Thank you for your very thoughtful response
My dad was career Navy, and I was a dependent overseas during the Vietnam conflict. Like many others in the Seventies, I stood by silently while I let liberals trash our veterans.
I vowed, when I realized what had been done to those men, that I would never let their slanders go unchallenged again. I had the opportunity to do just that over the last decade when liberals were trashing our veterans outside Walter Reed, and the DC Chapter of Free Republic went out to face them every single Friday night for years.
I was fortunate to be able to stand with them on many occasions, and even with the other things I have tried to do as a civilian to help our troops, those were more rewarding experiences than nearly anything else.