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The Summer Soldier And New Graduates
By Kevin Fobbs
June 22, 2004

This week, the summer season begins with most American's thoughts focused on vacation getaways, relaxing in some far away paradise or simply getting their backyard ready for the traditional round of barbecues around the deck, the pool or patio. We take this time to relax, satisfied with the notion that we are secure, our children are safely near by in ear shot, our pets are being playful in the lawn grass, our beers and favorite beverages are just a cooler or small refrigerator away, and we are content that life is under control

The new high school graduates are stepping off into this summer season as well, with school, all the memories whether good, bad or indifferent are fading feelings as well as thoughts. This after all is America. For the new graduates one door closes and a new one opens. Summer of fun and sun also brings a new addition to their lives: adulthood.

Before graduation, holidays like Memorial Day, Independence Day and Veterans Day represented quick albeit brief conversations between parents, Uncle Harry, grand dad, and pass the ketchup. It was never the point of many conversations, but rather was the transition between quiet and awkward moments of silence, but precious little reflection if any was given to the particular holiday being celebrated.

Now as adults, these new graduates have to encounter much more of the reality that created the holiday in question as well as how it may have an even greater role in their young adult life.

Now when they hear the word "Draft", they are not going to just automatically think about a professional football, basketball or baseball draft. Distant events like service to your country become harsh close up realities after high school.

For instance, are our graduates thinking, as do the young adults of Israel, about national service to your country? Do our young adults understand that national service is just part of the role of being an Israeli citizen? Are our young people thinking about the lessons of sacrifice, which made celebration of Memorial Day, and D-Day and Independence Day so valuable and essential to the essence of who we are as Americans? Are they wishing that they gave Uncle Harry and Grand dad more than a casual listen or not so deaf an ear?

We do owe it to our young adults, these new and at times impressionable citizens to help them to understand what their role is on their new journey in the America of the 21st century. They should have some understanding upon what basis former President Reagan's remarks regarding a "Shining City Upon a Hill" meant. Maybe she got it school, but you can't assume that, and maybe he got it from the daily news, and you definitely can't assume that.

Think about this summer of graduation as being a renewed partnership with your new graduate and yourself as you both experience this fresh journey of rediscovered patriotism together.

Where do you begin? Well, we think you begin at the beginning. At the country's infancy and with one of our nation's greatest patriots.

Although he was never President, he like former President Reagan had a vision which embraced the feeling that the greatness of our nation was more than just a collection of words, or sound bytes or interesting conversations which were sandwiched in-between potato salad, beer, a cocktail or the spirited exuberance of a hay ride.

Over two hundred years ago Thomas Paine, much like President Reagan, had his hands filled with despots and potential war and faced detractors who differed on what should reflect our shared American will. Thomas Paine was a man for all seasons, and he spoke forcefully for America's independence. Like Reagan two centuries later, he said, "the cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind."

There were many then who supposed that our freedoms were just an inconvenience if it meant that we had to sacrifice creature comforts and creature goods made and purchased in England. That was just the burden we were supposed to bear, and if they supported this new cause, it had to be done quickly and in enough time to get the Thanksgiving Dinner on the table. Sort of, "if it can't be done in 90 days then it is not worth fighting for" mentality.

Paine wrote about those individuals who take on freedom as a temporary cause but sacrifice little or give even less. He referred to them as Summer Soldiers. They often come prepared to battle, to talk but not to act and will sacrifice even less, because their time is too precious, their priorities are too critical, their vision of America's commitment too narrow.

Paine offered this in describing them, "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." That focus by Paine, and by former President Reagan embodies all of us. This belief calls upon us to not just recognize why we are a great nation, but how we got there and also why we remain so. This is important for all of us to acknowledge and for our young graduates to embrace this summer.

Don't get us wrong, We are not placing young people in that batch of bad apples.

Our armed services are filled with young people who have joined and have given their lives. Their family's sacrifice so that our summers can be safe and so that millions of others around the world in countries, cities, hamlets we will never know the names of, or meet those families who live there, will also be able to remain safe, secure and free.

For President Reagan, tearing down the wall of communism and literally tearing down the Berlin Wall was symbolic of why all Americans and citizens all over the world would fall heir to this. The Berlin Wall was not local to our neighborhood, it didn't directly impact on the price of a lawn trim, or a flowerbed, or a golf game. The wall was a measure of man's inhumanity to man. It was a measure of what can happen when the golf games do disappear, when the flowerbeds and lawns are replaced by impersonal totalitarian doctrine.

Reagan knew this, and he made it plain and made it simple and more importantly made it personal so that all of us not only understood it but felt it as well. Paine called it first in his writings hundreds of summers long ago, and said, "many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying of a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the author."

Our young people have to begin to hear and understand what Paine spoke of and what Reagan stood for. The War on Terrorism is not a seasonal exercise. As young adults they have to understand that the war on terror is not something that will be done and over between the hockey season and the baseball season. They have to begin to think of themselves as part of an American culture that protects the "natural rights of all mankind" and this is crucial for a country built upon faith. Freedom's eternal vigilance means for as long as it takes, and not fitting nicely and neatly into a MTV defined world.

This should be the concern of every parent and every person whom God has given the power to feel. Because we are now all in harm's way. Frederick Douglass, the great Civil Rights and anti slavery advocate of the 19th century said, "The Price of Freedom is eternal vigilance."

Well, we believe harms way has now come to all Americans, and not just for those who dutifully go off to join the armed services. Harms way has come to our homeland, our cities our neighborhoods. This past week we learned from the 9-11 Commission that there was a deadly plot by the 9-11 terrorists to rain down additional horror upon our cities. Their heinous plan was to send not just four planes but as many as ten planes crashing into nuclear plants, the White House, stadiums and the like. Untold thousands upon thousands would have been killed by this mayhem.

Young people were not alive when Reagan was president. Most don't understand what impact the nature of an ever-present nuclear threat had to the psyche of American adults and to their families.

What these young adults may not understand is that when the war of communism was torn down a new wall of worldwide terror was erected over its ashes. So the harms way this new season of summer is presented with is in many ways more real and more unsettling than the nuclear weapons which were stored away in distant Soviet silos.

When we were young we had bomb shelters and duck and cover practices in school. These new graduates have entered the adult world of terror alerts. This summer should be enjoyed by our young graduates, and at the same time when you get an opportunity to speak with your graduate son or daughter, or nephew or niece or grandson or granddaughter, help them to at least understand why when they stand up at the baseball games or at events and pledge allegiance to the flag with one nation under God, help them to appreciate why they are doing it.

More importantly, as they begin their young journey into this adult world, help them to be more understanding of their own role, their own part in this great experiment that this nation's creation was at its infancy.

Ronald Reagan and Thomas Paine both had it right. Although their detractors painted them as being beyond their time in how they described the perilous times they lived, our young adults, should learn to ignore the scornful sayings of the Summer Soldiers and the accompanying liberal bias that saturate the air ways.

They must learn to be critical this summer, the first season of their new adulthood. Follow Paine's wisdom, "a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."

Time proved both Paine and Reagan right. And hopefully with more thought put into it by this new season of graduates, time will make converts of them as well.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.