A recent memo, sent out from the Department of the Army, warning of the inherent dangers of the 4th of July and encouraging us all to be safe startled me. It wasn't anything in the memo itself, typical be safe chatter that is designed to increase awareness over the holiday, or the fact that over 11,000 people get injured by fireworks every year, it was an epiphany of where are the pro-life memos constantly reminding us of the recurring continual costs of abortion? The Department of the Army feels it necessary to protect Soldiers because of 11,000 injuries, however, we don't feel it important to note that over 4,000 babies will lose their fight for independence on July 4th. 4,000 souls will meet their maker, and that is the good news. The bad news is, unless we take their fight seriously, who will? While many are starting to worry about their carbon footprint, what about the legacy that gets pummeled every second of every day? So what? We march, we sing, we beg, and we plead and we get...partial birth abortion banned. Yeah us! What a sorry record of achievement. 34 years and we have managed to ban a procedure that would have made Hitler blush. This doesn't so much speak to our effort as much as it speaks to the opposition we face, granted. But what do we really do? The war for the rights of infants is being fought by several hard working individuals while the rest of us watch! Pastors, typically, give one obligatory sermon a year to the topic, in January...then...11 months of silence, cowardice, and safeguarding their 501c3. I personally want to hear that conversation when I get to Heaven. "Pastor Jones it says here in your file that you could have done great things to end the slaughter of the innocent...why didn't you?"
"Well...uh...God...um...I didn't want to pay taxes..."
I don't know about you, but if it takes a little extra in the collection plate from me on Sunday, maybe 15-20% instead of the required tenth, to keep the church going in Lieu of a 501c3. I am game, because only when we get over this "fear" can we really start to do the Lord's work.
But it is not just pastors who have failed. How many give money to charities which support pro-abortion policies? You don't? You better double check. How many of us vote for pro-abortion candidates because they are the lesser of two evils? Mark my words. If I have to choose between those options, I will not pick one. I don't care what their record of achievement. Does that make me a one-issue voter? Tell me, if your choices were two members of the Nazi party, or the KKK, would vote for one just because of their record on the economy? There is no more a pressing issue. Terrorism? How can I trust someone to watch out for my little girls when they won't even bat an eye at someone else's little girl getting mutilated? The Economy? How much more value would 40 million taxpayers do to help out the economy, pay taxes, and help entitlements? Immigration? Perhaps if we had an additional 40 million more Americans to do the jobs, there wouldn't even be a problem?
Yes it is just one issue, but none of us would vote for someone who flat our advocated murdering the elderly, killing children, and the weak among us! We would all speak up for them! We would preach every Sunday about those atrocities! Wouldn't we? Or would we? I guess that is the whole point. So when you are out on a boat or lighting fireworks, be safe, celebrate our Independence, but please don't forget those who can't fight for and may never win theirs!

Is talk radio really running America? If so, then Rush and his VP Sean are doing a dang good job. However, I think that people are giving these and many others too much credit. It is one of those, me thinks thou dost protesteth too much. We all know that they are using it as a guise to bring back the fairness doctrine. In listening to Rush today over lunch, Rush painted an amazing picture of how these people think: (I am going to paraphrase so forgive me) 

       These liberals and blue blood Republicans have a view of all of you. Some of you may actually work, yes, they think that some of you actually have jobs. You go to work, you get off at noon you turn on your radio from 12-3, turn off your radio and do nothing else the rest of the day. You don't listen to McCain's statements on TV or anywhere else, you don't pay attention, you don't get on the internet, your whole source of information is from me and me alone.

This is amazingly accurate! They view us as dimwitted idiots whom don't know a thing. Of course I expected this holier than thou attitude from Ds but now Rs seem to have a case of the up and up as well. As Rush stated, they are mad because we didn't believe them at face value for what they said was in the bill, and we researched it, yes, we read it, and it is not worth the paper it is written on! They are mad because we are mad that they lied to us. They didn't even just try to deceive us, they lied to us. So, now, our task is not finished. We must primary every one and make them pay for lying to our faces!

But where is talk radio in all of this. As was Rush's point. People were not just listening to talk radio they were listening to the garbage spewing out of their Senator's mouth about this bill and they got angry. It wasn't Rush that was calling the shots. It was the American people who were calling in, in record numbers! Rush is great, and God bless him I agree with him 90% of the time, however, he is not calling the shots here, he and many like him just help us remember our values and they remind us that this country is still worth fighting for with our wallets, our voices, and yes our votes. So, they can take our talk radio, but they can't take our country and our freedom...not yet anyway.

 I just read this article on Breitbart.com and as I was reading, I figured out that one of the main reasons that Liberals have such a hard time with the war on terror is that their understanding of our enemy is diametrically opposed to their internal beliefs! They have an internal belief that states that everyone is basically good. Since everyone is basically good, government (a man-made organization) is perfectly good as well. It is fully understandable, under this paradigm, to see why they use government to further "good-will." It is also understandable why they have a hard time recognizing evil in humanity. It is hard to recognize something that you do not think readily exists. Conservatives, on the other hand, believe that man is basically evil. That makes it understandable when we believe that government (God ordained but run by men) is a source of potential evil as well. That is why our paradigm was followed by our Forefathers (checks and balances) and our heroes of the movement ("Government isn't the solution to the problem, it is the problem" RWR). It is also why we can see without thinking the vast evil that exists in the world. Especially those who eschew hate towards America in every fashion and opportunity. (I am referring to terrorists not liberals, although...) Take this story which I referred to earlier, how can anyone deny that those who would use children as murderous pawns in a chess game of ideologies are evil in their basic form? How can someone claim to believe that those who would kill their own for their ideological goals, would not want to kill our children, anywhere, as well?

This is the enemy whom we face. They are not just terrorists, in the meaning that they wish to terrorize, they are murderous islamic thugs who kill for no other purpose than a distorted religious viewpoint of their god. There is no rationalization within those ranks. How can killing off hundereds of thousands of your own people look like a good plan? Since when does suicide bombing ever seem like the best way to extend one's legacy? It doesn't, but then again, they are not rational and neither are the liberals who clamor to defeat quicker than a Frenchman at the hint of German weaponry. So, 5 years of fighting and where are we? Fighting an irrational enemy with irrational people in control of the purse and irrational people in waiting to run the fight? This doesn't seem like a winning strategy! In fact, nowadays, it feels like I am the only one who gets that it is a surefire loser. Know thy enemy, or else you are dead. We are in serious trouble, if we don't take heed. Frankly, I am not willing to stake my children's future on such a liberal flimsy foreign policy as Koom-ba-ya.

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I just found out that I may have a direct lineage to someone who is was in the Society of Cincinnati! I am stoked to actually have a possibility to apply for this marquee membership! I am thrilled...developing...

It seems that Fred Thompson is being cast as the second coming of the all-important Ronald Reagan. That wasn't sarcasm. In my lifetime (I was born 24 days after Reagan took office) there has been no influence greater than that of RWR. Mandi, when she was pregnant with Emma, Maddelyn, and I were one of the first fifty people into the Capitol Rotunda to bid the great President farewell. I remember it well, I stopped at the casket stood to attention and saluted the Great Man and made a solemn vow to carry out his conservative legacy. I am a Reagan baby, I have been influenced by him more than most. However, my concern is not the desire to carry on that man's legacy, as all the Presidential candidates on the Republican side of attempted to do. My concern is who do my daughters have to emulate? With the exception of that moment in Maddelyn's life in the a stroller in the Rotunda, none of them have any connections to the man. Who is their Ronald Reagan? I don't want my daughters growing up and still wondering when the next Ronald Reagan will step forward. I want them to have someone who they can talk to their children and grandchildren about. So, that is who we search for in 2008.

Is Fred Thompson that man? Will we refer to Thompsonomics? Will we credit the falling of radical islam to him after he has left? I don't know, however, I do know that his pseudo-campaign has taken great strides to be reverant of Reagan, while at the same time have not alluded that he is the next RWR. In fact, they have showed me that their main branding of FDT is not of the next RWR but the very best FDT that he can be. I am impressed by that! Maybe, my daughters will have the chance to talk about FDT in the light that I revere RWR. History will tell, but one thing that I know is I like FDT on his own merits, as far as I am concerned....that is more than enough for me.

I don't like second guessing. To me, Teddy Roosevelt's take on what critics do, is an accurate reflection of what goes on in the real world:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

However, what really infuriates me is nowadays, it is the precisely the critic who counts! In case you haven't heard, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated that the war in Iraq is lost. What amazed me about his statement is that he talked as if it was a great triumph. He went up to the big bad President who has the audacity to believe we can actually succeed as Americans and informed him that we, the men and women in the military, are worthless failures...YEAH! And the crowds rejoiced. Unfortunately, a lot of people have rejoiced at this news. CAN ANYONE TELL ME HOW IS THIS GOOD NEWS? As a person who wears the uniform on a regular basis, this pisses me off more than I have ever been pissed off in my life. He lied every time he opened his mouth and said he supported the troops. When he says that there are NO military options to winning this war, what is he saying? The military did such a great job, we can take it from here? NO! He is saying that we failed, he is saying that I failed! Nathan, why are you so upset, you ask? Because I now know that my little girls are going to learn from these idiots that their dad did nothing of importance or significance the 18 months he spent deployed away from them. The Christmas that they spent with their daddy on a webcam meant nothing. I missed their birthdays because I had nothing better to do. I missed first sentences, crawling, potty training, and such...for what...according to this pompous blowhard...nothing! BUT he is the critic, to the media, his words are the truth, an accurate assessment. The media will play this up as a breakthrough because they are critics as well. They haven't been in the arena, they have spilt no blood, they have lost no friends, they have missed no part of their lives, they have sacrificed nothing, and yet, they have the audacity of failure. They have NO right to count, yet they do. The biggest fear of mine, the realistic fear, is that history will remember and record only their tale and I will fade away in a bastion of unimportance, not as a human being, but as a Soldier. How did America ever let them get the power to destroy the legacy I FOUGHT FOR! Shame on any of you who are responsible.

January 17, 2007

Nancy Pelosi, along with most of her Democratic associates, don’t seem to understand the meaning of true sacrifice, or that you can’t honor someone’s service and sacrifice on one hand while demeaning why they sacrificed on the other. I thought Vietnam taught us that. Obviously, some Americans didn’t learn their lessons. So, while the party whose only plan for Iraq has been, “what is your plan again, oh, I hate that,” tries to wrestle with new found power in Congress, the rest of America is trying to find a plan that will work, help us win, stabilize the region, and bring some troops home with true honor, not some Vietnamized fake honor circa 1975.

Everyone has a plan. I find wisdom in what Dwight D. Eisenhower had to say about battle plans, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” While this may seem contradictory, as someone who has been on the battlefield, what is important is to keep the goals in mind, not the process to get there. The process, “plans” may change, but goals remain the same. So, I offer five main goals that Americans put any “plan” for Iraq against. If the plan doesn’t meet all five goals, throw it out. As politics heats up and presidential hopefuls start offering their “plans,” it is important to ask them who they had helping them create the plan. If they didn’t have anyone with commensurate Iraq experience, some of which should include actual missions on the ground, throw it out. They are just as useless as half the battle plans that come from Washington politicians. A true tell that the plan was made by someone who has no clue is if it has no information for providing adequate external and internal security. If they just focus on jobs, the economy, or the political process…throw it out. All they care about is getting out of Iraq, not helping the region, and not honoring the sacrifices that some of my close colleagues made in Iraq:

1) The Iraqi people must see a substantial improvement in their quality of life.

-Security is number one here. A lot of people will say that infrastructure, education, and the jobs are most important in this category. However, none of this can happen without adequate external and internal security to make the people of Iraq able to enjoy good roads, jobs, and education. I want to be able to live, before I can ever enjoy life.

2) We must train and equip Iraqi security forces to replace the missions now done by coalition forces.

- Perhaps the most important to being able to withdrawal military support, we have to provide external and internal security to ensure that this takes place. Without external and internal security, this cannot happen.

3) We need a united Iraq with Sunni involvement in the government.

- This includes all political efforts to make sure that all factions get an adequate share in the power and control over power.

- This means heavy diplomatic and black op pressure on Syria and Iran to ensure that the sovereignty of Iraq remains in place.

- This means that internal security wipes out terrorist activities of the Sunni and Shia factions. Terrorist factions should be treated as such and eliminated!

4) We must continue to ensure that their constitution remains strong on individual liberties and has support from all of the major groups in Iraq.

- We cannot afford to let despotism creep in the form of a democracy, i.e. Hezbollah.

- We also cannot allow terrorists to take aim at the constitutional freedoms of the Iraqi’s

- We must understand that their system does have differences from ours, however, we must always strive to help them realize “freedom’s embrace.”

5) We must involve the international community in the reconstruction of Iraq.

-While the external and internal security needs to fall into our coalition’s hands, the rebuilding of the infrastructure should include the international community (put the UN to work for God’s sake). This also involves getting sufficient oil supplies into the world market. If we do this, the “war for oil” critics will creep up. However, if an “independent” group takes over this responsibility, we have accountability aside from the Iraqis and we have a substantial source of revenue for Iraq.

Nathan Martin served for 12 months in Iraq as a casualty operations office, strength accountability officer, and helped in the training of two Iraqi battalions. He was also a congressional candidate from Ohio and is a SGT with the Ohio National Guard.

March 17, 2006
First, I would like to be unapologetically supportive of Marine General Peter Pace. In a culture where we are tolerant of every possible moral views, except of course moral views that are based on the Bible, it is particularly stunning but not surprising that the left has called out the “tolerance” dogs demanding an apology. What did Marine General Pace say? You might ask. Did he use the only “F-word” that causes liberals to blush? No. Did he say that he hated people who were gay? No. In fact, compared to those two other recent instances reported in the media, he handled his personal opinion in a way that was both respectful but more importantly, told the truth:

"I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe that the armed forces of the United States are well served by saying through our policies that it's OK to be immoral in any way."

After such an intolerant statement of truth, I expected liberals to ambush, but what is more disparaging is the “conservative” response to this statement. Let’s start with Senator John Warner of Virginia:

"I respectfully but strongly disagree with the chairman's view that homosexuality is immoral."

Or there is our administration, Tony Snow stated that President Bush:

"has always said that the most important thing is that we ought not to prejudge one another..."

Way to support the troops there Tony, and exactly how is this prejudging? Am I the only one that thinks that it is hard to prejudge someone who has purposefully and willfully participated in conduct that is unhealthy, unnatural, and, according to us “haters”, immoral. I, for one am tired of the radical homosexual lobby constantly and consistently demeaning everyone and anyone who doesn’t prescribe to the theory that having sex with anyone or anything at anytime is beneficial to the continuation of a civilization. And here is some friendly advice. If one thing that the homosexual lobby has to overcome is the perception that gay men are…errr…less manly, then wouldn’t it be beneficial to be able to laugh at certain things and not be such wusses. Like the Snickers commercial during the Super Bowl…if this had been a shot at Christians, there would have been no big deal. Make fun of a snickers “kiss?” You are an irresponsible advertiser. But would it be enough to hold everyone to the same standards of decency? Absolutely not, because what we have seen is an increasing acceptability of irresponsible behavior just because a homosexual committed the act.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at the following example, a college basketball coach has a sexual affair with a female player. Can you imagine the moral indignation? The outcry? That coach would have been sacrificed in the media, maybe there would have been some high level investigations into how often this occurs, and maybe some NCAA regulations into contact between coaches and players? Of course! If the coach had been male, but since this was a real instance and the coach was female…the most an ESPN columnist could report on is how bad the university handled the announcement and making the university sound bad because they hadn’t allowed the coach to even tell her players what happened. Am I saying that this coach was treated differently because she was gay? Absolutely! Why? Because the moment someone would have cried out with indignation, they would have been dubbed as close minded bigots by the radical homosexual lobby. Is that unreasonable? No, just ask Marine General Pace. Instead of focusing on how to maintain moral integrity in the military and defeating terrorists, they want to focus on attacking those who dare suggest that there are morally superior lifestyles than that of adultery and homosexuality.

By SGT Nathan Martin

Delivered: Veteran’s Day, 2006

In 1806, in a debtor’s prison lay a man about to die. If an individual takes into account that lone statement, he will have missed that man’s legacy and his importance. Thirty years earlier that same man signed a document of treason, loaned his fortune to a revolutionary cause, and put America on strong footing by helping to create a national bank. Yet, for all he had done, he lay impoverished, imprisoned, and near death. Good men would have complained. This great man did not. We may look back and believe that this was an injustice. That wasn’t the point to Mr. Robert Morris. The point of this story is, while good men do what is right for their own benefit, great men do what is right because it is right. The point to Mr. Morris surely was the fact that he died having felt freedom’s embrace.

Today we find ourselves in a similar situation. Chaos abounds, wars and rumors of wars hold us at a daily pause on the front page. However, it is imperative that we understand that the point of what we experience is not the experience itself, it is that we experience it in a greater context, in freedom’s embrace.

Thus, we honor those who have gone before on this solemn occasion. Not good, but great men and women who fought, and some died. Not to give us our freedom, but to allow us the opportunity to experience the freedom that God himself has granted. Their stories are many. Some of courage, some of sacrifice, all about a lasting legacy of service, and it is in this legacy that we ourselves, as Americans, can take solace. Freedom’s sacrifice opens freedom’s door. Lest we forget that when we live today as free men, there were men, not yet free who died to give us the great opportunity. For, as Mark Twain wrote: In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot. In this light, we honor the veteran who has been willing to make that sacrifice for our God-given freedom. Today let us embrace those who serve, those who have served, and those whose service has been immortalized. So, that many years from now, when we are on our death bed, no matter what circumstance in which that experience occurs, we can look back and understand that because of these great patriots we died having felt freedom’s embrace.