Pat Dollard

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Recently the group Vets For Freedom had a date for their National Heroes Tour cancelled at the very high school its spokesman, Pete Hegseth, attended.

I have never seen this country more divided in my life. It may have been this way back in thelate 60′s/early 70′s , but I was too into Speed Racer, The Banana Splits, and Yogi Bear to notice the political differences between so many Americans. I may have sensed a few things, coming from Hippie parents who campaigned for Bobby Kennedy and then George McGovern, in the arena of hating “All the PLastic People” out there, but I didn’t really care. I’d rather watch “Uh oh, Chongo! It’s Danger Island!”

But the mainstream media in America, and far left whacko groups like Code Pink and MoveOn.org, and even more sinister ones like Recreate ’68 and The RNC Welcoming Committee have so successfully puked enough hate out into the airwaves and the streets to cause a polarization like never before.

Great article here in American Thinker by Kyle-Anne Shiver…below is an excerpt:

In The Company Of Heroes
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

“The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.”
– Carl Jung

Last weekend, I was profoundly privileged to be in the VFW Post in Nashville, Tennessee with a roomful of the some of the most intelligent, reasonable and sane human beings I have ever encountered. These men seemed to shun the term “hero.”

Yet, what other word could possibly suffice?

From Hollywood’s anti-war movies to the New York Times’ pitiful anti-vet screeds, to the major networks’ portrayals of whacked-out homeless vets to the Winter Soldiers , the American public is bombarded on a daily basis with the notion that suffering for a just cause is not only a needless expenditure of treasure, but a disgraceful evil that should never be borne by good people.

But anyone with a decent upbringing and a grain of common sense, who listens to representatives from Vets for Freedom and Vets for Victory, as I did last weekend, clearly knows that Carl Jung had it right. These hero vets of VFF and V4V know intimately and soundly, the difference between legitimate and illegitimate suffering.

These men, these genuine heroes, are the personification of sanity walking tall.

And having listened to these heroes explain with poise, eloquence and clarity the cause of our war against the forces of terror, I have never been more proud to call myself an American.

Nor have I ever felt such shame for the mainstream media’s insane and childish portrayal of America to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has the big megaphone and theirs is the voice the world hears.

Using the Smaller Megaphone, One Town at a Time

Making appearances in 19 American cities in less than a month, the National Heroes Tour, sponsored by the Vets for Freedom and the Vets for Victory, some of our bravest and finest men and women, all veterans of the Iraq and/or the Afghanistan Wars are using their smaller megaphone to reach the hearts and minds of our citizenry.

Their message is simple:

We are fighting for a noble cause and our suffering is both legitimate and worthy.

These men and women have completed their military missions abroad in the war on terror, but they well understand that no democracy can ever hope to win a war in the just cause of freedom and human rights, without gaining the will of her people in support of the mission.

Now these honorable vets sacrifice, once again, the comforts of hearth and home to traverse America, and educate us, the public, about the vital necessity of victory, not only for those of us alive now, but for our progeny.

They call us simply to do our duty for God and Country, and to not sacrifice the precious liberties we have inherited on the altars of our own sloth and pleasure.

Captain Pete Hegseth makes the choice as easy as pie.

Captain Pete Hegseth, the Executive Director of Vets for Freedom, is no John Wayne or George Patton. I never thought I’d live to see a man I thought was better than John and George, but I believe I have.

Pete Hegseth is not the older generation’s type of female-worship hero. He’s smooth, not rough. He’s softer spoken and more calmly reasoned, rather than brash or erratic. But, wow — does he ever walk boldly, and carry well the big stick of reason.

Hegseth, a graduate of Princeton, seems to be living proof of the fact that education is what one makes of it. As a Sophomore, Hegseth joined the ROTC, which upon his graduation, resulted in a contract for a tour of active duty. He served that first tour at Guantanamo.

When I asked him whether he thought we ought to close that detention center, he left no wiggle room in his forthright answer.

“We’ve got enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay now, that if released, want nothing more than to go kill Americans and to continue to fight for Jihad,” he told me with nary a hint of equivocation. “There’s no doubt that we need a facility to hold enemy combatants, and it should not be in the United States of America…so why not Guantanamo Bay?”

Captain Hegseth then added that making the decision about the exact location for holding detainees “is a bit above my pay-grade,” but his answer, firmly grounded in the common sense of a man who has seen the cost of Jihad on civilian innocents, certainly seemed more than reasonable to me. And I can only hope that our politicians can be persuaded to see the issue as clearly.

Read the full article here.