It was a night time firefight. In the jungle. Vietnam. The morning sunlight exposed the carnage from the night’s horror. The dead and blown up body parts lay scattered around the encampment. Ken walked over to a dead “gook” and rummaged through his pockets looking for souvenirs. It might sound ghoulish, but as Ken said “that’s just what we did.” His 9-year-old kid brother was often the recipient of Ken’s souvenirs.

Ken had been in college, but dropped out to join the Marines so he could serve his country in Vietnam. His father Marston and his three brothers had all suited up and were shipped around the globe in the Second World War. Marston hit the beaches on D-Day, fought in the Normandy hedgerows, was made an officer in Paris and then led a company of half starving, frigid men in the defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. After marching into Germany, he volunteered for service in the Pacific.

Ken had a wife, Betsy and a two-month-old daughter, Carol Mead. When he went through the dead gook’s wallet, Ken saw a picture of the dead soldier with his wife and their two-month-old daughter.

Ken survived Vietnam, like his father, he came home, raised a family and went on with life. He’s 73 now. Like a lot of vets, like his Dad and uncles, Ken never really discussed “the war.” He went on with life. 22 years ago, he had a “St Paul on the Road to Damascus” experience he shared with me that is one of the most moving testimonies of the power of Christ I have ever heard. It still gives me chills. As he got older, I think he came to the realization that he had done something, experiencing something extraordinary that few people do. He never bragged or looked for any acknowledgement from others about “doing his duty,” although he did fly the Marine Corp flag in front of his house. At middle age, he got a Marine Corp tattoo. For the past 5 years or so, he has been riding his motorcycle with a group of Vietnam combat vets, raising money for other combat vets in need of help. He is very close to these guys and they spend a great deal of time together. Ken is too much of a “tough guy” to call these friends a “support group.” Henry V’s St Crispin’s Day speech explains their kinship best:

“And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;…”

LORD ACTON

Knowing all this about Ken, made him the perfect source to get his opinions on the current debacle in Afghanistan, so I called him. I have never known him to be hesitant to express his opinions to anybody. He’s the type who would proselytize to a wooden Indian. He has no filters.  He didn’t disappoint. He said what I expected him to say, that Joe Biden is a demented fool, and just a puppet to Obama and the cultural Marxist cabal that currently has its deathly grip on our nation. But what surprised me was his reflections on the “dead gook” and his wallet.  He said that guy was exactly like him and was being controlled by a system that by its nature devolves towards evil. He “super-sized” Lord Acton. Not only does power corrupt, and absolute power corrupt absolutely, but in his mind this absolute power leads directly to evil. He equated himself and the dead soldier as the same. The dead soldier was just a cog in an evil regime, and he realized that if he was a soldier in Biden’s armed forces, his status would be much the same as his.

What has shocked me about Biden’s Afghanistan debacle is the callousness and utter disregard for the lives and sacrifices of American citizens. It is shocking. One would expect that the first and foremost concern of our government in planning the withdrawal from Afghanistan would be to get our people and equipment out safely. What it proves, more than anything I have witnessed in my lifetime is that the Left does not view those under its control as people or individuals. (By the way, if one reads the private correspondence between Marx and Engels, they openly discuss liquidating certain southern European races as being incapable of usefulness in their new utopia). You dear reader are a “thing,” nothing but chattel and you are the property of the radical leftists who have taken control (illegally) of our government. Afghanistan proves what they think of you.

However, it’s not just Afghanistan, take the vaccine. As I recently stated in my August 5, 2021 column on mandatory vaccines, our government is so eager to jab you with an experimental drug that it is purposefully lying to you about the vaccine and the threat of Covid 19. Its “Ministry of Truth” is working with social media platforms to deny you any medical information that is contrary to its official “2 + 2 = 5” narrative, so you “the individual” cannot make an informed decision. In their minds, you are not an individual, you are property that belongs to them. You are as faceless and uniform as Winston Smith.

At the same time the Afghanistan fiasco is occurring, the US is literally being invaded at our southern border, and our government facilitates and enables this invasion. Thus far border agents have recorded invaders from over 150 countries. The same government instilling fear that forces you to wear masks, get vaccinated and “show your papers,” lets these hordes into our country without even testing them for Covid. Terrorists, Mexican drug cartels, Chinese fentanyl flowing over the border at will. Do you think these government apparatchiks care about you or your children? You have no soul, divine spark or special human qualities. You are a “thing.”

Back to Ken, he then went on a tirade about how corruptible the military brass and defense contracting system is. The brass will be complicit and do what they are told, no matter how heinous. They want to retire with full benefits and then get a cushy job in the defense industry where they can lobby their former colleagues to buy the hardware they are hawking. While all the hogs are at the trough, men and women who have honorably devoted their lives to their country are almost assuredly going to be slaughtered. Hostages will be paraded in front of western tv screens for years. This is an unmitigated tragedy, brought to us by a class of leftist ideologues and their corrupt counterparts and surrogates within the Washington establishment.

Ken asked me what’s the solution?  He agreed with me that the government is just too big. It controls too many of our institutions because it hands out so much money, all of which is extracted from the people it considers its property. Short of a 1775 revolution, he asked me how do we get the tyrant’s boot off of our neck. As stated here before, our only hope is to “DECONSTRUCT” the federal government. The less money it has, the better it is.  Power is the aphrodisiac; it leads to corruption, and then as Ken says “downright evil.” Take away the money and Aphrodites is just a nice little old lady from Pasadena tending her gardenias. Always follow the money. All good things come from money being left in the private sector and keeping it away from the corrupt political class.

The Marines NEVER leave their dead or wounded behind. A Marine can count on his buddies not to abandon him, but he can’t count on his current government to do the same. It’s absolutely sickening. I know Ken. He is 24/7 Semper Fi and even at 73, he and 100 of his buddies would gladly rush into Kabul and the Afghan countryside to save Americans. Ken’s still a bad ass. He has something that is totally missing from our disgusting political rulers. Honor.

By the way, I am the 9-year-old mentioned above and Ken is my oldest brother.