This week's Chris Matthews had Cynthia Tucker calling John McCain the only true war hero in the current race. While it may be a stretch to call a flight surgeon in the early stages of Vietnam a ' war hero ', certainly he was a hero to anyone he treated at the time. While McCain has the romanticism and real scars of a pilot in a prison camp, he deserves no more or less in terms of the honor of his service. 
My fear that the pain of the experience and the tendency of people to emphasize the dramatic and ultimately the emotional, will continue this sentiment for heroes. Neither man was instrumental in the start or conclusion of the conflict. They rose to the skills of their competence and both should be lauded at the heights of man's understanding of both. Yet the talk is better spent on the personalities, money and the horse race. As the real metrics and events come trickling over the next few months, we can breathe release during the Presidential holidays in February that the need to pay attention only lasted a month and one more to come. Issues matter not at this stage . . . .
I regret not serving not so much as an issue of patriotism, but simply as an aversion to further institutionalization. The whole part about cool machines, systems, weapons and action would certainly have been better than three more years of somebody else's book/life. And while I'm not hip to being told to charge at the other guys over there, the fact is the first Gulf War went by quick because Bush One was still playing by the old ruling elite's rules. Old GWB has messed that up.
The power grab to the top is tremendous. You're literally CEO and the biggest gun in the world. The evidence at what or how that person can be influenced by the presiding ideas or junto of the day is that many are simply patsies for the cause. Empty suits blathering blah blah blah. Clinton was barely above that and with my own personal disdain is held to anyone capable and as undeserving of such a role is most. I have no doubt that while McCain was the maverick fight pilot, greater minds were reading Bastiat, Hayek and Mises. A baby doctor congressman with real economic and foreign policy still has a lot of cache with the American imagination. Even us big "L" libertarians fight for the argument for open immigration and legal abortion. No NOTA LP people, stick with the 24/7 Liberty program, there's always an issue or cause worth pursuing outside the box.
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