instead of real perspective. Among the real journalists remaining, you would think they could overcome resistance surrounding them to reveal our police risk their lives in black communities where a young man is more than 12 times as likely to commit a violent crime than his white counterpart, and policing is correspondingly required to be more intense. Those thugs are where law-abiding blacks should point the finger of blame when they feel unfairly suspected by police.
Speaking of stupid, how about that new movement leader, Colin Kaepernick, so courageously kneeling during our national anthem? He has inspired a cottage industry now of kneeling football players in the pro ranks, rapidly spreading among university teams and now high schools. Some raise a fist that used to be called the black power salute. They say they won’t respect our national anthem until their issues are solved, which is two kinds of stupid rolled into one.
First the easy one. There never has been and never will be unanimity that America has solved all its problems to everyone’s satisfaction. Our country has always had problems and always will. For those not irrevocably stuck on stupid, it should be evident that solving one person’s problem just might create one for someone else. But the stupid can insist on Utopia like a spoiled child.
Which brings me to the other kind of stupid, since Colin and other spoiled children in football getup have not reached the level of maturity to feel a duty to respect and honor the country that gives them the opportunity to make a lucrative living playing a game with a ball. That same country protects their right to be stupid.
When my daughter Melanie was about 5 years old, at the Peachtree City 4th of July Parade I showed her how to stand erect and silent with hand over heart while the honor guard with the flag passed by. She asked me why other people around us didn’t stand up and, “Why did they kept talking, Dad?” Whatever I said translates to, “They’re stupid.”
You don’t have to serve in the military to revere our flag. Even among those who went to war, most didn’t want to go, many didn’t even believe in the war, but they were doing their duty for their country. I didn’t know any who willingly gave their life; they wanted to go home like everyone else. But do know some who died doing their duty, faces frozen forever young in my mind. I think about them, and countless Americans who never served think about them in a broader sense, when we hear our national anthem.
Respect must be paid.
You could get a story about this from a vet from any war. Here’s one from mine.
I’m giving a two-hour presentation in a few weeks at Brock High School in Texas, where my Vietnam Dragon platoon of Cobra helicopter gunship pilots has its annual reunion. One of the guys who flew with us is Jerry Denton – Jeremiah Denton III. His dad, Jeremiah Denton II, was the senior prisoner of war kept in a lousy place in Hanoi they called the “Hanoi Hilton.”
When Jerry graduated from flight school and got his wings, the Army told him they wouldn’t send him to the Vietnam War because of his dad’s status. But Jerry fought the Army because he felt a duty to go, for what he had been trained to do and maybe a duty to his dad. Finally the Army sent him to Vietnam.
I should tell you Jerry and I have some lively discussions because he is quite liberal while I am the opposite. This year he’ll be there for the presentation and he will cover the part about POWs, and a little about his dad, who was a POW and tortured regularly for eight years.
When the North Vietnamese paraded POWs through the streets for crowds to jeer and throw things at them, one of the guards commanded, “Bow your heads!” It was Jeremiah Denton who yelled back, “Keep your heads up. You are Americans!”
Many don’t know that North Vietnam had the toughest air defenses the world has ever known, built by Russians. When our jet-bombers launched from aircraft carriers to hit them, they were flying through intense enemy fire. When they were shot down, since North Vietnam didn’t comply with the Geneva Convention, they did not reveal who was a POW, and we didn’t know who was dead or alive, or how POWs were being treated.
In 1966, North Vietnam released a film featuring Jeremiah Denton being interviewed and robotically answering questions confirming they were treated well, while his captors never knew he was blinking Morse Code for T-O-R-T-U-R-E. That was the first intelligence America had that our POWs were being tortured.
Their torture was not the play-tool of waterboarding, which was done to us just as part of our training. Until Ho Chi Minh died in late 1969, POWs were tortured daily to coerce signed confessions of war crimes. Bad stuff. Some of them died.
Last year I took a group of about 10 people to a premier showing of “JEREMIAH,” a PBS film about Jeremiah Denton III. Our buddy Jerry had a number of appearances in the film, and his brother described how surreal it was, after eight years, to watch on TV when the first of 54 planes landed with 591 released POWs in 1973 at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. The first man off the plane was Navy Captain Jeremiah Denton. He stepped to a microphone, and said in clipped pieces to keep control of his voice:
“We are honored — to have had the opportunity — to serve our country – under difficult circumstances. – We are profoundly grateful – to our Commander in Chief – and to our nation – for this day. – God bless America!” Can you imagine this man taking a knee during the National Anthem?
A friend named Jim Warner was a Marine jet pilot, shot down and held by the North Vietnamese for 5-and-a-half years. At one point they put him in a small tin shed in the 120-degree sun, sides too hot to touch, too low to stand, no stool, couldn’t sit in his own mess because he had dysentery from the starvation diet, so he had to crouch in his ankle irons.
They kept Jim in that shed for over a month, taking him out every day to beat the hell out of him. When they sent him back to the Hanoi Hilton, his ankles were swollen up like footballs, so they used steel levers to pry the ankle irons out of his inflamed flesh.
Another friend named Mark “Zippo” Smith, was a POW, but they kept him in a cage and a hole in the ground in the Cambodia jungle for 312 days, released when the war ended and POWs were released. Zippo received the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor, for his “extraordinary heroism.”
A few years ago, we were together visiting the new Infantry Museum at Ft. Benning (well worth a visit). One of the exhibits was a wax figure of Zippo, his rice bowl, etc. I took this extraordinary photo of Zippo standing next to his own wax likeness.
There is a message here.
To the rioting lynch mobs demanding the instant gratification of their own brand of vigilante justice, to the self-indulgent football players and others trying to make a point with their antics during our national anthem, I would say to them America is not about you and your microcosm of complaint. It is about something much larger that includes all of us — E pluribus unum — and requires civilized behavior.
No matter what your issue, no matter what you think of any American policy or war, the flag represents something important, and respect must be paid.
Unless of course you are a spoiled and stupid child.
[Terry Garlock of Peachtree City, Ga., occasionally contributes a column to The Citizen.]
Terry Garlock’s friend, Mark “Zippo” Smith, stands in front of his own wax likeness as a POW, held in a cage and hole in the ground in Cambodia. Photo taken at the Infantry Museum at Ft. Benning, Ga. Photo/Terry Garlock.
