What Matters... a note from Mike Walker, USMC Colonel (retired). I am always impressed with Mike's message but this piece speaks to purpose and strength in an individuals life and how that person chooses to share that in his/her community.
Marines,
We veterans got it right about the far-leftist liberal elites a long time ago. Long serving Democratic Senator John Glenn of Ohio said it best more than thirty years ago.
A rich and removed Howard Metzenbaum, a man whose ignorance was always in competition with his arrogance, never grasped what made a real American.
But Howard got a glimpse when he ran into the real deal in the form of a grass roots all-American hero, John Glenn, US Marine and Astronaut. Here is what transpired way back in 1974:
Howard Metzenbaum: “How can you run for the senate when you never held a job?”
John Glenn: “I served twenty three years in the United States Marine Corps. I went through two wars. This was not a nine-to-five job. I flew one hundred and forty nine missions. My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on twelve different occasions.
I was in the space program. It wasn’t my checkbook; it was my life that was on the line. This was not a nine-to-five job where I took time off to take my daily cash receipts to the bank.
I ask you to go with me, as I went the other day, to a veterans’ hospital and look those men, with their mangled bodies, in the eye and tell them they didn’t hold a job. You go with me to any Gold Star mother and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job.
You go with me to the space program and you go as I have gone to the widows and orphans of Ed White and Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee and you look those kids in the eye and tell them that their father didn’t hold a job.
I tell you, Howard Metzenbaum, you should be on your knees every day of your life thanking God that were some men – some men – who held a job. And they required a dedication to purpose and a love of country and dedication duty that was more important than life itself. And their self-sacrifice is what made this country possible.
I have held a job, Howard.”
What today’s pampered, blessedly isolated, and simple far-left liberal souls, like Howard before them, will never realize is how their disdain for best and brightest in America will become an eternal rallying cry. To understand please see the video from Afghanistan:
http://www.mca-marines.org:80/leatherneck/2d-marine-division-combat-camera.asp
How does that Marine, in the midst of war, recall that dialogue word for word with such passion?
Because it matters.
Semper Fi,
Mike
