Yesterday, I was walking out of a store wearing a t-shirt with a military logo on it. An overweight girl and her apparent boyfriend, who was also overweight, were walking up to the store. They looked at my shirt and she asked me if I had ever been in the military. “Yes,” I replied, stopping. She then asked me if I had ever gone overseas, “to war.” “Yes,” I said again.
“I could never go and do all that,” she said. “Me, either,” her apparent boyfriend added.
This was the too-many-th time I had heard that from too many someones. “You’re not willing or able to defend your country!” I said in a loud voice, and walked off, muttering like some crazy coot: “We have become a degenerate people. Our ancestors would disown us.”
I know that not many serve these days (probably one of the problems), and that even those who might want to often don’t qualify for a host of reasons (another one of the problems). I suppose the girl and guy meant what they said as a sign of respect and awe, and that I became just a weird jerk to them by the way I acted. But those words they said have become a pattern I have heard far too much. People thank me and others for our service, and I appreciate their words, but they almost say it with a fearful relief that someone else did it, that at least someone COULD AND WOULD do it. People of all political stripes say they “love” their country, and they want to enjoy their “freedoms,” but “couldn’t imagine” doing what I and others have done. They don’t want to serve their country, and sure as hell couldn’t imagine defending it, especially not where they might be killed. With so few willing and able to defend this nation, how can we not be planting the seeds of our fall?
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