 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Every day, when I tune in to my local AM radio station, I hear actor Tom Hanks intoning his appeal for financial support of a World War II veterans memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. He tells us that a thousand vets a day are dying of old age; that WW II is the only major war without a memorial to the soldiers who fought and died in it; and that this nation should complete this tribute to the "great generation" that rescued our freedom from dictators intent on enslaving us.
I have to admit that when I listen to this public service announcement, I experience rather mixed emotions. My father is a veteran of the war. He served in Europe, landing in France a few weeks after D-Day. He fought in Luxembourg and in the Battle of the Bulge and ended by guarding German prisoners in Marseilles. He almost died of appendicitis when the Army wouldn't believe his symptoms were real. A strafing German plane left him with shrapnel in his back that has afflicted him for the past fifty-seven years.
He barely escaped death when a nest of bees drove him and his buddy a few yards away to dig their foxholes. Another pair of soldiers didn't care about the bees and were killed when a bomb landed right on their position. My dad also barely escaped a highly probable death when he and his fellow squad members were headed towards the infamous Citadel Fortress of St. Servan in Luxembourg. As they prepared for their turn assaulting this meat-grinder, the attack was called off for that day due to the horrendous casualties suffered by the American troops attempting to take the fortifications.
Like so many other young men, my dad was drafted. He was sent from Iowa to Florida for basic training the same month his first daughter was born. Soon after that, he was shipped off to fight in a war the U.S. should never have entered, a war thrust upon us by a lying, scheming, fascist president. Those barely adult soldiers were forced to witness and endure horrors no sane person should have to experience.
For having the most productive years of their lives -- or those very lives -- stolen from them, the soldiers of World War II deserve recognition for their losses. So do the draftees of the Civil War, World War I, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
News reader Tom Brokaw tells us that these seventy- or eighty-year-old men formed, not just a "great" generation, but the "greatest generation." Apparently, not even the Founding Fathers and the troops who fought at Lexington or Breed's Hill or Yorktown rate alongside these aging warriors.
We're inundated of late with books and movies recounting the exploits of the soldiers of World War II. Stephen Spielberg gave us "Saving Private Ryan." We had "The Thin Red Line," "Pearl Harbor," and "Enemy at the Gate." Television gave us its version of Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers. Bruce Willis stars in the upcoming prisoner-of-war drama, "Hart's War," while "Windtalker" tells us about Navajo coders in WW II.
The interest level regarding this span of history is high, indeed.
When the war was over, these soldiers returned home, many wanting nothing more than to forget what they had done and seen. Twin explosions of productivity led to rocketing consumption of cars and houses and a baby bulge that continues to influence and direct the course of our society. Surely, nothing can minimize the impact the World War II generation has had on the world.
Tom Hanks wants to cap this half-century run with a physical monument to these gray-haired folks.
As I said above, I am torn when I hear such undiluted -- almost fawning -- admiration pouring from today's media millionaires. On the one hand, I can understand such reactions. On the other hand...
The "Greatest Generation" fought and died, yes. The now-elderly members of that group, however, also bequeathed us monuments of their own, monuments that I, for one, cannot respect or applaud.
The "Greatest Generation" elected...and elected...and elected...and elected a man who destroyed the gold standard; repudiated valid contracts; promoted fascist programs and agencies; maneuvered us into a world war; admired Mussolini and Stalin; repeatedly lied to the public; prolonged the Depression with his inane and idiotic economic policies; saddled us with a Ponzi-style "social security" system now threatening to bankrupt us all; and strangled freedom even while promising to preserve it.
The "Greatest Generation" supported -- and continues to support -- the destruction of health care via Medicare, Medicaid, and, now, a whining call for prescription drug coverage.
The "Greatest Generation" sat idly by while our right to defend ourselves was transformed into a "privilege" any two-bit political jurisdiction can revoke at will.
The "Greatest Generation" created an "affirmative action" program that perpetuates racism while denying freedom of association and the validity of property rights.
The "Greatest Generation" clamored for loans and subsidies and special favors that breed political corruption, civilian cynicism, and that reward the inefficient at the expense of the capable.
The "Greatest Generation" stood at the helm of a "Great Society" that declared a "War on Poverty" and created a growing underclass of poor people.
The "Greatest Generation" decided to wage a "War on Drugs" that is eviscerating the Constitution they swore to defend while it fills our prisons with nonviolent "criminals" and undermines the integrity of law-enforcement personnel.
The "Greatest Generation" focused their collective will on "public" education and poured hundreds of billions into a slave-system of "learning" that produces mounting illiteracy, ethically challenged students, and ignorance on a massive scale.
The "Greatest Generation" helped create a tax system that steals half of all personal income to finance social engineering projects that would do Hitler or Stalin proud.
The "Greatest Generation" sent our troops to Korea and Vietnam, to the Arabian Gulf and Nato Europe, and to Africa and South America, helping set in motion the animosity that culminated in the attacks of 9-11-01.
The "Greatest Generation" also spent hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid that succeeded primarily in propping up dictators who suppressed and starved and slaughtered their own people.
The "Greatest Generation" racked up a $5 trillion dollar national debt, did nothing to stop the dollar from losing 95% of its value over the last century, and helped mold a new generation of statists, collectivists, and irrationalists that continue to drive us into the arms of a Big Brother "Homeland" while spending $2 trillion of our own money every year.
These legacies, then, are the true monuments of the "Greatest Generation." They allowed our freedoms to wither, our liberty to be bound in chains, and our lives to be stolen from us by petty bureaucrats and supercilious and condescending politicians. Worse, far too many of these dying warriors and their kin praise these heinous developments.
The "Greatest Generation" gave us the "greatest" society only in the sense that the State we endure now is the greatest in size, the greatest in power, and the greatest in hubris we have seen this side of a police state.
Such monuments to colossal intellectual error and/or overweening evil are nothing to boast about.
Yes, the "Greatest Generation" can rightfully be proud of the wealth they created (to the extent it was done without the intervention of the State). Yes, they and their descendants materially benefitted from their hard work and creativity. Yes, they endured tragic, difficult times.
Somewhere along the long, though, these men and women forgot or failed to discover that the true source, the true measure of greatness lies not in how much wealth you can seize from your neighbor, how much you can control his life or his property, or how many laws and regulations you can pass. The pursuit of rational values and ideas and the transformation of such ideas and values into reality through productive work is the only foundation for genuine, authentic, valid greatness. That loftiest expression of the human spirit, the human soul must be earned. It cannot stolen.
The "Greatest Generation" is not that of the aging World War II veterans. The "Greatest Generation" was not even the men and women who founded this nation. The "Greatest Generation" will be the one that -- finally and for all people -- establishes true freedom in this country.
That world of liberty, morality, and justice will truly be a monument for the ages.
