Praise - Glory - Honor to the Fallen!

 

D-Day, History, and Memory

By Barrett Tillman americanthinker.com

History is where you find it.       

Certainly it’s found in books, and on television. But while we still enjoy the company of perhaps 150,000 Americans who served in World War II, they include veterans of June 6, 1944, and the scores of D-Days that preceded and followed the Normandy invasion. We can still appreciate their sacrifice and their service.

For a moment, let’s consider what those veterans meant to America and the world. Let’s ponder what their victory accomplished -- and what it did not.

Operation Neptune (the naval portion) delivered Overlord (the invasion) to five beaches along the Normandy coast: two American, two British, one Canadian. Some 175,000 Allied airborne and ground troops comprised the initial landings, with perhaps 4,400 dead or missing, including 2,500 Americans.

German losses remain uncertain; perhaps 9,000 total casualties.        

French citizens suffered severely from the Germans, from the Allies, and from internecine conflict. Allied bombers and artillery inflicted massive damage: surveying a ruined French city, an American soldier gained anonymous immortality when he said, “We sure liberated the hell out of this place.”

Among the eloquent oratory attending the World War II Memorial and the D-Day anniversary is a frequent refrain: The Greatest Generation preserved America’s freedom. It is, however, a gross overstatement. The plain fact is that neither Germany nor Japan ever had the ability to conquer America.

By June 1944, both Axis powers had lost control of the sea, lacking the ships and manpower to occupy North America. (If Hitler was unable to invade Britain in 1940, how could he possibly occupy America?) In fact, the Axis already was fatally overextended on the Eurasian landmass and in China.

Even today, orators continue overstating the threat to America’s freedom. While our security may be at risk in the war on terror, our freedom is as secure as We the People want it. Not even during the height (or depth) of the Cold War was American freedom at stake. The Soviet Union had the power to destroy us, but never could have enslaved us. Only Americans have the ability to deprive Americans of their freedom.

What, then, was America’s stake on Normandy beaches?        

The question answers itself. At stake was Western Civilization and the freedom of most of Europe. France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Italy, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Norway, and other nations awaited liberation. In fact, so did Germany and its European allies: Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. Sadly, many of them exchanged one oppressor for another: Nazism for Communism.

A Monumental Undertaking

World War II was a people’s war. More than 15 million of 138 million Americans entered the armed forces. If today’s military represented the same proportions, we would have over 30 million of America’s 331 million people in uniform. Today, there are but 2.1 million in the active, reserve, and National Guard forces.        

The production feat was enormous, easily the greatest in history. Of more than 5,000 ships and landing craft in Operation Neptune, most of the former and all the latter had been built since 1941. But long before D-Day, the Allies had to defeat Hitler’s U-boats, a campaign largely completed by mid-1943. Once the Atlantic pipeline was opened, a flood of men and materiel spanned the sea lanes, bringing the wealth and youth of the New World to the rescue of the Old.

It was a war of logistics. Consequently, it was won at home, in factories and on farms. Among other things, America manufactured 79,000 landing craft; 297,000 airplanes; 2.5 million trucks; 12.8 million rifles; and 190 million pairs of boots and shoes.

Logistics also bore heavily upon manpower, as less than 25 percent of the Allied troops in France belonged to combat units. For every infantryman, tanker, or artilleryman who crossed Omaha and Utah beaches, four or five other GIs backed him up: clerks, cooks, mechanics, truck drivers, doctors and nurses.

So when you think of the World War II vet, don’t allow your mental computer to default to the traditional image. He may have been your father, grandfather, or the neighbor you hardly knew. But give him tribute, gentle reader, whether he wielded a bazooka, a bomber, or a bulldozer.

When you think of the World War II vet, think of the uncle who collected scrap metal or the aunt who learned to use a rivet gun.

When you think of World War II, think of a nation unified in its purpose with steely resolve. It was the kind of singlemindedness that took us from 30,000 feet in the skies of Europe in 1944 to the lunar Sea of Tranquility only 25 years later.

Millions paid the price

It’s astonishing to contemplate. Germany, with a population of 77 million, challenging virtually the rest of Western Civilization. The United States counted 138 million people; Russia around 108 million. Yet it took the United States, the Soviet Union, and the British Empire nearly six years to defeat Nazi Germany.

It’s an inherent fault of democracies, which seldom learn the ancient wisdom of fourth-century military writer Vegetius. Fifteen centuries before D-Day, he wrote: “Who desires peace should prepare for war.” That’s why years of European appeasement and American complacency required a generation of young men to crawl up fire-swept beaches, leaving their blood and the friends of their youth in sandy venues from France to New Guinea to Okinawa.

The Atlantic Wall was an imposing barrier, with Wagnerian bunkers concealing powerful cannon. But it was a porous blockade, often thinly manned. Germany disposed of 850,000 troops in France but only 80,000 in Normandy.

The Allied deception plan worked; Hitler’s strength lay in the Pas de Calais. Against 175,000 Allied troops enjoying uncontested air supremacy, it seems remarkable that the issue was ever in doubt. And yet it was, however briefly. The Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, penned a note for release in event that Overlord failed.

Overlord was coalition warfare writ large -- writ huge, in fact. Five Allied nations were involved at sea or ashore: America, Britain, Canada, Free France, and Poland in exile. It set a standard for what followed on larger scales in Korea, Southeast Asia, and the wastes of Mesopotamia.

In the unlikely event that Overlord failed, the Allies had an ace up their sleeve. Operation Anvil-Dragoon landed in southern France two months later, making the Riviera the most glamorous arena of the war.

However, the larger picture involved the Soviet Union. Had the western allies failed to gain traction in France, eventually Josef Stalin’s tankers would have parked their T-34s at Calais. The entire postwar history of Europe would have been vastly different.

Meanwhile, there are eleven U.S. government cemeteries in France. They contain the graves of some 60,000 Americans who died liberating that country, roughly 30,000 each in both world wars.

Somehow, the Great War -- the one that was to end all wars -- escaped the same degree of memorialization. There is little tribute to the 116,000 Americans who died in uniform in 1917-18; the Kansas City World War I memorial opened in 2006, five years before the last doughboy died.

While most French citizens were grateful for liberation, their governments then and since remain truculent. Perhaps it’s Gallic resentment of essential American aid in two world wars, combined with a cultural invasion expressed in Levi’s and McDonald’s. If so, surely America’s huge debt to France in the Revolution has been paid with interest.

Let a retired airline pilot describe the situation: “On the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 2004, I was flying a 757 from JFK to Paris. After the usual post-landing customs dance, we met the wizened little Frenchman with the large white moustache who drove our crew bus to town. He had decorated his dashboard with a little display of crossed American and French flags, and he greeted us with repeated, ‘Sank you, Americans! Sank you!’”

Despite the political rhetoric, America did not free itself on Utah or Omaha Beach. America did something grander: It freed a continent of enslaved peoples. And for that, Mon vieu, most U.S. veterans would reply, “You’re welcome.”

 

An 'Outstanding' article about the horrific efforts of Democrat Socialists to destroy our Republic!

 

The Road to Socialism is Paved with Equity

By William Manning www.americanthinker.com

Equity is one of those quirky words that has numerous meanings, including "the value of an asset" and "justice according to natural law or right."  The first defines equity as the value of financial assets a person might possess.  The second establishes equity as a quality of fairness divined by nature or our Creator.  If we look at the word closely, we discover that these meanings converge in the collective mind of liberals.  

The Biden administration defines equity as "the consistent and systematic treatment of all individuals in a fair, just, and impartial manner."  Who could be against a policy so pure?  One would think the supporters of a policy so pragmatically pristine would encourage critical discussion.  This is not the case.  Anyone that dares question the Democrat party's pursuit of equity is castigated as a blasphemer against liberal orthodoxy.  Liberals require opponents to approach their canon with the reverence of monastic silence.  But when the equity dogma is examined, one realizes that it more closely resembles a Faustian bargain than progressive enlightenment.

The Biden administration is unable to enact legislation that will assure its vision of equity.  Instead, it relies on the dictate of executive order and bureaucratic malfeasance to push its vision of systematic equity into American culture.  This vision portrays America as a nation dedicated to systemic racism, chauvinism, and misogyny.  Liberal elites have contorted history, social norms, and anthropology to awaken America to support their contrived culture.

In search of equity, liberals ignore justice.  Democrat district attorneys all over the country downplay criminal behavior because they consider crime the result of a plethora of inequities encountered by law-breakers.  They ignore the fact that criminal behavior is a choice made to damage or harm others.  Liberals refuse to hold criminals accountable, preferring to prosecute society.  They fail the people they represent by releasing criminals back into the communities they harm.  Innocent people live in fear.  The police are demonized.  Justice is a sham.

Liberal state legislatures are decriminalizing shoplifting.  Criminals may steal from stores without repercussion so long as the amount stolen doesn't exceed $1,000, or whatever amount the state considers equitable.  This causes losses so large that many businesses lock their goods up or close the store altogether.  Many firms claim these losses against insurance policies, causing insurance costs to increase across the country.  Businesses must raise prices to cover these losses.

Biden's executive orders are harmful.  In 2008, the U.S. economy almost failed because federal mortgage agencies "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made home loans accessible to borrowers who had low credit scores and a higher risk of defaulting on loans."  Hundreds of billions of dollars were lost.  The economy teetered on the brink of collapse.  The Biden administration is doubling down on this failed policy.  Biden has determined that the government should encourage borrowers with low credit scores by reducing their costs to obtain mortgages.  To accomplish this, he is increasing costs for borrowers who have higher credit scores.  USA Today reports, "By charging borrowers with good credit scores higher fees, those with non-stellar scores will pay less than they did previously.  Think of it as mortgage socialism." 

Biden wants to forgive student loans, costing taxpayers $400 billion.  He allows the FDIC to cover billions of uninsured losses at banks that are failing across the country.  Executive orders have been enacted to shut down America's energy sector, though no reliable alternative exist.  Equity is universal.  Anyone who enters the country illegally is greeted with government benefits. 

Every American possesses cultural equity.  When the Declaration of Independence was signed, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness became a component of our cultural equity.  Enactment of the Constitution and Bill of Rights increased our equity.  When abolitionists demanded freedom for all Americans, and blood was spilled on battlefields from Gettysburg to Selma to assure the equality of all Americans, our equity rose substantially.  Equality, liberty, freedom, and justice are the currency of our shared cultural equity.  These unalienable rights are endowed by our Creator.  A government's suggestion that it can give, transfer, or redistribute the cultural equity Americans possess is perverse. 

Most Americans possess financial equity.  Liberals don't believe that money is earned through hard work.  They believe that financial equity is obtained through the oppression of one person by another.  Hard work, prudence, entrepreneurship, and efficiency in pursuit of profit are evidence of this oppression.  Democrats want to remove the financial equity from the pocket of the oppressor to put it in the pocket of the oppressed. 

The purpose of America's government is to secure the property and liberty of its people so they may freely pursue their interests.  Liberal factions in the Democrat party will remove the cultural and financial equity from one group and deliver them to another until their version of equity is satisfied.  Redistribution of unalienable rights is tyranny.  Redistribution of wealth is socialism.  Socialism is no longer creeping.  The Democrat Party has it on a fast track.  Americans are right to question this deceitful version of equity and demand its cessation.

 

There is no limit the Biden Administration will go to accomplish their fraudulent, evil, corrupt agenda to destroy our once great Republic!

 

Bidenites quietly drop DNA requirement for illegal border-crossers claiming to be 'families'

By Monica Showalter www.americanthinker.com

If the recent scandal of migrant child labor in the U.S. ever bothered the Bidenites, you wouldn't know it from their latest idiocy on admission of illegal border-crossers into the U.S.

According to the Immigration Reform Law Institute's Brian Lonergan, writing for American Greatness,

as of May 31, the federal government ended familial DNA testing at the southern border. Don't expect to hear about this on the news, but it is a move that will have tragic consequences while also revealing the galling cruelty and hypocrisy of the Biden Administration.

Lonergan explained what's been going on that prompted a need for it:

 Because recent U.S. immigration policy has favored family units over individuals crossing illegally, cartels have begun to "rent" children to their migrant customers looking to enter the United States. Once the migrants successfully cross the border, the children are then recycled back to Mexico and assigned to another client.

Along the way, these "rentals" are often subjected to violence and sexual abuse. Breaker boys, children who worked in coal mines in late 19th century America, faced an easier predicament by comparison.

In other words, the cartels are running a rent-a-kid operation in order to get illegal border-crossers into the interior of the country as a "family unit," which the Biden administration is still allowing, despite its claims about running a tougher border operation after the end of Title 42.

The kids are used as fodder to get an illegal migrant into the U.S., and then recycled back to Mexico to "serve" as another phony parent's kid, and abused horribly in the process.  For some, when they get too recognizable to Border Patrol agents, they are eventually shipped into the States as "unaccompanied children."

If they enter alone, they're handed over to slavers claiming to be their parents or other relatives in order to work at egg farms, construction sites, industrial cleanup operations, and other horrors of child labor documented in a two-part report in the New York Times by Hannah Dreier, all so they can pay their "debts" for their entry into the U.S. 

These workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.

Largely from Central America, the children are driven by economic desperation that was worsened by the pandemic. This labor force has been slowly growing for almost a decade, but it has exploded since 2021, while the systems meant to protect children have broken down.

No DNA testing on those kids or their "parents" or "uncles," either, despite Biden officials' claims to being shocked at the exploitation allegations.  The Bidenites claimed they had big plans to vet these kids' sponsors better:

After the article's publication in February, the White House announced policy changes and a crackdown on companies that hire children.

...and...

Robyn M. Patterson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that the administration was now increasing scrutiny of employers and reviewing its vetting of sponsors.

There also was this New York Times headline about Biden's White House promising they'd do better.

Biden Administration Plans Crackdown on Migrant Child Labor

Yet somehow, none of this included DNA testing, which they have since dropped. 

Instead, Biden promised a crackdown on employers who hire illegal alien child labor — with no sign of that happening, either, despite, or perhaps because of, all the big corporate wokester names involved, such as 

Ben & Jerry's, Fruit of the Loom, Ford, General Motors, J. Crew, Walmart, Whole Foods and Target. In Grand Rapids, Mich., children worked late nights at plants operated by Hearthside Food Solutions, which makes and packages food for other companies, including General Mills, Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats.

There was also a promise to pick up the phone when a child migrant calls to report exploitation while handling industrial chemicals or operating construction equipment or something similar.

On Monday, senior administration officials said Health and Human Services would now direct operators to return calls to children and require them to explain what local law enforcement agency would be in touch.

And in the grand finale, Biden's big crackdown included a promise of a welcome packet for the "sponsors" with information on U.S. labor law, as if cartel exploiters would actually be concerned about that.

Case managers will also start providing information to sponsors and recently released children about U.S. labor protections.

Just no DNA testing about who these people are, and why they can claim some kind of familial right to be guardians of these kids and why they're being released, despite whistleblowers attempting to stop that and being punished

As has been noted on the GOP side of the House:

A spokesman for Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, "cut corners on vetting procedures to prioritize the expedited release of minors, and as a result more migrant children are being handed off to traffickers and exploited."

With problems like that, one wonders why the Bidenites ever so quietly dropped that DNA testing requirement for incoming migrant "families."

As Lonergan notes:

Despite the preposterous claims by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that his department is "taking it to the cartels," the U.S. government has become the silent partner of the ruthless criminal enterprises that are profiting from human misery at our border.

The cartels transport the migrants from the Northern Triangle or other points south to the U.S. border, and Biden's immigration agents process them at the border so that various nonprofit groups can disperse them throughout the interior of the United States. It's an efficient pipeline that benefits all the partners. The best part is that the enterprise is mostly funded by the U.S. citizen taxpayers, who then must suffer under the numerous bad consequences that come from a reckless mass migration policy.

Lonergan adds that the Biden White House doesn't seem to care because the people there have their narrative:

Are the architects of this ghoulish flesh-peddling market held accountable for what reasonably could be called crimes against humanity? Quite the opposite. Biden, Mayorkas, and other fellow travelers hide behind the rhetoric that they are the compassionate saviors of children[.]

The only reason this is occurring is that Joe Biden has put a loophole in for cartels in his refusal to expel illegal crossers traveling alone who are under 18, and in his refusal to detain any group claiming to be "families."  Whistleblowers have been punished, as the New York Times notes, so the child exploitation continues.  From there, mayhem of all kinds has followed because the cartels saw their opportunity, and they took it.

In both kinds of crimes against children, whether of using rent-a-kids to get single migrants over or releasing single children traveling alone to skeevy exploiting sponsors claiming to be relatives, significant amounts of child exploitation can be and have been stopped dead by DNA testing to detect phony "families."

If Biden cared about this, he wouldn't have stopped the DNA testing to prevent this exploitation of migrant children.

That he didn't tells us he's got some other game going on, and it's not pretty.

Hang this issue around him.  He needs to answer some questions about this sneaky gift to the cartels and the child-exploiters.