The Islamic Republic followed the old playbook. Trump didn’t.



History offers a grim pattern: A tyrant rises, slaughters the innocent, and the world watches — then regrets. From the ruins of cities and graves of millions comes the same old lesson, relearned too late: Free nations must stand together or perish apart.

In the fifth century, Attila the Hun terrorized Europe. Theodosius II, the Eastern Roman emperor, bought peace by paying Attila 2,100 pounds of gold annually. The Western emperor, Valentinian III, stayed silent — happy to remain out of range. But Attila didn’t stop. He turned west, burned cities, demanded Valentinian’s sister in marriage, and claimed half the empire. Rome tried appeasement again. Gold flowed. But the hunger of predators cannot be satisfied with treasure.

History has handed us one last chance to learn its lesson. Let’s not waste it.

Modern history offers another warning. Adolf Hitler spelled out his genocidal vision in "Mein Kampf." He made no secret of his plan to build a racially pure Volksgemeinschaft by eliminating “inferior” peoples. Yet, the world did nothing.

When Hitler marched troops into the Rhineland, Europe’s powers stood by. When he absorbed Austria in the Anschluss of 1938, they did nothing. When he threatened Czechoslovakia, the world convened — not to confront him but to appease him. The result was the Munich Agreement, signed in the name of peace, but it delivered only conquest. Six million Jews died. Tens of millions more followed. Once again, the world failed to act until it was far too late.

The refrain “never again” echoed across continents. But history’s warning now blares once more — from Tehran.

On February 11, 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran was born. That August, it declared Al-Quds Day, with crowds chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” The regime announced its goal: global domination under a single theocratic rule. Nonbelievers would be crushed. Sound familiar?

The alarms have only grown louder. In 1979, Iran seized 66 Americans at the U.S. embassy and held 52 of them hostage for over a year. In 1981, Iran’s Islamic Revolution inspired the assassination of Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat. In 1982, it supported the Syrian uprising that spawned Hamas. In 1983, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans. By the 1990s, Iran backed Ansar Allah — the group now called the Houthis.

Iran built a terrorist Hydra of proxies, encircling Israel with armed fanatics. And the world did what it always does: It looked away.

Even the United States bent the knee. The Reagan administration traded arms for hostages. Obama gave Iran billions in sanctions relief under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — an appeasement deal in all but name, dressed up as diplomacy. In return, Iran advanced its nuclear program while promising not to use it. A familiar bargain: Leave us alone, won’t you? Please?

RELATED: When American men answered the call of civilization

  Illustration by Ed Vebell/Getty Images

Then came October 7, 2023. Hamas terrorists — financed by unfrozen Iranian assets — slaughtered more than 1,200 Israelis. They raped. They kidnapped. They filmed their atrocities. And still, Iran marched forward, building nuclear capacity for a “final solution.”

Enough.

President Donald Trump saw the danger. Intelligence revealed that Iran was weeks away from building a bomb. He acted.

Eight U.S. B-2 bombers carrying bunker-buster warheads struck Iran’s nuclear sites — Natanz, Isfahan, Fordow, and others. Trump announced to the American people that the regime’s key nuclear enrichment facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.”

Trump did what history demands. He refused to sacrifice nine million Israelis while the world held meetings. He didn’t wait for Tehran to strike first. He acted to stop a second holocaust before it could begin.

This is the difference between a predator’s barbarism and a statesman’s vision. Trump offers peace through strength — as opposed to allowing predators to plunder, rape, and murder their way to barbaric “prosperity.” Trump’s prosperity emerges from shared interest. He champions a commonwealth built on commerce, not conquest.

History has handed us one last chance to learn its lesson. Let’s not waste it.

Trump’s tariffs take a flamethrower to the free trade lie



The globalist fairy tale is finally unraveling — and not a moment too soon.

For decades, Americans were sold the shiny promise of globalization: open markets, booming trade, cheaper goods, and peace through economic integration. But behind the glittering sales pitch was a brutal reality — the slow, deliberate hollowing out of the American middle class.

Trump’s tariffs are not just about trade. They’re about rebuilding what our elites sold off piece by piece.

Enough of this.

President Donald Trump’s recent announcement on tariffs sent the elites — those who profited most from this decades-long experiment — into full panic mode, and for good reason. Their gravy train may finally be running out of track.

This isn’t about economic theory. This is about the lives, livelihoods, and dignity of the American people — especially those in towns and cities that once hummed with the sound of industry.

How it started

The North American Free Trade Agreement was the appetizer in a global feast that served American manufacturing to foreign competitors on a silver platter. Even President Bill Clinton, at the NAFTA signing ceremony in 1993, seemed eager to get past the domestic details and embrace the coming wave of globalization.

By the early 2000s, the United States was importing at unprecedented rates. Today, the trade deficit with the European Union alone is $235 billion. That’s not trade — that’s surrender. Our deficit with Europe hasn’t fallen below $100 billion since 2011.

None of this happened by accident.

It began with a handshake in 1972, when President Richard Nixon traveled to Mao Zedong’s China. At the time, China was riding bicycles and rationing rice. No one imagined that opening the door to trade would lead to the economic superpower we face today.

But by 2001, that door had been blasted open. China joined the World Trade Organization, committing to lower tariffs and removing trade barriers. American markets were flooded with cheap Chinese goods — and American workers were left holding an empty lunch pail.

The result was a trade deficit with China that ballooned to $295 billion last year. That’s the largest deficit we have with any country. Our total trade deficit in 2024 was a record $1.2 trillion — the fourth consecutive year topping $1 trillion.

The human toll

The fallout from this one-sided relationship with China is staggering. A 2016 MIT study found that, in the decade following China’s World Trade Organization entry, the U.S. lost 2.4 million jobs — nearly a million in manufacturing alone. The researchers concluded that international trade makes low-skilled workers in America “worse off — not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis.”

You’d think a quote like that would be plastered across every office in Congress. But no. The political class — especially on the left — chose to ignore it.

Instead, they wring their hands in confusion when working-class Americans turn to a leader like Donald Trump. “Why are they so angry?” they ask, while standing atop the wreckage of towns they helped dismantle.

About that wreckage

In Galesburg, Illinois, Maytag once employed 5,000 workers. The last refrigerator rolled off the line in 2004. The site is now rubble and weeds.

Youngstown, Ohio — once a titan of American steel — has lost 60% of its population since the 1970s. Gary, Indiana, once home to U.S. Steel’s largest mill, has over 10,000 abandoned buildings. In Flint, Michigan, over 80,000 GM jobs vanished. By 2016, over half of men ages 25 to 54 in Flint were unemployed. Buick City, once a symbol of industrial might, was demolished in 2002.

Detroit, once richer than Boston, is now 40% poorer. The U.S. auto parts industry lost 419,000 jobs in the decade after China joined the WTO.

Even NPR admitted that “the China Shock created what looked like miniature Great Depressions” in these areas.

From dream to despair

Between 2000 and 2014, America lost 5 million manufacturing jobs — the steepest decline in American history.

Meanwhile, in the same time period, corporate profits soared 600%. CEO pay has ballooned to 290 times that of the average worker. In 1965, it was 21 times. Since 1978, CEO compensation has grown by over 1,000%. Regular worker pay? Just 24%.

They told us the rising tide would lift all boats. Turns out, it mostly lifted yachts. And the rest of the boats? Capsized.

This economic assault came with a steep psychological toll.

A 2017 Princeton study found a link between rising deaths of despair — suicide, alcoholism, drug overdoses — and job losses in trade-exposed areas.

Since 1999, overdose deaths in America have increased sixfold. In Ohio, they rose 1,000% between 2001 and 2017. The hardest-hit areas? Deindustrialized, working-class communities.

The American middle class is vanishing. In 1971, 61% of households were middle class. By 2023, it was just 51%. In 1950, manufacturing jobs made up 30% of total U.S. employment. Today, they make up just 8%.

RELATED: Why tariffs are the key to America’s industrial comeback

  Bet_Noire via iStock/Getty Images

There are fewer Americans working in manufacturing today than there were in 1941 — before we entered World War II — despite our population more than doubling.

This collapse hit black workers especially hard. Between 1998 and 2020, more than 646,000 manufacturing jobs held by black Americans disappeared — a 30% loss in that sector.

A reckoning long overdue

Trump’s tariff push is a long-overdue confrontation with the failed consensus of globalization. For 25 years, the arrangement has been spectacular — for China and for U.S. corporations chasing cheap labor. But for America’s workers and towns, it has been catastrophic.

Yes, the corporate press is scoffing. CBS News recently “fact-checked” Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s claim that America has lost 90,000 factories since NAFTA. The correct number, they said, was actually 70,500.

Oh? Only 70,500? As if that’s supposed to be reassuring.

These aren’t merely statistics. These are livelihoods — entire communities turned into ghost towns. Every shuttered factory was once a promise of stability, dignity, and upward mobility. And with each closure, that promise was betrayed.

We’ve allowed globalization to crush the backbone of this country — the working men and women who don’t show up on CNBC but who built the very foundation we all stand on.

Trump’s tariffs are not just about trade. They’re about sovereignty. They’re about self-respect. They’re about rebuilding what our elites sold off piece by piece.

This is not a perfect plan. But it’s the first real attempt in decades to confront the human cost of globalization. It’s a wager that America can still choose dignity over dependence, self-sufficiency over servitude.

Let’s hope we’re not too late.

Neocons Use Accusations Of ‘Appeasement’ To Morally Blackmail People Into Supporting Forever Wars

Neocons like Mark Levin always start screeching 'appeasement' to try to shame opponents of forever wars.

This Yale professor thinks patriotism is some kind of hate crime



Timothy Snyder has built a career trying to convince Americans that Donald Trump is a latter-day Adolf Hitler — a fascist demagogue hell-bent on dismantling America’s institutions to seize power. Last week, the Yale historian and author of the bestselling resistance pamphlet “On Tyranny,” briefly changed course. Now, apparently, Trump is Jefferson Davis.

In a recent Substack post, Snyder claimed Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg amounted to a call for civil war. He argued that the president’s praise for the military and his rejection of the left’s historical revisionism signaled not patriotism but treason — and the rise of a “paramilitary” regime.

Trump doesn’t want a second civil war. He wants the first one to mean something.

No, seriously. That’s what he thinks.

Renaming Fort Bragg

Trump’s first alleged Confederate offense, Snyder said, was to reinstate the military base’s original name: Fort Bragg. The Biden administration had renamed it Fort Liberty, repudiating General Braxton Bragg’s Confederate ties. Trump reversed the change.

The Biden administration had renamed the base Fort Liberty, citing General Braxton Bragg’s service to the Confederacy. Trump reversed the change. But he didn’t do it to honor a Confederate general. He did it to honor World War II paratrooper Roland L. Bragg, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explained.

Snyder wasn’t buying it. He accused the administration of fabricating a “dishonest pretense” that glorifies “oathbreakers and traitors.”

That charge hits close to home.

My grandfather Martin Spohn was a German Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Berlin in 1936. He proudly served in the U.S. Army. He trained with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Bragg before deploying to Normandy. Like thousands of others, he saw the base not as a Confederate monument but as a launchpad for defeating actual fascism.

Restoring the name Fort Bragg doesn’t rewrite history. It honors the Americans who made history — men who trained there to liberate Europe from tyranny.

That’s not fascism. That’s victory over it.

Deploying the National Guard

For Snyder, though, Trump’s real crime was calling up the National Guard to restore order in riot-torn Los Angeles. That, he claimed, puts Trump in the same category as Robert E. Lee.

According to Snyder, the president is “preparing American soldiers to see themselves as heroes when they undertake operations inside the United States against unarmed people, including their fellow citizens.”

Let’s set aside the hysteria.

Trump didn’t glorify the Confederacy. He called for law and order in the face of spiraling violence. He pushed back against the left’s crusade to erase American history — not to rewrite it but to preserve its complexity.

He didn’t tell soldiers to defy the Constitution. He reminded them of their oath: to defend the nation, not serve the ideological demands of woke officials.

Snyder’s claims are as reckless as they are false.

He smears anyone who supports border enforcement or takes pride in military service as a threat to democracy. Want secure borders? You’re a fascist. Call out the collapse of Democrat-run cities? You’re a Confederate.

This isn’t analysis. It’s slander masquerading as scholarship.

The real division

But this debate isn’t really about Trump. It’s about power.

The left has spent years reshaping the military into a political project — prioritizing diversity seminars over combat readiness, purging dissenters, and enforcing ideological loyalty. When Trump pushes back, it’s not authoritarianism. It’s restoration.

The left wants a military that fights climate change, checks pronouns, and marches for “equity.” Trump wants a military that defends the nation. That’s the real divide.

Over and over, Snyder accuses Trump of “trivializing” the military by invoking its heroism while discussing immigration enforcement. But what trivializes military service more — linking it to national defense or turning soldiers into props for progressive social experiments?

RELATED: The real tyranny? Institutional groupthink disguised as truth

  Photo by Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

And Trump isn’t breaking precedent by deploying the National Guard when local leaders fail. Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson used federal troops during desegregation. Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect civil rights marchers. The Guard responded during the 1967 Detroit riots, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the Black Lives Matter and Antifa upheavals of 2020.

Trump acted within his authority — and fulfilled his duty — to restore order when Democrat-run cities descended into chaos.

A House divided?

Snyder’s rhetoric about “protecting democracy” rings hollow. Trump won the 2024 election decisively. Voters across party lines gave him a clear mandate: Secure the border and remove violent criminals. Pew Research found that 97% of Americans support more vigorous enforcement of immigration laws.

Yet Snyder, who constantly warns of creeping authoritarianism, closed his post by urging fellow academics to join No Kings protests.

Nobody appointed Timothy Snyder king, either.

If he respected democratic institutions, he’d spend less time fearmongering — and more time listening to the Americans, including many in uniform, who are tired of being demonized for loving their country. They’re tired of being called bigots for wanting secure borders. They’re tired of watching history weaponized to silence dissent.

Snyder invokes Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to condemn Trump. But it was Lincoln who paraphrased scripture when he said, “A house divided cannot stand.”

Americans united behind Trump in 2024. Snyder’s effort to cast half the country as fascists or Confederates embodies the division Lincoln warned against.

Here’s the truth: Trump doesn’t want a second civil war. He wants the first one to mean something.

He wants a Union preserved in more than name — a Union defined by secure borders, equal justice, and unapologetic national pride.

If that scares Timothy Snyder, maybe the problem isn’t Trump.

Perhaps, the problem lies in the man staring back at him in the mirror.

The Alliance Wasn’t Always Grand

Britain’s declaration of war against Finland on December 5, 1941, was a typically humiliating moment of allied warfare. Invaded in November 1939 by Soviet forces, Finland fought tenaciously against overwhelming odds through a brutal winter. In a 1940 broadcast, Winston Churchill declared "Only Finland—superb, nay, sublime—in the jaws of peril—Finland shows what free men can do." Yet without aid, Finnish defeat was as inevitable as the harsh treaty Stalin imposed after his hefty losses. Was anyone surprised the Finns took the opportunity of Hitler’s invasion of Russia in 1941 to regain the territory it ceded and more? Yet this aligned Finland with Nazi Germany, a country that ironically had aided the original Soviet invasion. And, more irony, Soviet and British interests were suddenly aligned, with Churchill deciding Britain would do all it could to keep the Russians fighting. Among Stalin’s many demands was a declaration of war on Finland. The British government duly obliged.

The post The Alliance Wasn’t Always Grand appeared first on .

When American men answered the call of civilization



Eighty-one years have passed since American troops landed at Normandy — an event that changed the course of history and helped bring down the Nazi regime. Yet the 80th anniversary came and went last year with barely a murmur of national recognition.

That silence speaks volumes.

The most enduring lessons come not from strategy but from the men who waded ashore, knowing they might not live through the morning. Why did they do it?

Deep divisions have clouded American political life, but failing to commemorate the most significant amphibious invasion in history marks more than forgetfulness. It reflects a broader unease with our own history and the sacrifices that secured our liberty.

The Trump administration has begun to reverse that drift, reviving public recognition of the past in ways absent during the Biden years. Critics have seized on moments like President Trump’s recent remarks at West Point, where he appeared to downplay Allied contributions. Those contributions must never be forgotten. But the American role in defeating Nazi Germany — and especially in the brutal and heroic assault on Fortress Europe — cannot be overstated.

No day better symbolizes that effort than June 6, 1944.

The beginning of the end

D-Day ranks with Gettysburg, Meuse-Argonne, and Iwo Jima in the American martial canon. Its outcome was anything but assured.

Operation Neptune — the seaborne phase of Operation Overlord — followed months of planning that began in late 1943 after Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin conferred in Tehran. Stalin had pushed hard for a second front to relieve Soviet pressure. Churchill preferred a Mediterranean approach. But the Americans insisted on France. We won the argument.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower became supreme commander. British Gen. Bernard Montgomery was named ground commander. The invasion would take place in late spring.

Three major conditions needed to be met before Neptune could launch.

First, the Germans had to be pinned down in the east. Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 had already opened a two-front war that Germany could not sustain. Despite massive Soviet losses, the Red Army had recovered. The Wehrmacht had not. It was arguably Hitler’s greatest blunder.

Second, the Allies needed air superiority. Through strategic bombing and air-to-air combat, the U.S. and Britain weakened the Luftwaffe, hitting factories, airfields, and supply depots. By June 1944, Allied fighters controlled the skies over France.

Third, the Mediterranean had to be secure. Campaigns in North Africa and Italy tied down German forces and freed up Allied naval resources for the invasion of Northern France.

With those conditions met, the Allies selected Normandy as the landing site. Pas-de-Calais was closer to Germany and easier to resupply but far more heavily fortified by the Nazis. Normandy offered a more realistic point of attack — provided the Germans could be fooled.

Deception and preparation

Operation Fortitude aimed to do just that. Allied intelligence fed Germany a steady diet of false information. Fake radio traffic, dummy landing craft, and bogus army units — including a fictitious command under Lt. Gen. George Patton — convinced Hitler that Calais would be the invasion point.

The ruse worked. German commanders remained fixated on Calais long after troops began pouring ashore at Normandy.

Military theorists had long understood how war resists prediction. “Everything in war is simple,” Carl von Clausewitz observed, “but the simplest thing is difficult.” Clausewitz’s “friction” and Helmuth von Moltke’s warning that “no plan of operation extends with any certainty beyond first contact with the main hostile force” applied in full. Amphibious landings, by their nature, magnify every point of failure.

The plan called for landings on five beaches, with three airborne divisions deployed inland. U.S. forces hit Utah and Omaha. British and Canadian forces landed at Gold, Juno, and Sword. Airborne units dropped behind German lines to disrupt reinforcements.

The moon and tide had to align. Weather delayed the launch from June 5 to June 6. That delay caught the Germans off guard. General Erwin Rommel had left France to celebrate his wife’s birthday. Other commanders were away conducting war games.

The landings begin

Allied bombers struck German positions after midnight, followed by naval bombardment. Many shells landed behind the defenses, missing their targets. That failure would prove costly.

British forces advanced steadily, although only the Canadians reached their assigned D-Day objectives. Montgomery had hoped to seize Caen that day. British troops would not take the city for weeks.

The 4th Infantry Division at Utah Beach caught a break, landing in the wrong spot due to strong currents. But the division met light resistance and advanced quickly. The 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled Pointe du Hoc and took heavy losses but completed its mission.

RELATED: The Army called him a handicap. History calls him a hero.

  Photo courtesy of Walt Larimore

Omaha was a bloodbath. German defenses remained largely intact, and U.S. troops were cut down on the sand. Casualties reached 2,400 — the highest of any landing. Despite the carnage, immortalized in “Saving Private Ryan,” small units clawed their way inland, broke through the defenses, and held the beachhead.

By nightfall, the Allies had established a tenuous grip on Normandy. U.S. forces pushed toward the port of Cherbourg. British units hammered away at Caen. American troops slogged through the bocage.

On July 25, U.S. forces broke out at Saint-Lo. By August, the Allies had encircled 50,000 German troops in the Falaise pocket. By the end of August, Paris was liberated. Operation Overlord had succeeded.

What D-Day means now

The victory in Normandy depended on strategy, deception, adaptation, and above all, human will. The Allies fought as partners — ideologically divided but functionally united. The Axis powers, despite ideological similarities, failed to coordinate effectively.

Every war plan eventually collapses. Things go wrong. What matters is how commanders and soldiers respond to chaos. D-Day demanded that kind of adaptation under fire. Clausewitz understood this. So did the men who stormed the beaches.

The most enduring lessons come not from strategy but from the men who waded ashore, knowing they might not live through the morning. Why did they do it?

J. Glenn Gray, in “The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle,” offers one answer:

Numberless soldiers have died, more or less willingly, not for country or honor or religious faith or for any other abstract good, but because they realized that by fleeing their posts and rescuing themselves, they would expose their companions to greater danger. Such loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale.

These soldiers protected more than one another. They preserved the American republic. They fought against an ideology bent on erasing it.

Success in war depends not only on weapons and tactics but on leadership, courage, honor, and duty. These virtues allow men to overcome fear and endure the chaos of combat. On June 6, 1944, those virtues burned white-hot in a handful of men who refused to retreat.

U.S. Army historian S.L.A. Marshall wrote that “thousands of Americans were spilled onto Omaha Beach. The high ground was won by a handful of men who on that day burned with a flame bright beyond common understanding.”

That flame still burns.

We’ve seen it elsewhere throughout our history — at the Chosin Reservoir, in Hue, in Fallujah, and in Helmand Province. America continues to produce men willing to face death to protect others. We should thank God for that fact — and pray we remain a nation worthy of such sacrifice.

Max Boot’s Ghoulish Pearl Harbor Analogy Reveals What He Really Wants From The Russo-Ukraine War

Boot just wants this war to escalate even further.

When Surrender Is an Option

Presidential speechwriter and journalist Jonathan Horn, author of books on George Washington’s latter years in the 18th century and Confederate general Robert E. Lee in the 19th century, explores the 20th century with his latest work on the entwined lives of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright. It was their destiny to preside over the greatest defeat in U.S. military history in the Philippines as the United States was thrust into World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

The post When Surrender Is an Option appeared first on .

The Army called him a handicap. History calls him a hero.



You’ve probably never heard of Phil Larimore — a teenage hero of World War II whose story sounds too improbable to be true. But behind the unbelievable details stands a real young man with the leadership of Dick Winters (“Band of Brothers”), the resilience of Louis Zamperini (“Unbroken”), and the courage of Desmond Doss (“Hacksaw Ridge”).

Born in 1925, Philip B. Larimore Jr. excelled at outdoor pursuits — hiking, camping, horsemanship, sharpshooting, and hunting. But he also struggled with discipline and behavior, prompting his parents to send him to military school at age 13. There, Phil found his purpose. He emerged as a standout cadet and natural leader, graduating with honors shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

If Dad could speak to us this Memorial Day, I believe he would ask for just one thing: Tell the stories of those who served.

At 17, he became the youngest cadet up to that point to complete the Army’s demanding Officer Candidate School. Days after his 18th birthday, he received his commission — becoming the youngest Army officer in the war. He then trained intensively with the 82nd Airborne.

By early 1944, Phil had landed on the beachhead at Anzio, Italy, with the 3rd Infantry Division. He had just turned 19.

A survivor

He fought in frontline combat almost immediately. He first led an ammunition and pioneer platoon, working shoulder to shoulder with his men. At night, often deep in no man’s land, Phil defused mines, strung barbed wire, delivered supplies, and engaged in brutal combat — sometimes hand to hand — as he advanced through Italy and into southern France.

During that phase of the war, the average life expectancy for a junior officer on the front lines was 21 days. Phil survived 415.

Days after his 20th birthday, he was promoted to company commander, the Army’s youngest at that post. He went on to become one of the most highly decorated junior officers, receiving every valor medal the Army awarded except the Medal of Honor — including the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, and three Presidential Unit Citations. His bravery included volunteering to fly 200 miles behind enemy lines to find where Hitler had hidden the world-famous Lipizzaner stallions — a top-secret mission that led General George Patton to authorize Operation Cowboy to save the breed from extinction.

On April 8, 1945 — just one month before VE Day — Phil learned that a squad of his men were pinned down by more than 120 German soldiers. Without hesitation, he jumped on the back of a tank and coolly manned a .50-caliber machine gun under relentless enemy fire. He wiped out three German gun nests and scattered the surrounding troops. A sniper’s bullet shattered his leg before he could return to cover.

Surgeons in a field hospital amputated his right leg. Phil was then flown home to an Army hospital, joining more than 15,000 soldiers recovering from major limb loss. Army policy at the time mandated automatic discharge for all amputee officers after rehabilitation. Phil refused to accept it. He appealed the policy, calling it unjust, unfair, and unethical.

A shattering setback

During his appeal hearing on April 15, 1947, Phil discovered exactly how Army brass viewed amputee officers. One colonel told him, “You’re a handicap to the Army. You’re a highly decorated cripple — but still a cripple.” Another added, “The Army doesn’t need one-legged handicaps,” and “Amputee officers simply don’t have a place in our Army.”

The board denied his appeal by a single vote. Phil received an honorable discharge with the rank of major — at just 22 years old.

Though the Army later reversed the policy in 1950, the damage had been done. Phil’s self-image was shattered. His promising military career had been stolen — not only by a German sniper, but by the Army and country he had faithfully served and loved. He fell into despair and contemplated ending his life.

Fortunately, he turned to an Army chaplain for help. With the support of family, friends, and his faith, Phil rebuilt his sense of purpose and began healing.

I’m the oldest of Phil’s four sons. He never spoke about the war. Only after he and my mother celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary did I ask what it felt like to be a hero.

“Two million men fought in Europe,” he replied. “I was one of over 500,000 American casualties. But more than 100,000 are buried there. Those are the real heroes. Not me!”

A role model for generations

Dad’s quiet but steady faith, humility, and lifelong service to others became a model — not just for my brothers and me but for the many students and Boy Scouts he mentored over the decades. Several even named their first sons Philip.

After retiring, Dad made peace with his past and with his Creator. The nightmares faded. The stench of war no longer haunted him. He died peacefully in his sleep on Oct. 31, 2003. He was 78.

After 15 years of research and writing, I completed my biography of him — “At First Light” — first published in 2022. The book led to his posthumous inductions into the Army’s Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame and the 3rd Infantry Division Hall of Fame, alongside legends like Audie Murphy and Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George C. Marshall, and Lucian K. Truscott.

After his most recent induction, I visited his grave. I thought: Dad, I always loved being your son. Now more than ever, I’m honored by it.

If he could speak to us this Memorial Day, I believe he would ask for just one thing: Tell the stories of those who served. Tell the stories of those who gave everything on the altar of war — those who sacrificed their tomorrows so we might have our todays.

And above all, remember the cost. The freedoms and liberties they preserved must not only be appreciated — they must be wisely stewarded.

A Marine’s Memorial Day message: Don’t forget the price



This weekend, we observe Memorial Day, a national day of remembrance first established by General John A. Logan’s “General Order No. 11,” issued on May 5, 1868, by the Grand Army of the Republic. The order declared:

The 30th day of May 1868 is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers and otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.

Logan’s order codified a practice that was already widespread across the country. In the years following the Civil War, Americans from both the North and South began gathering to honor the fallen. Logan provided that instinct with formal significance and established a national calendar.

In 1998, while serving as a professor at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, I had the honor of delivering the city’s annual Memorial Day address at City Hall. In those remarks, I warned that the true meaning of the holiday was slipping away.

Memorial Day permits us to enlarge the individual soldier’s view — giving broader meaning to the sacrifice that was accepted by some but offered by all.

Memorial Day had become little more than a three-day weekend. For many, it marked the start of summer — just another excuse for a cookout. But that was never the intent.

The holiday was established to solemnly reflect on the lives lost in service to the country. It offered catharsis for those who fought and survived. And it served as a national promise to remember those who gave everything so that the republic — and the principles that sustain it — might live.

A long history of sacrifice

I argued that Americans have forgotten how to honor their war heroes and remember their war dead. My friend and fellow Marine “Bing” West made the point forcefully in his powerful book on Fallujah, “No True Glory.” Stories of battlefield courage, he wrote, must “be recorded and read by the next generation. Unsung, the noblest deed will die.”

During my remarks, I recalled acts of heroism from the Civil War, World War II, and Vietnam. I spoke about a grieving mother who had written to me after her son — one of my Marines — was killed in Vietnam in May 1969. I asked, rhetorically: Why do men like those Marines under my command willingly fight and die?

Glen Gray offered one answer in “The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle”:

Numberless soldiers have died, more or less willingly, not for country or honor or religious faith or for any other abstract good, but because they realized that by fleeing their posts and rescuing themselves, they would expose their companions to greater danger. Such loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale.

Gray’s insight matches my experience. In the heat of combat, soldiers don’t talk about ideology. They think about each other. They fight to protect their brothers.

And yet, while the individual soldier’s focus narrows to survival and loyalty, Memorial Day offers us the chance to widen that lens. It helps us see the larger meaning of sacrifice — accepted by some but offered by all.

Memorial Day gives the nation a chance to recognize those sacrifices and validate them through the only lens that matters: the founding principles of the American republic.

‘Mystic chords of memory’

I noted in 1998 that Pericles, in his famous funeral oration during the Peloponnesian War, gave meaning to the Athenian dead by praising the excellence of Athens. He honored their sacrifice by affirming the civilization they died defending.

President Abraham Lincoln did something similar four months after the Battle of Gettysburg. At the dedication of the cemetery there, he expanded on what he had previously called the “mystic chords of memory” in his first inaugural address — those chords stretching “from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land.”

Lincoln gave universal meaning to the particular deaths on that hallowed ground. He allowed Americans to understand Memorial Day through the lens of Independence Day — to see the end of those soldiers’ lives in light of the nation’s beginning and the purpose of the American republic.

I argued that the deaths at Gettysburg, throughout the Civil War, and in all of America’s wars must be understood in relation to the founding principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence. Throughout history, countless brave soldiers have died fighting for causes that were unjust. Americans, by contrast, are fortunate. We can anchor the sacrifice of our fallen to a moral proposition: that all men are created equal.

Some critics accused me of glorifying war — of sentimentalizing conflict, justifying unjust campaigns, and trivializing death. But that critique misses the point. Soldiers enlist for many reasons. But almost all are motivated, at least in part, by a sense of duty, honor, and love of country.

That love of country — patriotism — is under constant attack. Critical race theory and the 1619 Project insist that America’s founding was corrupt and its principles invalid. But they’re wrong. A country built on decent principles, however imperfect its journey, remains a cause worth defending — and, if necessary, dying for.

My intention was never to trivialize individual loss. The death of a soldier marks the end of youth, promise, and joy. No speech or philosophy can console the family left behind. The mother who wrote to me after losing her Marine son in Vietnam carried a grief no words could ease.

Her anguish reminded me of Kipling’s “Epitaphs of the War,” especially the fourth verse, “An Only Son”:

“I have slain none but my mother;
She (blessing her slayer) died of grief for me.”

Kipling, too, lost his only son in World War I.

But as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in his Memorial Day address of 1884:

Grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death — of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

So by all means, have that burger this weekend. Enjoy the cookout. Go to the beach. But also take some time to remember to honor those who died to make your weekend possible.