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."
How ‘Je Suis Charlie’ exposed the hypocrisy of the elites
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Spiked : Two crimes were committed against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, 10 years ago today.
Islamist gunmen committed mass murder at the paper’s Paris offices.
They shot dead eight cartoonists and journalists, two police officers
and two others, in a graphic demonstration of their hatred for freedom
of speech and of the press.
Then the great and the good of Western society committed a mass
free-speech fraud. They sold us the line that they all supported free
speech, making rhetorical and ritualistic gestures of support for the Charlie Hebdo
victims. Yet at the same time, many were acting out their contempt for
the real freedom of expression that allows such provocative publications
to exist in the first place.
The massive ‘Je Suis Charlie’ demonstrations in Paris and many other
cities, which followed the massacre and the connected murders at a
Jewish supermarket, were uplifting displays of human solidarity that
made an impression on us all. They also, however, gave a misleading
impression of the state of play with free speech in Europe and America.
Here, it might have appeared, was a clear cultural divide: on one side, a free world united in support of Charlie Hebdo
and freedom of expression; on the other, a handful of extremists
opposed to liberty and ‘all that we hold dear’. Behind those solidarity
banners, however, Western opinion was far less solidly for free speech.
Many public figures could hardly wait to stop paying lip service to
liberty and start adding the inevitable qualifications, obfuscations
and, above all, ‘buts…’.
Those who took a dim view of genuinely free speech in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo
were not confined to Islamist terror cells. It quickly emerged that the
threat to freedom came not just from a few barbarians at the gate, but
also from within the supposed citadel of civilisation itself.