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This is not a deep analysis of what is happening in our country. Instead, it is a personal rant – kind of like the one on the 4th I suppose – in response to a person who asked the titular question on my post in a YouTube video I commented on. I don’t bother arguing with idiots, but it pissed me off because I feel justified in reversing the question. And, since I own my own site, I have the liberty of bitching here. So, what the hell have I done about it? Mount up Freedom Troopers, draw your saber, and let me tell you.
I have been arguing about Jeffersonian values and protecting our freedoms since at least High School. Fellow students felt I was far too serious. My mother said I skipped my teens and went right to old age…not precisely true since some of my views in high school definitely revealed that my brain had not fully developed yet (that happens around the age of 25 btw – I find it interesting that some of the founders argued that was an appropriate age for voting and political service when we just fully realized this within the last 20 years. Anyway, what have I done?
The year I graduated from High School I joined the US Army Reserve and after Basic Training I joined ROTC at UNL as I served in the army reserve. Before graduation I volunteered for active duty first at Fort Knox KY in the 1st Training Brigade (the same brigade I was trained in,) and then was sent to Europe and served in the US 8th Cavalry in Germany. We were stationed in Mannheim, Germany but once a year we deployed to the East German/Czech border and stood guard along the Iron Curtain while the 2nd ACR went to tank gunnery and their annual training. So, when I turned 20, I was in a foreign country defending against communism. My first marriage failed, and I have always thought that part of it was that (of the 3 1/2 years I spent in Germany,) I spent an average of 197 days a year “in the field.” My oldest son was born in Heidelberg Army Hospital. As I said to one fellow I spent more time with my M-16 than I did with my wife and that was during peace time.
When I was in Germany I decided I wanted to do more than stand at the border and wait for war with the Soviet Union to start. I became aware that Military Intelligence was already doing their wartime job during the Cold War, so I determined to become an intelligence agent. I also had hurt my back by then and, since I had always planned to retire from the army and then teach at university, I thought I might have a better chance to make it twenty years if I was in MI than if I continued working with tanks and armored personnel carriers. They are heavy. Much heavier than a pistol.
How does one find a MI agents? No one seemed to really know except I could send a request through personnel. I figured there might be an agent or two in Mannheim. Mannheim was a big city right? I was walking down the hall in the casern offices one day and I found a door with glass panels that were all papered over. It had no plaque saying what it was. Every door in the army is marked. 8th Cav Troop A Headquarters, 2nd of the 15th Infantry HQ, 3rd Brigade HQ, Broom Closet, but this door was unmarked. It aroused my curiosity, so I looked closer. In the corner of one of the window panels was a small cartoon. I used to read Mad Magazine in High School and Jr. High. One of my favorite was “Spy vs. Spy.” It was a “Spy vs. Spy” cartoon.
I knocked on the door. An older man answered with a curious look on his face. “Yes?”
“I want to be an agent.” He asked me to come on in, sat me down and started interviewing me. Part way into it another agent came in. He looked up at the newcomer.
“This man wants to be an agent.”
“Is he smart enough?”
“He found us.”
I then found out that they happened to have a shortage of agents. Ronald Reagan was increasing tensions at the time with the USSR and confrontation was the order of the day. They transferred me to the Cav, S-2 Intelligence Shop while I awaited my TOP SECRET SCI access and orders for training.
So, military wise I had service in the Cavaly Scout, Drill Sergeant Academy Fort Leonard Wood, MO, 1st Training Brigade, Ft. Knox KY; US Cavalry Recon Platoon, 8th Cavalry, Europe; Counterintelligence Special Agent School, Ft. Huachuca and 902nd MI Group.
From acting Special Agent in Charge of a resident office (a sergeant can’t be a SAIC – I hear you say – quite right. But no one wanted that office so officially an officer in HQ was assigned for his “command time” while HQ continued to use him on staff, and I got the work end of it. I didn’t mind. I got a plaque that says Acting Special Agent In-Charge – that works for me.)
In every unit I served in, at some point I received the soldier or NCO of the year award…I lived for military service…until Clinton wanted to cut back on the cadets and officers…so I ended up with a degree but no commission for the ROTC scholarship the US Army gave me.
Now with a disability, I didn’t want to get my degree in Criminal Justice. I didn’t want to serve as a probation officer or in the penitentiary and I knew I couldn’t be a cop with my back. So, I used my hours to go to teacher’s college for Social Studies. When I did my practicum, I was assigned to an AP History class and the teacher told me – “We can’t really teach history. We have to teach for the test these kids need to take.” Long story-short there I decided I wouldn’t teach High School and figured maybe a professorship was in my future.
My sister had been sending me all these brochures about ministry. I finally asked her, what the heck are you sending me these for? She said she thought I was called to ministry. I told her she was crazy. But all my life was geared to being in the military, so I was a bit lost. I sang in the church choir and one Sunday I spent all the service in prayer asking God what I should do with my life. I finally decided God wasn’t going to answer and decided to listen to the preacher. Just as i looked up she said, “Right now, God may be calling one of you into ministry.” OK, I can be stubborn, sometimes my preconceptions may even make me slow to grab new ideas. But I’m not stupid. I ended up going to Seminary in Kansas City and serving a three-point country charge.
On September 11th, 2001 the twin towers went down and I left the ministry and applied to INS (later CIS in the newly formed DHS). My intention was to transfer to intelligence work but I liked immigration and helping people legally become citizens of the US. there were also an awful lot of prior military personnel, there, including 3 of my ROTC instructors from UNL. I retired from immigration on disability after a car accident put me in the hospital and I had to push around a walker for far too long. That also ended a lifetime of martial arts training. (I was hit head on by someone who looked like they were adjusting their radio as they turned a corner.)
I am a retired Federal Officer, Cavalry Scout and CI Special Agent. My two oldest sons served in Iraq, one is disabled. My youngest son did security for awhile but, as you know, I told him the Army is not what it once was and neither was our government, so I discouraged him from military service. I said it was his choice but don’t feel he had to just because Grandpa was in WWII, I was in the Cold War, and his brothers were in Iraq (his other grandpa was in the army for a tour also.)
I have been blowing my trumpet about corruption in government and our having lost track of the Constitution since at least the 1980s. President Reagan was the first President I voted for. More than once I sent a letter to every senator in the US Senate about corruption and also about the failure to give our soldiers in Iraq proper equipment. I regularly harass the White House, my Representatives and Senators, state and federal on Political issues I think are important. I became disabled in service to my country as did my oldest son.
What have I done? I turn it back on the troll in the youtube comments. “What the hell have you done to preserve liberty in this country?” Its a question we all should ask ourselves. Do we do enough? Have we prepared are children to be good citizens? Do we model that for them?
Retiring does not mean you’re done. As I said to my parishioners once “You’ll know when you can retire from being a Christian because they put you in a box, bury you, and everyone goes back to church to eat potato salad. that is when you are done. I think the same is true of citizenship.”
But it’s not “what have we done?” That’s not really the right question. It’s what are you doing now and what are you going to do tomorrow?
