Hope for the New Year

          Some might remark that we are in quite a mess as we begin a new year.  While our insouciant president vacations in Hawaii, people are dying at the hands of fanatics both on our streets and in many countries beyond our borders.  Yet, there is reason for optimism.  Some of the progress, like the normalization of relations with Cuba, may be delusional.  But one happy development, the drop in oil prices, is having a salutary effect worldwide, not the least of which is on a belligerent Russian, suddenly beset by financial woes that threaten to derail its military ambitions.

          Closer to home we have reason to cheer the progress in our home state of North Carolina.  The Left may not be happy with Republicans having control of both the executive and legislative branches of government.  But this monopoly has had its positive effects.  We now have a right-to-work state that is advancing free-market policies, rushing past weak unions to foster a pro-growth agenda, reforming a bloated government, encouraging private-school vouchers, and advancing pension and tort reforms.    
          It is no accident that North Carolina is one of the fastest-growing states in the country.  It is promoting economic growth with sound tax policies and a business-friendly atmosphere.  Even Perquimans County is now seeing a promise of growth in water-related industries like boat building and repair.  As Baby Boomers age, they will increasingly look to our area and its moderate climate as a prime area for retirement.  Even professional golf is now discovering the attractiveness of the Albemarle Sound area and its friendly people.
          North Carolina and Perquimans County in particular are, as some people have proclaimed, a slice of paradise.  Those of us who have made this our permanent home have many reasons to smile and welcome the New Year.

Random Thoughts

          Some random thoughts on the issues of the day:

          Racism.  It had to happen.  A crazed gunman assassinates two police officers after announcing his intention to kill two policemen for one black man.  Race-Hustler-in-Chief Al Sharpton is scrambling to deny that his inflammatory cries for justice had anything to do with it.  I recall reading that the latest group he incited to protest hit the streets shouting, “What do we want? Dead cops!  When do we want it? Now!”  So much for justice.
          Cuba.  Marco Rubio charged that Obama’s normalizing of relations with Cuba is a betrayal.  He described this president as the worst negotiator ever, giving everything away without getting anything in return.  In his first speech to Cuba’s National Assembly after Obama’s announcement, Raul Castro announced that nothing will change.  I guess that means Cuba will remain a Communist dictatorship, an avowed enemy of the United States, and a denier of basic human rights for Cuba’s people.  Nice bargain.
          North Korea.  The FBI has identified North Korea as the perpetrator of the cyber attack on Sony.  Many have called this a matter of national security, some going as far as to label it as an act of war.  President Obama was quick to play down the belligerent nature of this attack.  Instead, he asked the Chinese to tell the North Koreans to play nice.  Well, the president did say earlier that we would respond at a time and method of our choosing.  Now we know.
          Education.   Jeb Bush has thrown his hat in the presidential ring, but his path to the White House may hit a few bumps.  One of them is his support for Common Core, federal educational standards for the nation’s public schools.  Conservatives like me acknowledge that standards are necessary, but we insist that federal government bureaucrats have no business imposing one-size-fits-all standards on states and local schools.  North Carolina was correct in repealing Common Core and leaving it to the State Board to adopt standards appropriate to North Carolina students.
          Energy.  Russia’s economy has been driven to its knees by the collapse of oil prices, not by ineffective sanctions or unserious threats from the West.  How ironic it is that this was brought on by the boom in oil and natural gas on private lands in the United States, at the very time that the Interior Department, at Obama’s direction, has blocked exploration on public lands, and the EPA has waged war on fossil fuels in favor of wasteful spending on renewable energy projects. 

Hating the Police

          Several years ago I was stopped by a Hertford police officer on Burgess Road where it ends at Holiday Island Road.  It was dark, and because I had not seen headlights coming from either direction (or the police car in the shadows), I turned left without making a full stop.  I was wrong and prepared to be ticketed.  When the officer came to my open window and asked if I knew why he had stopped me, I admitted the violation, but I also asked that he keep his voice down, because my two granddaughters were in the back seat sleeping.  He checked.  I guess the sight of the little girls tugged at his heartstrings: he let me go with a warning.

          I thought of this incident while viewing pictures of rioters and protestors accusing police of racism in Ferguson and New York.  I asked myself if I would have been ticketed for my transgression had I been black.  I suppose I’ll never know.  But what I do know is that in dealing with local police officers on several occasions over the last 12 years, I have always been treated with fairness, courtesy, and efficiency.  I can also say the same for judges, prosecutors, and court personnel, even when decisions didn’t go my way.  Come to think of it, I couldn’t be more pleased with local public servants in other branches of the judicial system and Social Services, as well as with school officials and teachers in Perquimans County.
          This is not to say that there aren’t any problems with police actions elsewhere or that all our local public servants are without blemish.  But before we excuse arsonists and looters as victims of discrimination; before we claim to understand why rioters march under the banner of civil rights; before we vilify law officers as racist oppressors; before we empathize with race hustler and presidential advisor Al Sharpton as he flouts the rule of law and justifies violence in the name of justice; before we find ourselves inclined to do any of that, we should stop and think about how we are blessed to have people who serve us with unswerving dedication and who would unhesitatingly sacrifice their very lives to ensure our safety.    
          We do not live in a police state.  God forbid we should be forced to become one by the haters and the radical extremists among us.

More of the Same from Obama

          A flurry of news items have grabbed the public’s attention since the mid-term elections.  Several deserve our consideration.

          President Obama insists on going through with an unconstitutional executive order to give de facto amnesty to five million illegals, and Republicans vow to fight him any way they can.  Some have even uttered the “I” word.  But the GOP leadership insists that impeachment is not in the cards.  Congressman Trey Gowdy gave one reason for not wanting it when he asked, “Have you met Joe Biden?”  Another congressman agreed, describing Biden as two floppy shoes short of a full clown outfit.  So much for respecting the vice-presidency.
          The president is also moving forward on his global warming agenda by, on the one hand, negotiating a deal with China on pollution control, and, on the other, pledging $3 billion of taxpayer money to help emerging nations fight climate change.  The first is a symbolic farce, and the second will get little support in Congress or among developed nations that have better things to do with their money.
          Then there’s that familiar target of Conservative pundits, ObamaCare.  Among reports of glitches in the new start-up period, we have embarrassing videos of Jonathan Gruber revealing the extreme cynicism and dishonesty of ACA architects like himself.       “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” said Gruber.  “Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”  In other words, let’s not tell the people the truth.  Let’s make promises we know we can’t keep (“If you like your doctor…If you like your plan…”).  The stupid people out there won’t know the difference.  What’s important is that we know what’s best for them.   
          Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are on record praising Gruber’s brilliance, although Pelosi now claims she didn’t know the guy.  And Obama says Gruber wasn’t part of his ACA team.   Then why, we ask, did he visit the White House so many times, and what did he do for the $400,000 he was paid?
          Charles Krauthammer said it best: “But now we know what lay behind Obama’s smooth reassurances—the arrogance of an academic liberalism, so perfectly embodied in the Gruber Confession, that rules in the name of a citizenry it mocks, disdains and deliberately, contemptuously deceives.”  Amen.

 

New Battle Lines

          When Republicans put up losers like Sharon Angle, Christine O”Donnell, Richard Mourdock, and Todd Aiken in Senate races they should have won in 2010 and 2012, Democrats rubbed their hands in glee at the prospect of further destructive battles between conservative and establishment factions within the GOP.  They can now stop chortling…the Republicans have finally put their act together.  Worse, the shoe is now on the other foot.

          The blame game has already started and it is revealing a deep division among Democrats.  One side, as described by Daniel Greenfield, is “the old corrupt party of thieves and crooks…the products of political machines [who] believe in absolutely nothing [and] will say anything to get elected.”  This is the faction headed by Harry Reid whose political action committee produced some of the most despicable and disgusting ads we’ve ever seen in any election cycle.  On the other side is the radical left, progressives like President Obama who want to fundamentally transform this country.
          The smashing victory of the Republicans on November 4^th has effectively removed Harry Reid from the seat of power in the Senate.  But, judging from the president’s first news conference on November 5^th, he is not about to give an inch.  He made it clear that he intends to use his veto pen and executive orders in pursuit of his agenda.  Compromise is simply not in his vocabulary.
          It remains to be seen how a Republican-controlled Congress lacking a veto-proof majority will be able to deliver on its own agenda.  Or how both parties go about reforming their battle lines for 2016.

 

 

Another Kind of Veteran

          I have never served in the military, but others in my family have. My brother Phil fought in Vietnam in the late 60s, and two of my sons were career officers in the Navy.

The first family member to serve was my uncle Emile who enlisted in the Army in 1917.  He wanted to go to Europe with America’s Expeditionary Force in WWI, but he was diagnosed with tuberculosis during basic training at Ft. Devens and was sent home. His youngest brother, my uncle Vic, served as an Army chaplain in Burma and India during WWII. I remember the souvenirs he brought back, including an ebony elephant, a gong, and a tiger skin with a head that had marbles for eyes but real teeth.  My dad is another story.

          In 1943 Dad tried to enlist in the Navy, but was turned down because he was too old and the father of two children with a third on the way. Instead he went to work for a Goodyear plant in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, that had been recruited to do secret work for the Army. Before the war Goodyear made sneakers in that plant. Then someone came up with the idea of making inflatable rubber decoys—planes, trucks, tanks, landing craft---and deploying them in England across the English Channel from Calais to fool the Germans into thinking that the allies would invade there instead of Normandy. I believe General George Patton was temporarily assigned to this fake army to convince Germans it was real. History tells us that the plan worked when the Germans concentrated much of their defenses around Calais. 
          In this odd way my Dad did his part in WWII.  Unfortunately, when the war ended, so did the need for Goodyear’s rubber tanks. Dad, in fact, told me he had been the last one to lose his job. He literally closed the door of the plant on its last day of operations. 
          It wasn’t until 1956 that he returned to government service with the State Department in Vietnam. Even after he retired in 1975 he retained a soft spot for the military. I was sitting next to him in 1985 when my son David was admitted to the Naval Academy. I turned to look at him during the induction ceremony. He had tears of pride rolling down his cheeks.

         

Saluting a Hero

           Last month I took my grandson Matthew for a haircut in Wilmington.  While I hung around waiting for him to be sheared, an old man walked in and sat down to wait his turn.  When I noticed that he was wearing a cap identifying him as a WWII veteran, I went over and sat next to him.

          I began a conversation by telling him about a good friend of mine who had been a bombardier flying missions from England.  The old man asked, “He wasn’t the one who bombed St. Lo, was he?”  St. Lo is a town in Normandy that was turned to rubble as part of the D-Day invasion.  “Were you there?” I asked.  He replied that he had landed on Utah Beach with the Army’s 5^th Infantry Division at 6:00 a.m. on D-Day, wading ashore with water up to his neck.  He pointed to a ribbon pinned to the back of his cap.  It had five stars on it and what looked like a grain of sand.  He said proudly, only those who landed on the beach that day have one of these.”
          For the next several minutes the old veteran kept me spellbound with tales of the liberation of France (and St. Lo) and the dash across Germany.  When he paused, I chimed in with a tale of my own.  I told him that I had been a student in Belgium in the early 60s and that one day an American friend of mine and I decided to take a break from our studies to visit the great cathedrals of northern France.  Our first stop was in Amiens, which is in the northwestern part of France and not all that far from Normandy.  After checking out the cathedral we stopped at a local bar for a late afternoon beer.  We were alone in the place except for four older men seated at a table across the way.  They kept staring at us.  Finally, one of them came over to our table and asked, “Are you boys American?”  When we told him that we were, he stuck out his hand and said, “I want to thank you for what you Americans did for us in the war.”  I remember how that sent shivers up my spine.
          When I finished my story, the old veteran looked at me in the eye and said, “Many people thank me, but very few take the time to talk to me.”  He was pleased that I had.  I told him I felt privileged for having had the opportunity to meet a real hero.
          By then my grandson had gotten his G.I. haircut and came over to us.  Matthew has always been interested in the military, and when I told him that the man sitting next to me had been part of the D-Day invasion, his jaw dropped and his eyes grew big as silver dollars.  He shook hands with the veteran and thanked him.
          We celebrated the 70^th anniversary of D-Day this year.  Veterans Day celebrated this week reminds us of the debt we owe to those heroes who risked their lives for us on that day.  We should never pass up a chance to say thank you. With so few WWII veterans remaining among us, we may soon not get another.