By Dave Smith
Lead Street Survival Seminar Instructor
- ... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses. ... (Juvenal, Satire 10.77-81)
In a post 9-11 world it would seem the people of the world’s greatest republic would spend some time in their busy days of commerce and freedom pondering the tasks ahead needed to maintain that freedom and the other pressing issues of the day. I don’t expect them to spend all their time doing this, but certainly the Founders felt it important to have an educated and thoughtful populace to ensure the preservation of the liberty they had fought so hard to create.
Jefferson’s “Tree of Liberty,” which requires the blood of tyrants and patriots, remains well-fed as our heroes still fight daily in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other unmentioned nations of the world. Here at home, in one day alone last week three of our own Brothers fell.
While the Nation sat transfixed with anxiety over who gets Anna Nicole’s body, as a judge’s outrageous behavior reminded us that too often we are the only ones who take the system of justice seriously, while poor Brittany checks in and out of rehab, and the phone system of the country became alive with votes for America’s next “Idol,” three law enforcement officers paid with their lives to sustain this odd time of bread and circuses.
None of the supposed national news networks mentioned them, they were far too busy with talking heads expending great energy explaining why this or that plaintiff deserved the former playmate’s body, and debating who might be the father of her baby. Thank God for the Officer Down Memorial Page where the real news of the day is posted, IE: the names and circumstances of the daily sacrifice made to maintain freedom on our streets.
Those who did not live in Toledo or St. Louis or Alexandria, LA had very few ways to find out about the tragedies that had struck those communities. While Americans sat transfixed watching a judge ramble about how his courtroom was not the circus it had truly become Officer Stephen Jerabek collapsed and died in the St. Louis gym after finishing a physical fitness test.
Earlier that day, while Americans tossed and turned in their beds with anxiety over the tragic odyssey that has become Brittany Spears’ oddball life, PFC Brian Colemen died from injuries sustained in an accident the day before. In Toledo, Ohio Detective Keith Dressel and his partner interrupted a drug deal and was killed in the ensuing gun battle, one he continued to fight in even though mortally wounded!
A heart attack, a traffic accident, and an armed assault, these are a pretty solid representation of the risk faced daily by law enforcement officers everywhere. It is not the public’s duty to prepare us for the threats we might face, or to even recognize our fallen, that is truly our duty; but what is the duty of a free people?
February 22nd was not only the day our Brothers died, it was also Washington’s Birthday. He felt that a free people should not only be armed but disciplined as well. He was also adamant that, “every man who is in the vigor of life ought to serve his country in whatever line it requires and he is fit for!” I think that were he to survey our Nation’s law enforcement and military personnel he would smile approvingly for he fought Congress throughout his tenure to establish security throughout the Nation against enemies foreign and domestic.
I also think that were George Washington to look at the true state of our Union today he would be dismayed at how little sense of responsibility exists within our educational, informational, and parental cultures. Of education being essential to a republic (remember we are not a democracy) he wrote, “It is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” Even in his day Washington had little faith in the media to help in that enlightenment, “If the government and the officers of it are to be the constant theme for newspaper abuse, and this too without condescending to investigate the motives or the facts, it will be impossible, I conceive, for any man living to manage the helm or to keep the machine together” and, “There is so little dependence on newspaper publications, which take whatever complexion the editors please to give them, that persons at a distance, who have no other means of information, are oftentimes at a loss to form an opinion on the most important occurrences.”
No, it is up to us to spread the word of service, to explain to all who will listen how freedom is preserved. To teach the following generations the nature of good and evil and how evil is turned away. It is sad we will have to remember the words of wisdom that have come down to advise on safety and security and how we preserve it without input from schools or the media, but it is our duty to find these words and pass them on. Washington knew the essential keys to peacekeeping: “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”
One thing I truly believe in is the pride President Washington would feel for the citizens who chose to serve the defense of liberty, to be prepared. One can see him staring at the monuments that stand in the city that bears his name. I can see him standing there, remembering the suffering that purchased the freedom of his people and wondering at the legions of men and women who have chosen to serve and ultimately fall. Names that will not be in People or Us or Geraldo at Large, or the 2008 update of Trivial Pursuit, but will always stay remembered in our hearts, and for those who served to protect and fell at home…etched forever…on the wall…
