Posted on 10/26/2004 9:32:40 AM PDT by Pukin Dog
For weeks now, I have been working on an essay, hoping to inspire everyone to get to the polls next week. It was going to be about our brave men and women on the battlefield, fighting to defend our freedom, and why they (and you) are hated by European and Arab nations. I told FReepers to watch for it, but I’m not doing that essay any longer.
Instead, I just want to share a few thoughts with you all that have been on my mind, but they require a bit of background. I’ve been called long-winded with my essays before, but I ask you to be patient and hang in there to the end.
Two Saturdays ago, I joined a neighbor of mine and went with him to watch his 8 year old son play in a Pop Warner football game. He is a member of the Mira Mesa Tigers, who on that day would be taking on the Balboa Raiders down at Hoover High School, which is in the inner city of San Diego.
Hoover High School is located on El Cajon Blvd, which is a street that runs almost from downtown San Diego all the way to La Mesa. 20 years ago, when I was a young nugget flying out of Miramar, I bought a car from a dealer on El Cajon Blvd, as it was a thriving area of town loaded with all sorts of businesses, small and large.
When we arrived on El Cajon Blvd that Saturday, I had not been the area in something like 15-18 years. There were still hundreds of business lining the street, still a very strong economy going on, but something had changed. In the span of time that I had been out of that area, almost every business along that road near Hoover High had become minority owned; Mostly Asian, but also Mexican, African, and some other ethnicities.
I think I remarked once to my friend while we were looking for a place to park about the drastic changes there, but our minds were on football and a victory for the Tigers. If you have ever been to a Pop Warner football game, you know that there is a lot of sitting and waiting for things to happen, as some kid gets hurt every third play, and the referees aint the best in the business.
So, I’m sitting in the stands, next to an Asian guy whose kid is going to play in the game after ours, and I find from the gentleman that he’s from Laos. So, while making small talk, I remarked about the changes along El Cajon Blvd, since the last time I had been in the area; how the business all appeared to be minority-owned and operated. His response to me is the subject of this essay. The man turned to me and said:
“Yeah, it has changed down here, but it is still America.”
I can’t get those words out of my head, and I don’t want to. For the rest of the afternoon, I watched boys between 8 and 12 years old playing football on a typical clear San Diego day, but I noticed that these were White kids, Black kids, Vietnamese kids, Laotian kids, Hispanic kids, Korean kids, and others who for an afternoon put all that aside long enough to be just some American kids playing football. Not bad, not bad at all. It occurred to me, that the next day, that Sunday, some of those kids would be going to their Catholic church, some to a Baptist church, some to a Synagogue, some to a Temple, some to a Mosque, but every one of them under an American flag. I can’t write that other essay, because it is not our military strength that makes America great, it is the fact that we can come together, no matter where we came from, and contribute to the health and strength of our great country.
Those businesses along El Cajon Blvd provided a healthy tax-base for the city 20 years ago, and they still do today. The only difference is that there are more folks, from backgrounds and histories spanning the globe contributing what they can to this country, our country.
In this country, when I get up in the morning and get my paper from the curb, I don’t have to be concerned about bullets flying in the street, or some car-bomber lurking around the corner ready to take me out over my defense of democracy. In this country, I don’t have to hide my love of God from those who have a different idea of religion at the risk of losing my head to a sharp knife.
How often do you stop to consider just how incredibly, stupendously wonderful a country this is? Everyone, everywhere loves their country to some degree, but how often do you notice how just plain superior America is, and how blessed we are to live here, instead of somewhere else? How beautiful it is in every direction, how great, kind and generous its people are? I’ve been blessed in many ways throughout my life, but never more so, then to have been born in America.
When I go to work, I drive to Lindbergh Field to catch a ride to Atlanta. The greatest thing about my commute to the airport, is that coming down from the freeway, I can look across the San Diego bay to Coronado, and see CVN-76 sitting there, high in the water, ready to take its sovereign American territory anywhere in the world to watch over little American boys playing football on Saturday afternoon. How many folks are so blessed as to have the USS Ronald Reagan and sister ship USS Nimitz (CVN-68) sitting along their commute as a reminder of what it’s all about? Now, I am sure that the French will someday build an Aircraft Carrier that airplanes can actually use, but I’m not holding my breath. For the moment, we do it, and we do it better than anyone ever dreamed possible. That is America.
A few weeks ago, we all witnessed America at her best, when Burt Rutan and his team won the X-Prize. I don’t know if we all understand what an incredible achievement it was that this privately financed team of engineers managed to send their ship into space twice in the span of a few days? Would this have happened anywhere else? Could it? No. It could not happen, because no other nation has what we have. No other nation has our spirit, our drive, our work ethic, and our desire to better ourselves. We lead the world in every way that matters, and most ways that don’t.
There is something about being an American, which can never be duplicated by another country. Something about the swagger in the young Marines I see walking into the airport after graduating from MCRD Boot Camp directly across from the airport. I like to watch these former kids, trying on their manhood for the first time after 12 weeks of hell, dying to get home to mom and dad and show them how the boy who left them came back to them hardened steel. Something about the Vietnamese woman at the Dry Cleaners who refused to take money when she cleaned my old Navy flight jacket. She says I already paid her. There is something about those great folks who come out every year for the Miramar Air Show who prayed together for the pilot who lost his life trying to entertain them.
Where else can America’s enemies and detractors on the Left walk our streets in protest without the fear of persecution, arrest and death or dismemberment? Where are the Million Man Marches in the streets of Somalia, Sudan or Iran? Where can PETA throw cow blood on a policeman and not get shot, on the streets of North Korea? What would the punishment be for spiking a lumber tree in China? A high speed chase through the neighborhoods of Saudi Arabia? Public Drunkenness in Pakistan? Vandalism in Singapore?
Yet, all around us, all you hear this week is bitching. Bitching and moaning about how terrible we are. Liberals wondering where they can go, after George Bush wins next week, as though there is really a better place on Earth than the United States. But, singers who can’t sing and actors who can’t act are telling us what to think, how to feel and what to do, so that they can feel better about this country. They are begging us to vote for a primped, perfumed pussy of a Senator who believes that he can fool enough of us into installing him into the seat of American power. Every time I see John Kerry limp around in that A-1 jacket, with the patches in the wrong places, trying to appear as some kind of man’s man, I get ill.
Maybe it’s because his favorite Red Sox player is “Manny Ortiz”, or that he wants Swiss Cheese on his Philly steak, or that he cant throw a baseball 90 feet without breaking a rib, or that he cant fall down on skis unless some SOB Secret Service agent (sworn to protect his miserable, phony life) knocks him down, or that he does not know where the Packers play, but can name the exact GPS location of the Sturgeon who produced his breakfast caviar while pulling a wheelie on his $8,000 bicycle on his way to the doc for another Botox injection? Sadly, that is also America.
That is the America of the loser-left; the America of those who are uncomfortable with our greatness. They don’t like that we are #1. They don’t think we deserve it. Never mind that were it not for us, Lance Armstrong might have won 6 tours of German Occupied Territory. Never mind that we taught the Japanese modern manufacturing. Never mind that while the USSR was pointing nukes at us, we were sending food to their citizens. Never mind that North Korea thinks we are Satan, but that our money is A-OK. Never mind that after winning every war we ever fought, Americans died rebuilding nations and lands that we could have just kept for ourselves.
It is because of the greatness of America that we tolerate the hatred of our country by the Liberal left. We die defending their right to wish that we would die sooner. George Bush has the nerve to believe that Freedom is a gift from God. How dare he? Out of hatred for such thinking, the Left wants him out of office. The Left all over the world wishes him dead. Just like they did Ronald Reagan. They hated Reagan, because he had the unmitigated gall to stand up to tyranny. He had the nerve to give us an economy that resulted in something less than the 24% interest rates of Jimmy (old, but still a nut) Carter. They blamed Reagan for $600 toilet seats, without the sophistication to understand that those ‘toilet seats’ are actually the skin, engines and avionics of the B-2 bomber, that we could not talk about back then.
The Left wants our President to be the guy who said we could not afford to put better engines in the Tomcat, even though men were risking their lives with the older ones. The left wants the President to be a guy who said America could not afford tax cuts even though they doubled revenue to the government in a single year. The Left wants the President to be a man who calls our soldiers war criminals, but himself a hero, who took his marching orders from North Vietnam in helping to demoralize the very men he calls his brothers.
The Left does not like the fact that America is the best, because they know we are the best in spite of them. They don’t contribute to our greatness, they detract from it. They know they had nothing to do with it, and would have stopped it if they could. They could not stop it, because there are more Americans who love this country then who hate it. The left wants to join those self-hating, cheese-eating, surrender monkeys of Western Europe in their misery and sing folk songs together as the tanks surround their towns.
They want us to revert to a country where you must think as they think, or risk arrest. They want to kill your unborn children, but arrest you if you kill a snail-darter or spotted owl. They want to shut down the very coal mines that keep the lights on at their favorite oxygen bar, where they drink wheat-grass, as they bitch about the pesticides protecting the wheat fields feeding the world.
In their world, little boys won’t be allowed to play football on Saturday because it is too violent for their sensibilities. They will be forced to play Soccer, but even then, won’t be allowed to keep score, to keep the self-esteem even among all the participants. In their world, the USS Ronald Reagan would be cut into scrap, to make way for windsurfing park for future girly-men to impress future rich widows. In their world, the cultural diversity of America would become the Politically-Correct-Group-Think-Utopia where small business would go the way of the dinosaur due to the high taxation needed to pay for all the new parks, streams and endless fields of cannabis.
I love America, and I even love those Godless idiots on the left that want to destroy her, in favor of a new mother-land. I love them because God says I must, but I will fight them to the end, to protect our way of life and those who defend it on foreign shores so that they don’t have to defend it over here.
I love a country that can produce an airplane like the 777 that saves my life from my own stupidity. I love a country where the great young minds of the world come to be educated and discover upon their arrival that it is nothing like they were told by their leaders. I love a country that will pay you to start a business, to employ people, to just learn something. I love a country that no matter what you do, it will pay someone to defend you against a criminal accusation if you cannot afford it on your own, and will make no assumption about your guilt or innocence before hand. I love a country where just one of our states exceeds the GNP of all but 6 foreign countries, but still finds time to complain about its own economy.
America is the envy of the world for many reasons I could mention, but only one reason that matters. Next week, you get to decide. YOU. Without a gun at your head, or a knife at your throat, you get to decide who your leaders and representatives are going to be. No one is going to set off a bomb in your line as you stand outside your polling place. No one is going to turn you away if you follow the laws and instructions for voting. No one is going to deny you your right to be heard.
If you love America as I do, you will get your ass to the polls next week, and keep those on the Left who hate America as they hate themselves from gaining a measure of control. You will crawl over broken glass to make sure that George Bush wins next week, and continue to be the engine of the greatest country on God’s earth. And when we win, and we WILL win, take more time to look around you and appreciate all that we have. We have each other, we have America.
Now, let’s come together and keep it.
I'm Pukin Dog.
Good job...
I will bookmark.
I'm beginning to recognize individual posters here - I sem to remember that I liked several of your posts, for what it's worth. Too bad I'm not here enough to really read as much as I want . . .
I made it through 6 paragraphs, but now the baby is crying. Back later! I like it so far :-).
A little long winded isn't it?
8-)
Don't apologize.
Bump!
bump
"They are begging us to vote for a primped, perfumed pussy of a Senator who believes that he can fool enough of us into installing him into the seat of American power."
This is my favorite part. Otherwise, great overall. It's where writing begins. BTTT!
Wonderful essay.
Thank you for writing this.
I read every word of it Pukin Dog. Helluva good read. Charlie Mike.
Excellent all the way through!
Fan-freakin'-tastic P.D.! Thanks for sharing.
Excellent essay! Thanks for writing it.
Great job, PD.
Nicely done.
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