I know from my grandfather’s funeral that members of the military find it a special honor to take part in any ceremony honoring their own in their final rest. I was curious about what it must be like to be part of Reagan’s honor guard, and Blackfive has the remarks of two soldiers who carried Reagan’s casket.
Archive of entries posted on 11th June 2004
BTW
Reagan’s Ronin
I seem to be the king of coming up with new ideas and not following through. I like this idea of Reagan’s Ronin, though, because it’s something I can just integrate into my regular blogging by giving me more focus. Yes, I’m mainly just a silly humor site, and they’ll take my silly humor from my cold dead hands, but important things are happening in the world and I want to do my part. I think a great way to do that is to dedicate ourselves to Reagan’s legacy. I even am going to get a nice little bowl to put on my coffee table to fill with jellybeans so I’ll have a daily reminder of the bigger things in life (and yummy candy).
So, what to do? I already had some ideas for rules and a banner. Then someone mentioned kanji, which is cool, so here is ronin in kanji:
Former Hostage has already made some new banners based on that:
We may want to add an element for Reagan, though. So what would be some good kanji to represent him? You could just spell out his name phonetically, but I’m thinking that instead we should find some words that best describe Reagan and use the kanji for that as his symbol. I’d like to hear suggestions.
One place to find kanji is about.com
Here is a very comprehensive dictionary.
And here is another site where you can get Kanji on t-shirts and mugs.
More importantly than a banner or symbol is what shall we ronin do to fight against terrorism? Our enemy are those who want to weaken the American resolve and the resolve of the world, so how do we fight back?
Well, things to think about for the weekend.
Rest in peace, Ronald Reagan, we’ll handle things here now.
The New War
It’s Reagan’s funeral, I have the day off and nothing particular to do, and thus, of course, I get to thinking: How does our current conflict compare with those in the past?
Back during the Cold War, we had an enemy intent on our destruction and with the means to do it. Still, America wasn’t untied in taking down this enemy. I guess, unless you see Rover from next door flying past your window as the whole neighborhood about you explodes, some people just don’t get it. You can’t kill an enemy by talking endlessly about peace, and, if you could, I assume it would be a very excruciating death outlawed by the Geneva convention. If it weren’t for people like Reagan to smack the pinheads around, who knows how long the Soviets would have lasted.
So here we are in the 21st century facing our new enemy: terrorist retards. They also want us all dead. Once again, all of America is not united against them. It seems in some ways like the Cold War, but there are a number of key differences. The neighborhood had exploded, but Rover flying by the window still wasn’t enough to give some people a reality check. It is not a “cold” war; just ask our troops in Afghanistan and the Sunni Triangle. Our people (and I mean Americans and allies in that phrase) are still dying in this fight. Also, unlike with the Soviets, there is no conceivable way in this universe or any other allowed by classical or quantum physics that the terrorists can actually defeat us, but they can kill a good number of us in their deluded pursuits. Finally, we don’t have Ronnie anymore. It’s just me, Dubya, angry man Rumsfeld, and you guys to smack around the pinheads and get things done.
Now, let’s get things straight: the terrorists are going to get what’s coming to them… eventually. It doesn’t matter if we have a Democrat controlled White House and Congress; if a big enough bomb goes off, things will get taken care of. The point is, we need to make sure things happen before more people die. We had more then enough provocation, and it shouldn’t take more death and more families weeping before we get the resolve to see thing through to the end, to take care of the terrorist threat once and for all.
I guess my point is – and I’m nearly sure I have one this time – is that the front on the war on terrorists is here at home. We aren’t dodging bullets or having to check every vehicle headed our way for a bomb, but it’s whether we are resolved or not that makes sure our troops can get their job done, to show the Islamo-fascists that we, the American people, are bonified badasses who are never to be f**ked with. They will not get another big attack against us because they will be too busy being hunted down like dogs.
To win this and win it quickly, we have to protect our resolve. That means we need to fight the media that chips away at it daily. We have to fight the naysayers out there who want to paint us as the bad guys while our troops are dying the freedom of others. And, we have to make sure Kerry doesn’t get elected president because… well… he’s a goober – even if, he, by the way, served in Vietnam.
So what to do? I guess blogging helps because we put to light what’s really important. Still, though we have some push, blogs are still pretty small compared to the media as a whole. So what else to do? I’m not really sure.
Me, for what it’s worth, I wrote this.
Sorry for not being funny today, but I guess you get more serious when you turn twenty-five. Plus, it’s a solemn day. We lay to rest someone who had the courage when it was needed most. Now it’s up to us to continue his legacy.
God bless.