‘The Powers That Be’: Lawful Authority, Honorable Service and a Cursed Traitor

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My soldier son and his mother at Fort Benning.

Our night-owl friend Ali — who lately has kept a Dracula-style sleep schedule — stayed up past dawn to report that a deeply confused fool is more deeply confused than anyone previously suspected.

Regular readers know my Army son is currently training in hope of joining the elite Special Forces. My hatred of the traitor Manning is therefore perhaps as personal as it is patriotic.

Have I ever said a nice word about President Obama? Is there any policy of the current administration that I support? I think readers know the answer to those questions, and yet I was stirred with pride that day at Fort Meade when I watched my son swear the oath to obey the orders of his Commander-in-Chief. Obedience is the first duty of a soldier, and obedience must be rooted in respect for lawful authority.

“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”
— Romans 13:1 (KJV)

And let all God’s children say, Amen.

Contrast this sense of duty — the honor of obedient service — to the traitor Manning’s selfish and arrogant disrespect for authority:

Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy — the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, and the Japanese-American internment camps — to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

The traitor Manning’s citation of Zinn — a man infamous as a godless Commie — is characteristic: A generation that hates God is therefore disrespectful of all that is good and decent in this world. That such a traitor as Manning could have been trusted with our nation’s secrets is symptomatic of America’s descent into madness.

A mere private soldier who was then, as now, in the throes of severe mental illness, the traitor Manning nevertheless appointed himself a judge of the policy of his nation, arrogating to himself the authority to disobey his orders and breach his oath of service.

Attempting to make himself a hero in the eyes of his fellow fools — for no wise man could ever admire such a heinous a traitor — now Manning cites leftist history that he imagines will some day vindicate him.

Yet the traitor’s name shall always be cursed among men of honor. Every patriot must hate a lying coward who betrays his oath.

May God save the Republic, and may God bless America.

 




 

61 comments

  2. I spent 6 years in the service during 89 through 95. A good year of that was loading munitions by the ton in the service of a specter gunship. I salute your son and say welcome to the brotherhood.

    Concerning Bradley Manning, I suspected that there was something turbulent occuring with this young man. I was a little taken aback that it was this deep. His dealings with Wikileaks has greatly angered me in the past and I still find myself bearing a grudge against Manning and Assange

    With that being said the recent events have forced me to revisit my stance on Manning. The issue withe IRS being used to suppress political opponents and leaking of personal data. The use of the EPA to do the same. The NSA spying program who’s extent we have yet to determine.

  3. Proud father (and as lucky a bastard as they come: fabulous wife, well-raised and mature, honorable children).
    God has truly blessed you Stacy and I pray He shall continue to bless you and yours.

  4. These things make all of us take pause and be suspicious of our government. As I have been on a Cicero kick lately, here is a quote from him that I feel is relevant:

    “A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so
    strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in
    possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?
    Pretty apt in my view.

  6. I’ll save the leftist trolls some time and recite the MORAL OUTRAGE!(TM) Pavlov’s reaction mantra:

    OMG U HAETFUL PRIVILEGED WHITE CIS PATRIARCHY TEABAGGER TRANSPHOBE BIGOT!!1!#%^*&! CHELSEA SAID ZE’S A WOMAN SO LIEK THERE’S NO WAY SHE’S LYING ABOUT IT BECAUSE ZE SAID ALL THE DOUBLEPLUSGOOD WORDS!!*(%(@#%@&!!

    There! No need to comment at all because I pretty much covered every possible leftist objection.

  7. Congratulations. In this mess of a world you’ve managed to raise a son that appears to be truly decent and good – no easy task with the forces working against you. My kids are much younger (8 and 10) and I get prouder of them every day. I can only imagine how proud you must be.

  8. Thank you. You have done humanity a great service. RSM should just copy and paste that at the head of every thread to save the poor trolls the effort.

  9. When Bob and his twin brother Jim were 11 or 12, they had gotten the Ranger Handbook and watched some TV documentary about wilderness survival, so they had a survival campout in the woods behind our house. They shot a bird with their pellet gun, dressed and cleaned it, cooked it over an open fire and ate it.

    Hiking in the woods was one of our favorite activities together when they were kids. If they ever whined about being tired, I told them we were on the Bataan Death March, and crying was not allowed on the Bataan Death March.

    An old-fashioned stoicism, an indifference to hardship, and a sense of personal pride in being able to endure difficult conditions and triumph — these were the values they were taught. And, of course, that jaunty devil-may-care cheerfulness in the face of danger, which I have always so admired in the British officer class, was part of what they were taught: “Piece of cake!”

  10. But in all seriousness, you have every right to be proud.

    Did he get Expert in rifle there? Nice. I messed up on the test and only got Marksman, though I did make Expert on grenade. Used to be an in-joke between me and a friend who kept getting test jitters on rifle but also mastered the fine art of grenade-throwing: “I may not be able to shoot straight, but by God, I can sure throw a grenade!” (For all you D&D nerds out there, sometimes this was flavored with “My DPS is AOE rather than single-target”)

    But it takes guts to enlist right now. It was a little difficult to enlist during the Clinton years, but I understood what I was signing up for, and my country mattered more. Godspeed, PFC.

  11. Of course, he made Expert! When he shipped out, his Uncle Kirby (who served in the 101st Airborne) had me tell the boy that he must make Expert, to uphold the family honor.

  12. Old-fashioned stoicism, indifference to hardship, to endure difficult conditions and triumph, cheerfulness in the face of danger…no one I know talks like that; no one except me, and I merely admire those qualities from a distance. My hat is off, sir.

  13. Great! When – not if – he finishes training let’s do a special bleg to buy him sone decent MagPul mags for his issue weapon.

  16. Ex-PFC Manning faces a life with the equivlent of a Felony conviction (that’s what a Dishonorable Discharge is), and hopefully thirty five years at Ft. Leavenworth.

    My thinking is that he deserves every second of it, if not more. He violated his oath of enlistment, voluntarily given, and the NDA he signed. Nobody forced him to do anything, but he decided in the infinite theoretically superior judgement he possess, to steal and publish classified documentation.

    Ex-PFC Manning, because of his disgruntlement and narcissism thought himself better than the rest of us, and showed his utter lack of character.

    If a service member has a problem, he must bring it up to the right people. The chaplain corps exists for a reason, and if there is a real concern about the legality of something, speak to a Congresscritter. I’m sure some of them would have enjoyed causing pain and discomfort to any administration. Do not go searching for a group of anarchists.

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