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Colonel Terry Fobbs has passed on to join the hundreds of thousands of America’s soldier warriors who have brought honor and integrity to America through war and peacetime service. For many Americans the patriotic service of the citizen soldier has personally touched their lives and families as in many wars, like in Afghanistan, or in defense of America’s sovereign interests around the globe.

What is truly remarkable about the nature of the conservative soldier warrior is the noble spirit that engages the heart to go forward into battle and not away from responsibility.

The pillars of courage which Americans have seen in their own family’s sacrifice when a son or daughter has volunteered to seek a greater cause than a backyard barbeque or a quick political posting that denigrates a soldier’s service, is heartwarming. America has always been home to the hypocrite and the coward, because that is the nature of hypocrisy and cowardice; to run, to hide, and to pitch rocks until the soldier has secured their freedom. Even in the Revolutionary War, there were cowards who would rather sale out their freedom for the comfort of powerless slavery.

But the nation, and the soldier warrior need not be concerned about the coward or the hypocrite, for their kind would do more harm than good if they could find momentary steel in their hollow backbone.

The greatness of the conservative warrior soldier is found in the heart of a soldier and officer like Colonel Terry Fobbs, who decided that even in the midst of national civil rights turmoil in his native Detroit and in protests in the streets over Vietnam, he saw the higher purpose. He volunteered to defend the U.S. Constitution and to protect it and the nation with honor, duty and courage, because where others sought baseless complaints to identify with, he sought solutions that would strengthen America.

That is the trademark of a true American soldier warrior. It did not matter that there were protesters cowering in groups with signs of dissent or hiding behind their marijuana cigarettes, and peace pipes, America’s true heroes who protected those rights, knew to avoid duty, honor and service is to surrender one’s values, one’s principles and eventually one’s nation.

If America is to remain free, its soldiers have to remain above those who love to stand against protecting the nation, and who would rather find a way to elect political leaders who attempt to negotiate away America’s freedoms, its borders and its sovereignty. The weakness of those who talk away the nation’s freedoms are never as strong or as enduring as the Colonel Fobbs of this nation who stand up and fight to defend and strengthen the pillars of freedom.

Veteran’s Day is fast approaching and it is important, yes even essential that each American takes the time to embrace as well as to celebrate their very own Colonel Fobbs or Sergeant Wagner or Private Garcia in their family. Take the time to understand and embrace with your heart what it means to have their honor and their courage.

Fifty years ago, on May 12th in 1962, in an address to the U.S. Military Academy, General Douglass MacArthur described the loyal patriotic devotion that military leaders like Colonel Terry Fobbs possessed. He affirmed that military leaders and soldiers must display three cherished and necessary qualities.

"Duty, Honor, Country" — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.” General Douglass MacArthur 

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Happy Birthday Abraham Lincoln.

Remember always that he was the greatest president of the 19th Century, and literally saved the young Union from being inexorably torn in two.  Abraham was a great politician.  He was a decent, just, humble man, and in the most virtuous sense he was also a great politician.  He used the power of his political skill and rhetoric to appeal to a nation, the Union in its entirety, to address the problem of slavery in a way that best preserved the natural rights of all men.  He was not like the extreme abolitionist, John Brown, who murdered for the cause.  He was not a slave holder who defended the practice as essential.  

He was not a racist who saw Whites as superior to Blacks.  But he was a great politician who had to appeal to the extremes on both sides; the abolitionists on one side, the slave states on the other. And he had to find common ground so that the Union could be preserved. For, without the United States of America, her Declaration of Independence and its statement of Natural Rights, and the Constitution with its Bill of Rights, slavery would not be eradicated.  It would continue to exist in some form within and without the Union indefinitely.  

Abraham Lincoln used his expert political skill to maneuver sentiment and popular opinion.  He used his debate skills to trap Stephen Douglas and others dedicated to the protection and perpetuation slavery to expose their hypocrisy, and turn their Constitutional arguments against them.  Lincoln spoke to a deeply divided America. Racism, superstition, fear, and economic necessity impelled the slave states to fight to the death for the practice upon which they based their culture.  Ideology, human freedom, and Christian love impelled those who sought the immediate and unconditional abolition of all slavery.  Only when he was unsuccessful in the political realm to heal the rent Union, did Lincoln resort to military action, and with the force of war, called the secessionist states back home.  He hated the Civil War. Lincoln's skill as Commander in Chief did not match that of his political skill. Yet he persisted, in the name of freedom, and in the name of the indispensable Union, he persisted.  He, at first, refrained from using the full force of the Union against the Southern states.  And it was not until Ulysses S. Grant became the Commanding General of the Union Army, that victory over secession, and victory over the practice of slavery became possible.

Abraham Lincoln was a great politician, and a reluctant Commander in Chief.  His love of all people is unquestionable.  And he knew that for America, and the rest of the world to have a "Last, best hope," that the Union must preserved and its Constitution along with it.  Happy Birthday Abraham Lincoln.  Your memory and legacy blesses us still.