So much media attention has been devoted this month to the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the ensuing assassination of President Lincoln that it’s easy to forget the final days of another war, one that didn’t end with the stars and stripes flying high. I’m speaking of course, about the Vietnam War, which ended quite ignominiously forty years ago this April 30th.
The image was heartbreaking—soldiers and Marines crowding together atop the final American outpost in a country that wouldn’t exist the moment they lifted off. Historian Dominic Sandbrook summed up the mood:
On May 11th, 1975 fifty thousand jubilant revelers staged a celebration in New York’s Central Park. One reporter described it as a “joyous all-day carnival of songs and speeches in the perfect sunshine.” One person in attendance told a reporter: “There’s a lot of lumps in a lot of throats. It’s unbelievable. Today is the first day I finally realize the war is over.”
“Over” was such a strange word. For Americans, the war had already been over for two years, when the last combat troops left Vietnam. But that was not enough for the most strident activists who would not rest until the country we had bled so much to protect was washed away like a sand castle on the beach.
A reasonable person would be able to forgive the revelers if they had been merely marking the end of an acrimonious war that had inflicted so much pain on their generation. They were probably ignorant of the bloodbath on the other side of the world and, in their defense, the American press didn’t spill much ink reporting it.
But the imaginary end of hostilities is not what made that day so sweet for them. America had been humbled, even humiliated, and they threw a party.
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With the help of the words above, the point I intend to make is this: The generation of like minded activist that shared in that May celebration of America's lack of resolve for victory years ago are now the residents of the Ivory Towers they so once railed publicly against. They now hold power in this country. From the city halls of America's largest cities, to the seats of power in Washington, to the institutions of higher learning and the media, they wield more than their share of political power, and their brainwashed apathetic offspring are following quickly in their footsteps.
They have chosen to further divide the country, open old wounds, and declare deviance as normal. They deplore the free speech and opposing views they so demanded in their day. They have dumbed down the education system to a point it creates politically correct easily led herds of sheep. They declare we are 'Phobic' because of our concern for the direction of the country's culture, and for the love for what she once was and stood for. They discount the dangers of a culture that has declared war on western civilization, make excuses for their actions and preach to us it is all our fault they hate us so.
Just as the people of pre-world war 2 Europe watched with apathy as darkness gathered on the horizon, these same leftist activist have chosen to ignore the history of what a small bands of blood thirsty hate-filled humans with a cause can do, and instead they have declared their own war on America, it's laws and it's culture.
The image was heartbreaking—soldiers and Marines crowding together atop the final American outpost in a country that wouldn’t exist the moment they lifted off. Historian Dominic Sandbrook summed up the mood:
“For the Americans who fled Saigon in those desperate hours, there were no words to describe the grief and shame they felt that morning. In two weeks, they had supervised the evacuation of six thousand Americans and more than more than fifty thousand Vietnamese: a heroic effort under any circumstances but one that fell short of an honorable exit. ‘The rest of our lives, we will be haunted by how we betrayed those people,’ one diplomat said on the USS Okinawa. ‘It made me cry when I got here. There were lots of people who were crying when they got here."While brave military men cried and those loyal to the Republic of Vietnam were killed or deported to “reeducation camps,” the mood here at home was starkly different. Among certain segments of the population it could only be described as elation.
On May 11th, 1975 fifty thousand jubilant revelers staged a celebration in New York’s Central Park. One reporter described it as a “joyous all-day carnival of songs and speeches in the perfect sunshine.” One person in attendance told a reporter: “There’s a lot of lumps in a lot of throats. It’s unbelievable. Today is the first day I finally realize the war is over.”
“Over” was such a strange word. For Americans, the war had already been over for two years, when the last combat troops left Vietnam. But that was not enough for the most strident activists who would not rest until the country we had bled so much to protect was washed away like a sand castle on the beach.
A reasonable person would be able to forgive the revelers if they had been merely marking the end of an acrimonious war that had inflicted so much pain on their generation. They were probably ignorant of the bloodbath on the other side of the world and, in their defense, the American press didn’t spill much ink reporting it.
But the imaginary end of hostilities is not what made that day so sweet for them. America had been humbled, even humiliated, and they threw a party.
_______________________________________________________________________
They have chosen to further divide the country, open old wounds, and declare deviance as normal. They deplore the free speech and opposing views they so demanded in their day. They have dumbed down the education system to a point it creates politically correct easily led herds of sheep. They declare we are 'Phobic' because of our concern for the direction of the country's culture, and for the love for what she once was and stood for. They discount the dangers of a culture that has declared war on western civilization, make excuses for their actions and preach to us it is all our fault they hate us so.
Just as the people of pre-world war 2 Europe watched with apathy as darkness gathered on the horizon, these same leftist activist have chosen to ignore the history of what a small bands of blood thirsty hate-filled humans with a cause can do, and instead they have declared their own war on America, it's laws and it's culture.