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Robert R. Owens, PhD
It's Never Too Early to Be Too Late
November 17, 2009
If no one has
told you this yet let me be the first, as you get
older time goes faster. If you’re under thirty
you’re thinking, “This old coot has finally gone off
his rocker! Everyone knows an hour is an hour. So
how can time go faster as you get older?” If you’re
between thirty and forty you’re thinking, “Who’s got
time to think about time and who cares? I’ve got to
go to work!” If you’re between forty and sixty
you’re thinking “He might have something there” as
you day-dream about those endless summers when you
were in high school. If you’re over sixty you’re
hoping time doesn’t end before you finish reading
this paragraph.
Besides being a dimension, time is a concept that’s inextricably
intertwined with our material reality as in the space-time-continuum,
E=MC2 and all that. It took the genius
of Einstein to find a way to prove what every old man knows, time can
move at different speeds for different people. Knowing all this is
little comfort when confronted with reality. The last wave of the
Millennial Generation has entered college. I now teach History to
students born after the end of the Cold War; adults who’ve never known a
day without a personal computer, the internet or a cell phone.
When the weapons of the superpowers became too terrible to use, the Lost
Generation, those who fought World War One and led the world through the
Great Depression, and World War Two gave America the Cold War. For those
too young to remember, this was a 50 year conflict marked by bellicose
rivalry and our first modern limited war in Korea. Not to be outdone the
Greatest Generation, those who grew-up in the Great Depression and
fought World War Two and Korea gave us escalating tensions, naval
blockades and another limited war in Vietnam. They finished with a
flourish by winning the Cold War and then doing a hundred day encore in
the Gulf.
The Boomers hit the White House like guest hosts on Saturday Night
Live with a snappy monologue and a party in the Oval Office. They
tried to keep the limited war train rolling by occupying Bosnia. Losing
a Blackhawk in Somalia and bombing Serbia for Kosovo. Then Boomer George
met Osama in New York. Enter the first post-boomer president and a War
on Terror becomes a law enforcement problem just as Korea, with 55,000
dead, was a “police action.” Have we refined limited war to the point
that we aren’t sure whether it’s a war or a series of unrelated
unfortunate incidents?
A friend who optimistically believes every cloud has a silver lining
hopes the tragedy at Fort Hood was merely the work of a volunteer in the
Insane Clown Army and not a terrorist attack on an American army base in
our supposedly safe homeland. This struck me as symptomatic of the age
we’ve entered; call it the Reality Show at the End of an Era. In
the land of the free and the home of the brave the best we can hope for
is a demented mass murderer because the alternative is too frightening
to face. If homegrown jihadists are beginning to kill the brave in bosom
of the heartland it won’t be long before check-points and internal
passports begin restricting the free in the byways of the homeland.
Have you ever noticed that after Pearl Harbor we didn’t declare war on
sneak attacks? Instead, we declared war on those who attacked us. In
America today we’re constrained by the emasculating cult of political
correctness from even naming our enemy. Our leaders blather on about the
“religion of peace” when people hold street dances to celebrate 9/11 and
mobs murder and burn in reaction to an offensive comic strip. Now we
have a person doing his best to enlist as a foot-soldier in Osama’s army
while serving in Obama’s, shouting the catch phrase of the 9/11 bomber
pilots as he murders more than a dozen unarmed innocents and the
corporations once known as the Mainstream Media pussy-foot around trying
to give us the false hope that he’s merely a homicidal maniac.
It’s time to understand that if we don’t stand for something we’ll fall
for anything and until you admit you have a problem there’s no chance of
finding a solution.
Time is slipping into the future. Are we going to stand complicit in our
silence as wars without limit fought by people who proudly proclaim they
love death more than we love life shoot our unarmed citizens in the name
of God? Will we allow apologists for evil to blame the second amendment
instead of telling us the truth?
It’s time to rise up
and say enough is enough! We know who our enemies are and we know who we
are! If the brave want to keep their land the free can’t sit at home
chasing the remote. Whatever speed time is moving its going too fast to
wait. It’s never too early to be too late. Let’s roll...
About Robert R. Owens, PhD
Robert R. Owens,
PhD is an Associate Professor of History at
Southside Virginia Community College where he also
teaches Political Science, Religion and
Leadership. He write a weekly column of opinion and
observations which appears in numerous locations
both print and electronic. He is the author of three
history books currently on the market;
America Won the Vietnam War, The
Azusa Street Revival
and
Never Forget!
He maintains an archive of his articles
here. |
