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Remembering US Army veteran Paul Marino

Today is Memorial Day, devoted to remembering the US military service personnel who devote their lives and safety so that the rest of us civilians can sit back and crack a cold beer and marvel at how life in America is oh, so good. So easy.

Out of the many hundreds of thousands of US military veterans who have contributed to my own daily sense of settled well-being, one recently caught my attention. Not because he was a super warrior who killed many enemies, nor because he was a battlefield hero who risked his own life to save many of our own wounded. What actually struck me was the clean, all-America way that Paul Marino lived his life, raised his wholesome family based on time-tested simple values, worked for a living, contributed to his community and neighbors.

Not that military veterans hold these kinds of qualities exclusively, but we all know many veterans, if not the vast majority, who are exemplary citizens and neighbors. Real stand-outs in terms of their public service, their charitable giving, their easy way with strangers and neighbors. US Army veteran Paul Marino exemplified all of this.

Here is the thing: I did not know or meet Paul Marino. He only came to my attention because he was recently executed with his wife, Lidia, while visiting the grave of their son Anthony in the Delaware Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Bear, Delaware. For years they visited Anthony’s grave there almost daily.

Paul and Lidia were shot in their heads execution-style, from behind, by a 29-year-old man named Sheldon Francis. He used a handgun, up close and personal. By all appearances this was a classic hate crime, Paul and Lidia targeted because of their skin color by a hateful man amped up on a constant barrage of racial hate and jealousy messaging from American campuses, activist groups, American media people, and even from some religious institutions.

Some people have surmised that Paul and Lidia were murdered by Francis in retaliation for the racially motivated murder of Ahmad Aubrey in Georgia earlier this year. I suppose to some people this might make sense, or even be justified. It is not justified, and I have no question that Paul and Lidia would disagree, also, were they alive today to have an opinion on it. After all, they believed in hard work, simple family values, church attendance, community, home, and service. Blind retribution was not in their lexicon.

As a little girl, Lidia remembered the German soldiers marching through her town in Italy, and she also remembered the American GIs marching through from the other direction as the Germans skedaddled in retreat. Lidia knew the value of family, community, and practicing good deeds.

Whatever the reason for Francis gunning down two people in their eighties in a cemetery, the fact remains America is much the poorer for their loss. We lost a solid veteran and his life partner in an unexpected, avoidable, unnecessary, evil way. Paul and Lidia represented the very best of America. The murder represents a culture clash that must be resolved, peacefully and with love, and firmly.

Modern America was built by people like Paul and Lidia Marino. In fact, it is impossible to think of an America without them and their important small, humble, daily positive gifts and services back to all of us. The solid communities they built, the sense of reliable neighborliness they brought to any community they lived in. And the US Army that Paul Marino served in did not so much build Paul up, as people like Paul built up that institution and made it the effective fighting force and great equalizer for Americans of all skin colors and religions that it remains today.

Rest easy, Soldier, and thank you for your many different services you provided to all of us Americans.

9/11’s meaning then and now

Today is the 18th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, known as “9/11”.

From October 2001 to October 2003, I worked closely with the National Park Service and with the families of the Flight 93 victims on protecting the crash site, two solid hard-working years, so that it could eventually become a national memorial without worries of losing the physical sense of what the surrounding ground looked like the moment the plane flipped upside down and did a nose-dive into Tim Lambert’s spruce grove.

And for those two years no one ever blamed the victims of 9/11. Nor did anyone try to scapegoat anyone else for 9/11. Solemnly we focused hard on protecting the landscape so that future generations would know and remember not only what happened, but why and by whom. Like a battlefield, which most Americans properly see it as.

However, for a lot of Americans today, the ‘why’ and and ‘whom’ parts of 9/11 are now strangely flipped around.

In a recent conference about 9/11, panelists blamed guns, the NRA, whites, Christians, and a lack of open borders for 9/11. No, I am not making this up. Blaming the American victims of 9/11 is the actual state of mind among many liberal leaders today. At the conference, they refused to mention Islam, Muslim terrorists, or hijacked planes. Instead, they used the event to call attention to their favorite failed policy goals, not to heal the wounded nation or to discuss lessons learned about how to avoid a repeat of 9/11.

And let’s be honest: Open borders will lead to not just one more 9/11, but many more acts of mass terror against Americans. You could fairly argue that the coast-to-coast illegal alien crime wave already is a form of terrorism, or that the liberal policy assault on law enforcement and the resulting mass shootings is a form of terrorism. But what is meant here, and what is the worst, are carefully planned and targeted acts of mass murder. Like what happened on 9/11.

Eighteen years ago 9/11 heightened our awareness. It made Americans feel vulnerable. It taught us that our best intentions and most open-minded policies are seen by most people outside of America as signs of weakness, of decadence, of a lack of willpower to survive, and they were then exploited to our disadvantage. Our federal government at the time properly took revenge on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, mostly hiding in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. But then that same government mistakenly tried to implement a repeat of the World War II Marshall Plan, where America re-built the nations we had invaded and occupied. The post-9/11 attempted rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan was overly optimistic, because these Muslim countries are not European. They share none of the values or culture of WWII Europe, and they are immune to our culture and values.

And so now, instead of learning lessons from 9/11 and using them to protect America, we have an entire American political party that has inverted 9/11 and turned it into another forum and stage for promoting policies that have zero to do with 9/11 or preventing something similar from happening again.

Today in America, to one political party, the military veterans who fought to protect America by taking the fight to Iraq and Afghanistan are now the threat to America, not orthodox Muslims following the Koran to the letter of the law. And the patriotic friends of those veterans are the threat to America; the religious Christian friends and family of those veterans are the threat to America; and the hunters and target shooting friends of those veterans are also the threat to America.

Everyone but the actual perpetrators of 9/11, and their supporters like US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, are that political party’s scapegoats for 9/11.

For radical Muslim Ilhan Omar, on 9/11 “Somebody did something.” That’s it, that is her whole take on 9/11, and her political party agrees with her.

And now her political party is coming hard after you and me.

Looks like a whole lot of people missed the lessons-learned part of 9/11. Probably because they don’t care about them. And that right there is the real lesson learned for the rest of us: 9/11 only means something to people who actually care about America staying America.

 

George Scott: Fake Candidate for Congress

George Scott is a candidate for the local US Congressional seat presently held by Scott Perry, covering a large swath of Central Pennsylvania.

Both Scott Perry and George Scott are military veterans, and both were senior military officers.

And that is where their shared anything diverges.

After watching George Scott gleefully burn a .22-caliber small game rifle in a small bonfire (see screen shot below, and another screen shot at the end showing that George Scott removed his own self-damning video, because he doesn’t want hunters to know he is hostile toward them), which he incorrectly calls a “weapon of war,” I could only conclude that this man is unfit for service in any capacity, and it is a good thing he is no longer wearing the uniform of our nation’s military. What a shameful embarrassment.

George Scott advocates for a mandatory registry of every single gun in America, from the dinky .22 caliber rifle he burned to your average sporting shotgun and deer rifle. This means he wants to put government bureaucrats in charge of our Constitutional rights. When people say they want “common sense gun control,” like George Scott says, what they really mean is they are against private gun ownership altogether. His policy positions demonstrate that he is hostile toward gun ownership, even for hunting.

George Scott also wants to outlaw basic semi-automatic rifles that are the firearm of choice for coyote hunters across America, and which share a basic appearance, but not a mechanical ability, with fully automatic rifles used by the military.

When a military officer equates a basic hunting gun with a “weapon of war,” then you know this is a guy who either doesn’t know anything at all about guns, especially the guns he supposedly oversaw in the armed services, or he is simply hostile to the idea of private firearms ownership….Contrary to American history to date, to what the Second Amendment plainly says, and to what the US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled it means.

When a military officer takes an oath to uphold and defend the US Constitution, which George Scott did, and then he turns around, runs for elected office, and takes an official campaign position directly against that same Constitution, then the guy cannot be taken seriously. He is either clueless and unworthy of being in Congress, or he is a bald-faced liar, or a power freak and closet tyrant.

US military officers are supposed to trust and defend the American People, not use coercive government force to disarm them and then make them dependent upon government for their rights. That is no longer America, it is a dictatorship. Like many people, I remain leery of military men who do not think citizens should own guns. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao come to mind, as does Venezuela’s current socialist strongman, Maduro.

Whatever issues you may have with Scott Perry, and I think both liberals and conservatives are grumpy with him, one thing I like about Scott Perry is that he is the complete opposite of George Scott. In the sense that he is a stable and normal person, who says what he means and means what he says.

On the other hand, based on his own actions and public statements, George Scott demonstrates that he is unfit to serve. He is a fake candidate and cannot be taken seriously.

 

Veterans’ memorials are often the most beautiful workmanship

–Josh First

Some societies place plain wooden markers to mark their dead.

Most American Indian groups built death platforms lifting the deceased closer to Heaven.  After a couple of years, they collapsed, their wooden skeletal remains reminiscent of the human skeletal remains once upon them.  Such visual starkness says ‘Hallowed Ground’ more powerfully than most grave sites.

Like the European Celts and Picts, some Indians built small to incredibly large burial mounds, and we have two small ones on our hunting property.  Small or huge, they are still just plain piles of dirt.  Seven large mounds in a neat row line a remote hillside on northcentral State Forest Land I hunt, an evocative but peaceful reminder of who hunted there before me.  Yes, it is clearly a cemetery, but I feel very comfortable there.

Most European countries, and America, place great emphasis on ornate mausoleums, statuary, and finely detailed headstones marking the deceased.  Chiseled of hard granite, these are testimonies to either lots of money or lots of love among those left behind, but a big sign of respect, nonetheless.

In a nod to the less-is-more aesthetic, the United States military places simple marble crosses and Jewish stars on the headstones of fallen warriors.  While these appear plain, plain, plain to the careless eye, more scrutiny reveals careful craftsmanship; beveled edges, hollow grinds, stippling, and more.  Attention to refined details elevate these markers to the level of real workmanship, but avoiding ostentation.

And that is the fitting and well-thought-out purpose to our military cemeteries: Quiet, humble valor that even in death commands respect and appreciation.  Subtle statements that go beyond the initial visual “grab.” In their austerity, reminders of sacrifice and loss, and in their subtle details, the best, most careful workmanship for the best of our citizens.

Memorializing these fallen citizens requires us to do more than salute the Flag, eat a hotdog, or buy a new mattress at a low price, although these days saluting the Flag is a pretty bold statement (surely someone will call you a ‘racist’ for doing it).  Instead, go by a public cemetery and find the veterans markers, sit down at one or two head stones, and do an internet search (on your smart phone etc.) of the occupant in front and center of you.  See if anything can be learned about this person.  Or, if you lack a smart device, have a chat with the inhabitant, and thank them for their service.  Without their service, none of us would have the smart phones and hot dogs we now take for granted.

This is truly memorializing someone.  That is a worthy Memorial Day.