Dangerous Old Men

[Valin]

The American Thinker:

Ebben Raves

1/12/13

 

 

Everybody knows a Walt Kowalski. He is the grizzled Korean War veteran Clint Eastwood played in the movie Gran Torino. A man who spends his days sitting on the porch, keeping his house and yard immaculate, satisfied to drink his cheap beer while watching his neighborhood and country go to hell around him. He is an anachronism, a dinosaur -- part of the old America where you worked hard, took pride in your work and where you lived, and fought for your country and what it stood for when called upon. Armed with his M1 Garand rifle and 1911 .45 pistol he brought back from the war, he put new meaning in "Get off my lawn."

 

 

(Snip)

 

There are over twenty-five million veterans in the United States… among them many Walt Kowalskis… and most of them are gun owners. Some of them remember the horrors of the concentration camps and of communism. Others are from the Vietnam era and remember what awaited them when they came home. They see John Kerry, the same man who threw his medals over the White House fence and was photographed with Jane Fonda and the North Vietnamese, nominated as secretary of state. They remember. ObamaCare, where you get painkillers instead of treatment because you are old? They have heard this. They have been spat at and vilified before, and now, with time running out for them, and the America that they knew seemingly fading away, many will say, “At one time, I was asked to write a check to my country for up to and including my life. Do I need to do it again?

 

You would be surprised at what you can overhear at the VFW, or even the “early bird dinner,” for that matter. Thanks to the “War on Terror,” there are also many younger combat veterans, many from a lineage of soldiers. They know that old people can be stubborn, and “the government threw grandpa in jail because he didn’t turn in his guns” will not go over well. As an older friend of mine whom I see at Denny’s on occasion tells me, “I’m just sayin’.”

 

H/T Right Scoop