Basie: Jim, didn’t I teach you anything?
Jim: Yes! You taught me that people will do anything for a potato.

— Empire of the Sun

It’s easy to have principles when your belly is full.  Anyone can choose to believe in liberty and be contrary to those who want to control others when their children don’t cry themselves to sleep every night.  It’s amazing how quickly things like freedom and justice get jettisoned when people are hungry or afraid.  Live through enough suffering for long enough, and you may find yourself selling the things we fight for now at fire sale prices.

That’s why it’s so important to build up the walls that protect us now, when times are relatively easy.   In 1928, Germany and the United States were free societies.  By 1934, both had socialized their economy, adopted gun control, and were giving massive amounts of power to oligarchical juntas.  Let the collapse be quick and painful, and people will line up to sign away their rights in exchange for a bag of food and a warm place to lay their kids down.  Preparing for those times now will help us to fight holding actions while the rest of the herd panics.

When I was your age, television was called books. And this is a special book. It was the book my father used to read to me when I was sick, and I used to read it to your father. And today I’m gonna read it to you.  — The Princess Bride

All of my kids have liked to be read to, and Boo loves it most of all.  I think at first it was the one-on-one attention, but now he enjoys reading along in the simpler books and helping to tell the stories.  There’s something absolutely golden about finding a quiet moment to read to a young kid who is paying attention.  Children who are read to will read to themselves, and that opens up an entire new universe for them.  Ten minutes of reading thrown in between brushing your teeth and turning off the bedroom light will pay off in spades later in their life.

I must be losing my punch. I never expected the son of a bitch to get up. — M*A*S*H

Like I always tell my kids, if you have to fight, fight until they stop resisting or someone pulls you off.  I’ve also heard someone say that if you have to shoot, shoot until the target changes shape or catches fire.  Either way, one punch, one kick, one shot, or one whatever might not do the job.  I had “One shot, one kill!” drilled into my head so much that now I have to remind myself in shooting competitions to shoot two or three times at the same target to make sure I ‘neutralize’ it.  Yeah, one bullet is enough if you put it in the right spot, but I can’t guarantee that I’m that good a shot on any given Sunday, and a little overkill between friends never hurt anyone.

Realizing that is why I’ve absented myself from the current argument about the U.S. Army’s rumblings about replacing their standard pistol, the Beretta M-9 in 9mm.  My 1911 brethren have come out of the woodwork, and the 9mm versus .45 ACP versus 5.7mm versus .457 Cthulhu holy wars have flared up yet again.  But if you look at the gelatin penetration tests, they’re all pretty much the same when it comes to how we gauge effectiveness.  With any pistol caliber, you’re liable to need at least one follow-up shot.  Truth be told, I’m starting to lean toward dropping the pistol completely for almost all troopers that need a weapon that’s not a rifle.  Instead, if I had a leg to stand on and anyone would listen to my relatively uninformed opinion, I’d suggest issuing pistol-build M-4’s in 5.56.  More compact than a rifle, pretty easy to carry, and with a rifle round coming out of the muzzle.

Of course, all of this discussion is moot if you don’t train enough to actually hit what you’re shooting at, but that goes without saying.

We’ve no use talking like this. You won’t know what I mean. Only, it’s been a long while since we enlisted out of this classroom. So long, I thought maybe the whole world had learned by this time. Only now they’re sending babies, and they won’t last a week! I shouldn’t have come on leave. Up at the front you’re alive or you’re dead and that’s all. You can’t fool anybody about that very long. And up there we know we’re lost and done for whether we’re dead or alive. Three years we’ve had of it, four years! And every day a year, and every night a century! And our bodies are earth, and our thoughts are clay, and we sleep and eat with death! And we’re done for because you *can’t* live that way and keep anything inside you! — All Quiet on the Western Front

The things we ask our young men and women to go through are beyond most of our imaginations.  No matter how we think it is, it can be worse.  Promises of a quick, easy, and short war are rarely true, and as we can see from recent events, planning for the war means you have to plan for what to do with those who are wounded.  If we are going to provide free homes, free healthcare, free food, free telephones, and free just-ab0ut-everything-else to people whose biggest achievement is learning to breathe through their nose without drowning, then we need to find a way to provide for those who suffer on our behalf.

Benefits to combat veterans are not welfare.  They are bought and paid for with their youth, blood, minds, and souls.