In Life There's Often A Role Call

By Rich Kozlovich

One of my personal heroes is Col. John Boyd:

Known as "Forty-Second" Boyd......defeating every opponent in aerial combat at the Air Force's premier dog-fighting academy in two-thirds of a minute.........however this doesn’t demonstrate the “long and often painful saga of a man who, as a full colonel, went toe to toe, time after time, with a phalanx of two-and three-star generals for the good of the country, winning most of his battles and surviving long enough to help provide secretary of defense Richard Cheney the ideas needed for swift and decisive victory in the Persian Gulf War....... "defined by the courts-martial and investigations".......... Boyd's intellectual achievements were matched by his relentless guerrilla warfare against hidebound "careerists" then running the Air Force……

We'll come back to Col. Boyd as this article is predicated on his vision of real leadership, courage, and the commitment to doing what's right. Let's start with some of the things I've observed over the course of my life.  

• Patterns of life keep repeating over and over again.
• People will always be people.
• People really aren't as complicated as they think they are.
• You have to see the patterns but if we never read a history book we don't even know there are patterns. . 
• People will act in their own best interests, unless they don't because they're clueless, and then act in the best interests of those who wish to take advantage of them.
  

I think the speech Abraham Lincoln gave in 1838, in what's known as the Lyceum Address, which was delivered to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, is an example of historical patterns repeating.  Not exactly, but in principle.

This address was intended to make Americans aware the real threat to Americanism isn't from without, but from within.  In modern times, that's more true than ever, only the threat from without is now very real also, and it's insidious, it's mendacious, and that threat uses our own values against us with more than enough American fools supporting the effort to destroy America.  Lincoln says:

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.  

While in Lincoln's era the bands of violent rabble involved slavery issues, that doesn't change the value of his warning about radicals and the violence they perpetrate to gain their goals. He goes on 

..........whenever the vicious portion of [our] population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend upon it, this government cannot last. 

He notes these bands become alienated from society by the actions, but never in his life did Lincoln think violent thugs such as these, like Antifa, BLM, and the OWS crowd would be supported by government, funded by government, promoted by government and protected by government, and never could he have dreamt the government would be working in harmony with them to destroy the government.  But none the less, the warning as to what this does to a society is valid. 

Whether it's reparations, or any of the other outrageous issues they're promoting, there will be no harmony, and there will be no end to the voracious demands they'll make until America no longer exists. With the left, there can be no peace, it's war, and it's a war they intend to win because of their corrupt and contentious desire for uncontrolled power.  Power so overwhelming their evil can no longer be contested.  Then there will be no contentions, because they will do what all leftists do.  Imprison or execute any who dare to call what they do criminal. 

These violent destructive leftists are following a secular, neo-pagan religion that tells them they are the best and the brightest, they don't have to follow the laws of the land and in fact, it's their duty to ignore and destroy those laws, along with the culture that created them.  Lincoln goes on to explain that when such ones spring up amongst us it's imperative for:

...........the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate [their] designs.........[and to] cultivate a "political religion" that emphasizes "reverence for the laws" and puts reliance on "reason—cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason."

If  American society cannot recognize that "Truth, Justice and the American Way", is now and has been for all our warts and scars, the finest example of what man is capable of accomplishing, then all is lost.   

We're at that proverbial fork in the road.  Col. John Boyd gave a speech to the graduating class  saying:

One day you will come to a fork in the road. And you're going to have to make a decision about what direction you want to go.......... If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments." 

Then Boyd raised the other hand and pointed another direction. "Or you can go that way and you can do something — something for your country........ If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference.

"He paused and stared. "To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?"

We're now in that fork in the road, and we have two options. 

Option One:  America never offered perfection. America offers the most acceptable imperfection, and history shows that imperfect state delivered more people out of poverty, misery, and suffering than any system in world history. Believing humanity has God given rights to free speech, freedom of religion, and the right to defend their families and the nation, none of which can be taken away by the government as these rights were not bestowed on America by the government, but was an endowment from God. 

Option Two: The left is a secular neo-pagan religion that demands perfection, and claims to be able to deliver perfection, but history shows that's a blatant falsehood.  They wish to fully destroy freedom of speech, Christianity, the Constitution, and a citizenry that's armed and prepared to defend their freedoms, because the state is God.  Since the French Revolution 230 years ago the left has never done anything except deliver misery, squalor, disease, tyranny, and early death.  Mass imperfection to the nth degree.

Whether it is in the government, military, academia or business this is something we need to learn, repeat, retain and practice:

"To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?" - Col. John Boyd

Which way will you go?  As for me, I like the "Most Acceptable Imperfection" option.