Sipsey Street Irregulars: Today is my son Matt's thirty-fourth birthday.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Today is my son Matt's thirty-fourth birthday.

He is spending it in Afghanistan with the United States Army -- his fourth deployment since 2003 (three in Iraq and now in the 'Stan." It is hard for me to believe that he is that old, but he is, now with two sons and a daughter of his own. I remember vividly the day he was born -- the day we almost lost him as well -- as one of the proudest of my life. Happy birthday, Matt. I'm proud of you. Come home safe.

9 comments:

eddy3 said...: Happy Birthday Matt! Thank You for your service! Prayers for your safe return.; January 19, 2013 at 7:48 AM
Anonymous said...: Happy Birthday, Matt!
Most importantly, take care of yourself. Now, go kill some terrorists or train the Afghans to do it and return to us safe.

- Old Greybeard; January 19, 2013 at 9:21 AM
Anonymous said...: I guess this would be a belated "Happy Birthday", but, none-the-less, I wish it as Good and Happy as you can have.God Bless you for your untiring service, as I am retired Army myself.
Bless you and Thank you.

Mike, Bless you also. Take care; January 19, 2013 at 9:24 AM
Hefferman said...: Tell Matt to be safe, and watch his six.; January 19, 2013 at 10:49 AM
j said...: God bless you Matt- Happy Birthday and thank you.; January 19, 2013 at 11:06 AM
Happy D said...: Happy Birthday Matt!; January 19, 2013 at 7:03 PM
Gunny G said...: My son goes to Parris Island this summer. I know how you feel. May he enjoy many birthdays to come. Tell him to trust his fellow warriors and no one else.; January 19, 2013 at 9:31 PM
Herschel Smith said...: Happy Birthday Matt, and I wish you fighting and traveling mercies. May God be with you.

Mike, as a father of a former Marine who saw combat in Fallujah in 2007, I know what it means to have a son deployed. I pray for peaceful rest for you one day.; January 19, 2013 at 10:05 PM
Anonymous said...: Mike,

May God bless your son, and protect him and his family.

Doug in PA; January 20, 2013 at 4:25 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Today is my son Matt's thirty-fourth birthday.

9 comments:

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