by Stephen Dietrich, Managing Editor
“Time will not dim the glory of their deeds.”
Every day on my walk into the office in Baltimore, I see the same stone memorial.
Until yesterday, I had never bothered to stop and acknowledge the significance of it.
As far as war memorials go, this isn’t the prime tourist destination of my city. It’s a nice, but small and slightly tucked back memorial just outside of Baltimore’s Camden Yards stadium – built after the city tore down the Orioles old Memorial Stadium, as a way to continue to honor our nation’s veterans.
It exists only as a reminder to all who pass by.
“Time will not dim the glory of their deeds.”
That’s about all it says. Just a reminder, simple as that. A simple reminder that – I admit — is easy for folks like me to ignore during my everyday routine.
Hundreds of people walk by it every day. Thousands, when there’s a baseball game in town. Like me, every day in our country, Americans are consumed with a mountain of work to tackle, remembering to pick up the kids from daycare, getting groceries and paying bills, swing by the dry cleaners, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash.
It seems these days there are many important things to do, and seemingly little time to do it.
But yesterday, I stopped. I noticed. And I took a moment to consider what the memorial really says.
“Time will not dim the glory of their deeds.”
The beauty of such a monument is hidden in its simplicity. It is a reminder of what is truly important.
It was intentionally set back from the walkway — designed to be more silent than loud.
It’s a quote from General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, the leader of the American expeditionary force in France in World War I.
And it exists only as a quiet reminder to our nation.
“Time will not dim the glory of their deeds.”
A tribute to every American warrior who has taken up arms in defense of our nation.
The memorial is stony-faced. Silent, and often alone. Appreciated, but largely overlooked during the day-to-day hustle and bustle.
To really see it, you have to step out of the normal flow of traffic. You have to stop your everyday routine for just a moment, and step into the memorial.
“Time will not dim the glory of their deeds.”
A haunting reminder of the tremendous sacrifice the heroes of democracy have given. Of the cruel altar thousands of our nation’s bravest have laid their bodies upon in sacrifice for our grand democracy.
We live in a free republic, whose future is decided by the will of “We the People” – free from kings, dictators and the tyranny that is so common in the man’s history. We live in peace and prosperity.
Because they only serve as our watchful, silent sentinels – ever on guard.
“Time will not dim the glory of their deeds.”
Like this memorial, our soldiers and veterans are not flashy. They do not demand our fealty or obedience.
They often do not get even our attention.
Still, they dutifully board ships and planes and travel thousands of miles to die on strange lands. They sacrifice in silence as our shield bearers; brave souls who cross the globe to do battle and ensure our enemies’ spears cannot reach the heart of America.
Like the knights of myth, they don their armor and ride off to slay the dragons in their caves.
They do all of this, and often these deeds fail to demand our attention. There’s no pep rally at the local high school, or evening news update anymore.
They exist in our lives, but not in our way. They are our eternal sentinels, always standing guard. Always facing outward. Always.
“Time will not dim the glory of their deeds.”
Those words ring true. Time will not — cannot — dim their glory, as long as Americans give a moment to honor them.
To honor their courage. Their sacrifice. And their commitment to freedom and democracy so strong, they are willing to leave their families knowing they may never come home – and knowing they are too often ignored.
The citizens of the State of Maryland dedicate this memorial to all veterans who so valiantly fought and served in our nations wars with eternal gratitude to those who made the supreme sacrifice throughout the world.
Stephen Dietrich is the Managing Editor of The Horn News, and is a veteran of the Iraq War
Find them jobs and give them good medical treatment. Rhetoric and cliché’s aren’t helping.
you are so right. Makes me sick that our veterans get less than illegals. THey fight and some don’t even get the right to vote like one vet said in Colorado he fought to give Iraq people the right to vote and his vote didn’t count in COlorado.
America is doing nothing for them, they did nothing when they said they would improve the hospitals and they brought up that jerk who would our could not answer one question after he was put into office to clean up the Veteran’s administration. Another appointee from the muslim in our White House whose main goal is to destroy our country. Blogging etc does nothing,
I have often thought that we should have a Constitutional Amendment requiring the Commander in Chief to have served in the US Military. Just my opinion.
So True
I LOVE OUR VETERANS!! Thank you for your service!!
I appreciate my freedoms and my families freedoms. I appreciate our veterans and feel they deserve ONLY the best.
I use to frequent the VA Hospital with my Father, God Rest his soul, and I was disturbed on how long the veterans have to wait for treatment of any kind. They deserve the BEST.
Our country is ONLY FREE BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE!!!
God Bless America and God Bless our veterans. !!
you are a great American, I have twin grandsons in the US Marines and one wanted to make a career of it but is leaving because of what is going on. He told me Gram you have no idea what this muslim is doing to our count ry, I cannot stay in and call him my Commander in Chief. He fired 2500 or more of our great military leaders and many resigned because they didn’t want to be blamed for what he is doing to this country. If you go to parades you see no young people, only us older people are there. The young people are not taught history etc in school, but what they are taught is the Koran. Believe it true because my grandkids tell me.
Stephen, the author of the article, is either misguided or misinformed when he writes glowingly (and inaccurately) about “Our Democracy.”
The Founders and Framers despised democracy, and rightfully so.
This country was founded as a Republic, and even better, a Constitutional Republic, that is, a system of governance in which all officeholders are required to swear oaths of obedience to IT above all loyalties to every human. This is what Rule of Law MEANS, as opposed to a Rule of Man, like in kingships or dictatorships or Party rule…or Oligarchal rule, for that matter(e.g. When Corporations Rule the World).
THAT is what the heroes fought and died for, NOT DEMOCRACY.
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths…”
“We may define a republic to be … a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.”
~James Madison, Federalist No. 10, (1787)
“A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.” Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Our military training manuals used to contain the correct definitions of Democracy and Republic. The following comes from Training Manual No. 2000-25 published by the War Department, November 30, 1928.
DEMOCRACY:
• A government of the masses.
• Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of “direct” expression.
• Results in mobocracy.
• Attitude toward property is communistic–negating property rights.
• Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether is be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
• Results in demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
REPUBLIC:
• Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.
• Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.
• A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.
• Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy.
• Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.
• Is the “standard form” of government throughout the world.
The manuals containing these definitions were ordered destroyed without explanation about the same time that President Franklin D. Roosevelt made private ownership of our lawful money (US Minted Gold Coins) illegal. Shortly after the people turned in their $20 gold coins, the price was increased from $20 per ounce to $35 per ounce. Almost overnight, F.D.R., the most popular president this century (elected 4 times), looted almost half of this nation’s wealth, while convincing the people that it was for their own good. Many of F.D.R.’s policies were suggested by his right hand man, Harry Hopkins, who said,
“Tax and Tax, Spend and Spend, Elect and Elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference.”
“As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government (that of a Republic) presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.”
James Madison, The Federalist 55
“If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of the public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of the public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.”
—Benjamin Disraeli
“The great object is, in a republican government, to guard effectually against perpetuating any portion of power, great or small, in the same man or family. This perpetuation of power is totally uncongenial to the true spirit of republican governments.”
–Richard Henry Lee, in 1787
“That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangements of the powers of society, or, in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws, is the best of republics.”
— John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)
Reference: The Works of John Adams, Charles Adams, ed., 194
“No good government but what is republican…the very definition of a republic is ‘an empire of laws, and not of men.'”
–John Adams(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President
Source: “Thoughts on Government” January, 1776
“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right.”
— H. L. Mencken(1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic
“I wouldn’t call it fascism, exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed-down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either.”
— Edward Zehr(1936-2001) Columnist
“Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation.”
— Karl Marx, Father of Communism, Author of the ‘Communist Manifesto’
“It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.”
–Lord Acton[John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton] (1834-1902), First Baron Acton of Aldenham
Source: The History of Freedom in Antiquity, 1877
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”:
–John Adams(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President
Source: letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814
“…[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention…intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often… oppress only a few, but it is the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country.”
–Fisher Ames(1758-1808), American statesman, orator and political writer
Source: 1805
“Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism.”
–Fisher Ames(1758-1808), American statesman, orator and political writer
“A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.”:
–Aristotle(384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
–Giordano Bruno(1548-1699)
Source: On Shadows of Ideas
“The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.”
–Edmund Burke(1729-1797) Irish-born British statesman, parliamentary orator, and political thinker
“Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business: and gives in the long run a net result of zero.”
–Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881) Scottish Philosopher and Author
Source: Chartism, VI 1839
“It is not true that democracy will always safeguard freedom of conscience better than autocracy. Witness the most famous of all trials. Pilate was, from the standpoint of the Jews, certainly the representative of autocracy. Yet he tried to protect freedom. And he yielded to a democracy.”
— Joseph A. Schumpeter, 1942.
“English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralized democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.”
— James Anthony Froude(1818-1894) Author and historian
Source: Short Studies on Great Subjects, 1872
“The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.”
— Thomas Jefferson (Letter to William Hunter, 11 March 1790) Reference: Bartlett’s; check LOA edition
“When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.”
—Fredrich August von Hayek
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it—good and hard.”
—H. L. Mencken
“[W]e are confirmed in the opinion, that the present age would be deficient in their duty to God, their posterity and themselves, if they do not establish an American republic. This is the only form of government we wish to see established; for we can never be willingly subject to any other King than He who, being possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness and rectitude, is alone fit to possess unlimited power.”
~Instructions of Malden, Massachusetts for a Declaration of Independence, 27 May 1776 Reference: Documents of American History, Commager, vol. 1 (97)
“When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.”
— Fredrich August von Hayek(1899-1992), Nobel Laureate of Economic Sciences 1974
“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the well-born; the other the mass of the people … turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the Government …Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.”
— Alexander Hamilton(1757-1804)
Source: speech to the Constitutional Convention concerning the United States Senate, 06/18/1787, quoted in the notes of Judge Yates
These are just SOME of the citations which prove what i allege beyond a shadow of a doubt. Had Stephen been aware of this, he may have worded his Op-ed a bit differently and more accurately. i hope he learns from this.
Constitutionalist – you are absolutely right, except when you are wrong!
Most of your quotes are taken from historical sources during periods when education was limited and the unwashed, volatile masses may not have been the best arbiters of sensible government.
You are true in stating that the Founding Fathers wanted a ‘Republic’ (as the the Greek tradition of rule by the wealthy) rather than a Democracy (as in the Icelandic tradition of the ‘All-thing’). But be realistic – your definition, based on historical precedent rather than modern example would exclude much of the excitement and turmoil (yes!) of latter-day politics. Would Trump (or will Trump) be permissible in such a chaotic process as ‘Mobocracy’. Would Reagan have prevailed? I doubt it !
The mere existence of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and even the UK belies your belief (and has done so since 1603 with the rise of the Parliamentarians in England).
It is the very uncertainty of Democracy that throws up characters who possess the imagination and foresight to envision a path forward where more traditional voices would have advocated restraint. After all was it not Winston Churchill who reiterated the adage ” Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…” And even he was thrown to the wolves after WW2 !
However, to change the subject back to the article, Stephen’s emphasis upon the exaggerated worship of warriors of past wars seems to ignore the current realities of their shabby treatment by stingy politicians (yes – shame upon the Republican scrooges who shrink the very funding that would help the wounded, as well as the widows and orphans.
To quote Laurence Binyon’s poem …
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.”
But what about the wounded living … and their dependents?
Their suffering shames us all, whatever our political persuasion.
Globalist-
Ok, for unknown reasons at present, my post is being blocked – so i’ll be posting in sections, trying to determine the offensive word being used which has triggered the blocking software.
First, thanks for replying to my post; too few do.
Second, why accuse “ME” of being wrong? i quoted people from the times of the ancient Greeks to the 1940’s, all of whom say essentially the same thing: “democracy sux.” How am i wrong for agreeing with them? How are THEY wrong? They’re obviously far more intelligent than the majority of those who post here, for example, and the general populace in the aggregate, as well(especially democratic voters)…so that’s who your real argument is with, not me. Only the ignorant, the deceived, the brainwashed, or the willfully-complicit w/socialists speak glowingly of democracy, e.g.:
I have a family of many military men and women
So sad to know that a family me ever serving in the USAF at this time, and serving over seas,had to wait 6 mos for boots and a back pack.
As the Obamas spend millions on the family vacation every year.
Or military is not treated right. They get grunt wages, as the low life protestors are out chanting for $15.00 an hour. Losers. And friggin Hillary and never had a job Bernie feel everyone deserves $15.00 an hour. They obviously have NEVER run a business, let alone had a real job.
Stupid Americans. They need to wake up. Pay attention. Get a clue.
You’re only worth what you are worth. Burger flippers, etc are jobs meant school aged young adults. If you want to make more money- EARN IT.
Some jobs, I agree, should pay $15.00 an hour. But, the average every day job, that any 16 yr old can perform is worth much less than $15.00 an hour.
The military men and women are the ones that deserve a raise. !!!!!!!!! And the elderly !!!!
The traitor in Chief is a pos
He would crap his pants within seconds on the front line. He is a complete pansy and I can’t wait until he is GONE. !!!!
Our military men and women have PRIDE- something Obammy doesn’t have. He does not LOVE America. Him and his tranny wife are traitors.
I can’t wait until President TRUMP starts to PROVE what these low life’s are. They are NOT eligible. Trump is for the people and he WILL show us the TRUTH!!!
TRUMP2016!!!