Thank you for your service as well - I was in diapers during Vietnam, but I supported the troops!DaveT wrote:First off, thanks for your service.Unocat wrote: Agree whole heartedly!
I did a tour in Afghanistan for our rights, freedoms, and to fight back against those that would take them away. I am very surprised at this forum in general, I am new, but I thought I was joining a place where people were interested in advancing our rights as enumerated in our countries founding. However I see a lot of CC only people griefing people who are interested in OC. It is always an interesting human dynamic, that not matter how much alike a group is they always find a way to divide over some issue. It saddens me.
If I may, here's a slightly different way to look at what you've posted above...... I did two tours in Vietnam, whenever we got back to a rear area we would usually visit the Red Cross places where they had a TV. There was only one channel and that was Armed forces TV. We would mostly watch old recorded news shows from 'back home' so we could keep up with what was happening.
At the height of the protests back home, we watched weeks old news reports of all the demonstrations. One evening I asked my old and wise platoon sergeant why we were in Vietnam if so many people didn't want us there? His answer was one I've never forgotten.... He said we were there to assure those people the right to a differing opinion, and to demonstrate if they thought that was the way to express their point of view. In other words, freedom at work.
It's no different with the many differing viewpoints expressed here on the forum. While you may not agree with some points of view, you served our country honorably to preserve those differing opinions.... even those vastly different from yours.
I certainly don't agree with everything I read here, and I was totally against folks walking around with AR's and AK's trying to push their point of view, but I am not saddened by it...... I am reminded that we are all very lucky to be living in a country where freedom works, even when being expressed differently than we believe.
Maybe I should have placed a blank line between the two thoughts in that paragraph. The first thought was about agreeing with an above post about our rights constantly under fire and being taken away from the people and the states. The second thought was that there are clearly, within this auspicious group two camps being set up. Those that seem to be against OC and those that are for OC. Granted there are a lot of us that are somewhere in the middle of the field, but some of the nastiness and fighting is on this issue. So it saddens me that no matter how many times you slice a group of people into what appears to be a homogeneous sliver, that group finds a way to divide itself over something... hair color, eye color CC/OC. etc... Mr Cotton had a good posted somewhere recently about the fact that it is the law and we should strive to be part of it as written... and that in the future it maybe likely that these two camps will need to part ways (a loose paraphrase, if you will).
