RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/video/5-most-inspiring-lines-from-president-trumps-memorial-day-speech-at-arlington-cemetery/

On Monday, President Donald Trump gave brief remarks at Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate the American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who made the ultimate sacrifice. In a sign of true humility, he clapped perhaps more than he spoke, and his remarks extolled the fortitude and nobility of America’s fallen heroes.

Here are five of the most moving lines Trump delivered at Arlington on Memorial Day. The video follows below.
1. “A love more deep than most will ever know.”

Trump began his Memorial Day remarks extolling the love America’s fallen heroes showed for their country.

“Theirs was a love more deep and more pure than most will ever know,” he declared. “It was a love that willed them up mountains, through deserts, across oceans and into enemy camps, and unknown dangers. They marched into hell so that America could know the blessings of peace. They died so that freedom could live.”
2. “We cannot imagine…”

Trump directly addressed the families who lost loved ones in the service of American freedom.

“Most importantly we’re joined today by the families of American heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice,” the president said. “We cannot imagine the depth of emotion that this day brings each year: the grief renewed, the memories relived, those last beautiful moments together cherished and always remembered. And you also feel that incredible pride, a pride shared by one really and truly grateful nation.”

“To every parent who weeps for a child, to every child who mourns for a parent, and to every husband or wife whose heart has been torn in two, today we ask God to comfort your pain, to ease your sorrow, and to wipe away your tears,” Trump said. “This is a very special day, and today our whole country thanks you, embraces you, and pledges to you we will never forget our heroes.”
3. Hope Stubenhofer.

During his remarks, President Trump addressed Hope Stubenhofer, whose father — U.S. Army Captain Mark Stubenhofer — died while fighting in Iraq in December 2004, mere months after her birth.

“Although she never got the chance to meet her great father, she can feel his love wrapped around her every single day,” the president said. “And when Patty [Mark’s widow] puts her children to bed and kisses them goodnight, she can see Mark’s legacy beaming back at her through their bright and glowing eyes.”
4. Christian Jacobs.

President Trump then addressed 7-year-old Christian Jacobs, whose father — Marine Sergeant Christopher Jacobs — died in a training accident in 2011 when Christian was only 8 months old.

Trump movingly told the story of Christian visiting the White House in a Marine Corps uniform. “He wanted to look good, he told me, as a tribute to his father,” the president recalled.

“Christian, I want you to know that even though your father has left this world, he’s left it for the next, but he’s not gone. He’ll never be gone,” the president declared. “Your dad’s love, courage, and strength live in you, Christian. And as you grow bigger and stronger just like him, so too, does your father’s incredible legacy.”
5. Why we remember America’s heroes.

The president concluded his speech with another moving declaration. Of the fallen, he declared, “They fought and bled and died so that America would remain forever safe and strong and free. Each of the markers on that field, each of the names engraved in stone, teach us what it means to be loyal, and faithful and proud and brave and righteous and true.”

“That is why we always will remember, because here on this soil, on these grounds, beneath those fields, lies the true source of American greatness, of American glory, and of American freedom,” Trump said. “As long as we are blessed with patriots such as these, we shall remain forever one people, one family, and one nation under God.”

In the current time of tragic polarization, these Memorial Day remarks at Arlington National Cemetery are more important than ever. Watch Trump’s tribute to America’s fallen heroes below.

General Douglas MacArthur said of the American soldiers: “However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.”

In his farewell speech to West Point on May 12, 1962 he gives an eloquent tribute to those who choose to serve and defend America:

“Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?

Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world’s noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy’s breast.

But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.

In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people.

From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs of the glee club, in memory’s eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light.

And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of the relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.

Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory – always victory, always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following your password of Duty, Honor, Country.”

On the eve of Memorial Day, here’s a piece we get a lot of requests for. It was first written for The Chicago Sun-Times and other papers in 2004, and is anthologized in my book The [Un]documented Mark Steyn. A lot of the controversies mentioned below – Abu Ghraib, etc – are forgotten, and others – Guantanamo Bay – became mysteriously less controversial after, oh, late January 2009. Time passes, and moss and lichen creep across ancient grave stones. But the men beneath them are forever young:

Memorial Day in my corner of New Hampshire is always the same. A clutch of veterans from the Second World War to the Gulf march round the common, followed by the town band, and the scouts, and the fifth-graders. The band plays “Anchors Aweigh,” “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America” and, in an alarming nod to modernity, Ray Stevens’ “Everything Is Beautiful (In Its Own Way)” (Billboard No. 1, May 1970). One of the town’s selectmen gives a short speech, so do a couple of representatives from state organizations, and then the fifth-graders recite the Gettsyburg Address and the Great War’s great poetry. There’s a brief prayer and a three-gun salute, exciting the dogs and babies. Wreaths are laid. And then the crowd wends slowly up the hill to the Legion hut for ice cream, and a few veterans wonder, as they always do, if anybody understands what they did, and why they did it.

Before the First World War, it was called Decoration Day – a day for going to the cemetery and “strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” Some decorated the resting places of fallen family members; others adopted for a day the graves of those who died too young to leave any descendants.

I wish we still did that. Lincoln’s “mystic chords of memory” are difficult to hear in the din of the modern world, and one of the best ways to do it is to stand before an old headstone, read the name, and wonder at the young life compressed into those brute dates: 1840-1862. 1843-1864.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270284/how-can-we-honor-soldiers-endless-war-daniel-greenfield

What does Memorial Day mean in an age of endless war?

The era of wars that began and concluded neatly, with declarations, speeches, rules, objectives, deciding battles and signed peace accords, ended before the oldest active duty soldier serving today was born.

The men and women who fight and die, leaving their families never knowing if they will return, and in what form, serve not in wars, but endless police actions, peacekeeping missions, terrorist pursuits and nation building exercises with names that sound like obscure action movies, New Dawn, Inherent Resolve, Freedom’s Sentinel, that will never have a final ending, only another generic name.

Obama ended the Iraq War twice. It’s still ongoing. And likely will for all of human history.

We didn’t begin the Iraq War. Arguably Mohammed and the Sassanids did. Over 1,300 years later, the Persians and the rulers of Mecca and Medina are still fighting over Bahrain. When we left, it went on without us. And the Sunnis and Shiites, Mecca, Medina and Tehran, will go on fighting no matter what.

Civilized nations fight wars. And the places where we fight are not civilized, though they may have flags, anthems and constitutions. They’re murderous tribal wastelands torn by perpetual hatreds and feuds.

The Islamic resurgence has placed us in a state of permanent war. We may debate over which fronts that war should be fought on, but only the left can deny that the conflict itself is inescapable. We may fight it in Iraq or in New York, in Syria or in Sweden, the front lines may shift, but the war won’t go away.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/05/did_you_know_that_president_trump_stood_on_concrete_in_the_hot_sun_and_shook_the_hand_of_every_single_naval_academy_graduate.html

I am a fairly avid consumer of political news, and I watched the live coverage of President Trump’s address to the Naval Academy graduates at their commencement ceremony. (If you happened to miss the inspiring speech, Rick Moran’s coverage of it was excellent. But Rick and I, and probably you, did not hear about the fact that the President of the United States, a 71 year old man, stood in the Maryland sun and heat, wearing a suit jacket, and took the time to shake the hand and thank every single one of the 1,191 graduates. I learned of this via Glenn Reynolds and The Newly Press.

It was not exactly a secret, yet got little play in the media. You can see the entire process, speedy up, in this tweet:
Josh Caplan @joshdcaplan

Awesome video of Pres. Trump shaking hands of Naval Academy graduates for 90 minutes. Here’s every single one in under a minute.
dagny @dukeblu85

71 year old, stood straight backed in the sun on concrete and shook hands for 90 minutes. What an incredible tribute. Thank you President Trump. Meaningful. #MAGA

These new Naval Officers and Marines will remember the gesture for the rest of their lives. I don’t recall President Obama doing anything similar.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/28/the-destiny-of-amer

President Coolidge delivered this speech on Memorial Day, May 30, 2923, in Northhampton, Massachusetts.

Patriotism is easy to understand in America. It means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country. In no other nation on earth does this principle have such complete application. It comes most naturally from the fundamental doctrine of our land that the people are supreme. Lincoln stated the substance of the whole matter in his famous phrase, “government of the people; by the people, and for the people.”

The authority of law here is not something which is imposed upon the people; it is the will of the people themselves. The decision of the court here is not something which is apart from the people; it is the judgment of the people themselves. The right of the ownership of property here is not something withheld from the people; it is the privilege of the people themselves. Their sovereignty is absolute and complete. A definition of the relationship between the institutions of our government and the American people entirely justifies the assertion that: “All things were made by them; and without them was not anything made that was made.” It is because the American government is the sole creation and possession of the people that they have always cherished it and defended it, and always will.

Why Patriotic Societies Come to Be
There are two fundamental motives which inspire human action. The first and most important, to which all else is subordinate, is that of righteousness. There is that in mankind, stronger than all else, which requires them to do right. When that requirement is satisfied, the next motive is that of gain. These are the moral motive and the material motive. While in some particular instance they might seem to be antagonistic, yet always, when broadly considered or applied to society as a whole, they are in harmony. American institutions meet the test of these two standards. They are founded on righteousness, they are productive of material prosperity. They compel the loyalty and support of the people because such action is right and because it is profitable.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/27/hillary-and-t

Hillary Clinton couldn’t resist referring again to her historic defeat while addressing the graduates at Yale last week. This brought to mind her remarks at a speaking event in India in March, which can still rankle.

At that time, she declaimed that Trump’s “whole campaign, ‘Make America Great Again,’ was looking backwards,” and added for clarification: “You know, you didn’t like black people getting rights; you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs; you don’t want to, you know, see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are—you know, whatever your problem is, I’m gonna solve it.”

In this assignation of bigotry to, you know, the white working-class Americans who voted Trump, she makes clear that she just doesn’t listen, and didn’t get the message these voters were sending to the Democratic Party.

This is the party that was supposed to be looking out for them, that always boasted it stood for the “little guy,” for the good jobs, fair wages, and tight labor market favorable to working families. Clinton is also giving these voters additional reasons to steer away from that party in the future. You can’t trust the Democrats who pretended to be horrified by her words. Her view is theirs, too. They are panting for the demographic shift they believe will give them the permanent majority. After all, Hillary also claimed she regretted her “deplorable” remarks, (or was that only because they helped cost her the election?), but here she was, repeating them again.

An Opinion-Sharing Global Elite
Her remarks echoed those of snotty British writer Martin Amis, who pronounced on Trump supporters in a discussion with Ann Coulter as the 2016 returns were coming in on election night. Like Hillary, Amis spoke with sneering condescension. “The fallback position of every white man [in America] is,” he asserted, “I may not be much, but I’m better than any black man in this country, and they look at Obama and they suddenly realize that they’re not anymore. And the whole prestige of being white, working class, heterosexual has melted away from them. They’re called the left behind.”

https://usa.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/for-your-eyes-only-a-short-history-of-democrat-spy-collusion/

Who what where when why? The desiderata school teachers drill into their charges trying to master effective writing skills apply also in the effort to understand that byzantine drama known to the world as the Trump-Russia-collusion investigation.

Let’s start with “when.” When did it start? We know that the FBI opened its official investigation on 31 July 2016. An obscure, low-level volunteer to the Trump campaign called Carter Page was front and centre then. He’d been the FBI’s radar for a long time. Years before, it was known, the Russians had made some overtures to him but 1) they concluded that he was an “idiot” not worth recruiting and 2) he had actually aided the FBI in prosecuting at least two Russian spies.

But we now know that the Trump-Russia investigation began before Carter Page. In December 2017, The New York Times excitedly reported in an article called “How the Russia Inquiry Began” that, contrary to their reporting during the previous year, it wasn’t Carter Page who precipitated the inquiry. It was someone called George Papadopoulous, an even more obscure and lower-level factotum than Carter Page. Back in May 2016, the twenty-something Papadopoulous had gotten outside a number of drinks with one Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat in London and had let slip that “the Russians” had compromising information about Hillary Clinton. When Wikileaks began releasing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee in June and July, news of the conversation between Downer and Papadopoulos was communicated to the FBI. Thus, according to the Times, the investigation was born.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/obama-administration-politicized-intelligence-law-enforcement-apparatus/

The Obama administration blatantly politicized the government’s intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus.

‘Isn’t it a fact that you’re a scumbag?”

Our contretemps over the nomenclature of government informants has me unable to shake this arresting moment from my memory. In Manhattan, about 30 years ago, I was among the spectators basking in the majesty of Foley Square’s federal courthouse when we were suddenly jarred by this, shall we say, rhetorical question. The sniper was a mob lawyer in a big RICO case; the target was the prosecution’s main witness, the informant.

Until this week, I’d always thought the most noteworthy thing about this obnoxious bit of theater was the reaction of the judge, a very fine, very wry trial lawyer in his own right.

The prosecutors, of course, screamed, “Objection!”

The judge calmly shrugged his shoulders and ruled: “He can answer if he knows.”

Did he know? I don’t remember. I was laughing too hard to hear any response.

The court’s deadpan was not just hilarious. In its way, it was trenchant.

The judge was not insouciant. He was a realist. The witness had done what covert informants do: He pretended to be someone he wasn’t, he wheedled his way into the trust — in some instances, into the affections — of people suspected of wrongdoing. And then he betrayed them. But that’s the job: to pry away secrets — get the bad actors to admit what they did, how they did it, and with whom they did it, until the agents and prosecutors decide there is enough evidence to convict the lot of them.

The judge understood that. For all the melodrama, whether the informant was a hero or a villain hinged on how one felt not about him but about the worthiness of the investigation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-marine-gets-his-medals-1527287941

‘A nice town, with good people” is how Lance Corporal Jimmy Reddington described his Pennsylvania hometown of Scranton to a fellow Marine who shared a foxhole in Vietnam, according to a story in the local Times-Tribune. Within three months of deploying to Vietnam, Reddington was killed in action. Fifty-one years later, in time for Memorial Day, this Marine will finally get the 12 medals he earned there, including two Purple Hearts.

The Marine with Reddington was Joe Silvestri, who was wounded but survived the same battle that took his friend’s life. Since discovering Reddington’s grave in 1994 in Scranton’s Cathedral Cemetery, Mr. Silvestri has been coming back, along with other Marines, to tend the grave and pay respects to their brother-in-arms.

The medals make this year’s commemoration a little more special. Because Reddington’s father died when he was young and his mother and sister have since died too, the medals will be presented to the local Marine Corps League. They will be presented by retired Lieutenant General Ron Christmas, a Marine legend for his actions in Hue, one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War. Marines from Reddington’s Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines will also be on hand—some old now, some in wheelchairs, but all determined to see that one of their own gets his due.

There are Jimmy Reddingtons all around us. They wear different uniforms—Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard—but they have in common a way of life that elevates service to country. Amid the cookouts, parades and flags that mark the last weekend in May, the stories of the men and women who didn’t live to make the trip home will rightly be told at thousands of Memorial Day celebrations in little towns and big cities across the United States.

Fifty-one years is a long time to wait for recognition. But the people of Scranton know it is never too late for the living to show our gratitude for the sacrifices that make America’s freedom possible.