Posted on 10/22/2001 4:10:35 AM PDT by rocknotsand
Disclosure... I am an Aussie Freeper. This is a vanity.
12 months ago... the Boys Scouts were under attack
Thanks to FR, a year ago I saw a whole truckload of vilification, smear and hate being chucked by the Democrats and the usual loony left suspects onto the Boy Scouts of America. Reams of paper and heaps of electronic bandwidth was devoted to smearing the BSA and all this while someone called Al Gore had his glee club heckled the Scout honor guard at the DNC etc. It was just... so way out there. The BSA was being boxed about the ears for daring to exist; for surviving the cultural war and for not going away like the other icons of that America.
Anyways the BSA-is-bad issue was like a line in the sand or something for the real conservatives. The BSA issue had a zillion threads here at FR. I was one of the BSA supporters on those threads and there were quite a few BSA attackers for sure. Maybe there still are. (Where are the Log Cabins now?) It is wonderful being part of FR and I only wish Australia would have something to imitate it, to cast light on the dark deeds of the liberals. FR was 100% THE right place to be (still is).
Now we're in a war...
12 months later FR is still something special as always. Thanks JR. I won't get into the war and 911 specifically... I want to dwell on the big change on the news and commentary front - and the current state-of-play regarding liberal and lefties.
From an overseas perspective there seems to be many pitiful lefties in America that are cringeing whenever they see the current eyeful of flags a-flying, and the pledges being taken at schools, and the patriotism hitting the streets (eg Freeps against Peaceniks). That all this has come of the Taliban fanatics is horrible of course (I would need 2000 words to attempt to describe how I feel about 911 & aftermath)...
Would anyone care to comment about the huge, grand-canyon-wide, light year super-size difference between that time and this? If you had just come out of coma you just couldn't get over it real easy. I'd be gobsmacked for sure.
When I look back to the 2000 election etc, I end up thinking that the lefties should not be given a chance now they're down. They took a swing at the BSA and America's backbone. They had the support of every college professor, every ACLU spruker, every magazine commentator, every clunky celebrity, and every lock-step local United Way committee, that they could muster. Don't forget it.
Last night Hillary was booooed bigtime and it almost made up for 'all that'. I see "The Night Of The Big Boo" as a sort of closing curtain, a fade-out, of the liberal strangle hold on America's ego. Wonderful to behold was it not? Anyway, around the western world we are praying for our servicemen and women. It is an time of uncertainty, we are in the midst of anthrax scares and paranoia etc, BUT American values seem more secure now than they have been for years. True. From the moment the congress 'choir' hesitantly sang "God Bless America"... For me that impromptu 'scene' is a memory up there with the fall of the Berlin wall. By the second verse they were in full voice and I will never forget it. Neither will the liberals perhaps - tho for different reasons.
Thats how I read it... We all have renewed respect for firemen and police and for those in uniform; and this too is where I return to tie in my praises of the BSA and its bedrock principles and moral strengths. I am connecting the dots here I suppose, but I link the BSA with the heroes that went charging up those stairs on 911. I link the BSA to the 'right stuff'. The BSA does a wondrous job and I give three cheers every hard-working scoutmaster in the BSA. I know that the BSA has a worldview that leads them and their troops to be achievers and believers - to get hold of the American right stuff and hang on, come what may. It's the stuff the free world needs today and always will need.
Peggy Noonan did a great piece recently praising/realizing that America could still do it. It was on FR. She said that America could still make real men (!). But the BSA knew that all along I think. (Could someone post a picture of scouts in a 4th of July parade or something).
USA!
Normally I'd be exceedingly skeptical of a statement such as this, but you know, as improbably as it seems, you may be right! I recently spoke with a neighbor working to convince me that she was a conservative. She voted for Gore for Gods sake. She laughed it off saying, "it was only because I new he'd never win". We live in Florida… I decided not to press it.
The conversation went on from there, but the relevance to your post is that here was the most socially connected woman I know striving to distance herself from what she wants to write off as a joke. She was trying to embrace conservatism as she knows it. That's unprecedented in my experience.
I must comment on your post. I loved it. Conservatism in the US is under attack, as usual - by the leftist media, and all the usual suspects. We do have a great opportunity, and there is danger that opportunity will not reach its full potential as conservatives everywhere fail to take full advantage of it. Too often we see, over internal squabbles and petty differences, a crippling of opportunity take place.
We've seen a huge increase in numbers of people here. New users are pouring in, and within that new group are great numbers of people that aren't as knowledgeable as long-term readers here - like yourself! They have began a new trek - that of finding information hidden from them by major media publications and broadcasts.
They have also altered the tenor of the pre-9/11 forum here on FR, as has numbers of outright leftists that have become strident. It is indeed a different place here, and a different world - but, one I have great hope in. The roots of our nation are quite alive, even if the branches are a bit withered and the bloom is off a bit from leftist poison. The left indeed faces a large problem - the renewed energy and vow of many to return to those roots.
Note to admin... I used to be able to bump using reply to "All". Now I can't cause "All" isn't on your registry of users or something. (?) What's the new way of replying to no-one in particular?
Great word...b u m p
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