God deals out humility to me in big doses through my readers. (That's you, you know.)

SGT Rodger Young in a photo taken before he was reduced to the rank of private at his own request because he felt he could not carry out the duties of squad leader conscientiously due to problems with his hearing and eyesight. The shortest man in his company, his health qualified him as 4-F and he could have spent the war in a cushy defense plant job. He refused.

Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Army, 148th Infantry, 37th Infantry Division. Place and date: On New Georgia, Solomon Islands, 31 July 1943. Entered service at: Clyde, Ohio. Birth: Tiffin, Ohio. G.O. No.: 3, 6 January 1944. Citation: On 31 July 1943, the infantry company of which Pvt. Young was a member, was ordered to make a limited withdrawal from the battle line in order to adjust the battalion's position for the night. At this time, Pvt. Young's platoon was engaged with the enemy in a dense jungle where observation was very limited. The platoon suddenly was pinned down by intense fire from a Japanese machinegun concealed on higher ground only 75 yards away. The initial burst wounded Pvt. Young. As the platoon started to obey the order to withdraw, Pvt. Young called out that he could see the enemy emplacement, whereupon he started creeping toward it. Another burst from the machinegun wounded him the second time. Despite the wounds, he continued his heroic advance, attracting enemy fire and answering with rifle fire. When he was close enough to his objective, he began throwing handgrenades, and while doing so was hit again and killed. Pvt. Young's bold action in closing with this Japanese pillbox and thus diverting its fire, permitted his platoon to disengage itself, without loss, and was responsible for several enemy casualties. -- Medal of Honor citation for PVT Rodger W. Young.

Folks,

My legal bills are not yet outstripping my ability to pay because of notes like this:

Mike,

Please find enclosed my support for your legal issues. I understand that you put yourself squarely in the crosshairs of those who have no regard for our rights or liberties. No one man should have to shoulder that burden alone. This is the least I can do. God bless you and your family, and may He smile upon us all in this struggle against injustice, and our eternal fight for freedom!

Daniel B.

Enclosed was a check.

Mind you, I have not asked for such donations, they just flow in. Not in a flood, but in a steady trickle. Most of them are twenty dollars or less. People sending what they can, even though they could certainly use it themselves. One envelope contained seven dollars, all in ones. SEVEN dollars. Not five, not ten, but seven. That tells me that the fellow who sent it enclosed every cent he could spare that day.

Every cent.

I'm sure that Daniel and others who have sent me money had plenty of other things they could have spent it on in these times. But they didn't. They sent it to me. To ME.

Like the promises of "One hundred heads," such gestures from the heart never fail to make me bend my knees to God in thanks.

You know, I was giving a speech the other day in Michigan (the video of which we will be posting as soon as some more faces in the crowd are depixelated) and when I got to the part about how folks who call me a hero shouldn't because I don't even come close to that definition, I choked up. My voice shifted up an octave and I could barely stutter out the words. But if I wept, it was out of vast humility and a sense of inadequacy to the task, of not measuring up to the need.

Heroes, real heroes, are not celebrities high and low, or winning athletes, or even soldiers or policemen or firemen who simply do their jobs without incident. Being in a dangerous profession does not make you a "hero," and being a loud-mouthed scribbler of unpopular political opinions certainly doesn't either.

A hero, for those of you in doubt, is someone who throws himself on a smoking hand grenade to save the life of his buddy in the same foxhole, or a farm boy like Rodger Young who stands up into the middle of enfilade fire in what is certain suicide in order to charge and kill the bunker that is decimating his friends. Those are heroes.

I am not a hero. I am not even sure I'm a very good leader.

To me, it is scandalous that most folks today consider sports stars to be "heroes." They are not and to call them that devalues the word and the sacrifices of real heroes.

The truth is that I take no more risks than any one of you Three Percenters who have decided that you won't be pushed back anymore from the free exercise of your liberties. In a surveillance society that puts Orwell's 1984 in the shade, we are ALL on the front line.

But until we are called to throw ourselves on a grenade or stand up and charge a bunker, we will never be "heroes," just citizens.

But that in itself is no small honor. Citizens -- free men and free women who take their rights and responsibilities seriously -- are rare enough these days. In fact, we are in this mess because there are too few citizens and too many serfs in this country.

So, if you wish to call me a "citizen," then I will gratefully and humbly accept that honor for I feel I have tried my best to earn it. But remember, most of you have too, or you wouldn't be visiting here on a regular basis.

To all of you, but especially to the Daniel B.'s who do things, not because they are pressured or even asked but because they anticipate a need and respond willingly, I thank you humbly and am grateful to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you all in this fight -- a fight which is perhaps the defining moment for free peoples everywhere -- for the survival and restoration of the Founders' Republic.

May God bless and keep you all, and may God save the Republic.

Mike
III

Postscript: It was no accident that Robert Heinlein named the troop transport in Starship Troopers the "Rodger Young." While the war was yet raging, The Ballad of Rodger Young became the anthem of the infantry, although these days that sort of thing is out of fashion.