Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
1)
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a Canadian police department’s diversity
enforcer attempt to shut down a Pamela Geller speech by getting her bounced from a Toronto synagogue.
In Britain, the shut-up-he-explained crowd cut to the chase: They went
to the (supposedly Conservative) Home Secretary, the ghastly Theresa
May, and got Miss Geller and Robert Spencer banned from the entire
country on the grounds that their presence in the United Kingdom would
not be “conducive to the public good“.
By contrast, the presence of, say, Anjem Choudary, philosophical mentor of the Woolwich head hackers and a man who calls for the murder of the Prime Minister,
is so “conducive to the public good” that British taxpayers subsidize
him generously and provide a half-million-dollar home for him to live
on. Mrs May’s Home Office has just admitted to the UK Muhhamed al-Arefe
who advocates wife-beating.
Perhaps Mr May will try out Imam al-Arefe’s expert advice on the
beneficial effects of “light beating” on Theresa this weekend – or is
spousal abuse only “conducive to the public good” of Muslim women?
The reflexive illiberalism of Britain’s so-called liberals
– the urge to ban the debate rather than win it – is now so deeply
ingrained they will soon be hungry for new victories. Nearly four
centuries after Milton’s Areopagitica, freedom of speech is dead in
England. In denying her charges access to dissenting ideas, Mrs May is
inviting them to find alternative means of expression. No good will come
from this.
OTTAWA - An
Alberta MP has succeeded in his bid to repeal a section of the Canadian
Human Rights Act long seen by free-speech advocates as a tool to
squelch dissenting opinions. Conservative MP Brian Storseth saw
the Senate give third and final reading late Wednesday to his Bill C-304
which repeals Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, an act that had been
used to, among other things, attack the writings of Sun News Network’s
Ezra Levant and Maclean’s columnist Mark Steyn… Last summer,
Storseth’s bill cleared the House of Commons in a free vote and, now
that it’s through the Senate, it will get Royal Assent and Section 13
should soon disappear.
I believe it received Royal
Assent a couple of hours ago. So victories against the state’s
encroachments on free speech are protracted and difficult, but still just about possible.
I am honored to have played a small role in a modest victory for
liberty in Canada, and I hope my friends in London ashamed by what their
government has done will take heart.
3) What connects the above
to today’s decisions in Washington is the slapdash contempt of Anthony
Kennedy’s opinion. Whatever the merits of gay marriage, it ought to
revolt anyone with a decent respect for self-government that this
incompetent jurist could find no other way to frame the issue than to
besmirch the motives of those who oppose him. As Justice Scalia wrote:
To
defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate
those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the
Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate
other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this
institution. In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding
is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement… It is one thing for a
society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose
change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies
of the human race.
What I always objected to in
Canada about Section 13 was its casual contempt for the citizenry, the
same contempt on display today in Washington and London. Like Theresa
May, Justice Kennedy would rather impute motive than engage argument.
The need to delegitimize those who disagree does indeed “demean this
institution”, and is profoundly disturbing. National Review
