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."
Those we call "Native
Americans" also owned black slaves. McGrath writes: "Accompanying the
Cherokee on their 'Trail of Tears' were some 2,000 black slaves.
They
were put to work on Cherokee farms in the new tribal home, raising
cotton, corn, and garden crops, and tending hogs and cattle. ... During
the antebellum decade, slavery reached its peak among the Five Civilized
Tribes. The Cherokee, numbering only about 20,000 themselves, owned
nearly 5,000 black slaves; the Choctaw 2,500; the Creeks 2,000; and the
Chickasaw and Seminole about a thousand each. To protect their slave
property, the Five Civilized Tribes, except for a few dissident
factions, sided with the Confederacy when the Civil War erupted."
The
government did not own slaves; people did. Conservative Dinesh D'Souza
estimates that no more than 10 Republicans, out of tens of thousands of
slave owners, owned slaves. The Ku Klux Klan was founded by Democrats.
Congressional Democrats were overwhelmingly opposed to the 13th, 14th
and 15th amendments. As a percentage of their party, more Republicans
voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did Democrats. Maybe the
Democrats should sue themselves to pay for reparations.
Reparation
proponents often say things like "slavery built America" or "America
was built on the backs of slaves."
Ta-Nehisi Coates, testifying at a
recent congressional hearing on reparations, made the following claim
about slave-produced products: "As historian Ed Baptist has written,
enslavement -- quote -- 'shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and
politics of America, so that, by 1836, more than $600 million, almost
half of the economic activity in the United States, derived directly or
indirectly from the cotton produced by the million-odd slaves.'"
