Trump's People's Parade - Wow!

I thought I'd watch a little of the Washington DC Fourth of July Parade. It was not at all what I expected.  Having for years watched the Macy's Parade and the Rose Parade, I was unprepared for the best parade I've ever seen.

It had nothing to do with the expense of the floats. There were no Vander orchids or butter yellow daisies in a bed of roses. I haven't seen a professional level marching band. I don't think I've seen a singel college band. Everything so far has been high school marching bands. The drill teams have largely been healthy black girls doing shimmy shake dance routines, mixed drill teams swinging everything from flags to some kind of white pole wrapped in lace, or sticks with crepe paper streamers.

I've been watching it for over an hour as cars, semi-trucks, crepe-decorated trailer floats, odd groups of people in matching tee-shirts. My favorite bit was when the second group in the parade was the Daughters of the American Revolution carrying big flags and the first flag they carried was the Betsy Ross Flag. (Take that Colon Krapsickle!). 

The parade participants were a cross section of every American parade in every heartland city of the United States.  There were no tanks, missiles, or weapons of war. There were proud groups of Taiwanese Americans, Chinese Americans, and Vietnamese Americans (on a big float that said "Thank you America").  There were Sikh Americans, Buddhist Americans, Krishna Americans and Christian Americans. There were members of every ethnic group you can imagine. The high school bands were a rainbow of races - no racism in evidence.

It was fascinating the level of ordinariness to be seen in the parade. I couldn't stop watching. This was Washington, DC, but the parade was straight out of Houma, Louisiana. I kept waiting for the horses and sure enough, there they were bringing up the rear of the parade. The only thing they didn't have in the parade were kids on bicycles with crepe paper streamers laced between the spokes of their wheels. I think the parade was anyone who showed up with balloons, band instruments or a float.

I missed the kids on bikes, but they had everything else you'd see in a Fourth of July parade in downtown Fredericksburg, Texas or Sandusky, Ohio. There were Model T's and Mustangs, open top Camaros and Cadillacs with Corn Queens and Queens of Black-Eyed Pea festivals and county fairs sitting in the backs waving. There were restored 50s era pickups and huge balloons of unlicensed cartoon characters.  There was slightly out-of-tune high school marching bands playing John Phillip Sousa marches, jazz tunes or 60s oldies.

I smiled stupidly all the way through the thing, wondering what the reaction of the left would be to a genuine people's parade right in the middle of snooty old Washington with Trump supporters crammed cheek by jowl alongside the parade route. Participants were a representative sample of De

You could hear 'em hyperventilating down at the DNC. It was gloriously simple, amateurish and the best parade I've seen in my life, not the least because it was utterly in-your-face to the left. It was an actual people's parade, only the people's bussed themselves into Washington, brought their own flags and stuff and pretty much all of them had voted for Trump in the last election or planned to vote for him in the next one.

And the one song the immigrant groups played from their floats going by??? 

                              "I'm Proud to Be an American...........God Bless the USA"


How cool is that?

Free Colleen Koldstinki....From His NFL Contract!

Carlton Krappantski* has every right to
state his opinion...and so do we.

You know the NFL has gotten a little too secure with its position in American culture. If they don't take a hard stance on the flag disrespect by players, they're likely to see everyone turn off their TV sets and not watch the game for a few weeks. They seem to have forgotten up at the NFL Commissioner's office that watching football is an optional thing for Americans. And they don't seem to get it that a huge majority of the folk who watch football, buy football gear and go to games don't like seeing an NFL player like Colon Klaptrapki disrespect the national anthem and the flag.

Maybe for a couple of weeks we all ought to change our Sunday afternoon routines. Perhaps we could flip off the TV, grab a football and go play touch football out on the lawn with our kids and neighbors for a few weeks while the NFL finds a way to apologize for and discipline its members. 

Freedom of speech means you can't be arrested for speaking your mind. We are protected from that by the first amendment and nobody is proposing that we arrest people like Colin Karpnackistan. In fact, setting Colin Krapernicrud free from his NFL contract might just be a proper response in this case - that is if the NFL doesn't want to see a fan boycott.

Just sayin'.

© 2016 by Tom King

* And I know I'm not spelling his name right, but I figure if Colonic Krapenema can disrespect the flag of the country that made him wealthy, I can disrespect his name too - as in I'll never spell his name right ever again. Just me exercising my freedom of speech.

Conservatives MUST Support Goshen College Decision

We've gotta stop shooting at our own people!

by Tom King (c) 2011

The board of directors of tiny Goshen College in northern Indiana just stepped in it and I don't mean the stuff that litters the area's many cow pastures. A small private Mennonite school, the school board recently voted to ask college President James E. Brenneman to find an alternative to playing the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ at school sporting events. Being Mennonites means accepting a strong pacifist tradition and there isn't much of a way for the announcement not to sound like another hippie leftist dissing of the national anthem. What's next? Is the school going to haul down the flag?

Not likely.  Mennonites have long been a pacifist, separatist religion but not an unpatriotic one. Similar in belief to their spiritual brethren, the Amish, though without the funny hats and rejection of electricity, the Mennonites came out of war-torn Europe to settle here, hoping to live in peace. They are hard-working, keep neat, well-ordered farms, live lives of service to their fellow man and they are good neighbors wherever they settle. They are total conscientious objectors and have a traditional cultural abhorence of violence and war, which is understandable given the violent persecution they experienced at the hands of their Christian brothers in Catholic and Protestant Europe. They are good Americans and contribute much to their communities.

While their beliefs sound like those of the socialist left, even to the point of sharing terminology like "social justice" and "peace-making", the Mennonites don't believe in sitting on their duffs and letting the government do all the work for them. They believe in full-bodied Christian giving and service - the way Christian charity ought to be done.

The school has not played the Star-Spangled banner since 1957, until recently when, for a time, it has been allowed as an instrumental piece to be played at some sporting events.  The move was likely a response by some Mennonites to the polarism in this country and to a desire in the midst of all of this to demonstrate publicly that they are, despite their pacifism, deeply patriotic Americans. The imagery of the Star Spangled Banner, however, likley proved too much for the old line Mennonite culture and some of the more left-leaning on campus. It is very Mennonite to avoid causing controversy within the faith or the school over the issue. The school, therefore, has asked staff and students to choose other patriotic songs with less war-like imagery to express their patriotism. At any rate, the school will work out the issue among its own people and perhaps some of those who wish to play the anthem will challenge the ruling.

But none of Goshen's internal dialogue on whether they should play the national anthem or not should have garnered the anger and outrage we've seen coming out of the conservative right in the past few days.

While we may disagree with the Goshen board's views on the national anthem (and I do) or on the need for a strong military, one thing we absolutely must do is defend the right of a Mennonite school to choose for itself how it will express its patriotism. Mennonites are good people. They follow the Golden Rule as well as anybody does. They are good Americans by the evidence of their day to day lives. They value honesty, loyalty, fidelity, charity, peace, love and duty as most conservatives do.

If we do not grant the right to speak, worship and express patriotism in their own manner, unmolested to a people who worship God carefully and reverently (as they do), then we become no better than the socialists who would bring everyone's conscience under the iron thumb of government and shout down anyone who objects. If we feel we must shout down, ridicule and threaten those who act according to their conscience and disagree with us a little, maybe we've been spending too much time among the liberal/progressives.  We may just be picking up their bad habits. 

I spoke to a friend today who lives in Germany. He has had a long career in the US Army and now works for the Corps of Engineers. He describes US Army communities over there as virtual "prisons", not with just razor wire, but with walls and bars and elaborate intrusive security. He says we are incrementally giving up our freedom in exchange for a false sense of security.  And as that government intrusion is allowed to grow and expand its power and to become more and more invasive, the whole system becomes more and more corrupt, with legions of fat bureaucrats making themselves fat draining the lifeblood of American taxpayers to support their lavish lifestyles. My friend says the level of waste and corruption is truly appalling.

If we pile on the Mennonites, who mean us no harm and whose fundamental beliefs support values far closer to those of the right than the left, then we succeed only in driving away more allies in the war on tyranny. Me I'd rather stand and fight to defend the right of a peaceful people like the Mennonites to live peaceably, worship peacably and sing whatever songs they want to sing. I don't care that they never pick up a gun. God bless 'em for it.  We've got no business criticizing good people for refusing to kill their fellow man. If I am called to fight upon the wall to protect such people, I will call it my privilege and honor as King David did, knowing full well that there is a price that soldiers pay for taking up arms. David, himself, was a great defender of the people, but God would not allow him to build the temple because he was a "man of war". David suffered great personal losses in his wars - even to losing sons, but he did it all for his people and accepted the cost of doing that in order to protect his family and his people from the consequences of being a warrior.  For their sacrifice, we bless the warriors, but at the same time we must NEVER curse those whom they protect!  To do so would be to disparage and minimize the warrior's sacrifice for his brothers at home.

Let's save our righteous indignation for the ones that are really out to do us harm. God bless the Mennonites for trying to find a way to express their patriotism while remaining true to their deeply held beliefs.  And shame on us for criticizing them for it.

Just telling you what I think.

Tom King



The Promises We Made - Remembering 9/11

There were two reactions that day in September - fear and anger. The fearful curled up and hid somewhere, hoping they would not be next. The angry stood up and did something, even if it was only to go outside and hang a flag out front of the house in defiance. I remember hanging my second flag (I already had one up), looking around the neighborhood in defiance and thinking, "Bring it on, wherever you are hiding. Here I stand!"

Maybe John Edwards was right. Maybe there are two Americas, but I doubt it was the two Americas he envisioned.  I think the two Americas are inhabited by the fearful and the brave. Like children on a playground, the fearful surrender and submit in hopes that the local bully won't hurt them much. The brave stand up to the bully and take a pounding if they have to, but they refuse to submit or surrender.  The cost of cowardice is far too high to pay and you will never cease to pay that price.  Its not just we who pay the cost either. It will be our children and our children's children who will pay the price if we are too fearful to stand up to the bullies of this world.

God placed us in this land to create a refuge for the bullied peoples of the world. He blessed it so that those refugees now live in the most prosperous, peaceful land in the world.  We didn't steal it our prosperity from others.  We dug deep, worked hard and held on against those same bullies and thugs who would follow us here to prey on us in this new land.  Our forefathers taught us to fight tyranny, to fight the bully boys of the world that our children might enjoy the blessings of liberty. We fought tyranny during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. We fought it again during the Civil War, and World War II. We owe our fathers and our children a toe to toe, knock down drag out fight like this world has never seen to preserve our sacred liberty in this generation.  There are those among us who would surrender our liberties to the very same thugs and bullies that generations of Americans fought so hard to free themselves from, mainly because they are too afraid to fight.  Dylan Thomas' famous poem says, "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage against the dying of the light."  Good advice for this generation of Americans for we are in danger of slipping quietly into the long night of tyranny in exchange for bread and circuses and the illusion of peace and safety.

It is well on this anniversary to remember 9/11 and what can happen to us if we cease to be vigilant.  It is better that we remember the promises we made to ourselves and our posterity in the days after 9/11 when the horror of what was done to us was still fresh in our minds.

Tom King, Tyler, TX

* Image available at: http://concordville.org