Turning 65 isn’t just about waiting for Medicare and ones Social Security check, but a time to reflect upon earth shaking times for my country. The Korean War was from 1950-1953 but I hardly remember it, though I do know that the television series MASH upon which it was based lasted longer, 1972-1983, than that war. Vietnam was the war indelibly etched in my mind which though it began in 1955, its escalation carried it through 1975 during my formative years taking out so many young talented souls of my generation.
I remember the 1952 national presidential conventions on television featuring Dwight D. Eisenhower (Military Hero Republican) versus Adlai E. Stevenson, II (Liberal Democrat). The unscripted back room deals for delegate votes were fascinating which has lost some of that mystery in today’s selection process. My fathered played checkers and Richard Nixon gave a speech on Checkers. And then on November 23, 1963 during the last period of band, it was announced over the intercom that President John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed. A nation mourned and more lives were lost in Vietnam including a young man that I was crazy about.
From the sit-ins for integration to protest against anything related to the perceived war machine, this was that time. As a UNC-Greensboro biology major, shortly before my scheduled graduation, I was part of the first April 22, 1970 Earth Day. While I slept on August 24, 1970 during my premedical school externship, Sterling Hall a physics building on the campus of the University of Wisconsin was bombed again upsetting a settled world, by young anti-Vietnam protesters bent on anarchy. In the cauldron of this atmosphere the “Weatherman”, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Black Panthers and others flourished. As I recently viewed tapes of the body of our Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens being hoisted through the streets and handled as hunting bounty by radicalized young Islamic men, not only was I sickened, but questions poured forth on what have we learned about our enemies and what is our country’s foreign policy all about?
Other things may come and go often fading from my memory; however the 2012 Democratic National Convention will always ring most poignant for unbelievably G-d was systematically removed from their platform and shouted down in efforts to return Him, Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel was not supported, non-traditional and alternative lifestyles were given preference and cultural relativism seems to have taken over forgetting the underpinnings of religion, family, and nation.
Romney is not the one to be feared in the 2012 presidential race-- it is those who advocate the redistribution of wealth via taking from some to give to others without their consent; the rewriting of the US Constitution seeking cultural assimilation; the failure to stand for liberty and freedom; and the bashing of capitalism, free markets and the individual through regulations and taxation.
2012 is another of those defining hours for this nation. Will it be one of our finest? Will we still stand up and vote for those advocating liberty, freedom and the US Constitution?
