I finally broke down and this morning added one of those pictures that appear with Blogger comments. As many of you know I proudly served 4 years in the United States Marine Corps and consider that a defining period in my life. The USMC motto is “Semper Fidelis” which means “Always Faithful”. This describes (in order of importance) where our faith is placed:
What do y’all think of it?
How can you have faith in a country? When religious faith and patriotism are conflated is where a large part of the worlds problems begin, IMHO.
Nevertheless, the military provides wonderful experiences and life lessons that you could never have in civilian life, as my brother who has just finished serving 10 years as an airforce pilot will attest.
It’s easy to have faith in a country. As to whether it causes a large part of the world’s problems, well that all depends on which country you place your faith in. If you place it in one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all then I don’t see how you can go wrong. Problems are caused when people lose faith in these things or were never taught where to put their faith to begin with. Then they start acting exclusively in their own self-interest. And as Ben Franklin said, “If we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately.” So we have faith in God-given inalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have faith in our government of men and women who are brought together by the people and for the people to protect these rights, and we have faith in our brothers-in-arms who are from time to time called upon to defend with their lives these articles of faith.
I like Dave. Looks sharp.
Nice priority of allegiances. The thing that will destroy Europe is the lack of that type of allegiances, specially the First One.
Nice one Dave!
Now I’m sure the ACLU and various other parties are going to try and make you take that picture down from public display! I figure you can tell them that Europa is mostly God-free and is quite temparate this time of year, in fact all year.
“Always faithful” describes the response of we Marines to God, Country and Corps. It doesn’t mean that we believe the country or the corps is perfect and never does wrong, but that we will never abandon either or shirk our duty when the going gets tough. Every Marine knows from painful experience that Marine Corps leadership can do some boneheaded things, as can (even more) the civilian leadership of the country. But he also knows that nothing human is perfect and that fidelity is a virtue precisely when you are in a pickle because somebody else blew it… like at Wake Island in WWII, the Chosin Reservoir in Korea or Khe Sahn in Vietnam.
Semper Fi and keep up the good work, Dave.
Dave T., 2nd Marine Division, 1986-90