Let’s face it; we are all liberals, no matter how conservative we may be. The Puritans who founded America conquered dangers and disasters to win religious freedom, but they were liberals. In 1754, Benjamin Franklin depicted a rattlesnake cut into eight sections in his Pennsylvania Gazette. The eight sections of snake symbolized eight eastern seaboard colonies and the caption said “Join or Die!” It was a call to arms during the French and Indian war. By 1776, an image of a coiled rattlesnake, with “Don’t Tread on Me”, became an American icon of independence and a battle cry engrained in the Spirit of ’76.

What is different about the liberalism of the Puritans and the liberalism of the progressive movement in America today? In a word, the difference is morality. The Puritans personified deeply held, Bible based morality with their liberalism. When morality is stripped away from liberalism, the result is 30 million aborted babies over thirty years, legalized sodomy and the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), all protected by the immoral ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union).

Born in 1954, I was a classic Love Generation, anti-Vietnam War liberal, living at the speed of party! It is unbelievable; what our generation has lived through. The sexual revolution, women’s lib, the music revolution, the recreational drug awakening, the Civil Rights marches, the nuclear arms race, the space race, the information revolution spawned by the computer, the internet, satellites and cell phones are just part of what we have witnessed! What a wonderful life and evolution of our democracy, in our time!

Our choices for president in 1972, when I turned eighteen and got a draft card, were Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. I did not vote that year. Most profound, perhaps, we stopped the Vietnam War to protect those poor rice farmers, from US troops. We quit and came home. Then, between 1975 and 1978, the Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge slaughtered about three million of those peasants who we demonstrated in US streets to protect, from US troops. How foolish we were!

The lesson is clear: really bad guys immediately fill the muscle void when good men stand down and go home. Those who rallied our utopian filled minds to stop the war were mostly silent about the genocide that ensued, after US troops were withdrawn. Our killed and wounded were sacrificed in great numbers. In the end, their mission and our allies were simply abandoned by Congress and our divided nation.

We grew up with Why We Fight, Victory At Sea, Combat, Black Sheep Squadron, Rat Patrol and other programs about WWII, the death camps and the cost of freedom on TV. This type of programming saturated the few over-the-air channels and we found it educational, entertaining and fascinating. Many of us still find it fascinating. It was all about the gritty, epic struggle between freedom and tyranny and it was very patriotic!

The Rifleman, Leave It To Beaver, Gunsmoke, My Three Sons, Bonanza, The Waltons, Wild Kingdom and All In The Family are just a few programs I recall that were favorites for lighter entertainment. And the Ed Sullivan show. It was all pretty wholesome fare and we loved it. The America of our youth is already gone forever, in case you missed its passing.

We watched in naive befuddlement while the Shah of Iran was overthrown by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Tehran, who used US hostages as pawns on TV for over a year beginning in 1979. Interest rates were sky high and lines at gas stations were longer than that. Our President at the time was a former peanut farmer and most of us watched, from afar, the rise of radical Islam without understanding it.

As a result of the gasoline shortages that followed, there was a lot of talk about energy independence. Certainly, the masses of us did not connect the dots between buying foreign oil and funding terrorism. Apparently, neither did our elected leaders who were most interested in re-election, as they almost always are above all else. In retrospect, what in God’s name were we doing? Oh yeah, partying! We watched while our secular, modern thinking but despotic ally was swept from power, our Embassy was overrun, our hostages were traumatized and the rest of us w ere slowly strangled at the gasoline pump. We were brain dead.

We watched our principled Ronald Reagan from a distance with admiration, as did millions worldwide throughout the 1980’s. When Ross Perot entered politics, he caught everyone’s attention by driving the national debate for a balanced budget and by opposing NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) with his famous “giant sucking sound” quote. Perot redirected enough conservative or moderate votes from Bush Forty One to put Clinton in the White House.

Bill Clinton really motivated many of us politically. When Clinton said that he did not inhale the marijuana he tried in college, it was obvious that he was a liar, a scrupulous manipulator and many of us were motivated against him immediately. The Adolescent President, Bubba, dragged us all into the abyss of political and moral relativism where anything goes, as Nixon had done decades earlier. It was more liberalism without morality.

Rather than recount the long series of terrorist attacks we suffered and mostly ignored, from Carter’s administration until 9/11, let it suffice to say that I was already paying attention to politics before 9/11 thanks to Bubba. Now we are aware that we are in the fight of our lives. We have let the radical ideology of our enemies morph into a giant violent network with global reach and influence and we even, indirectly, enabled it and still do.

Our strategic goal must be the triumph of human freedom over tyranny in Muslim countries, for our own safety too. It is in our interest, is moral and it will take a generation or two for freedom to achieve victory over this brand of fascism. For non-radicals like most of us, it is bigger than the cost of oil, revenge or even justice. Because of weapons technology, it is about survival for which radicals care not. Tactics, tools and diplomacy will need to adapt and be re-configured for each adverse circumstance until the right combination is found to achieve long term victory.

The hour is late. Since 1979 our enemies have been at war with us and teaching their children to be martyrs, en masse. Most of us were asleep at the wheel until September 11, 2001 and too many of us seem to have gone back to sleep again. Religious, ideological hatred and technology are growing against us, so America must fight for freedom for others once again. We can not maintain our freedom alone, we need allies.

While we are divided about the best ways to achieve the strategic goal of freedom over tyranny, it is clear to most of us that we must use all of our resources and tools, for generations. Clarity resulted from 9/11 for most baby boomers and that means war, and diplomacy. Diplomacy only works to our advantage from a position of strength. “I am convinced, Captain, that the purpose of diplomacy is to prolong the engagement.” – Mr. Spock.

Lightning fast global communications show our enemies a vicious political war internally which makes winning the wars of bullets and bones infinitely more difficult. Our political division emboldens our enemies to kill more Americans. They believe we will quit and go home, again. They have Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia as their proof and recruiting tools. Last but not least, our division demoralizes our own volunteer military forces.

A massive show of political unity at home is required because votes affect troop morale on both sides!

Purveyors of propaganda surround us. Seek and you shall find what our troops’ majority wishes are, but you must work at it. It is not easy if you prefer polling data of our military over logic. Polling questions will improve so answers cannot be so easily spun into interpretations not intended by the military volunteers questioned, if I have my way. When you are sure you know what our troops’ majority political wishes are, support them with your votes because only votes count. Our words of support, without our votes being aligned with our troops’ majority political wishes, mean nothing. Our troops and our enemies have connected the dots between votes and troop morale, on both sides, can you?

Vote as if your life depended on it, because it very well might. This is how we found clarity, crafted from common sense; the hard way!

About the Author: Average Joe Boomer works to help you boost troop morale, by influencing voters, with his online store at WEAR the Gear (Garments, Tote Bags, Bumper Stickers & more!)