Let me state my qualifications for speaking today, meager as they are as compared to so many others so much more worthy. I was in Vietnam in 1963 — but not in the Army — in a USO show. But don’t worry, I won’t sing — unless you start falling asleep.
I was in the Army from 1966 to 1971 — mostly at Letterman [General] Hospital in S.F. I was drafted from graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and joined student psychology program. It was too early then to be mocked by fellow students — though many of them were typical university liberals who found it somehow more honorable to go to Canada than to the military.
However, I grew up in a small town in Illinois, an agricultural community very much like Tehama County. There, as it still is here for the most part, going against the deeply-imbedded principles of this country was unthinkable.
I served as a non-combatant, as an ancillary Medical Officer, a psychologist. But since I was stationed in San Francisco, I think I ought to qualify for the Veterans of Foreign Wars [VFW].
Still, like many other non-combatants, I sometimes wonder what it would have been like — and what I would have done — had I come under fire. Of course, I could never know until it happened. But like others in my situation, I have awe and admiration for those who actually came in harm’s way — which, by the way in regular war is about 1 in 5.
Since coming to Red Bluff to practice my profession, I was fortunate to connect with KBLF radio station and do a radio show for the past 9 years, as well as to do a column for The Tehama Trader [Plus]. I covered politics, religion, and philosophy — our reasons for living and the ways we live. I was able to read, and speak with, a whole panoply of authors and thinkers, and this created a unique perspective for me, and for a lot of people in this audience who have listened, or read, and appreciated what we have presented to the people of Tehama County.
Now let me start my talk — and I’ll gauge my time and tempo by the heat of the sun — notice I’m standing in the shade . . . . And remember, several hundred years ago, before there were electronics, the main speaker of the day might be three hours long. Of course, that was when they were rhetoricians, people who were schooled in rhetoric — instead of being able to look good like today’s television anchor people.
However, I will be as short as I can. And let me start backwards, with absolutely no disrespect intended in this reversal of the usual order:
What I have to say today is entirely my own set of ideas and is not representative of, or sponsored by any other person, group, or organization. It is because we have freedom of political and religious speech that I am here.
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES; this is the title of a book by American philosopher Richard Weaver; now not many university students have heard of him because he’s not Politically Correct. And in keeping with today’s teaching ethics, all sides do NOT have to be presented. But I urge you to look up and read Richard Weaver.
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
How about idea of the King sharing power with the nobles — this led to the Magna Carta. Or the idea of men governing themselves — this led to America. Or the idea that economics are dictated by class struggle — that idea, from Marx, led to tens of millions of deaths in this century alone.
So IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES — often very far-reaching.
Now let’s take look at a young man who not too long ago was demonstrating in Florida. And he had a sign: NOTHING IS WORTH DYING FOR.
NOTHING IS WORTH DYING FOR!
And we let immature 20-yr olds dictate to spineless university administrators! I used to think I knew it all, too. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite bumper stickers is "Hurry Up and Hire a Teenager While He Still Knows It All.
I sure thought I did. I interviewed a man once who was one of the student leaders who took over Columbia University in the 60s. He’s now a conservative judge in Texas. People can change.
He told me that they took over the university just because they wanted to get arrested and thrown into jail and become martyrs. But what happened, they took over the university, and the administration capitulated. And there they were, sitting in the president’s office and they didn’t know what to do, so they said, "Let’s go for more power." And a whole student movement was born in the 60s.
Finally, perhaps, this may be changing. The president of the University of Alaska said, "Enough is enough," and just recently did not let the politically-correct crowd take over. Some people are starting to get courage.
You know, we do need the idealism of the young. I’m not putting that down. But we must remember that wisdom is intelligence tempered by knowledge, maturity, and experience.
NOTHING IS WORTH DYING FOR!
For those who believe that, can there by really be Anything Worth Living For — besides the cheap thrills of the moment?
Now, let me give you something I got from the Internet. It’s supposedly an Old Chinese Proverb. And everyone to whom I tell it has raised his eyebrows and nodded approvingly — An Old Chinese proverb that probably has counterparts in every culture.
It goes something like this: THOSE IN THE FREE SEATS BOO THE LOUDEST.
THOSE IN THE FREE SEATS BOO THE LOUDEST. It means, of course, the less price you pay, the less you value something.
We’re here today to honor those who paid the ULTIMATE price. Memorial Day is meant to honor our War Dead. The 4th of July honors our country and its founding. Veterans Day honors the veterans, but today the real honor is for those who lost their lives in the service of our country.
Just try going to a National Monument for our War Dead and keep a dry eye. Or go to a cemetery and see row upon row of crosses and Stars of David. Several years ago, the traveling Vietnam Wall came to Redding, and Dr. David Wilson, a psychologist up there, a friend of mine with whom I was both in graduate school and the Army, invited me to come up.
And I thought I could be objectives, because after all; it’s just a bunch of names on a wall. But I should have known better. After all, it takes a box of tissues for me to read Lassie Come Home to my kids. By the time I was half-way down the way, my reactions — combined with the reactions of those around me — made my eyes water so much I just had to stop. And I said to Dave, "I have to stop," and he looked at my with my eyes full of tears and said, "I know what you mean." It took us a while to go back through it.
The ultimate price for liberty is death for some of its procurers and its defenders. The penultimate, which means the next highest price, is watchfulness. As a number of thinkers have stated, back through Woodrow Wilson and FDR, way back to the ancient Greeks, the Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance.
Now why? Why is this? To find the answer, we must look beyond philosophy and psychology to what used to be called — now get this — the highest of the sciences, theology, and its view of the Nature of Man.
Our Founding Fathers almost entirely of Christian-based education and persuasion. Regardless of what distracters say, only a few were deists; and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin toyed with Christian ideas all their lives. Read Peter Marshall’s book called The Light and the Glory to see the Christian influence in the founding of this country.
Coming from a Christian theological heritage, the Founders knew the true nature of man not to be good — as the humanists and their French Enlightenment mentors would say — but the true nature to be base and sinful, full of selfishness and pride.
Look at your average family dog, a nice, beautiful, calm dog, friendly with the family. Now put that dog together with three other dogs from the neighborhood, just the same kind, and watch them go out and kill chickens. Human Nature is much the same way.
James Madison, one of our Founding Fathers, was fully aware of this as he crafted — because he was the main architect — those checks and balances of power in our Constitution that have made it so robust and strong.
John Adams, another Founding Father and our second president, knew this — knew the nature of man — when he said, and I quote:
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Francis Scott Key, a Sunday School teacher, knew about the true nature of man when he wrote the "Star-Spangled Banner." Not many people know the 4th and final verse. The first 3 verses are questions, but the 4th verse is a statement, and it goes like this:
And thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their loved homes, and the war’s desolation
Blessed with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land (he meant Heaven)
Praise the Power (with a capital P, that means God )that hath made, and
preserved us a Nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just (Think about Sudan right now)
And this be our motto, "In God Is Our Trust,"
(And as long as this happens) And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave,
O’er the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave
Today, the heirs of French Enlightenment thinking are the Rationalists, Naturalists, and Secular Humanist who populate our universities and make up what is known as the New Class, those people who purvey information and advice — including, I’m sorry to say, most shrinks, teachers union leaders, journalists, media people, Hollywood types and many politicians.
Their view of human nature is that Man is perfectible, and Man can be his own savior — and that everything is relative, and that there are no absolutes — except, of course, their own view about things.
They put their hooks into our young because we do not educate ourselves enough to inoculate our own young against these intellectual viruses.
Princeton University, formerly a stronghold of believing Presbyterians — John Jay, our first Supreme Court chief justice, and many of our Founding Fathers went to Princeton. Princeton University now boasts an endowed professor, Peter Singer, who thinks parents should get up to a month to decide if they want to kill their newborn baby, and that sex with animals is not perverse. Go, Princeton!
So it’s no wonder that we get our boy with his sign: NOTHING IS WORTH DYING FOR!
He’s been taught well. And many of his type are angry and contentious, depressed and grieving, prone to disrupt their own lives as well as others under the rationalization that they are changing the world for the better.
If nothing is worth dying for, then the only thing left to live for is either today’s cheap thrills, or else the false philosophies that brings false promises of peace through man’s own devices. Now what are some of these false promises?
Well, note the violence, always justified, when the peace movement is thwarted. Note Vladimir Lenin’s definition of Peace: "Peace is Communism." And know that Michael Gorbachev, formerly the leader of the Soviet Union and still a self-proclaimed socialist and Marxist, is a United Nations leader with offices on the Presidio of San Francisco!
Professor Paul Johnson, in his monumental history of the 20th Century entitled Modern Times, tells of tens of thousands of deaths directly following Ghandi’s peace policies.
All failed promises of peace because they don’t understand the nature of man.
NOTHING IS WORTH DYING FOR?
That boy and his type have been spoiled and mollycoddled right here in the only country where freedom and the Rule of Law let ANYONE succeed; where the lowest of the low still live like kings compared to much of the rest of the world; where religion — so far — is truly free. Try openly to convert people to Christianity in India, or in Iraq, or in China, or sometimes even in Israel. Try to speak your mind, or present scientific research in Canada about sexuality without being arrested for a Hate Crime. Try to have a private church in China.
NOTHING IS WORTH DYING FOR? That boy with the sign is BOOING FROM THE FREE SEATS.
Hear that sound? It’s the souls of the honored dead weeping for that boy and the deteriorating system that produced him in a country that’s spending its religious capital and is rapidly going bankrupt in ethics and morality, where Memorial Day is all-too-often the time to premiere a new movie with special effects, or play ball all day long, or barbecue and get drunk. A holiday but not a Holy Day. Where the percentage of people in this county, at memorial services, is probably less than one percent — and God Bless You All for being here, the same crowd year after year.
NOTHING IS WORTH DYING FOR?
Tell that to those raising families — Tell that to those killed for their country. — And son, tell it to the Marines — if you dare.
NOTHING IS WORTH DYING FOR?
Tell that to the Lord Jesus Christ.
In their small volume called The Lessons of History, written after their many-volume set on the History of Civilization, Will and Ariel Durant have this salient point:
Woe to that Country that does not bring up its sons to be warriors. Let me repeat that. Woe to that Country that does not bring up its sons to be warriors. The Durants knew the true nature of Fallen Man, who tries to enslave free people. All you have to do is read history.
We need to see the world as it is, not as we’d wish it to be. Then we can work toward making it what we want. Those who claim we can do it by ourselves are being just as religious as I am — except they cannot talk about immortal souls, in which they don’t believe. They believe salvation come from themselves, not from God. And anything noble is just an artifact of evolution, explained away by mindless and soul-less genes trying somehow to perpetuate themselves at the expense of other genes.
But I disagree, and say when we realize that we are created in the very image of God, and that salvation has to come from outside ourselves, then we will have given true honor to those souls who gave up their earthly bodies so we might remain — at least for the time being — the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave.
If you have applause, give it not to me, but to the memory of those souls whose earthly bodies were violently destroyed so that we as individuals might say what we want, worship how we please, and raise our families as we, ourselves, see fit.
Think about that for the rest of the day. And next year, come back again — only this time, each of you reach out to bring others from among your friends, your neighbors, your churches.
And most important of all, make sure your children come to learn their heritage — and the price that was paid for it.