My youngest of two grandsons is sitting on my lap, fiddling with the remote control for the television in between glances at my fingers as they type on this keyboard. He is wearing a new sweater, and a six tooth smile. He is curious about everything, and content on my lap. He loves the dogs, but the hyperactive one catches his attention the most. The walker is his freedom, and his mom and my wife and I are his guidance.
I voluntarily served my country in the United States Navy between 1984 and 1988. I chose to enlist, chose to endure boot camp, chose to serve on two naval vessels, and chose to endure each and every arduous bit and piece of my military journey from shaking the recruiter's hand, to the day I received my DD214.
A number of factors played into my decision to join the U.S. Military. My step-dad, a father in every sense of the word since I was almost three years old, served in the United States Marine Corps. He rarely spoke about his years in Vietnam, but when he did I was all ears. My grandfather served in World War II as an Army Airman. I loved to listen to his stories about the military as well, though some of them were doubtful (He used to tell the kids he punched Hitler in the nose). I planned, while I was in high school, to serve in the military. I was flirting with joining the Marines. I spoke with recruiters, and attended the military class on career day.
College beckoned. I took a couple classes. My aunt, who had set up a college fund for me, was encouraging me to begin my collegiate career at Occidental, but run-ins with the college world made it a difficult road to travel.
After graduating high school, in a sudden fit of obviously displaced urges of independence, I wrote my folks a cowardly note, and moved out, finding a roach-infested place downtown. I worked at a pizza place, lived in a one room apartment, squeezed in school studies (and debated communist teachers), and did it gladly for my freedom. After all, life may have been rough, but I chose that course of navigation.
During that period of independence I got my girlfriend, now my wife of 25 years, pregnant. Suddenly, the choice of fatherhood was thrust upon me, and I took a hold of it by both horns. I enlisted in the Navy.
Less than a year into my military service my beautiful son was born. Three months after that I fell asleep at the wheel of a compact sedan and wound up in intensive care, struggling for life, in a near death tragedy that changed me forever.
I was discharged with a partial disability shortly before my four year enlistment was up, taking with me a pair of Battle Efficiency Ribbons, and a family.
Now, I am a 43 year old man with a wife, two adult children, two grandchildren, and a blog.
I am sure there were better paths I could have taken. My biological father comes from a very wealthy family, and had I chosen to go back to school, life would have been my oyster. Anything I wanted was available. All things were possible. An easy road to a life of professionalism was mine to take should I desire to do so.
My joke is often that I am the only poor Gibbs.
I chose, freely, the path less traveled. I chose freely to make mistakes, to learn from my journey, and to become a construction worker and truck driver, rather than the corporate lawyer I seemed destined to become when I was younger.
When I read things like what Rahm Emanuel has to say regarding mandatory national service:
"Citizenship is not an entitlement program. It comes with responsibilities... Everybody - somewhere between the ages 18 and 25 - will serve three months of basic training and understanding in a kind of civil defense. That universal sense of service - somewhere between the ages of 18 and 25 - will give Americans, once again, a sense of what they are to be American and their contribution to a country and a common experience."
. . . It makes me cringe.
Mandatory service is indentured servitude. Government programs designed to teach mandatory service programs are, in a very real sense, re-education camps. The Democrats believe that they know how to be good Americans better than you, and to save that blessed knowledge, they have set up programs to bring your children up in their image. Children like my grandchildren. Children like I was, preparing to freely make poor decisions that will be the first step in the long journey of their life.
Serving your country falls under the label of "service" - because it is something people do as an individual, independent, voluntary choice. That is true freedom. It is freedom to have the choice to not serve, even if you should, as well.
With freedom comes responsibility, and we are sometimes irresponsible. With freedom comes choices, and sometimes we make the wrong choice. That is the wonderful thing about America - we have the freedom to offend or be offended, to have opinions, to be politically incorrect, to screw up, to do stupid things, and to learn from each of those experiences and become more responsible with time. No text book, or politician, can teach me the character I gained through my adventures in life.
Government believes it knows better than we do on how to run our lives. They believe they know what we should be doing for the common good. But what good is the common good if the individual is gone? What good is the community if the pieces of the puzzle are only acting out in the way the government has decided they should?
And most interestingly of all, Liberals entertain two schools of thought that are diametrically opposed to each other. The free-for-all attitude of ultimate freedom that is free from all morals, institutions, and consequences is not freedom at all, but slavery to undisciplined actions. Meanwhile, governmentalism wishes to curb your behavior into what is good for the state. It makes no sense. Don't smoke, don't drink sugary sodas, don't eat anything with trans-fats in it, but bend over and have AIDS shot directly into your body through unhealthy, unsafe, and immoral behaviors.
The response to that statement by members of the Left at this point surely was "How can you say that after championing freedom?"
I never said you shouldn't have the freedom to be sexual lifestyle idiots, though I don't believe anyone should be able to steal the definition of an institution like marriage, either. I just ask that you, or anybody, for that matter, be responsible, not only to yourselves, but to everyone else. You are entitled to make your mistakes. Your lives are the direct result of the decisions you make, regardless of who you are and what your decisions are. All that I ask is when practicing our freedoms, we take something into careful consideration:
Let's enable those sweater wearing, smile bearing grandchildren the same opportunity when they grow up, too.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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