Random Thoughts for January, 2018.
By Robert A. Hall
Feel free to post or forward.
Happy Hogmanay! We wish you and yours, and our Republic, a happy, prosperous, and peaceful 2018.
New Years Day, Madison, WI, 8:00 am. -12 degrees.
O New Years Eve, Bonnie and I went to see the movie, Their Darkest Hourabout Churchill and British politics in the desperate year of 1940. Terrific movie, see it if you can.
Faith defies logic.
One thing I hate about the Christmas Season is the “year-end wrap-ups” in the newspapers and magazines (also on TV I believe but I don’t watch it much.) I’m perfectly capable of boring myself without their help.
I live under the tyranny of the "To-Do" list.
For today's parties, character only counts when it can be used to bash the miscreants in the other party and protect your own.
About the time of Vietnam, Honor went out of style. We are paying the price, but it will get much worse.
How many people have died for a cliché? How many more have died because of one?
If you are a public person, a politician, an entertainment star, a general and so on, and you think it would be transparent and helpful to give a reporter total access to you life for a short period of time, think twice. The reporter will savage you to prove to his readers and editors that you haven't co-opted him. I have seen this happen more than once. Safer to keep the walls up and control the flow of information.
People never cease to think that words suffice for deeds. They don't, of course.
Fantasies should not be reality-based. It spoils them. But plans must be reality based, or disaster looms.
I think many of the Veterans' stories written by the staff and volunteers at the Madison My Life, My Story program will be read by the vet's great grandchildren after we are dead and gone. I think many will become family heirlooms.
Flattery ruins more folks than insults.
I've been reading selections from "The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War." Though he was an Athenian, and wrote his history during the war, it is striking how balanced his history is, though it was written almost 1500 years ago. Ken Burn's "Vietnam" isn't in the same ballpark for fairness.
Note to the Taliban, BLM, ISIS, Anti-Fa and others who are destroying monuments to the past: Times change, ideas change, morality changes; someday a people full of self-righteous outrage will follow your example and destroy every record and memory of you.
With some people, you don't dare ask, "How are you doing?" because they will tell you. At great length.
The Arabs are upset that the US recognized Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel, a country they don't recognize as having a right to exist, a culture they have vowed to obliterate and a people they have pledged to exterminate. Because, you know, it will interfere with the "peace process." Their idea of a "peace process" being they get to carry out these pledges.
Forgiveness is a mandated spiritual duty. But it's hard to forgive a viper that's coiling to strike again.
Politicians lie because they have to give the voters what they want. And they want to be promised cost-free benefits.
My sarcasm has automatic target acquisition and firing. Target, fire! Target, fire!
From Mizra on Facebook: “Follow your heart BUT take your brain with you.”
Both Trump and his Democratic critics are infected with a virulent malignity.
Never miss a chance to make someone else happy. For that will make you happy as well.
With some people, the better you know them, the less you like them.
If your whole sense of self is based on how good looking you are, the older you get the unhappier you will be.
I think there may be no such thing as a normal childhood. But some are much worse than others, as parents inflict their poor values, nasty personalities, and bad decisions on their kids.
We were in a restaurant and I thought the couple with their heads bowed at another table were saying grace. Until I saw they were studying their smartphones.
I may go on the new “Whisky Diet.” You have four or five Scotches every night and you don’t care how fat you are.
Saw a license plate: “IKOOK4U”
Given the large number of reported sexual assaults in the military, are feminists rethinking putting women in the field in infantry units? Probably not. Military women will just have to suffer so women who would never think of serving can feel good about standing for a principle.
The Democrats describe the Republican tax bill as a “heist” of government money. So, taking less of the money you earned is stealing from the government?
I think we should treat the Muslim minority in this country with the same tolerance and compassion that Christians, Jews, Hindus and minority Muslim sects are treated in Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Indonesia, Pakistan and other Muslim-majority countries.
Bureaucracy is the revenge of the C students.
Get the collection! My “Random Thoughts” from 2008 through July, 2013 are collected in this book: The Old Jarhead's Journal: Random Thoughts on Life, Liberty, and Leadership by Robert A. Hall
The Old Jarhead’s Journal is a collection of Random Thoughts on politics and life and Conservative Political Essays, mostly published on the author’s blog, including the essay “I’m Tired” which went viral on the Internet in 2009, “The Hall Platform,” “This I Believe,” and “Why I’m a Republican.” While they will be of interest to conservative thinkers, they are collected here in book form as a service to readers who wish to give a copy to favorite liberals and watch their heads explode. All royalties are donated to the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund.
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Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. He is the author of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic. http://www.amazon.com/Coming-
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