Georgiaboy61:

Re: “A man can’t live forever. And it matters how you die.”

Precisely my point. Our civilization and our society used to contain men who understood that certain fates were worse than death. Traditional manhood was sacrificial, when necessary, to protect the aged, infirm, the weak and the children. Allowing the law of the jungle in society, where the strong preyed upon the weak, was seen as evil and would have been unthinkable.

Men also risked their lives in defiance of tyranny and to free the oppressed. The insignia of the U.S. Army Special Forces contains a Sykes-Fairburn dagger, pointed upward, superimposed upon crossed arrows, against a heraldic shield bearing the inscription, “De Oppresso Liber,” Latin for “To Free the Oppressed.” Once, those words meant something to Americans, not only to elite soldiers, but to common men as well.

Do we still live in a culture which honors those lofty values? I honestly do not know; you tell me. There are undoubtedly individual men who still honor those words, but as for the wider society, I am not nearly-so-optimistic.

This is not to say that men of that time threw their lives away cavalierly; they did not. Rather, it is to recall a time when honor and courage were virtues widely-celebrated in our culture – and men strove to live up to those lofty expectations. Cowardice was shameful, not something to be celebrated.

In those now-bygone days, little boys wanted to grow up to be just like John Wayne, James Arness, or one of the other great cowboy western stars. People still believed in heroes then; today, heroes are tough to find anywhere in pop culture – and when you do find them, they are apt to be post-modern caricatures of them – traditional males need not apply. Today, the role of the villain is reserved for those kinds of men! Today, many kids have the ambition of getting rich and famous. People who risk their lives for others are seen as fools, saps who didn’t know how to play the game.

Yes, I am cynical, I admit… but I have ample reason for being so, would you not agree?

Darrell:

As a former police officer I find you statement about police officers to be filled with ignorance and the same hatred and malice intent that the democrats have been spewing forth for years. 98 percent of officers would not react like this yet you paint them all with a broad brush and just like the racist black lives matter you presume they are all the same. Then again you may just be a russian troll.

A hit dog always hollers.

moe mensale on the Keymod vesus M-LOK debate:

“I think that debate is also stupid. That’s why my 10″ and 20″ Colt AR15s are fitted with full Picatinny rails! When did AR15s become overly heavy? I think maybe some people need to put down their double frappe mocha italiano grande caffes and pick up a kettle bell.”

Fred Tippens:

Men cowering in their bathtub or not having the means to return fire is a sickness on their soul, the cure for which is Christ Jesus. If a man refuses to go armed he admits to a Holy God and all of mankind that he is unfit for his duties in a fallen world. He is a stunted child that is unequal to the task of manhood. Additionally, he doesn’t love his family. A man, any man, will fight to the death to protect that which he loves. This is God’s natural order that they deny and therefore, they deny God himself.

With Fred, I believe that any man who won’t defend his family is an ungodly coward.  Using Jesus as an excuse for his cowardliness is insulting to the Gospel.

Jesus came to die for the sins of His people as a vicarious atonement.  He had to drink the cup that was before Him.  Your death, or the deaths of your family members, won’t be a vicarious atonement for anything or anyone.  That’s why Jesus told His disciples to buy swords.

For everyone who wants to be a pacifist, beatnik, long haired hippie flower child, I suggest a long conversation with your wife (and children, if you have them).  It can begin this way.  “Dear, you know that I love you, and we lock our doors at night because I don’t want anything to happen to you.  But that’s as far as I’m willing to go to protect or defend you.  If someone invades our home, I’m willing to let him rape or even torture you, kill our children, and burn down our house, because I think that’s what Jesus wants us to do.  We care more about the criminals than we do our own safety.  I hope you understand.  Oh, by the way, just to make sure you understand, I feel the same way about defense of you and the children in restaurants, school, and at church as well.”

Please write me and let me know how this conversation goes.  I want the nitty, gritty details of her reaction.

Randolph Scott concerning the CIA:

I would choose to get rid of the agency. As the pricks walk out the door arrest every single one of them, everyone including pissy secretaries, readers, do nothings, mail clerks, janitors, every single living human being even remotely associated with that agency. Hold them all in jail and question every single one of them and if anyone is implicated in a seditious, treasonous or criminal offense prosecute and complete the execution by public hanging. Next burn the buildings down and grind the rubble to dust.

That is how you drain the swamp. When this is done move on to the next 3 letter agency.

Archer:

“But I suppose we should thank Hill for reminding us, once again, that “Progressives” can — and will — reverse course and trade in all their “gains” at the drop of a hat once the logical conclusions start to apply to a right they don’t like.

If it weren’t for double standards, they wouldn’t have standards at all.”

Roger J.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
From ‘The Gulag Archipelago’, Part I, Chapter 1, ‘Arrest’:

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the down-stairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”

Translated from the Russian by Thomas P. Whitney

TheAlaskan:

“Those who demand that you surrender your arms, are planning on keeping theirs.”

I get so many wonderful comments it’s hard to pick out the best.  I honestly believe I’ve got the best patrons on the interwebz.  I don’t know if you know this or not, but a lot of my payment for what I do is getting to read your comments.

That said, I have to pick one that rises to the top.  This one comes from Ray at WRSA regarding this article.

Mr H. Smith is a rabid Jesus Nazi. Who he wants for the next Emperor is of no importance to me at all.

Hey, I didn’t say to the top of what pile this comment rises.

Fred:

My nephew is in tech school (navy) and I told him before he went in to seek a deep understanding of illegal orders and to make sure they trained him on it. I also told him that if he took his training and turned it on his fellow citizens I would hunt and kill him, this child that I love and helped to raise up. He understood that this is no small matter.

And thus it will necessarily be like it was in the days of the war of independence, with family turning against family over the king.  Dark days may lie ahead.