I haven't written anything since we arrived home last July. My wife was desperately ill and her care took up a lot of time as well as concern. I got out of the routine of writing and I just never got back into it. Yesterday somebody asked me my opinion on the Republican candidates, so I put some thoughts down and then decided to post them on American Flyer to see if it would reignite my writing efforts. My wife has improved considerably in recent months, which is a great relief to my family.
Since I wrote this early yesterday Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary, and I had a long discussion with an ardent Ron Paul supporter last evening. One thing I've noticed is that Paul's supporters tend to be almost cultic in their devotion to him, and seem to think he's flawless. I don't. So let me give you my thoughts, and then let me know what you think.
Ron Paul is a weak candidate for several reasons. His approach to Israel is the same as Obama's; return to the 67 borders. He also wants to cut all aid to Israel. There is a video on Youtube showing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu saying that they don't need America telling them what to do, building their nation, or sending troops. Paul takes it from that statement that Israel doesn't need us or any foreign aid from us. The argument is that the US has always tried to control Israel and we should get out.
Actually, I believe in context Netanyahu was complaining about Obama telling Israel to give up the West Bank and the Golan Heights, both of which would be a disaster for Israel. We have never tried to control Israel or build their nation, and while Netanyahu told us not to send troops, which we have never offered to do, the Israeli Air Force that controls the Palestinian skies is made up primarily of US F-15s and F-16s. I am quite sure they don't want to give those up.
The primary reason, however, that we need to continue to support Israel, besides the fact that they are our only real ally in the region, is that God promised Abraham four thousand years ago that He would bless those nations that bless Israel, and curse those that curse Israel. As a Christian nation it is in our best interest to continue to support Israel. Paul's idea of basically abandoning them is not only unrealistic, but would remove what little of God's blessing is still on our country. His blindness to Iran's nuclear program and the general agenda of Islam to destroy America (he thinks 9/11 is America's fault) would make him as much of a disaster in foreign policy as Obama. Paul's position on abortion is certainly not pro-life in the strictest sense, and his idea of legalizing illegal drugs are hardly sound domestic policies.
As for securing the border with Mexico he has a good idea, I think, about using the military. He also wants to bring all troops home and stop "conquering" other nations. I don't think the war in Afghanistan and Iraq had anything to do with conquest. They were ill-fought by the civilian leadership in the long run, but the fact that we are bringing our troops home disproves any idea of empire building. I do like Paul's economic ideas of a 0% income tax and cutting a trillion dollars out of the budget. I think he would probably be a good choice for Secretary of the Treasury.
Mitt Romney is dangerous because his conservative credentials tend to grow as necessary to win the nomination, but nobody really knows what he'll do as president. People can change positions when they see the light, but Romney hasn't really explained his changes of position well. There's also the question of his Mormon religion. One of the candidates brought it up last summer and was excoriated for it, and since then it has been ignored, but my guess is Obama would use it, especially the idea that they will all become gods, to try to belittle him, and I think that puts a lot of doubt in conservative minds, especially among evangelicals. Romney has mostly been a good debater until last Monday night. At the Fox News debate Thursday night he had some good moments, but not as good an overall performance as he had been having in the past. Plus, the Democrats gave it away at the debate the week before when the woman moderator made the comment that the Democrats want Romney because they think he'll be the easiest to defeat. Stephanopoulos could hardly contain himself trying to get her to shut up. And then the MSM has already decided he's going to win and are doing their best to make it happen. That's enough reason for me not to vote for him.
Rick Santorum probably has the best and most consistent positions on all conservative issues with the exception maybe of the Second Amendment, but he's not been a very good debater overall, and rather than concentrate on the issues, he more than any of the other candidates went out of his way Thursday night to attack Romney and Gingrich, which made him look petty and small, and I don't think helped his chances at all. Gingrich and Romney got fired up Thursday and spoke with passion. Santorum didn't exude that same level of fire. He looked like he was trying to get fired up but his answers didn't carry the same weight of persuasion or spontaneity that the others' did, and I'm afraid that if he gets the nomination, his debates with Obama would lack the strength or eloquence to compete. Plus, since he lost his last race for the Senate seat in Pennsylvania that would probably be used against him. I don't think he's a winning proposition.
That leaves Newt Gingrich, the man with all the baggage. He has by far been the best debater through most of the debates, although he seemed to drift when the Romney attacks hit him in Iowa and he started retaliating in kind, but this last week he has proven himself again to be the best choice to take on anybody in a head-to-head debate. He does have problems, however, including the amnesty for illegals that have been in the country for 25 years, and his apparent belief in global warming.
Economically, however, and on foreign policy I think he would be very strong. He has a proven track record as Speaker of the House in the 90's. The criticism of his being thrown out as Speaker by his colleagues shows he had made some enemies along the way, and proves that nobody is perfect, but his leadership led to four balanced budgets in a row.
His marriage trouble is another example of his fallibility, but I think he nixed that one Thursday night. He has previously answered that he had hurt people, but that he had converted to Catholicism, made it right with God, and he's now a changed person. That will probably continue to haunt him, but when you consider Clinton's dalliances as governor of Arkansas and while he was in the White House (which led to his impeachment for perjury before a grand jury and before Congress) were swept under the carpet by self-righteous Democrats who wouldn't care less about Gingrich's morality if he were a Democrat, it shouldn't be made an issue anymore. In a nation that has a 50% divorce rate, and as many people living together unmarried as are married, I think we can take the high road of forgiveness and overlook those faults based on what we see of his life and attitudes today. People do make comebacks from bad mistakes, and I think Gingrich has done admirably well in recent years.
Gingrich has also taken on the MSM from the beginning, and his outburst at the first question Thursday night has proven him to be someone who won't be cowed by political correctness or the media's conceit. He's the first one, and the most forceful one to speak what is on the mind of people all over the country. Finally there is someone, more than the others, who is speaking rationally about the way things are and ought to be, and is not bending over cow-towing to moderates, liberals and the press to try to win them over.
By profession, Gingrich is an historian with a Christian view of American history, and not necessarily because he was raised a Christian. He wasn't. He came to his view objectively by a true study of history and has rejected the revisionist view of Deist founders influenced by Rousseau, and accepted the Christian view of a Constitution founded on the New Testament and the Ten Commandments (as stated by James Madison), and American exceptionalism due to the blessings of God on our Christian nation. He is the one man who articulates this position better than the rest, although I'm sure all of the candidates believe the same.
I believe this will be the most crucial election since Ronald Reagan won in 1980, and probably the most critical election in America's history. Obama is setting himself up to be dictator. He already ignores Congress ruling by decree and establishing unconstitutional czars. The only thing keeping him from going too far is the need to be re-elected, but if he wins again there will be nothing stopping him from overthrowing the country almost single handedly. I predicted a long time ago that if he wins a second election, I believe in another four years he'll manufacture some kind of crisis to enable him to declare martial law and hang onto power. But I'm not even sure his purpose is to necessarily hold on to power. Under his skin I think he's an avowed muslim who is only interested in destroying America for the benefit of Islam.
That makes his defeat more urgent than any in our history, and it's why I think Gingrich, even with his baggage, is the best choice. In an open, non-scripted debate, he'll expose Obama for the communist/islamic tool that he is, and make him look like a fool in front of the whole world. That absolutely needs to be done and a policy of American exceptionalism expounded so that the world knows we are still the top dog, and that we will continue to be a Christian nation. If we don't do this, America will land on the "ash-heap of nations," that Ronald Reagan warned us about. More than ever conservatives, Christian and non-Christian, Tea Party or dry, need to vote in this coming election, and I think the man we need is going to be Newt Gingrich.
That's my opinion.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Thanksgiving
Since the politically correct and historically unintelligent textbooks recommended by the National Education Association for our public schools have rewritten our history to say the Pilgrims declared the first Thanksgiving Day to thank the Indians for their help, a review of what actually happened nearly four hundred years ago to set the record straight is in order.
In 1609 a group of religious dissenters led by John Robinson, left England for Holland looking for religious freedom. There in the town of Leyden they established what would become the first modern Baptist church. After a decade away from home, however, they saw their children speaking Dutch over English and beginning to follow some of the more promiscuous practices of their hosts. The congregation removed back to England with a plan to continue their search for religious freedom in the New World.
Their venture was financed by a group calling themselves the Merchant Adventurers. They agreed to provide supplies and passage in exchange for seven years of labor. On September 6, 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England, with 110 people on board, 102 passengers and eight crew, which included 44 Pilgrims, who called themselves the "Saints," and 66 others whom the Pilgrims called the "Strangers." The voyage lasted 65 days across the cold and damp North Atlantic. One of the ships crew, a particularly vulgar man who taunted the Saints for their faith, was taken ill suddenly and died, the only casualty of the trip.
Originally bound for the Hudson River, they sighted Cape Cod on November 10, and it being late in the year they decided to take safe harbor in Massachusetts Bay at a location they called Plymouth. The following day they composed and signed the Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony. Both the Saints and the Strangers agreed to the document and 41 men signed it.
The Compact read in part: Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid. . . .
Their first winter in the New World was very harsh and over half of their number died. Then, on March 16, 1621, an Abnaki Indian named Samoset walked into the settlement and greeted them in English, "Welcome." Samoset introduced them to another Indian named Squanto, who had been to England and Spain as a captive of earlier explorers and spoke clear English. Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to tap maple trees for sap, plant Indian corn and other crops, and which plants were poisonous or medicinal. Of Squanto, Governor William Bradford said that he was "a special instrument sent of God for good."
In the autumn of 1621 the Pilgrims had a successful harvest. They had forged their home in the wilderness, were prepared for the winter, and they were at peace with the Indians. A treaty had been signed with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag tribe, a treaty which was never broken. Edward Winslow, who would later become the governor, declared, "by the goodness of God, we are far from want."In December 1621, Governor Bradford proclaimed a three-day thanksgiving celebration to thank God, and invited Massasoit and his tribe to join in. Massasoit and 90 "relatives" came to the feast.
In 1623 a lengthy drought threatened the entire harvest. Bradford called for a day of prayer and fasting on June 29. They had hardly finished praying when, to the amazement of all, Indians included, clouds began to form and a gentle rain fell and revived the crops. The colony was saved, but it also brought "no small comfort and rejoicing" to the Indians according to Bradford.
Another Thanksgiving feast was declared to which Bradford made an official proclamation: Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord {1623] and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.
Godly people are gracious people and no doubt the Pilgrims were beholding to Squanto for all he taught them, but since their purpose in coming to the New World was to advance the Christian faith, it is not hard to figure out Who they meant to thank when they went to church on Thanksgiving Day. It is also easy to see that God had used the circumstances to introduce the Christian faith to the Indians.
After his election as the first president of the United States, George Washington, in response to a request by both Houses of Congress, declared November 26, 1789, to be a day of thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.
Other national Thanksgiving proclamations were made occasionally (Washington again in 1795, Adams in 1799, Madison in 1814 and 1815), but most observances were at the State level. It wasn't until 1863, that Abraham Lincoln, after the Battle of Gettysburg, issued a proclamation establishing a national Thanksgiving Day to be observed on the last Thursday of November.
The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.... No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, Who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.... I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
Thanksgiving has been celebrated every year since as a day to thank God for His bountiful blessings upon our great land. At a time when we have a thankless president who only dwells on what he considers the faults of America, let us remember that no nation at any time in history has been so blessed, or done so much good for the world in general as the United States of America has done. And let us never forget that it is the Christian God of the Pilgrims and our Founding Fathers, and no other god, that has made us who we are. It seems particularly poignant this year as Thanksgiving approaches again, that we remember not only the God that made us a great nation, but the simple fact that America is the greatest nation on earth.
In 1609 a group of religious dissenters led by John Robinson, left England for Holland looking for religious freedom. There in the town of Leyden they established what would become the first modern Baptist church. After a decade away from home, however, they saw their children speaking Dutch over English and beginning to follow some of the more promiscuous practices of their hosts. The congregation removed back to England with a plan to continue their search for religious freedom in the New World.
Their venture was financed by a group calling themselves the Merchant Adventurers. They agreed to provide supplies and passage in exchange for seven years of labor. On September 6, 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England, with 110 people on board, 102 passengers and eight crew, which included 44 Pilgrims, who called themselves the "Saints," and 66 others whom the Pilgrims called the "Strangers." The voyage lasted 65 days across the cold and damp North Atlantic. One of the ships crew, a particularly vulgar man who taunted the Saints for their faith, was taken ill suddenly and died, the only casualty of the trip.
Originally bound for the Hudson River, they sighted Cape Cod on November 10, and it being late in the year they decided to take safe harbor in Massachusetts Bay at a location they called Plymouth. The following day they composed and signed the Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony. Both the Saints and the Strangers agreed to the document and 41 men signed it.
The Compact read in part: Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid. . . .
Their first winter in the New World was very harsh and over half of their number died. Then, on March 16, 1621, an Abnaki Indian named Samoset walked into the settlement and greeted them in English, "Welcome." Samoset introduced them to another Indian named Squanto, who had been to England and Spain as a captive of earlier explorers and spoke clear English. Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to tap maple trees for sap, plant Indian corn and other crops, and which plants were poisonous or medicinal. Of Squanto, Governor William Bradford said that he was "a special instrument sent of God for good."
In the autumn of 1621 the Pilgrims had a successful harvest. They had forged their home in the wilderness, were prepared for the winter, and they were at peace with the Indians. A treaty had been signed with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag tribe, a treaty which was never broken. Edward Winslow, who would later become the governor, declared, "by the goodness of God, we are far from want."In December 1621, Governor Bradford proclaimed a three-day thanksgiving celebration to thank God, and invited Massasoit and his tribe to join in. Massasoit and 90 "relatives" came to the feast.
In 1623 a lengthy drought threatened the entire harvest. Bradford called for a day of prayer and fasting on June 29. They had hardly finished praying when, to the amazement of all, Indians included, clouds began to form and a gentle rain fell and revived the crops. The colony was saved, but it also brought "no small comfort and rejoicing" to the Indians according to Bradford.
Another Thanksgiving feast was declared to which Bradford made an official proclamation: Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord {1623] and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.
Godly people are gracious people and no doubt the Pilgrims were beholding to Squanto for all he taught them, but since their purpose in coming to the New World was to advance the Christian faith, it is not hard to figure out Who they meant to thank when they went to church on Thanksgiving Day. It is also easy to see that God had used the circumstances to introduce the Christian faith to the Indians.
After his election as the first president of the United States, George Washington, in response to a request by both Houses of Congress, declared November 26, 1789, to be a day of thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.
Other national Thanksgiving proclamations were made occasionally (Washington again in 1795, Adams in 1799, Madison in 1814 and 1815), but most observances were at the State level. It wasn't until 1863, that Abraham Lincoln, after the Battle of Gettysburg, issued a proclamation establishing a national Thanksgiving Day to be observed on the last Thursday of November.
The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the Source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.... No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, Who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.... I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
Thanksgiving has been celebrated every year since as a day to thank God for His bountiful blessings upon our great land. At a time when we have a thankless president who only dwells on what he considers the faults of America, let us remember that no nation at any time in history has been so blessed, or done so much good for the world in general as the United States of America has done. And let us never forget that it is the Christian God of the Pilgrims and our Founding Fathers, and no other god, that has made us who we are. It seems particularly poignant this year as Thanksgiving approaches again, that we remember not only the God that made us a great nation, but the simple fact that America is the greatest nation on earth.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Errol Flynn and the Hope of America
Years ago the autobiography of movie star Errol Flynn, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, caught my eye in a bookstore. I was tempted to get it, but alas, at the time I was too principled and erudite to waste my time on what sounded like a very sleazy tome. Besides, I was in college, and it was hardback and too expensive.
Recently in the Philippines we had dinner at a western style restaurant designed to look like the Alamo called Texas Joe's. The Filipina waitresses all wore leather cowboy hats and boots, and they served some of the best ribs and brisket I've ever savored. On one side of the dining room was an old cabinet full of used books set up for a book exchange. So I brought an old paperback novel I had read and looked for something to swap it for. To my surprise I found a first edition Dell paperback version of Errol Flynn's book, that originally cost only sixty cents.
It's probably been thirty-five years or more since I noticed the hardback in the bookstore, and by now I'm either not so principled as I once was, or my experience in the world has better prepared me to read about his frivolities, so, curious as I was, I took it.
My first impression way back when was right. It was a bawdy romp through his memory of all the women he'd had in a hard packed, compressed life lived to its worldly fullest. In fairness, Flynn was clever but not graphic in his descriptions of his dalliances, and for all the episodes he related about fellow actors and some of their vulgarities, there was surprisingly little bad language. But the story is more than just a tale of how he became revered for his sexual prowess and then became a standing joke for the same thing. It's a tale of a man searching for his own soul, and Flynn is brutal in assessing himself.
Although it doesn't excuse his own culpability, young Errol was a product of his environment and careless upbringing. He was born in Tasmania, to a world famous Darwinist biologist father, who was too busy on archeological digs and teaching in universities to take any time for his son. His mother was an un-compassionate beast who beat him so severely that he ran away from home. When he was found and returned she was uncaring. He was put in boarding schools where he was either expelled or just ran away, and as a teenager he faced the world and stepped out on his own.
By the time he was 21 he had lived half a dozen lifetimes. He had sailed the Australian coast and across the ocean to New Guinea and Rabaul. He had managed a coconut farm and prevented the outbreak of a tribal war, owned a gold field which produced all of 100 ounces of gold, had owned a successful tobacco farm, and bought and sold New Guinea tribesmen into slavery. On an expedition into the New Guinea highlands he had been ambushed by head-hunters who speared two of his porters before he killed one with a pistol and they all fled.
Often broke, he became a thief, a con-artist, and a tough-as-nails street brawler. In Manila he and a friend invented a cock-fighting scheme and won all their fights by poisoning the opposing roosters with a slick slight of hand. When they were exposed they barely made it aboard a sailing freighter ahead of an angry mob.
When he finally reached England he got into movies, went to Hollywood, and became internationally known as a swashbuckling, sword swinging star. Everywhere there were women, and enslaved to his physical drives, he was almost powerless to resist any of them. The result was one scandal after another, including accusations of statutory rape of which he was acquitted, yet bore the stigma and a plethora of dirty jokes for the rest of his life. As he approached his fiftieth year he began to look back at his life with some remorse, but no regret. The book might have been better titled The Confessions of an Unrepentant Sinner.
"Confusion," he wrote, was his trademark. He questioned his existence. "How does a man become what he becomes?" To the end of his life he always had a question mark embroidered on the handkerchief pocket of his suits.
He saw no point in marriage, yet tried it three times, and had five children with whom he spent very little time until his last years. By his own admission he had dallied with thousands of the fairer sex in brothels, jungle villages, and in cosmopolitan circles. After a world wide search for love he very cynically concluded that there is no such thing, that the only thing that matters to a woman is money. "The man who for a woman fits the bill is the one who pays the bill," he wrote.
Early in his life he did everything he could to perpetuate his reputation as a ladies' man, but he came to think of himself as a male Mae West "in a swamp of Flynn jokes, dirty stories, snide innuendoes." In the end he had become nothing of what he wanted, and everything he didn't want.
Hollywood appealed to him and he to Hollywood audiences. Tall, muscular and gloriously handsome, he was a hit from his very first film, Captain Blood, in 1935. He might have been considered the action hero of his day with such popular films as The Charge of the Light Brigade and Robin Hood. He made several westerns to which he thought he was thoroughly unsuited due to his accent. He wanted to be remembered as a serious actor, but after over fifty films, he was only satisfied with half a dozen, bitterly disappointed that he was remembered for being a swashbuckler.
"There I was," he wrote, "sitting on top of the world. I had wealth, friends, I was internationally known, I was sought after by women. I could have anything that money could buy. Yet I found that at the top of the world there was nothing. I was sitting on a pinnacle with no mountain under me."
Flynn reads like the Book of Ecclesiastes. I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity. (2:1)
He eventually became so despondent and self-loathing that for three nights he sat on the edge of his bed with a gun trying to find the courage to end it all. He couldn't. Instead in a journal he began recording some astonishingly poignant thoughts.
"Alcohol is a far greater killer than all opiates.... It gets your brain, your liver. It destroys your morals, destroys your vitality, kills the sexual potential, and you become sluggish. It is a great pity that Prohibition failed."
"Man's indecency to man all over the world rules out the idea of humanity as an actuality."
His greatest addiction, he said, was curiosity. "This has gotten me into all my troubles, successes, failures."
He was an agnostic, he concluded, and didn't believe in a hereafter, so why be afraid of death?
Flynn finally found solace in a yacht and the sea which he loved. He sailed the Mediterranean and the Caribbean Seas, was an early scuba diving enthusiast, and built himself a large estate on the north shore of Jamaica. There he lived alone with his dogs and his caretaker. Finally he had a place to leave the world behind and consider his future.
On June 20, 1959, he turned fifty years old. He finished his autobiography a short time later, and the last line of the book reads, "The second half-century looms up, but I don't feel the night coming on."
But the night came on quickly. A month or so later he died suddenly of a heart attack, having used up his body, but never having found his soul.
Errol Flynn could have been a poster boy for the ACLU or any number of liberal, anti-morality organizations running around today. He was the picture of rowdy, raucaus, uninhibited living, the very lifestyle the anti-Christian crowd wants to force upon our society.
Flynn had delved into all the world's vices (except heroin, he said), had women, wealth and fame, yet he found his life empty and without meaning, and found no satisfaction in his accomplishments. At age twenty-five he was an Adonis, the best looking man in the movies. At fifty, his looks gone, he was a broken down wreck and could have passed for seventy-five.
This is the future the godless left offers to America. There might be an immediate gratification, but in the end it's not an audacity of hope, whatever that's supposed to mean, it is no hope at all. In a world without God there is no humanity. A culture dominated by an empty, free-wheeling, licentious philosophy is a culture headed to destruction.
Recently in the Philippines we had dinner at a western style restaurant designed to look like the Alamo called Texas Joe's. The Filipina waitresses all wore leather cowboy hats and boots, and they served some of the best ribs and brisket I've ever savored. On one side of the dining room was an old cabinet full of used books set up for a book exchange. So I brought an old paperback novel I had read and looked for something to swap it for. To my surprise I found a first edition Dell paperback version of Errol Flynn's book, that originally cost only sixty cents.
It's probably been thirty-five years or more since I noticed the hardback in the bookstore, and by now I'm either not so principled as I once was, or my experience in the world has better prepared me to read about his frivolities, so, curious as I was, I took it.
My first impression way back when was right. It was a bawdy romp through his memory of all the women he'd had in a hard packed, compressed life lived to its worldly fullest. In fairness, Flynn was clever but not graphic in his descriptions of his dalliances, and for all the episodes he related about fellow actors and some of their vulgarities, there was surprisingly little bad language. But the story is more than just a tale of how he became revered for his sexual prowess and then became a standing joke for the same thing. It's a tale of a man searching for his own soul, and Flynn is brutal in assessing himself.
Although it doesn't excuse his own culpability, young Errol was a product of his environment and careless upbringing. He was born in Tasmania, to a world famous Darwinist biologist father, who was too busy on archeological digs and teaching in universities to take any time for his son. His mother was an un-compassionate beast who beat him so severely that he ran away from home. When he was found and returned she was uncaring. He was put in boarding schools where he was either expelled or just ran away, and as a teenager he faced the world and stepped out on his own.
By the time he was 21 he had lived half a dozen lifetimes. He had sailed the Australian coast and across the ocean to New Guinea and Rabaul. He had managed a coconut farm and prevented the outbreak of a tribal war, owned a gold field which produced all of 100 ounces of gold, had owned a successful tobacco farm, and bought and sold New Guinea tribesmen into slavery. On an expedition into the New Guinea highlands he had been ambushed by head-hunters who speared two of his porters before he killed one with a pistol and they all fled.
Often broke, he became a thief, a con-artist, and a tough-as-nails street brawler. In Manila he and a friend invented a cock-fighting scheme and won all their fights by poisoning the opposing roosters with a slick slight of hand. When they were exposed they barely made it aboard a sailing freighter ahead of an angry mob.
When he finally reached England he got into movies, went to Hollywood, and became internationally known as a swashbuckling, sword swinging star. Everywhere there were women, and enslaved to his physical drives, he was almost powerless to resist any of them. The result was one scandal after another, including accusations of statutory rape of which he was acquitted, yet bore the stigma and a plethora of dirty jokes for the rest of his life. As he approached his fiftieth year he began to look back at his life with some remorse, but no regret. The book might have been better titled The Confessions of an Unrepentant Sinner.
"Confusion," he wrote, was his trademark. He questioned his existence. "How does a man become what he becomes?" To the end of his life he always had a question mark embroidered on the handkerchief pocket of his suits.
He saw no point in marriage, yet tried it three times, and had five children with whom he spent very little time until his last years. By his own admission he had dallied with thousands of the fairer sex in brothels, jungle villages, and in cosmopolitan circles. After a world wide search for love he very cynically concluded that there is no such thing, that the only thing that matters to a woman is money. "The man who for a woman fits the bill is the one who pays the bill," he wrote.
Early in his life he did everything he could to perpetuate his reputation as a ladies' man, but he came to think of himself as a male Mae West "in a swamp of Flynn jokes, dirty stories, snide innuendoes." In the end he had become nothing of what he wanted, and everything he didn't want.
Hollywood appealed to him and he to Hollywood audiences. Tall, muscular and gloriously handsome, he was a hit from his very first film, Captain Blood, in 1935. He might have been considered the action hero of his day with such popular films as The Charge of the Light Brigade and Robin Hood. He made several westerns to which he thought he was thoroughly unsuited due to his accent. He wanted to be remembered as a serious actor, but after over fifty films, he was only satisfied with half a dozen, bitterly disappointed that he was remembered for being a swashbuckler.
"There I was," he wrote, "sitting on top of the world. I had wealth, friends, I was internationally known, I was sought after by women. I could have anything that money could buy. Yet I found that at the top of the world there was nothing. I was sitting on a pinnacle with no mountain under me."
Flynn reads like the Book of Ecclesiastes. I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity. (2:1)
He eventually became so despondent and self-loathing that for three nights he sat on the edge of his bed with a gun trying to find the courage to end it all. He couldn't. Instead in a journal he began recording some astonishingly poignant thoughts.
"Alcohol is a far greater killer than all opiates.... It gets your brain, your liver. It destroys your morals, destroys your vitality, kills the sexual potential, and you become sluggish. It is a great pity that Prohibition failed."
"Man's indecency to man all over the world rules out the idea of humanity as an actuality."
His greatest addiction, he said, was curiosity. "This has gotten me into all my troubles, successes, failures."
He was an agnostic, he concluded, and didn't believe in a hereafter, so why be afraid of death?
Flynn finally found solace in a yacht and the sea which he loved. He sailed the Mediterranean and the Caribbean Seas, was an early scuba diving enthusiast, and built himself a large estate on the north shore of Jamaica. There he lived alone with his dogs and his caretaker. Finally he had a place to leave the world behind and consider his future.
On June 20, 1959, he turned fifty years old. He finished his autobiography a short time later, and the last line of the book reads, "The second half-century looms up, but I don't feel the night coming on."
But the night came on quickly. A month or so later he died suddenly of a heart attack, having used up his body, but never having found his soul.
Errol Flynn could have been a poster boy for the ACLU or any number of liberal, anti-morality organizations running around today. He was the picture of rowdy, raucaus, uninhibited living, the very lifestyle the anti-Christian crowd wants to force upon our society.
Flynn had delved into all the world's vices (except heroin, he said), had women, wealth and fame, yet he found his life empty and without meaning, and found no satisfaction in his accomplishments. At age twenty-five he was an Adonis, the best looking man in the movies. At fifty, his looks gone, he was a broken down wreck and could have passed for seventy-five.
This is the future the godless left offers to America. There might be an immediate gratification, but in the end it's not an audacity of hope, whatever that's supposed to mean, it is no hope at all. In a world without God there is no humanity. A culture dominated by an empty, free-wheeling, licentious philosophy is a culture headed to destruction.
Monday, July 4, 2011
America the Beautiful
One thing we've learned living outside of the country is that no matter how bad the problems are, or how difficult life has become in the United States, America is still preferable to anywhere else. The United States of America is home.
We are in transit to the States, and this year in particular I wanted to be home in time for July 4th to give our adopted daughter, Hannah, a taste of American patriotism, and an idea of what America is all about. But my wife came down ill in the Philippines, and we've been unable to travel for the last two weeks. Now the fourth is upon us and we're going to miss it.
Ronald Reagan said in his last message to America that he knew there would always be "a bright new dawn ahead." President Reagan could say that and mean it because he believed in American exceptionalism. We hear this term bantered around a lot lately, mostly because the current occupant of the White House basically announced to the world that he doesn't believe in it. How sad and pathetic that America could elect a man to the most important position in the world who doesn't have a clue about America's history, where we came from, or what we're about.
American exceptionalism is at the very heart of American life. Her greatness is found in the greatest military bar none on earth. Her greatness is found in her invention, industry and technology. It is found in her luxury of living. Her greatness is found in her biblical roots. It cries out in her natural resources and resounding beauty. It is found in her literature and music, in such great patriotic hymns as America the Beautiful.
This hymn is exceptional because it outlines our history and gives meaning to our existence. The first verse extols the wonder of the land and prays for God's blessing. The second verse examines the pilgrims who settled the wilderness with the ingredients for true freedom; self-control under the rule of law. The third verse honors the heroes who have given their lives for our freedom, and the last verse looks to a bright future of alabaster cities and reminds us that it is only made possible by the grace of God.
We used to learn this song in our public schools. Our children need to learn it now, need to take it apart and study our history from the viewpoint of the composer, Katherine Lee Bates. Consider the first verse:
Oh beautiful for spacious skies.
If you've never driven across Montana you'll never understand why it's called the "Big Sky State." There, more than anywhere, the sky just seems to go on forever. It pictures America's influence projected by our presence in nearly every nation on earth, a hundred fifty of which are under the spacious umbrella of American foreign aid.
For amber waves of grain.
Have you crossed what was once called the "Great American Desert?" Now interlaced with well maintained super highways, the desert has become America's "breadbasket."
For purple mountain majesties.
The Appalachians in the east offer a forested blanket of green that turns colors in the fall with breathtaking magnificence, but the purple majesties are found in the Rocky Mountain west, high above timberline where, on a clear day against a bright blue sky the peaks take on a purple hue. Colorado provides the highest paved road in America up to the peak of Mt. Evans, 14,256 feet high, and a view that is on top of the world.
Above the fruited plain.
Millions of teeming acres of wheat covering Kansas, and millions more of corn in Nebraska and Iowa fill grain reserves that feed the world.
America, America.
It is a name that should not be spoken lightly or in derision. It is a place of belonging and comfort, a place that has opened its arms to the tired and poor yearning to be free. It is a place that deserves our highest regard and respect, because it is our place. It is our home.
God shed His grace on thee.
This is as much a statement as it is a prayer. The hymn writer is asking God to give His grace to the nation, and well we should continue to pray that prayer, but the fact is, God already has shed His grace on America like no other nation in history. The United States didn't rise to the top of the heap of nations by being ungodly or mediocre. God gave America His grace because Americans honored God with their faith. Jefferson trembled for his country when he considered that "God is just and that His justice will not sleep forever." We have had the blessings of God in America, but how long will those blessings continue when the nation continues to deny the God that gave them?
And crown thy good with brotherhood.
The French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, stated that "America is great because America is good," and its goodness came from its churches that preached righteousness all across the land.
The reference to brotherhood speaks of the assimilation of immigrants who came to the United States to become Americans. Our strength was not in our diversity, but in our unity as people from all around the world joined us. This is a far cry from the illegal alien invasion of today, and even those who come legally, but only to live off the land and promote their own cultures within our borders without any intent of becoming American. If you don't want to be an American, find a better place to live and go there.
From sea to shining sea.
Our nation's borders stretch from one ocean to another. The story of the expansion to include the continental forty-eight and then Alaska and Hawaii is the story of America and how it became great.
American exceptionalism is not being taught in the public schools anymore. Even the Pledge of Allegiance is challenged by the ACLU and other liberal groups. It is time on this July 4th that we remember who we are and where we came from.
We are Americans. Our heritage is Christian. Our greatness comes from the God of our Fathers, the Christian God, who has shed His grace on us. We are a nation under God. If we ever forget that, we will, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "be a nation gone under.
Let's celebrate America the Beautiful. Happy Fourth of July.
We are in transit to the States, and this year in particular I wanted to be home in time for July 4th to give our adopted daughter, Hannah, a taste of American patriotism, and an idea of what America is all about. But my wife came down ill in the Philippines, and we've been unable to travel for the last two weeks. Now the fourth is upon us and we're going to miss it.
Ronald Reagan said in his last message to America that he knew there would always be "a bright new dawn ahead." President Reagan could say that and mean it because he believed in American exceptionalism. We hear this term bantered around a lot lately, mostly because the current occupant of the White House basically announced to the world that he doesn't believe in it. How sad and pathetic that America could elect a man to the most important position in the world who doesn't have a clue about America's history, where we came from, or what we're about.
American exceptionalism is at the very heart of American life. Her greatness is found in the greatest military bar none on earth. Her greatness is found in her invention, industry and technology. It is found in her luxury of living. Her greatness is found in her biblical roots. It cries out in her natural resources and resounding beauty. It is found in her literature and music, in such great patriotic hymns as America the Beautiful.
This hymn is exceptional because it outlines our history and gives meaning to our existence. The first verse extols the wonder of the land and prays for God's blessing. The second verse examines the pilgrims who settled the wilderness with the ingredients for true freedom; self-control under the rule of law. The third verse honors the heroes who have given their lives for our freedom, and the last verse looks to a bright future of alabaster cities and reminds us that it is only made possible by the grace of God.
We used to learn this song in our public schools. Our children need to learn it now, need to take it apart and study our history from the viewpoint of the composer, Katherine Lee Bates. Consider the first verse:
Oh beautiful for spacious skies.
If you've never driven across Montana you'll never understand why it's called the "Big Sky State." There, more than anywhere, the sky just seems to go on forever. It pictures America's influence projected by our presence in nearly every nation on earth, a hundred fifty of which are under the spacious umbrella of American foreign aid.
For amber waves of grain.
Have you crossed what was once called the "Great American Desert?" Now interlaced with well maintained super highways, the desert has become America's "breadbasket."
For purple mountain majesties.
The Appalachians in the east offer a forested blanket of green that turns colors in the fall with breathtaking magnificence, but the purple majesties are found in the Rocky Mountain west, high above timberline where, on a clear day against a bright blue sky the peaks take on a purple hue. Colorado provides the highest paved road in America up to the peak of Mt. Evans, 14,256 feet high, and a view that is on top of the world.
Above the fruited plain.
Millions of teeming acres of wheat covering Kansas, and millions more of corn in Nebraska and Iowa fill grain reserves that feed the world.
America, America.
It is a name that should not be spoken lightly or in derision. It is a place of belonging and comfort, a place that has opened its arms to the tired and poor yearning to be free. It is a place that deserves our highest regard and respect, because it is our place. It is our home.
God shed His grace on thee.
This is as much a statement as it is a prayer. The hymn writer is asking God to give His grace to the nation, and well we should continue to pray that prayer, but the fact is, God already has shed His grace on America like no other nation in history. The United States didn't rise to the top of the heap of nations by being ungodly or mediocre. God gave America His grace because Americans honored God with their faith. Jefferson trembled for his country when he considered that "God is just and that His justice will not sleep forever." We have had the blessings of God in America, but how long will those blessings continue when the nation continues to deny the God that gave them?
And crown thy good with brotherhood.
The French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, stated that "America is great because America is good," and its goodness came from its churches that preached righteousness all across the land.
The reference to brotherhood speaks of the assimilation of immigrants who came to the United States to become Americans. Our strength was not in our diversity, but in our unity as people from all around the world joined us. This is a far cry from the illegal alien invasion of today, and even those who come legally, but only to live off the land and promote their own cultures within our borders without any intent of becoming American. If you don't want to be an American, find a better place to live and go there.
From sea to shining sea.
Our nation's borders stretch from one ocean to another. The story of the expansion to include the continental forty-eight and then Alaska and Hawaii is the story of America and how it became great.
American exceptionalism is not being taught in the public schools anymore. Even the Pledge of Allegiance is challenged by the ACLU and other liberal groups. It is time on this July 4th that we remember who we are and where we came from.
We are Americans. Our heritage is Christian. Our greatness comes from the God of our Fathers, the Christian God, who has shed His grace on us. We are a nation under God. If we ever forget that, we will, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "be a nation gone under.
Let's celebrate America the Beautiful. Happy Fourth of July.
Friday, July 1, 2011
A Good Name
Last Sunday we were at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila preparing to head for the States when my wife, Lhey, became so ill she almost collapsed. I got her a wheel chair and we saw an airport doctor who gave her some pain medicine for her back and recommended we reschedule our flight. Our ride was still waiting so we repacked the van and headed back to Olongapo.
Unknown to us as we started for home was that about an hour behind us a long time friend of ours, Pastor Ramon Reyes, was bringing his sister and family to Olongapo to see their mother. Just about the time we were arriving home they were passing near the town of Floridablanca on a dark, unlighted stretch of highway, when the car ran head on into a concrete barrier and went off the road.
Six people were in the car. Injuries to the passengers were light. Pastor Nelson de Jesus, who was sitting beside Ramon in the middle front seat, received a deep gash on his right middle finger, and Ramon's mother had bruises on her head and shoulder, but Ramon apparently hit the steering wheel with enough force to crush his chest and died instantly.
Olongapo, the Navy town at Subic Bay, was a rough place in the 70's and 80's. Youth gangs defended their turfs in various areas of the city, and there was no gang leader any tougher than Ramon Reyes. He was known as a fighter and feared by many.
In 1975, two students from the Baptist Bible Seminary and Institute in Manila, Jose Ornias and Wilma Dequina, came to Olongapo to start a youth outreach using Bible study materials for all ages, and a sports program called Bible Basketball. Jose, who became known as "Brother Joe," organized teams from the various gang areas and brought them together to play basketball and to share the good news of the Gospel.
Brother Joe took particular interest in a young man named Ramon, but seeing a change in Ramon's life was not easy in coming. For two years he came to the basketball tournaments, before he finally, in 1978, gave his life to Christ.
The Bible Basketball ministry became the roots that led to the founding of the First Olongapo Fundamental Baptist Church. Ramon became instrumental in bringing many of his gang members, as well as other young people to the church. Eventually he attended BBSI, and when he graduated he became the youth pastor of the church, and in 1987 was elected a deacon.
FOFBC has been a recruiting and training ground for young people going into the Gospel ministry. In thirty-four years around forty young men and ladies, many off the streets of Olongapo, have come through the church, gone on to Bible college, and become pastors and missionaries, or have been involved in church work. Many of those were first brought to the church by Ramon Reyes.
I first met Ramon in 1986 when he worked at the church. That year Brother Joe had organized another Bible Basketball tournament. Twelve teams played a round-robin schedule to determine a champion. Each of the teams was organized by one of the young men in the church youth group. Brother Joe asked me to be involved in the Gospel sharing phase of the ministry. The winning team was sponsored by the church for a week at the Word of Life Camp in Laguna, south of Manila. Later Ramon would work at the Word of Life Camp for nearly twenty years. In recent years he also had a jail ministry at Camp Crame, the army post in Manila.
In 1987 we didn't have enough young men to organize teams for a tournament because most of those who had helped the year before had gone off to Bible school. So Ramon asked me to join him and do a "pick-up" Bible Basketball. Every Saturday for several weeks he and I, and three or four others from the church went around to local community centers and basketball courts, and got into games with the kids hanging around. When we were done we would sit down with the boys and share the Gospel with them.
One hot Saturday morning I took a picture of Ramon in his basketball gear, dripping wet with sweat, a Bible in his hand, telling the players how they could be saved. It's a telling picture because when the character of Ramon Reyes is considered, one thing stands out more than any other; an unquenchable desire to tell young people, street kids, and disadvantaged youth about Jesus Christ.
In the Filipino tradition a kind of a Christian wake is being held each night at the church until the burial on Saturday. It was my privilege last night to preach the final message at the first funeral service. I used as a text, Proverbs 22:1. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.
I am proud to have been the friend of Ramon Reyes, a man who truly had a good name.
Unknown to us as we started for home was that about an hour behind us a long time friend of ours, Pastor Ramon Reyes, was bringing his sister and family to Olongapo to see their mother. Just about the time we were arriving home they were passing near the town of Floridablanca on a dark, unlighted stretch of highway, when the car ran head on into a concrete barrier and went off the road.
Six people were in the car. Injuries to the passengers were light. Pastor Nelson de Jesus, who was sitting beside Ramon in the middle front seat, received a deep gash on his right middle finger, and Ramon's mother had bruises on her head and shoulder, but Ramon apparently hit the steering wheel with enough force to crush his chest and died instantly.
Olongapo, the Navy town at Subic Bay, was a rough place in the 70's and 80's. Youth gangs defended their turfs in various areas of the city, and there was no gang leader any tougher than Ramon Reyes. He was known as a fighter and feared by many.
In 1975, two students from the Baptist Bible Seminary and Institute in Manila, Jose Ornias and Wilma Dequina, came to Olongapo to start a youth outreach using Bible study materials for all ages, and a sports program called Bible Basketball. Jose, who became known as "Brother Joe," organized teams from the various gang areas and brought them together to play basketball and to share the good news of the Gospel.
Brother Joe took particular interest in a young man named Ramon, but seeing a change in Ramon's life was not easy in coming. For two years he came to the basketball tournaments, before he finally, in 1978, gave his life to Christ.
The Bible Basketball ministry became the roots that led to the founding of the First Olongapo Fundamental Baptist Church. Ramon became instrumental in bringing many of his gang members, as well as other young people to the church. Eventually he attended BBSI, and when he graduated he became the youth pastor of the church, and in 1987 was elected a deacon.
FOFBC has been a recruiting and training ground for young people going into the Gospel ministry. In thirty-four years around forty young men and ladies, many off the streets of Olongapo, have come through the church, gone on to Bible college, and become pastors and missionaries, or have been involved in church work. Many of those were first brought to the church by Ramon Reyes.
I first met Ramon in 1986 when he worked at the church. That year Brother Joe had organized another Bible Basketball tournament. Twelve teams played a round-robin schedule to determine a champion. Each of the teams was organized by one of the young men in the church youth group. Brother Joe asked me to be involved in the Gospel sharing phase of the ministry. The winning team was sponsored by the church for a week at the Word of Life Camp in Laguna, south of Manila. Later Ramon would work at the Word of Life Camp for nearly twenty years. In recent years he also had a jail ministry at Camp Crame, the army post in Manila.
In 1987 we didn't have enough young men to organize teams for a tournament because most of those who had helped the year before had gone off to Bible school. So Ramon asked me to join him and do a "pick-up" Bible Basketball. Every Saturday for several weeks he and I, and three or four others from the church went around to local community centers and basketball courts, and got into games with the kids hanging around. When we were done we would sit down with the boys and share the Gospel with them.
One hot Saturday morning I took a picture of Ramon in his basketball gear, dripping wet with sweat, a Bible in his hand, telling the players how they could be saved. It's a telling picture because when the character of Ramon Reyes is considered, one thing stands out more than any other; an unquenchable desire to tell young people, street kids, and disadvantaged youth about Jesus Christ.
In the Filipino tradition a kind of a Christian wake is being held each night at the church until the burial on Saturday. It was my privilege last night to preach the final message at the first funeral service. I used as a text, Proverbs 22:1. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.
I am proud to have been the friend of Ramon Reyes, a man who truly had a good name.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Fundamentally Un-American
On PBS's "Inside Washington," host Mark Shields, pontificating about raising the debt ceiling, pointed out that because of "two wars" we are spending 25 percent, but only taking in 14 and a half percent in revenues. "That's unsustainable and it's unacceptable and it's fundamentally un-American."
True, spending ten and a half percent more than you're bringing in every year is unsustainable and unacceptable, but raising taxes to cover for the greed of self-absorbed politicians who can't control their spending urges is hardly American. It's ignorant stupidity.
Mark Shields needs to go back to school. No, I take that back. It's the public schools that liberals are always crying need more money that are dumbing down America. Politically correct liberal education policies are failing to teach America's children real history, and instead are rewriting it to fit a socialist agenda. Public education is not teaching, but keeping the truth from America's children.
At the end of the Seven Year's War (French and Indian War) in 1763, the British government was deep in debt. Parliament passed a series of measures to tax the colonies and make them pay for their share of the war debt. It began with the Quartering Act in 1765, which allowed the British Army to billet soldiers in private homes without the consent of the home owners.
The Stamp Act followed in the same year, requiring all paper used in the colonies to come from London based companies with a government stamp indicating a tax had been paid to the Crown. Protests in the colonies led to the Declaratory Act of 1766 in which Parliament claimed it had the right "in all cases whatsoever" to pass legislation for the colonies, even though the colonies had no one to represent them in Parliament.
This was followed a year later by the Townshend Acts, five laws taxing the colonies for the salaries of Crown appointed governors and judges whose allegiances were to the King. These were intended to punish the colonies for failing to comply with the Quartering Act and previous taxes, and to force the colonies to submit to trade regulations. Resistance to the Townshend Acts led to the occupation of Boston by British troops in 1768. Tensions grew until in 1770, a confrontation in the streets resulted in the Boston Massacre.
Protests were so great that eventually most of the taxes were rescinded, but the Quartering Act remained, and Boston remained under occupation. Then on May 10, 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act to strengthen the British East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade, which further restricted international trade in the colonies, driving up the price of goods and burdening the colonial economy.
In response, an underground colonial patriot organization led by Samuel Adams held a party. In December 1773, the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians, boarded British ships in Boston Harbor and tossed their entire cargoes of tea into Massachusetts Bay, an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party.
Parliament countered with a series of laws, which became known as the Intolerable Acts, to try and force colonial submission to Crown authority. The effect was just the opposite as colonists were outraged and even more defiant than before. To coordinate their protests the First Continental Congress was organized in 1774.
Step by step events led slowly toward the Revolution, but underlying all the protests was one consistent theme. In 1765, James Otis declared "taxation without representation is tyranny," but the phrase that became a slogan for the Sons of Liberty and a battle cry of the Revolution was first used in a sermon preached by Rev. Jonathan Mayhew in Boston in 1750; No taxation without representation.
Mark Shields might well argue that we have a representative government, and on paper that is true. We have the Constitution, yet the current issue of Time magazine showing a picture of a shredded Constitution and asking whether it is still relevant, shows how far our government has drifted from representing "we the people." With a majority of Americans opposed to raising the debt limit, opposed to deficit spending, opposed to higher taxes, and in favor of a balanced budget amendment, a government that insists on ramming all of these down our throats and refuses to balance the budget is not representing its citizenry.
Higher taxes without the consent of the governed is fundamentally un-American, and so indeed are Mark Shields and all his leftist, elitist, socialist friends. They need to read some real history (let me suggest books by David McCullough and Richard Brookhiser) and find out what America is really all about.
True, spending ten and a half percent more than you're bringing in every year is unsustainable and unacceptable, but raising taxes to cover for the greed of self-absorbed politicians who can't control their spending urges is hardly American. It's ignorant stupidity.
Mark Shields needs to go back to school. No, I take that back. It's the public schools that liberals are always crying need more money that are dumbing down America. Politically correct liberal education policies are failing to teach America's children real history, and instead are rewriting it to fit a socialist agenda. Public education is not teaching, but keeping the truth from America's children.
At the end of the Seven Year's War (French and Indian War) in 1763, the British government was deep in debt. Parliament passed a series of measures to tax the colonies and make them pay for their share of the war debt. It began with the Quartering Act in 1765, which allowed the British Army to billet soldiers in private homes without the consent of the home owners.
The Stamp Act followed in the same year, requiring all paper used in the colonies to come from London based companies with a government stamp indicating a tax had been paid to the Crown. Protests in the colonies led to the Declaratory Act of 1766 in which Parliament claimed it had the right "in all cases whatsoever" to pass legislation for the colonies, even though the colonies had no one to represent them in Parliament.
This was followed a year later by the Townshend Acts, five laws taxing the colonies for the salaries of Crown appointed governors and judges whose allegiances were to the King. These were intended to punish the colonies for failing to comply with the Quartering Act and previous taxes, and to force the colonies to submit to trade regulations. Resistance to the Townshend Acts led to the occupation of Boston by British troops in 1768. Tensions grew until in 1770, a confrontation in the streets resulted in the Boston Massacre.
Protests were so great that eventually most of the taxes were rescinded, but the Quartering Act remained, and Boston remained under occupation. Then on May 10, 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act to strengthen the British East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade, which further restricted international trade in the colonies, driving up the price of goods and burdening the colonial economy.
In response, an underground colonial patriot organization led by Samuel Adams held a party. In December 1773, the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians, boarded British ships in Boston Harbor and tossed their entire cargoes of tea into Massachusetts Bay, an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party.
Parliament countered with a series of laws, which became known as the Intolerable Acts, to try and force colonial submission to Crown authority. The effect was just the opposite as colonists were outraged and even more defiant than before. To coordinate their protests the First Continental Congress was organized in 1774.
Step by step events led slowly toward the Revolution, but underlying all the protests was one consistent theme. In 1765, James Otis declared "taxation without representation is tyranny," but the phrase that became a slogan for the Sons of Liberty and a battle cry of the Revolution was first used in a sermon preached by Rev. Jonathan Mayhew in Boston in 1750; No taxation without representation.
Mark Shields might well argue that we have a representative government, and on paper that is true. We have the Constitution, yet the current issue of Time magazine showing a picture of a shredded Constitution and asking whether it is still relevant, shows how far our government has drifted from representing "we the people." With a majority of Americans opposed to raising the debt limit, opposed to deficit spending, opposed to higher taxes, and in favor of a balanced budget amendment, a government that insists on ramming all of these down our throats and refuses to balance the budget is not representing its citizenry.
Higher taxes without the consent of the governed is fundamentally un-American, and so indeed are Mark Shields and all his leftist, elitist, socialist friends. They need to read some real history (let me suggest books by David McCullough and Richard Brookhiser) and find out what America is really all about.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Common Sense
By the end of 1775 the American colonies were in a tentative war with the mother country, Great Britain. It had begun with protests against unfair, debilitating taxes levied against the colonists to pay for the king's European wars, but grew as British troops, ostensibly occupying the colonies to provide security for the colonists, took over their homes and attempted to confiscate their weapons, denying them the means of personal safety. In April "embattled farmers," the Minutemen, took up arms and faced off with the most powerful army in the world at Lexington and Concord.
Colonial militiamen came from all over New England and fortified Breed's Hill in Charles Town, across the channel from Boston. As they gathered, the Continental Congress realized they needed an organizational structure and on June 14, established the Continental Army. The next day George Washington was appointed Commander-in-Chief, but before he could take command, the British attacked on June 17, and at great cost drove the colonists back in what became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.
The British garrison was too decimated to carry the fight back into the interior, but the growing colonial army was untrained and poorly equipped, and the situation turned into a stalemate. A siege developed around Boston. While the Crown dallied, hiring Hessian mercenaries to fight the war for them, the colonists hadn't decided yet whether or not this was a struggle just for rights or for the whole pie, independence.
Into the mix came a disgruntled English philosopher by the name of Thomas Paine. He was also fed up with the tyranny of George III. Fearing, however, that he could be accused of treason, he published anonymously on January 10, 1776, a pamphlet encouraging the colonists to move for independence.
Common Sense became one of the most influential documents of the revolutionary period. The result was rational people thinking sensibly and counting the cost, pledging their lives, fortunes, and "sacred honor" to fight for independence. It was simply common sense.
One has to wonder what has happened to common sense in America today. Where is the sacred honor? The lunacy of an out-of-control government spending itself into oblivion is a far cry from the Patriots who sacrificed to build this nation. Liberal political elitists and arrogant, left-wing media view themselves as the intelligentsia and all the rest of us as stupid. But who is really suffering from a shortage of gray matter?
For example:
If Sarah Palin is so irrelevant, why does the MSM spend so much time trying to destroy her? Their failure has made her exceptionally relevant.
If lying to the public, lying to the press, and lying to Congress about sexting is enough to make Congressman Anthony Weiner resign, why was lying to the public, lying to the press, and lying to Congress about a sexual affair in the White House not enough to require President Clinton to resign?
Or, since it was just sex and character didn't matter then, why does it matter now?
If God doesn't exist, why does the ACLU and other atheist organizations waste so much time trying to prove the non-existence of nothing?
Since liberals generally support the ACLU and their godless philosophy, why do they ever end their speeches saying, "God bless America?"
Since socialism has never worked anywhere in the world where it has been tried, why does the left keep trying to force it on us?
Since Keynesian economics (high taxes and deficit spending) always leads to recession, and Reagonomics always leads to recovery, why do leftists keep insisting Keynesian economics is the way to prosperity?
If we are sitting on the highest oil reserves in the entire world, why are we still depending on OPEC and its intentionally inflated prices designed to ruin our economy, when we have the ability to become totally energy independent?
Since energy independence is the sole purpose of the Department of Energy's existence, and since we are more dependent on foreign oil now than when it was created, why do we still have a Department of Energy?
Since it takes more gasoline to produce ethanol than the amount of ethanol actually produced, why are we wasting billions subsidizing a program that wastes oil and corn as well, and drives the price of gasoline higher?
Two years after the 800 billion dollar stimulus package to rescue the economy was passed we have a net loss of 3 million jobs and an unemployment rate of 9.1%, so why would anybody in his right mind want to pass another stimulus bill?
By 2003 the Great Society had spent 7 trillion dollars fighting poverty. At the same the national debt reached 7 trillion dollars. Does anybody see a connection here?
If homosexuality is a genetic disorder (unproven by science), why do many homosexuals become heterosexual, or why are there bi-sexuals?
Why is it hate speech if you are pro-life, but not if you send death threats to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker?
The Nazis practiced infanticide, genocide, and euthanasia, and used mob rule to bully their way into power, yet the left continually compares the pro-life movement and conservatives with Nazis. If it is the left that is unapologetically pro-abortion and pro-genocide (Terry Schiavo) and resorts to mob rule whenever the cry-babies don't get there way (Wisconsin), who are the real Nazis here?
Every time there is a contested election, stuffed ballot boxes, dead voters, hanging chads and missing ballots found in car trunks, all turn out to be Democrat votes. Can we see a pattern here? Who really tries to steal elections?
If Islam is a religion of peace, why are 99% of the terrorists in the world Muslim?
If 99% of the world's suicide bombers are Muslim men between the ages of 18 and 35, why does Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano see no need to profile them?
Since the Arizona border with Mexico has become a war zone and Americans are dying, why did the media not challenge Obama when he said the border was secured?
What part of "illegal alien" do liberals not understand?
Why should 12 million illegal criminal aliens be given amnesty when my non-criminal sister-in-law had to wait twelve years to immigrate legally to the States?
Does changing the term to "undocumented immigrants" make illegal aliens any less illegal?
Does changing the term "global warming" to "climate change" make this phony scientific scam any less phony?
Since raising corporate taxes kills job growth, and raising personal income taxes kills retail sales and slows down economic growth, why do politicians still say the answer is to raise taxes?
Why is it that tolerance is only required of those with Christian values, but the ungodly are not required to be tolerant of Christian beliefs?
Why is the misinterpreted non-constitutional phrase "separation of church and state" used to throw Christianity under the bus, but never applied to any other religion from Islam to Wicca?
This is only a sampling of the lunacy that comes at us from left wing intellectuals and their media lap dogs every day. They've got their PhD.'s, and their ungodly, socialist philosophies from their Ivy League schools. They've got their utopian ideas for a perfect world. They arrogantly view themselves as the saviors of mankind while they drive America to the brink of destruction.
In all of the liberal ego bloated brain cells with all of their assumed intellectual superiority there's not an ounce of common sense.
Colonial militiamen came from all over New England and fortified Breed's Hill in Charles Town, across the channel from Boston. As they gathered, the Continental Congress realized they needed an organizational structure and on June 14, established the Continental Army. The next day George Washington was appointed Commander-in-Chief, but before he could take command, the British attacked on June 17, and at great cost drove the colonists back in what became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.
The British garrison was too decimated to carry the fight back into the interior, but the growing colonial army was untrained and poorly equipped, and the situation turned into a stalemate. A siege developed around Boston. While the Crown dallied, hiring Hessian mercenaries to fight the war for them, the colonists hadn't decided yet whether or not this was a struggle just for rights or for the whole pie, independence.
Into the mix came a disgruntled English philosopher by the name of Thomas Paine. He was also fed up with the tyranny of George III. Fearing, however, that he could be accused of treason, he published anonymously on January 10, 1776, a pamphlet encouraging the colonists to move for independence.
Common Sense became one of the most influential documents of the revolutionary period. The result was rational people thinking sensibly and counting the cost, pledging their lives, fortunes, and "sacred honor" to fight for independence. It was simply common sense.
One has to wonder what has happened to common sense in America today. Where is the sacred honor? The lunacy of an out-of-control government spending itself into oblivion is a far cry from the Patriots who sacrificed to build this nation. Liberal political elitists and arrogant, left-wing media view themselves as the intelligentsia and all the rest of us as stupid. But who is really suffering from a shortage of gray matter?
For example:
If Sarah Palin is so irrelevant, why does the MSM spend so much time trying to destroy her? Their failure has made her exceptionally relevant.
If lying to the public, lying to the press, and lying to Congress about sexting is enough to make Congressman Anthony Weiner resign, why was lying to the public, lying to the press, and lying to Congress about a sexual affair in the White House not enough to require President Clinton to resign?
Or, since it was just sex and character didn't matter then, why does it matter now?
If God doesn't exist, why does the ACLU and other atheist organizations waste so much time trying to prove the non-existence of nothing?
Since liberals generally support the ACLU and their godless philosophy, why do they ever end their speeches saying, "God bless America?"
Since socialism has never worked anywhere in the world where it has been tried, why does the left keep trying to force it on us?
Since Keynesian economics (high taxes and deficit spending) always leads to recession, and Reagonomics always leads to recovery, why do leftists keep insisting Keynesian economics is the way to prosperity?
If we are sitting on the highest oil reserves in the entire world, why are we still depending on OPEC and its intentionally inflated prices designed to ruin our economy, when we have the ability to become totally energy independent?
Since energy independence is the sole purpose of the Department of Energy's existence, and since we are more dependent on foreign oil now than when it was created, why do we still have a Department of Energy?
Since it takes more gasoline to produce ethanol than the amount of ethanol actually produced, why are we wasting billions subsidizing a program that wastes oil and corn as well, and drives the price of gasoline higher?
Two years after the 800 billion dollar stimulus package to rescue the economy was passed we have a net loss of 3 million jobs and an unemployment rate of 9.1%, so why would anybody in his right mind want to pass another stimulus bill?
By 2003 the Great Society had spent 7 trillion dollars fighting poverty. At the same the national debt reached 7 trillion dollars. Does anybody see a connection here?
If homosexuality is a genetic disorder (unproven by science), why do many homosexuals become heterosexual, or why are there bi-sexuals?
Why is it hate speech if you are pro-life, but not if you send death threats to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker?
The Nazis practiced infanticide, genocide, and euthanasia, and used mob rule to bully their way into power, yet the left continually compares the pro-life movement and conservatives with Nazis. If it is the left that is unapologetically pro-abortion and pro-genocide (Terry Schiavo) and resorts to mob rule whenever the cry-babies don't get there way (Wisconsin), who are the real Nazis here?
Every time there is a contested election, stuffed ballot boxes, dead voters, hanging chads and missing ballots found in car trunks, all turn out to be Democrat votes. Can we see a pattern here? Who really tries to steal elections?
If Islam is a religion of peace, why are 99% of the terrorists in the world Muslim?
If 99% of the world's suicide bombers are Muslim men between the ages of 18 and 35, why does Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano see no need to profile them?
Since the Arizona border with Mexico has become a war zone and Americans are dying, why did the media not challenge Obama when he said the border was secured?
What part of "illegal alien" do liberals not understand?
Why should 12 million illegal criminal aliens be given amnesty when my non-criminal sister-in-law had to wait twelve years to immigrate legally to the States?
Does changing the term to "undocumented immigrants" make illegal aliens any less illegal?
Does changing the term "global warming" to "climate change" make this phony scientific scam any less phony?
Since raising corporate taxes kills job growth, and raising personal income taxes kills retail sales and slows down economic growth, why do politicians still say the answer is to raise taxes?
Why is it that tolerance is only required of those with Christian values, but the ungodly are not required to be tolerant of Christian beliefs?
Why is the misinterpreted non-constitutional phrase "separation of church and state" used to throw Christianity under the bus, but never applied to any other religion from Islam to Wicca?
This is only a sampling of the lunacy that comes at us from left wing intellectuals and their media lap dogs every day. They've got their PhD.'s, and their ungodly, socialist philosophies from their Ivy League schools. They've got their utopian ideas for a perfect world. They arrogantly view themselves as the saviors of mankind while they drive America to the brink of destruction.
In all of the liberal ego bloated brain cells with all of their assumed intellectual superiority there's not an ounce of common sense.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Mt. Pinatubo
Twenty years ago today at 9:15 a.m., I was walking across the VC-5 ramp at Cubi Point in the Philippines to my assigned aircraft. I was about to lead a flight of A-4's to Okinawa. My head was down when one of my wingmen came over pointing to the north and saying, "Look!" A massive plume of light gray ash against a pale blue sky was rising quickly into the air through about 10,000 feet. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo had begun.
By the time I got my gear into my plane, did a quick pre-flight and lit the engine on fire, the light gray cloud was turning darker, shooting up through 20,000 feet at least and falling on the northern shores of Subic Bay. When we reached the hold short, it was so dark across the bay it looked like the blackest of night and it was coming our way. And we had to hold five minutes to wait for the wake turbulence of a DC-10 that had just taken off ahead of us to settle down.
Two months before in early March, I had launched with John "Horse" Cochrane for a Cope Thunder event. Cope Thunder was an Air Force exercise out of Clark Air Base that took place eight times a year. We flew 150 miles west to Scarborough Shoals, found a KC-10 tanker, and topped off our fuel.
We were the bombing package for an attack on the Crow Valley bomb range on the northwest side of Clark. At the commencement of the exercise, we dived down to around 100 feet and flew in across the South China Sea with an F-16 escort overhead. We skirted over the mountains on the peninsula on the west side of Subic Bay, and then headed north to cross a ridge of mountains and drop down onto the target.
As we ingressed we came into what at first we thought was a fog, which was unusual for that late in the morning, but we had to climb to 3,000 feet to maintain visibility. Then the ground under us began to look almost like it was covered with snow. Finally getting across the ridge we saw five plumes of smoke rising from the northern side of the peaks and realized what we were seeing was ash. We were the first to see the initial eruption from the air.
On June 12, we got our flight airborne and another after us just before the airfield was closed. I diverted my flight from the normal departure and turned south to circle around the ash cloud. We turned north and passed about ten miles to the east of Clark. As we climbed through 27,000 feet, I snapped a picture of the eruption. The top of the cloud was around 45,000 feet and as it grew and expanded it took on the appearance of an atomic explosion.
The Air Force had evacuated all Clark personnel to the Subic Bay Naval Station because Clark was only ten miles from the summit of the mountain. Subic was 20 miles to the south-southwest. Interestingly enough, on that morning Clark was in the sunshine while westerly winds blew the smoke and ash toward Subic Bay and the South China Sea.
The next two days saw smaller eruptions, but ash fallout was landing on Clark and Angeles City as well. Then early in the morning on June 15, the big one came. Mt. Pinatubo blew ash, dust, dirt, and stones over 90,000 feet in the air. Over one hundred earthquakes shook the ground during the day and the power went out.
Then as if the eruption wasn't enough, a typhoon rolled right over northern Luzon adding rain and wind to the mix. Great red streaks of lightning slashed horizontally across the blackened sky. Clark and Subic Bay were in total darkness for 36 hours. The ash fell with a consistency of cement collapsing thousands of buildings in Angeles, Olongapo, and other surrounding towns and villages and on the military bases. Hundreds of people were killed.
My future wife's home was 18 miles directly south of the volcano. She had been sleeping soundly when around 10 a.m. her mother woke her up. Leah sleepily wondered what was the problem in the middle of the night and was shocked to know it was the middle of the morning. And then they felt the earthquakes. On a battery powered radio they heard an announcement warning people to clean the ash off their roofs.
Their house was on a slope, and by taking a 2x12 board, they were able to place it on the high side and climb up to the roof to sweep the sand and ash off. Fortunately they did because one of the rafters in the house had already cracked.
In Manila, 60 miles away, a friend of ours, Brenda Garren, went to sleep with her window open to enjoy the cool evening breeze. When she woke in the morning her bedroom was under a two inch layer of dust.
Two hundred miles to the south in northern Palawan, missionaries Harry and Ann Rogers woke to a motor tricycle driving up the lane to their hospital. Their worker came to warn them, "It's raining milk!" The ash mixed with the rain was coming down in a milky white color.
Anticipating the fresh water supply at the naval base would be contaminated, the Navy directed a destroyer (the name of which I don't remember and I don't have my resources to look it up at the moment) to head for Subic Bay. It arrived in the middle of the eruption. The captain ordered all air vents sealed with duct tape and the ship steamed into the darkness and found its way into the bay using sonar. And fortunate it was the ship was there. It's water desalinization plant was the only source of water on the base for weeks.
Clark Air Base was a loss and the Air Force walked away no questions asked. Subic Bay, however, had something the Air Force didn't have: Seabees. The Seabees said, "We can fix this," and they went about fixing it. They cleared the mud off the roads and the airfield, repaired the water treatment plants, and in two weeks Cubi Point was open for limited operations.
The devastation was indescribable. There was an area around Mt. Pinatubo on the west and north sides that was a series of deep jungle covered ravines. Nobody lived in there and we used to call it "Prehistoric Valley" because it was so primitive it looked like a place you would find dinosaurs. The eruption filled those valleys, some of them several hundred feet deep, including the Crow Valley bombing range. The forestation was gone and flying over it, it looked like what you'd expect to see on the moon.
The rainy season usually starts in June, but the rains were late coming that year. When they finally did, they started washing all the dirt out of those valleys. Just as some people thought they were going to move back into their homes and rebuild, lahar (volcanic mud flows) swept down the valleys and carried away or buried entire towns.
Leah and I had been trying to make wedding plans, but there was a ton of red tape to go through. Mt. Pinatubo literally made it tons worse. We had to get certain documents from the Local Civil Registrars Office, but the building was destroyed and the records were lost. When the eruption was over, we had to start all over.
When we finally got married, we had planned our honeymoon in Hong Kong. But to get to Manila we had to take a Victory Liner bus, and rains had left the entire country side north of Manila under two feet of water, and the highway under several feet of mud. What was normally a two and a half hour trip took us seven hours.
A year later, almost to the day, I flew my last flight in an A-4. It was a freebie. I went out sight seeing all of my favorite places in northern Luzon, including flying down a flat river bed at 350 knots to see how bold I was and how low I could get. I had set my radar altimeter at 25 feet and it was flashing at me before I climbed out. I finished the flight going where no man had gone before.
The rains had left a lake inside the Pinatubo crater, but steam continued to rise from several vents and a strong sulfuric smell pervaded the air. On the northwest side of the crater was a wide, deep crevasse. The water from the lake flowed down through the crevasse and out into Iba Valley. I got down into the valley at 100 feet and flew up the crevasse into the crater at about 450 knots. Turbulence was so bad as I flew through the crevasse that I had to climb slightly, but then as I reached the center of the lake I pulled my nose straight up and flew out of the crater.
A few days ago, almost 20 years exactly, I went back to Mt. Pinatubo. My son, Jonathan, and I, and some friends went up to Crow Valley and took a jeep across the valley and up the ravine as far as we could go. Over the years the rains have basically washed away all the mud that had filled the bomb range, and although the target areas aren't there anymore, I recognized the spot where the old simulated airstrip, buildings, and fake planes sat waiting for the bombs to drop, and the circular target at the head of the valley.
The Philippine Air Force is still using the area where the circular target was for a weapon's range, and on our way out we had to wait 45 minutes for two OV-10's to strafe, lay smoke and shoot rockets.
As we got out of the target area and into the ravine we had to drive up the river, around boulders, across the leftover mud, and through the water. We went several miles until we reached the extent that the vehicles could go, and then we continued on foot. We still had three or so miles to traverse across very rocky, sandy, and muddy ground, and shallow water runoff so wide there was no way to avoid getting our feet wet.
The walls of the ravine were in places 200 feet high or more, and looked to be plastered with mud and volcanic ash. In places great heaps of mud had fallen to the bottom, and no doubt with every rain more of it continues to fall and wash away. We finally reached a rest area at the top of the canyon. Our guide told us that when they originally built the three pagoda like pavilions, they had been able to drive all the way up the canyon to that spot. So much mud has washed away that now they can't even get close.
We hiked on another 15 minutes until we crossed the ridge, and before us was a magnificent valley with a deep, lime green lake. At the top a little resort like area had been built with a refreshment stand, and a long, steep, stone staircase went down 169 steps to the shores of the crater lake. The water was cool and we were hot and soaked from the humidity. We had not come prepared to swim, but when we got there the temptation was too great, so stripping down to our skivvies, we jumped in.
We were in a bay on the east side of the crater. The crevasse I flew in through was around a point to the west and we couldn't see the valley from where we were. The water, although it looked beautifully clear from above, was so murky you couldn't see five feet in it. Our friend, Pastor Jihan Senina, and I swam the quarter mile or so across the bay to sheer cliffs on the other side and then back.
I couldn't help but think how beautiful, relaxing, and restful, was this place that had caused so much trouble and devastation so many years ago. And I was reminded that God will make all things beautiful in His time (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
By the time I got my gear into my plane, did a quick pre-flight and lit the engine on fire, the light gray cloud was turning darker, shooting up through 20,000 feet at least and falling on the northern shores of Subic Bay. When we reached the hold short, it was so dark across the bay it looked like the blackest of night and it was coming our way. And we had to hold five minutes to wait for the wake turbulence of a DC-10 that had just taken off ahead of us to settle down.
Two months before in early March, I had launched with John "Horse" Cochrane for a Cope Thunder event. Cope Thunder was an Air Force exercise out of Clark Air Base that took place eight times a year. We flew 150 miles west to Scarborough Shoals, found a KC-10 tanker, and topped off our fuel.
We were the bombing package for an attack on the Crow Valley bomb range on the northwest side of Clark. At the commencement of the exercise, we dived down to around 100 feet and flew in across the South China Sea with an F-16 escort overhead. We skirted over the mountains on the peninsula on the west side of Subic Bay, and then headed north to cross a ridge of mountains and drop down onto the target.
As we ingressed we came into what at first we thought was a fog, which was unusual for that late in the morning, but we had to climb to 3,000 feet to maintain visibility. Then the ground under us began to look almost like it was covered with snow. Finally getting across the ridge we saw five plumes of smoke rising from the northern side of the peaks and realized what we were seeing was ash. We were the first to see the initial eruption from the air.
On June 12, we got our flight airborne and another after us just before the airfield was closed. I diverted my flight from the normal departure and turned south to circle around the ash cloud. We turned north and passed about ten miles to the east of Clark. As we climbed through 27,000 feet, I snapped a picture of the eruption. The top of the cloud was around 45,000 feet and as it grew and expanded it took on the appearance of an atomic explosion.
The Air Force had evacuated all Clark personnel to the Subic Bay Naval Station because Clark was only ten miles from the summit of the mountain. Subic was 20 miles to the south-southwest. Interestingly enough, on that morning Clark was in the sunshine while westerly winds blew the smoke and ash toward Subic Bay and the South China Sea.
The next two days saw smaller eruptions, but ash fallout was landing on Clark and Angeles City as well. Then early in the morning on June 15, the big one came. Mt. Pinatubo blew ash, dust, dirt, and stones over 90,000 feet in the air. Over one hundred earthquakes shook the ground during the day and the power went out.
Then as if the eruption wasn't enough, a typhoon rolled right over northern Luzon adding rain and wind to the mix. Great red streaks of lightning slashed horizontally across the blackened sky. Clark and Subic Bay were in total darkness for 36 hours. The ash fell with a consistency of cement collapsing thousands of buildings in Angeles, Olongapo, and other surrounding towns and villages and on the military bases. Hundreds of people were killed.
My future wife's home was 18 miles directly south of the volcano. She had been sleeping soundly when around 10 a.m. her mother woke her up. Leah sleepily wondered what was the problem in the middle of the night and was shocked to know it was the middle of the morning. And then they felt the earthquakes. On a battery powered radio they heard an announcement warning people to clean the ash off their roofs.
Their house was on a slope, and by taking a 2x12 board, they were able to place it on the high side and climb up to the roof to sweep the sand and ash off. Fortunately they did because one of the rafters in the house had already cracked.
In Manila, 60 miles away, a friend of ours, Brenda Garren, went to sleep with her window open to enjoy the cool evening breeze. When she woke in the morning her bedroom was under a two inch layer of dust.
Two hundred miles to the south in northern Palawan, missionaries Harry and Ann Rogers woke to a motor tricycle driving up the lane to their hospital. Their worker came to warn them, "It's raining milk!" The ash mixed with the rain was coming down in a milky white color.
Anticipating the fresh water supply at the naval base would be contaminated, the Navy directed a destroyer (the name of which I don't remember and I don't have my resources to look it up at the moment) to head for Subic Bay. It arrived in the middle of the eruption. The captain ordered all air vents sealed with duct tape and the ship steamed into the darkness and found its way into the bay using sonar. And fortunate it was the ship was there. It's water desalinization plant was the only source of water on the base for weeks.
Clark Air Base was a loss and the Air Force walked away no questions asked. Subic Bay, however, had something the Air Force didn't have: Seabees. The Seabees said, "We can fix this," and they went about fixing it. They cleared the mud off the roads and the airfield, repaired the water treatment plants, and in two weeks Cubi Point was open for limited operations.
The devastation was indescribable. There was an area around Mt. Pinatubo on the west and north sides that was a series of deep jungle covered ravines. Nobody lived in there and we used to call it "Prehistoric Valley" because it was so primitive it looked like a place you would find dinosaurs. The eruption filled those valleys, some of them several hundred feet deep, including the Crow Valley bombing range. The forestation was gone and flying over it, it looked like what you'd expect to see on the moon.
The rainy season usually starts in June, but the rains were late coming that year. When they finally did, they started washing all the dirt out of those valleys. Just as some people thought they were going to move back into their homes and rebuild, lahar (volcanic mud flows) swept down the valleys and carried away or buried entire towns.
Leah and I had been trying to make wedding plans, but there was a ton of red tape to go through. Mt. Pinatubo literally made it tons worse. We had to get certain documents from the Local Civil Registrars Office, but the building was destroyed and the records were lost. When the eruption was over, we had to start all over.
When we finally got married, we had planned our honeymoon in Hong Kong. But to get to Manila we had to take a Victory Liner bus, and rains had left the entire country side north of Manila under two feet of water, and the highway under several feet of mud. What was normally a two and a half hour trip took us seven hours.
A year later, almost to the day, I flew my last flight in an A-4. It was a freebie. I went out sight seeing all of my favorite places in northern Luzon, including flying down a flat river bed at 350 knots to see how bold I was and how low I could get. I had set my radar altimeter at 25 feet and it was flashing at me before I climbed out. I finished the flight going where no man had gone before.
The rains had left a lake inside the Pinatubo crater, but steam continued to rise from several vents and a strong sulfuric smell pervaded the air. On the northwest side of the crater was a wide, deep crevasse. The water from the lake flowed down through the crevasse and out into Iba Valley. I got down into the valley at 100 feet and flew up the crevasse into the crater at about 450 knots. Turbulence was so bad as I flew through the crevasse that I had to climb slightly, but then as I reached the center of the lake I pulled my nose straight up and flew out of the crater.
A few days ago, almost 20 years exactly, I went back to Mt. Pinatubo. My son, Jonathan, and I, and some friends went up to Crow Valley and took a jeep across the valley and up the ravine as far as we could go. Over the years the rains have basically washed away all the mud that had filled the bomb range, and although the target areas aren't there anymore, I recognized the spot where the old simulated airstrip, buildings, and fake planes sat waiting for the bombs to drop, and the circular target at the head of the valley.
The Philippine Air Force is still using the area where the circular target was for a weapon's range, and on our way out we had to wait 45 minutes for two OV-10's to strafe, lay smoke and shoot rockets.
As we got out of the target area and into the ravine we had to drive up the river, around boulders, across the leftover mud, and through the water. We went several miles until we reached the extent that the vehicles could go, and then we continued on foot. We still had three or so miles to traverse across very rocky, sandy, and muddy ground, and shallow water runoff so wide there was no way to avoid getting our feet wet.
The walls of the ravine were in places 200 feet high or more, and looked to be plastered with mud and volcanic ash. In places great heaps of mud had fallen to the bottom, and no doubt with every rain more of it continues to fall and wash away. We finally reached a rest area at the top of the canyon. Our guide told us that when they originally built the three pagoda like pavilions, they had been able to drive all the way up the canyon to that spot. So much mud has washed away that now they can't even get close.
We hiked on another 15 minutes until we crossed the ridge, and before us was a magnificent valley with a deep, lime green lake. At the top a little resort like area had been built with a refreshment stand, and a long, steep, stone staircase went down 169 steps to the shores of the crater lake. The water was cool and we were hot and soaked from the humidity. We had not come prepared to swim, but when we got there the temptation was too great, so stripping down to our skivvies, we jumped in.
We were in a bay on the east side of the crater. The crevasse I flew in through was around a point to the west and we couldn't see the valley from where we were. The water, although it looked beautifully clear from above, was so murky you couldn't see five feet in it. Our friend, Pastor Jihan Senina, and I swam the quarter mile or so across the bay to sheer cliffs on the other side and then back.
I couldn't help but think how beautiful, relaxing, and restful, was this place that had caused so much trouble and devastation so many years ago. And I was reminded that God will make all things beautiful in His time (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Remembering James Arness
In the 1950's the growing new medium of television invaded American homes and one of the most popular TV genres was the western. The first western to appear was the Hopalong Cassidy show in 1949. Many of the early programs such as The Roy Rogers Show, Gene Autry, and The Lone Ranger were oriented more toward child audiences. Plots were usually pretty simple 30-minute "shoot-em-ups" with the good guys in white hats and the bad guys in black hats.
As television grew programs became more sophisticated and westerns began to target adult audiences. By 1959 there were 26 westerns on prime time TV, and eight of the top ten rated shows were westerns.
The first hour long western, Cheyenne, premiered in September of 1956, and starred a six foot six inch hunk who could have won a Mr. America contest, Clint Walker. About a post-Civil War frontier scout wandering across the West, the program was initially popular and ran for eight seasons, but the hour long format was new and presented unique difficulties, and fewer episodes were produced. Although the lead character, Cheyenne, was a good guy, he was a drifter with no home roots, and the show eventually became monotonous and lost its appeal.
The same month Cheyenne hit the airways, another western about Marshal Matt Dillon of Dodge City, also premiered. Gunsmoke starred another tall (6 foot 7 inch), although not quite as big, actor by the name of James Arness. With a cast of steady characters, home roots, and first rate script writers, the show was a hit, finishing first in the TV ratings five years running from 1957-61.
James Arness had been wounded in the right leg in the invasion at Anzio in World War 2. In his autobiography he wrote that his favorite hymn was "Holy, Holy, Holy," and that as he lay in a field severely wounded and unable to move, that hymn went through his mind over and over through the night until he was rescued.
He spent a year in the hospital recovering and after the war got into radio broadcasting, which then led to the movies. In 1951 he met John Wayne and starred in four movies with him for Batjac, Wayne's production company, including the anti-communist film, Big Jim McClain. He and Wayne developed a great friendship, shared the same conservative values, and it was John Wayne that recommended Arness for the roll of Matt Dillon.
Gunsmoke became the longest running drama in television history, lasting for 20 years. Following Gunsmoke, Arness made several TV movies and the miniseries, How the West Was Won, one of the best things ever done on television.
During the filming of How the West Was Won, a horse riding club, the Westernaires, from Jefferson County in Colorado was used for the US cavalry in three episodes. My brother, Randall, was a member of the Westernaires and spent several days around Canon City, Colorado where they were filming. (We saw him on screen twice!)
Randall, who has spent his life in the entertainment business, was particularly interested in how the actors worked and performed. He watched Arness closely whenever he had a chance, and one day had the privilege of a long chat and having his picture taken with another great actor, Ricardo Montalban. When he had a chance to meet James Arness, Arness was very kind and personable without the least bit of Hollywood pride or arrogance.
In more recent years Arness started a website (www.jamesarness.com) in which he posted a monthly update on his activities and answered questions from his fans, mostly about Gunsmoke and his relationships with the cast. He was very generous in his remembrances about his co-stars and the entire Gunsmoke experience, and he always made a plug for the United Cerebral Palsy foundation with which he had been actively involved for years.
About four years ago he announced that he would no longer be making public appearances and I noticed in the last year or more that his updates were becoming fewer and I began to wonder about his health. Sadly today we learned of his passing away.
When I was about six years old, Friday nights at our house consisted of dinner, then moving to the living room to watch Paladin, followed by Gunsmoke. Paladin, as most of the rest of the westerns, faded into obscurity, but Gunsmoke continued on year after year. Matt Dillon bringing justice to the wild west, and promoting pro-family morality and good neighborly values was part of my upbringing.
James Arness, a real American hero, will be missed.
As television grew programs became more sophisticated and westerns began to target adult audiences. By 1959 there were 26 westerns on prime time TV, and eight of the top ten rated shows were westerns.
The first hour long western, Cheyenne, premiered in September of 1956, and starred a six foot six inch hunk who could have won a Mr. America contest, Clint Walker. About a post-Civil War frontier scout wandering across the West, the program was initially popular and ran for eight seasons, but the hour long format was new and presented unique difficulties, and fewer episodes were produced. Although the lead character, Cheyenne, was a good guy, he was a drifter with no home roots, and the show eventually became monotonous and lost its appeal.
The same month Cheyenne hit the airways, another western about Marshal Matt Dillon of Dodge City, also premiered. Gunsmoke starred another tall (6 foot 7 inch), although not quite as big, actor by the name of James Arness. With a cast of steady characters, home roots, and first rate script writers, the show was a hit, finishing first in the TV ratings five years running from 1957-61.
James Arness had been wounded in the right leg in the invasion at Anzio in World War 2. In his autobiography he wrote that his favorite hymn was "Holy, Holy, Holy," and that as he lay in a field severely wounded and unable to move, that hymn went through his mind over and over through the night until he was rescued.
He spent a year in the hospital recovering and after the war got into radio broadcasting, which then led to the movies. In 1951 he met John Wayne and starred in four movies with him for Batjac, Wayne's production company, including the anti-communist film, Big Jim McClain. He and Wayne developed a great friendship, shared the same conservative values, and it was John Wayne that recommended Arness for the roll of Matt Dillon.
Gunsmoke became the longest running drama in television history, lasting for 20 years. Following Gunsmoke, Arness made several TV movies and the miniseries, How the West Was Won, one of the best things ever done on television.
During the filming of How the West Was Won, a horse riding club, the Westernaires, from Jefferson County in Colorado was used for the US cavalry in three episodes. My brother, Randall, was a member of the Westernaires and spent several days around Canon City, Colorado where they were filming. (We saw him on screen twice!)
Randall, who has spent his life in the entertainment business, was particularly interested in how the actors worked and performed. He watched Arness closely whenever he had a chance, and one day had the privilege of a long chat and having his picture taken with another great actor, Ricardo Montalban. When he had a chance to meet James Arness, Arness was very kind and personable without the least bit of Hollywood pride or arrogance.
In more recent years Arness started a website (www.jamesarness.com) in which he posted a monthly update on his activities and answered questions from his fans, mostly about Gunsmoke and his relationships with the cast. He was very generous in his remembrances about his co-stars and the entire Gunsmoke experience, and he always made a plug for the United Cerebral Palsy foundation with which he had been actively involved for years.
About four years ago he announced that he would no longer be making public appearances and I noticed in the last year or more that his updates were becoming fewer and I began to wonder about his health. Sadly today we learned of his passing away.
When I was about six years old, Friday nights at our house consisted of dinner, then moving to the living room to watch Paladin, followed by Gunsmoke. Paladin, as most of the rest of the westerns, faded into obscurity, but Gunsmoke continued on year after year. Matt Dillon bringing justice to the wild west, and promoting pro-family morality and good neighborly values was part of my upbringing.
James Arness, a real American hero, will be missed.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Memorial Day
American Flyer salutes all who have served and are serving, and remembers those who have given the "last full measure of devotion." If it weren't for those who loved country more than life, we would have neither. God bless all of you, and God bless America.
My Country tis of Thee,
Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing,
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountain side let freedom ring.
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free, thy name I love.
I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills,
My heart with rapture thrills, like that above.
Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees, sweet freedom's song.
Let mortal tongues awake, let all that breathe partake,
Let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.
Our father's God, to Thee,
Author of liberty, to Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright, with freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might, Great God our King.
My Country tis of Thee,
Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing,
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountain side let freedom ring.
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free, thy name I love.
I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills,
My heart with rapture thrills, like that above.
Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees, sweet freedom's song.
Let mortal tongues awake, let all that breathe partake,
Let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.
Our father's God, to Thee,
Author of liberty, to Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright, with freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might, Great God our King.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)