Tag Archives: history

What Would Our Great-Grandparents Say?

Posted on by Standard 1

If my grandparents and great-grandparents were alive, I’m pretty sure they would be embarrassed at what we have allowed to happen to our country. Their country.

My grandparents were workers. They were second generation immigrants from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Their parents came to America with no expectations that anything would be given to them. All they expected was freedom to work, live, and worship.

Income redistribution was the furthest thing from their minds. Why would one person work his or her ass off just to have the fruits of their labor go to somebody who refused to earn their keep? That just didn’t, and doesn’t, make sense.

photo courtesy Kearney Museum

My ancestors came to America because this country offered what no other country did – equal opportunity to be the best one could be. No American could be denied the right to own property they had paid for with their sweat, smarts and willingness to take a risk. And boy howdy, did they take a risk.

They entered America through Ellis Island and moved to North Dakota, where winters are long and cold, but the soil is rich and hard work is rewarded with bumper crops and fat livestock. Through wars, mosquitos and depressions, they just worked harder, fixing what was broken with bare hands, ingenuity and maybe some baling wire. There was no supermarket, no Home Depot, certainly no EBT cards or free school lunches. They repaired their own shoes, cut their own hair, and healed their sick cows. They gathered to play polka music on Saturday nights, and danced like there was no tomorrow. And they built a church down the road on their own time with their bare, calloused hands using stones they hauled from their fields.

They enlisted and marched off to defend liberty, laying down their lives for people they did not know because it was the right thing to do.

What would these tough, fearless, independent Americans think of us today?

Tom Balek, Rockin’ On the Right Side

(rough translation)
Where the wind wipes our noses, that’s where my first love lives,
Where the wind rubs our noses raw, that’s where my first love lives.
Even the horses knew how she rode ’em wild,
On the farm she wore out every single horse.

FARMER’S POLKA


January 6th – A Day That Will Live in Infamy

Posted on by Standard 3

It’s time. I can’t wait any longer to say this.

The following is going to sound a lot like President Trump when he repeats ad nauseum that the latest crime of our adversaries is “like nobody has ever seen before . . . “

There was a popular saying back in the 80s (when I still had hair) that somehow made sense at the time. “Shit happens.” Remember? If not, you are dismissed.

A lot of shit has happened over the last couple of decades. We elected the first minority president because he said, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America, there is the United States of America.” He assured us that he would put an end to the type of politics that “breeds division and conflict and cynicism.” Then he proceeded to pit half of his nation’s citizens against the other half while we prayed that his ascendancy would destroy every remaining hint of racism in the most anti-racist nation in the world.

Obama fabricated a seemingly indestructible federal bureaucracy, weaponizing it to push us to the very extinction of the freedoms we were taught to cherish because brave patriots spilled their guts for future generations.

After eviscerating Trump 1.0, Biden and the remaining Obama insiders continued the carnage, highlighted by the recruitment and admission of 30 – 50 million illegal immigrants to our diseased nation, many of them among the most immoral people on Earth.

Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight, right? Our nation was gut-shot so many times during the Biden era that survival would seem a miracle, while our conservative leadership refused to defend their electors who clung to the faith that the contrived battle between Obama’s “liberal America and conservative America” would somehow end peacefully – or at least they would be re-elected.

One could point to a hundred horrific, unconscionable acts by the leftists in our nation in recent years. It was one bitch slap after another: DEI, transgenderism, open borders, stolen votes, coddled criminals, corrupt politicians who never face accountability, assassination attempts, trillions of dollars of waste and fraud in federal programs, the horrendous Afghan withdrawal, shameless dishonesty in media, the destruction of our critical institutions including education, health care, national defense and our security agencies.

But there is one despicable act by the left that tops them all and can not be forgiven. Not ever. Never. It tops the list of depravity, like nothing anybody has ever seen before.

That is the savage damage done by our own government to the innocent American citizens who patriotically attended a rally in our nations capital on January 6, 2021 for the sole purpose of questioning the integrity of our elective process, and paid for that privilege with their lives, fortunes, and families.

The unthinkable actions taken by our federal government against its own people are the kind of perfidy we would only have expected from the evil, tyrannical governments that our nation fought with our blood and souls only a few generations ago. Our courts abandoned any responsibility for justice. Our news media and politicians shredded the truth, and continue to.

President Trump’s pardon for the J6 prisoners was a promise kept; a necessary and welcome start, but it is not enough. Until the victims and their families are made whole financially, and granted our nation’s full apologies for what they endured at the hands of our despicable government we should not, and can not, rest. Until those who lied and schemed in their vicious pursuit of innocent citizens are prosecuted, we should not, and can not, forget. And may any politician or member of the news media who ignores, supports, or refuses to remediate the injustices done by our nation on these people, face the wrath of his maker.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

You are the poster boy for how low one can sink
You slither by your lies and never even blink
You are a danger to the good left in the world
If only all your future words remained unheard

SHAME ON YOU – Richard Marx


Vietnam

Posted on by Standard 5

I graduated from high school in 1971, not yet eligible for the draft. In 1972 I turned 18. The war was winding down, and the number of American soldiers ‘in country’ was significantly reduced from the peak in 1968. Still, the word on the street was that young draftees were being sent to the front lines to replace the guys who had survived tours of combat and wanted to go home in one piece. The young grunts were easy meat for the more experienced and war-tough Viet Cong.

A great Marine recruiter had approached us senior boys at my high school before graduation, and I thought about enlisting, but after graduation, with help from my dad and my young wife, I was able to afford college and bypass military service.

1972 was my first year eligible for the draft lottery, and my number was 228. That year only the first 95 birthdates were drafted.

I was relieved, of course, at the time. Still, I had a gnawing ache that so many of my brothers had served and died in ‘Nam, and I didn’t. I saw the war protests on the nightly news, along with the reports of guys returning from the war being vilified as “baby killers”.

To this day, over 50 years later, there is a special place in my heart for Vietnam vets, who served our nation in that ugly war, without really knowing how their spilled blood made a damn bit of difference. Some were driven by pure patriotism, and some were just unfortunate draftees. All of them laid it on the line for their buddies.

Throughout our history, America has lost many brave young men on the battlefields, including more recent conflicts in the Middle East. Some Americans would have us send our young to Ukraine for God knows what purpose. I’m a patriot, and have reverence for all of our lost soldiers and war veterans. But I don’t ever want to experience the national heartache of the pointless Vietnam War again.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

He blesses the boys as they stand in line
The smell of gun grease and the bayonets they shine
He’s there to help them all that he can
To make them feel wanted he’s a good holy man

SKY PILOT – Eric Burdon and the Animals