I'm a veteran and I enlisted for one simple reason

I wanted a right to complain.

As far as I am concerned you have no right to complain unless you have at least something invested in the country. It does not have to be military service but it has to be something. Peace Corps, Vista, candy striping at the local hospital, something.

I know a guy that spent a couple of summers planting trees in Oregon for the Forest Service many years ago. That counts in my book. You don't have to be a war hero or invent a better light bulb, you just have to get off of your dead ass and onto your dying feet and do something for the rest of us.

There are just too damned many people out there that skate and then have the nerve to gripe when Uncle doesn't give them yet another freebie.

As a vet I have earned nothing more than the right to complain with something to back me up. If someone asks me what right I have to say such and such, I can say that I earned the right to gripe because I served in the United States Army. Generally when I ask THEM what THEY did they hem and haw.

Once I asked someone what they did and they told me thay had spent a couple of years in an inner city program teaching kids to read. The guy that said this to me said it in an uppity, effite tone of voice that made it clear he had little or no use for the military and I suppose I could accept that, but I didn't like his snotty delivery.

Still, I was halfway decent about it. I told him that he had done something and he, too, had earned the right to gripe. He had at least put up and that counts for a lot in my book.

While I don't really like the guys attitude I have to respect the fact that at least he didn't spend his life sitting on his ass doing nothing.






my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/