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REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

11/23/2007

Government of, by, and for the Privileged

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Don Kirlin of Boulder, Colorado

The whisper of revolution has been in the air for quite some time now, and it's becoming more audible, at least among the ever-shrinking minority known as 'informed Americans'.

It’s not only local, state and federal governments that are stealing our land from us, under the (completely convoluted from its original intent) right of ‘eminent domain’. The so-called legal/justice system is using all manner of wicked precedent to commit major, obscene private land grabs as well … all such crimes tracing back to a desire for more wealth and power on the part of those who already wield more than you or I.

Before inserting the precious words ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ into the Declaration, our Founders seriously considered using the wording ‘life, liberty and property’ (as originated by John Locke). I believe the latter to be a more powerful representation of our inalienable rights, but apparently the modern American government/judicial system vehemently disagrees with either expression.

Not sure whether you’re yet familiar with the plight of the Kirlin family of Boulder, Colorado. If not, get ready to spit nails.

Don and Susie Kirlin own a lucrative business in which they acquire foreign fighter jets from around the world to sell to wealthy aviation enthusiasts and to help train U.S. Navy pilots. Wired magazine ran a 2005 profile of Don Kirlin entitled, 'Building Your Own Air Force, One Mig at a Time'. Kirlin enjoys a reputation among aviators, both private and military, because of his collection of foreign fighter jets, which he often uses in training missions in co-operation with the U.S. Navy.

Don and his wife, Susie, own a vacant lot, worth roughly a million dollars in today’s market, on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado. They purchased it about twenty years ago with the idea of eventually building their retirement home there. It is located just down the road from their current home, they walk by the land regularly, and have been paying taxes on it faithfully for the past two decades.

Unfortunately for the Kirlins the couple that owns a home adjacent to their lot consists of a county judge, Richard McLean, and his wife, Edith Stevens, who is also an attorney. It seems that this ambitious couple has been using a portion of the Kirlins’ land to occasionally hold their own private parties, and, in doing so, they have also created worn pathways through portions of that land.

As a result, McLean and Stevens have invoked the doctrine of ‘adverse possession’, which allows a citizen to claim another’s property simply by virtue of using it for a specified period of time, in order to declare one third of the Kirlins’ land as their own.

When the Kirlins attempted to build a fence on a portion of their vacant land before beginning construction on it, McLean and Stevens had a restraining order issued against them, stating that, since they had been using the land themselves for some time, they had become ‘attached’ to it. The restraining order was issued within a few hours of their request for it. Apparently the wheels of justice move at lighting speed, if the person requesting the moving has the right connections.

As if the preceding weren’t evidence in itself of unmitigated chutzpah, McLean and Stevens are not only claiming to ‘own’ a large portion of the land in question (without ever having paid a penny for it, or any of the taxes incumbent in its ownership), they are also asking the court to rule that the Kirlins must pay any legal fees that they incur in order to achieve this particular theft.

Thus, as is becoming increasingly common in Amerika 2007, two people in power have decided to use a corrupt system to steal from someone else of lesser political stature -- in this case, out in the open, and without conscience or remorse.

Needless to say, the Kirlins are appealing the ruling (and amassing large, and no doubt growing, legal fees in the process). But I wouldn’t be taking any bets on their success. ‘Fighting city hall’ is fast becoming an empty phrase anymore, because the concepts of government of, by and for the people -- originally made possible by public servants who value individual rights more than government power -- is fast heading for extinction, as corruption, greed, and lust for power achieve a momentum that has become virtually relentless and unstoppable. Not to mention the fact that both the eighth (re: coveting) and tenth (re: stealing) of the Ten Commandments have essentially been declared null and void.

This case vividly portrays the battle between the average American citizen and our modern American 'ruling elite'.

That elite is gaining an increasingly strong foothold in the fabric of our society, and robbing you and me of our individual liberties (among them, the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to private property) daily.

But too many of us are more interested in the comfort of our couches, and the proximity of our remote controls, than we are in the plight of the likes of the Kirlins -- victims of a system gone awry.

How many of us who have read this account have done anything at all to see that justice is done -- even if our action only involves forwarding our own synopsis of it to as many people as we know?

I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that, unless we start giving a damn about the abuses that our neighbors suffer under tyrannical government dictates, those abuses will someday affect us, and there will be nobody left who can turn the tragedy around.

The only difference between appeasement and surrender is the passage of time.

Contact information for Boulder, and Colorado state, officials (thanks to John Cooper) can be found here.

~ joanie

11/22/2007

The Necessity of Thanksgiving

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Tomorrow being the day set apart by the Honorable Congress for public Thanksgiving and Praise; and duty calling us devoutly to express our grateful acknowledgements to God for the manifold blessings he has granted us, the General ... earnestly exhorts, all officers and soldiers, whose absence is not indispensably necessary, to attend with reverence the solemnities of the day.… George Washington (December 17, 1777)

In this era of overblown political correctness, we often hear tales of Thanksgiving that stray far afield from the truth. Contemporary textbook narratives of the first American harvest celebration portray the Pilgrim colonists as having given thanks to their Indian neighbors for teaching them how to survive in a strange new world. This, of course, is in stark contrast to the historical record, in which the colonists gave thanks to God Almighty, the Provider of their blessings. [There is also a growing trend, sometimes taking root, that calls for referring to Thanksgiving as a day of guilt, rather than a day of thankfulness, because of America's eventual mistreatment of the Indians.]

The "First Thanksgiving" is usually depicted as the Pilgrims' three-day feast in early November 1621. The Pilgrims, Calvinist Protestants who rejected the institutional Church of England, believed that the worship of God must originate freely in the individual soul, under no coercion. The Pilgrims left Plymouth, England, on 6 September 1620, sailing to the New World on the promise of opportunity for religious and civil liberty.

For almost three months, 102 seafarers braved the brutal elements, arriving off what is now the Massachusetts coast. On 11 December, before disembarking at Plymouth Rock, the voyagers signed the Mayflower Compact, America's original document of civil government predicated on principles of self-government. While still anchored at Provincetown harbor, Pastor John Robinson counseled, "You are become a body politic ... and are to have only them for your ... governors which yourselves shall make choice of." Governor William Bradford described the Mayflower Compact as "a combination ... that when they came a shore they would use their owne libertie; for none had power to command them....”

Upon landing, the Pilgrims conducted a prayer service and quickly turned to building shelters. Malnutrition and illness during the ensuing New England winter killed nearly half their number. Through prayer and hard work, with the assistance of their Wampanoag Indian friends, the Pilgrims reaped a rich harvest in the summer of 1621, the bounty of which they shared with the Wampanoag. The celebration incorporated feasting and games, which remain holiday traditions.

Such ready abundance soon waned, however. Under demands from investors funding their endeavor, the Pilgrims had acquiesced to a disastrous arrangement holding all crops and property in common, in order to return an agreed-to half of their produce to their overseas backers. (These financiers insisted they could not trust faraway freeholders to split the colony's profits honestly.) Within two years, Plymouth was in danger of foundering under famine, blight and drought. Colonist Edward Winslow wrote, "The most courageous were now discouraged, because God, which hitherto had been our only shield and supporter, now seemed in his anger to arm himself against us."

Governor Bradford's record of the history of the colony describes 1623 as a period of arduous work coupled with "a great drought ... without any rain and with great heat for the most part," lasting from spring until midsummer. The Plymouth settlers followed the Wampanoag's recommended cultivation practices carefully, but their crops withered.

The Pilgrims soon thereafter thought better of relying solely on the physical realm, setting "a solemn day of humiliation, to seek the Lord by humble and fervent prayer, in this great distress." In affirmation of their faith and providing a great witness to the Indians, by evening of that day the skies became overcast and gentle rains fell, restoring the yield of the fields. Governor Bradford noted, "And afterwards the Lord sent to them such seasonable showers, with interchange of fair warm weather as, through His blessing caused a fruitful and liberal harvest, to their no small comfort and rejoicing. For which mercy, in time convenient, they also set apart a day of thanksgiving."

Winslow noted the Pilgrims' reaction as believing "it would be great ingratitude, if secretly we should smother up the same, or content ourselves with private thanksgiving for that, which by private prayer could not be obtained. And therefore another solemn day was set apart and appointed for that end; wherein we returned glory, honor, and praise, with all thankfulness, to our good God, which dealt so graciously with us...." This was the original American Thanksgiving Day, centered not on harvest feasting (as in 1621) but on gathering together to publicly recognize the favor and provision of Almighty God.

Bradford's diary recounts how the colonists repented of their financial folly under sway of their financiers: "At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number."

By the mid-17th century, autumnal Thanksgivings were common throughout New England; observance of Thanksgiving Festivals spread to other colonies during the American Revolution. At other junctures of "great distress" or miraculous intervention, colonial leaders called their countrymen to offer prayerful thanks to God. The Continental Congresses, cognizant of the need for a warring country's continuing grateful entreaties to God, proclaimed yearly Thanksgiving days during the Revolutionary War, from 1777 to 1783.

In 1789, after adopting the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, among the first official acts of Congress was approving a motion for proclamation of a national day of thanksgiving, recommending that citizens gather together and give thanks to God for their new nation's blessings. Presidents George Washington, John Adams and James Madison followed the custom of declaring national days of thanks, though it was not officially declared again until another moment of national peril, when during the War Between the States Abraham Lincoln invited "the whole American people" to observe "a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father ... with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience." In 1941, Congress set permanently November's fourth Thursday as our official national Thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims' temporary folly of sundering and somersaulting the material as transcendent over the spiritual conveys an important lesson that modern histories are reluctant to tell. The Founders, recognizing this, placed first among constitutionally recognized rights the free exercise of religion -- faith through action.

If what we seek is a continuance of God?s manifold blessings, then a day of heartfelt thanksgiving is a tiny tribute indeed.

Patriot Post

11/19/2007

My Two Cents

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Back before the 2000 election somebody claiming to be a relative of the current POTUS stated that he was related to William T. Sherman. Most folks in the South consider Sherman’s March to be the tide turning event to finish out America’s Civil War, and he garnered a great amount of infamy in doing it, so I stated that he ought not advertise that too much as it might cost him the Southern vote in his bid for the presidency.

As to whether he is or isn’t related I have no idea, but if he is, he should have followed his ancestor’s tactics in prosecuting the current ... ahem ... ”war” we’re engaged in. Sherman understood the necessity of the actions he took and he was unapologetic.

”War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say give them all they want.”And so instead of waging a real war the POTUS, from the outset, has been playing a game of political and military gamesmanship and the “war” has devolved into something I can’t even name. The closest I can come is to calling it a “police action,” though some call it “reconstruction,” and others have even more and different names.

We cripple our military with “rules of engagement” and other nice sounding pleasantries so as to not offend the greater portion of our enemies else they become engaged in the “war”. Well, Sherman also had another quote ...”War is hell.” Are we really supposed to give a rat’s ass if our enemy is offended?

So, Mr. President, though it’s too late by far now, you should have gotten off of your political bipartisan high horse, stopped listening to the panty wastes you had advising you and followed Sherman’s methods a long time ago. If a Civil War analogy can be used then I would say that you’ve become Longstreet and our military is once again being asked to perform Pickett’s Charge. What a waste!

And as for you slime ball, slack jawed, head up your ass idiots in Congress, I have nothing but contempt for the whole lot of you. The few of you, and I do mean FEW, that ARE worth a damn should be screaming bloody murder from the rooftops. Instead you’re all playing the don’t offend anyone/go along to get along game as well. Some of you stupid imbeciles are still so “not over” getting your ass handed to you on the illegal immigration debate that, ONCE AGAIN, you’re garbaging up yet ANOTHER appropriations bill to fund the military with the DREAM Act.

You people are going to drive Americans into the next civil war in America because you’re too thick headed to listen, and then you’re going to be claiming “I didn’t know it would come to this,” as if you really believed it. You’re all like a spoiled brat who is going to have his way no matter what.

People have said for years that “the grownups are now in charge in DC.” Well, they’re idiots because they don’t recognize the lot of you for the petulant children you really are and they also don’t recognize that they’re supposed to be the parent with the belt ready to strap your happy ass when you get out of line!

So the lot of you slime balls in DC keep on playing your little games thinking that most folks don’t understand anything. The vast majority of Americans keep on expecting you to perform like a well-oiled machine, when in reality you’re just a well-rehearsed circus act. Meanwhile the minority is getting ready to pull their belts out of their pant loops and are getting ready to smack your asses. The saddest part is that you’re all too arrogant to even realize it.

Pardon my language, but I feel much better.

by philman_36
(contributing team member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)

11/17/2007

The Next Place

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The ten-month-old child of friends of ours had been battling a rare blood disorder/auto-immune disorder for the last four months of her life. She received a bone marrow transplant two weeks ago, and this past Monday evening she succumbed to a post-transplant infection before her new white blood cells could be produced.

A memorial service was held for Abigail this morning. During the service her parents read the following poem (perhaps better written/read as prose) that had been given to them by a hospital staff member shortly before Abigail passed from this earth.

I am transcribing it here because I believe that its message is appropriate for us all, with the holidays approaching and our hearts beginning to reflect on, and give thanks for, our personal blessings.

No responses are solicited to this poem/story. Please. I simply request that you all read it, and then, as Rick and I have tried to do recently, spend some time reflecting on your own gifts from God.

Thanks. :)

The Next Place
by Warren Hanson

The next place that I go will be as peaceful and familiar as a sleepy summer Sunday and a sweet untroubled mind. And yet it won’t be like any place I have ever been or seen … or even dreamed of in the place I leave behind.

I won’t know where I’m going, and I won’t know where I’ve been as I tumble through the always and look back toward the when.

I’ll glide beyond the rainbows; I’ll drift above the sky. I’ll fly into the wonder, without ever wondering why. I won’t remember getting there ... somehow I’ll just arrive. But I’ll know that I belong there and will feel much more alive than I have ever felt before. I will be absolutely free, of the things that I held onto, that were holding on to me.

The next place that I go will be so quiet and so still that the whispered song of sweet belonging will rise up to fill the listening sky will joyful silence, and with unheard harmonies, of music made by no one playing, like a hush upon a breeze.

There will be no more room for darkness in that place of living light, where an ever-dawning morning pushes back the dying night. The very air will fill with brilliance, as the brightly shining sun and the moon and half a million stars are married into one.

The next place that I go won’t really be a place at all. There won’t be any seasons -- winter, summer, spring, or fall. Nor a Monday, nor a Friday, nor December, nor July. And the seconds will be standing still … while hours hurry by.

I will not be a boy or a girl, a woman or a man. I’ll simply be, just, simply, me … no worse or better than. My skin will not be dark or light. I won’t be fat or tall. The body I once lived in won’t be part of me at all. I will finally be perfect. I will be without a flaw. I will never make one more mistake, or break the smallest law. And the me that was impatient, or was angry or unkind will simply be a memory … the me I left behind.

I will travel empty handed. There is not a single thing I have collected in my life that I would ever want to bring -- except the love of those who loved me, and the warmth of those who cared. The happiness and memories and magic that we shared.

Though I will know the joy of solitude I’ll never be alone. I’ll be embraced by all the family and friends I’ve ever known. Although I might not see their faces all our hearts will beat as one, and the circle of our spirits will shine brighter than the sun.

I will cherish all the friendship I was fortunate to find, all the love and all the laugher in the place I leave behind. All these good things go with me. They will make my spirit glow, and that light will shine forever in the next place that I go.

11/14/2007

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

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I know. I’ve been away a long time. Far too long some of you must be thinking. Not long enough according to others. But, I have a note from my doctor; the dog ate my homework; my tux didn’t come back from the cleaners; there was an earthquake; A TERRIBLE FLOOD!!

When in doubt, throw the kitchen sink full of excuses at the problem a lá Jake Blues while staring down the barrel of an M16 in the bottom of a sewer. (Note to discerning readers: for those of you who haven’t seen The Blues Brothers, it is rivaled only by Casablanca for a myriad of one-liners that is unsurpassed.)

Still, when resting on the veracity of an excuse, the first one is probably the best. And so it is with me. I actually do have a note from my doctor – several in fact.

Whence last I posted on this site, I was preparing to move, out of necessity, I’m afraid. The stampede of IT work to India had left me high and dry with nowhere to go. Coincidentally – well, maybe no so coincidentally – I was shifting gears out of this dead-end career to something more meaningful. Ever since my sojourn to Normandy in 2004 for the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings, life has not been the same. And there’s no going back to the same old thing, the same old way. More on that in the weeks to come.

Still, I was comfortably ensconced in a 1000 sq. ft. loft in a not so unfashionable part of town. One big room with everything I needed, perched above the garage where I parked my car. I hadn’t planned to spend ten years there after my divorce, but I did. And I wasn’t all that jazzed about leaving it. As tough a move as it turned out to be after accumulating ten years of useless junk, it got infinitely more so by virtue of getting pneumonia in mid-July.

My doctor – who happens to attend my church and considers his practice really his ministry, especially when it comes to straight white guys like me who have been cut out of the health care system under the avalanche of illegals that currently overwhelm the system out here – told me if I had waited another week, I’d have landed in an oxygen tent. When I asked him “Who gets pneumonia in the middle of summer?” he had a simple response: “You do.”

Six weeks and massive doses of industrial strength antibiotics later, I beat it. That takes us to Labor Day, and about the only aspect of the last four months or so that has anything remotely to do with the decline and fall of America.

I was lounging around my new digs on Saturday night of Labor Day weekend, and all of a sudden I got this overwhelming urge for a vanilla malt. Now there just so happens to be the obligatory greasy spoon burger joint not far from my new address that specializes in all kinds of artery-clogging goodness. Not the least of these delicacies are the thickest vanilla malts this side of the Dreyer’s ice cream factory in Tijuana, Mexico. So, I grabbed my stuff and headed on down to the burger joint. It was coming up on closing time, around 11:00 at night.

What follows is an exercise in how to violate just about every existing principle of situational awareness there is. First, I went there alone. It wouldn’t have taken much effort, even at that late hour, to give someone a call, and more often than not, I would have found a taker. But, on this night, I was flying solo.

Next, I failed to notice that the parking lot was all but deserted. Maybe two or three cars, widely dispersed in the lot, with my vehicle closest to the burger joint in what just happened to be the darkest part of the lot.

It gets better. After I was finished, walking back to the car, I paid no attention to two young guys behind me chatting quietly in Spanish. I mean, come on, this is California for crying out loud – where the streets are paved with gold, and fortunes are made easier than ever thanks to cheap laborers who are willing to work for 15¢ a day and no bathroom breaks. So, I paid it no mind.

Next thing I know, I’m getting spun around by the shoulder. And I caught a glimpse – just a glimpse mind you – of a large fist heading right for me before it smashed into my head above my left eye.

I went down on the curb next to my car – breaking a rib as a turned out – and blood spurted everywhere. All over my shirt, dripping in my left eye (rendering me temporarily blind as it happened), and seeing stars out of the other one.

When I shook some sense into my head, I discovered a couple of 20-something Latinos standing over me, one of whom was carrying a small folding knife that can do a lot of damage if you’re not careful. He and his buddy sported typical gang-banger attire – baggy pants, tank tops, and shaved heads, not to mention the knife the one who hit me was brandishing in my face. Mr. Knife Boy also had a barb-wire tattoo around his neck – which an ex-cop friend of mine informed me indicated he’d spent hard time in the joint.

So there I was, lying on the ground, out of breath, my side throbbing, and also suffering from a mild concussion, I discovered later. Mr. Knife Boy then demanded – in rather colorful language which I won’t repeat here (after all, it’s a family blog) – that I hand over my wallet, which I’m sure he expected to be filled with large amounts of cash and a diverse collection of credit cards.

It just so happened I had it with me in a fanny pack (although I think he might have been disappointed at the meager score he anticipated). So, as I was sprawled on the ground bleeding, I unzipped the fanny pack. He anticipated a fat wallet. What he got was a loaded .45.

Who ever said young people can’t move fast when they’re provided with the proper motivation? You never saw two kids move that fast this side of Parris Island, South Carolina. They were gone and out of sight in less than five seconds. Good thing too. If Mr. Knife Boy had stumbled in my direction – and he was about six feet from me at the time – he’d have ended up on a slab in the morgue. Provided, of course, I could have hit him with one eye open and a broken rib. But, I exercised remarkable fire discipline for someone of my advanced years. I didn’t kill either one of them. Must be getting sentimental on my old age, or too provincial. Anyway the only one who suffered any injuries in this little dust up was me.

There are some object lessons to be learned of which experienced CCW permit holders should be well aware. Not the least of these is always pay attention to your surroundings. And realize you can get jumped and beaten up just about anywhere. Even plush, upscale bedroom communities in southern California are not immune.

Over an above those obvious discernments, there are two overriding facts of life all of us should bear in mind:

1. Glock – Don’t leave home without it.
2. The Second Amendment – Every constitution should have one, and we should always practice what we preach. It works every time. Imagine that.

I didn’t file a police report. I mean, let’s face it, I was the only one who got busted up. And I’m sure those two misguided young people have seen the error of their ways and are giving the souls to Jesus as we speak. Can you say hallelujah?

On a more practical note, experienced CCW holders in this state know the hard facts of life of concealed carry. It’s one thing to defend your life. It’s quite another to pull a gun on an oppressed person of color who courageously crossed a hostile border to claw out a desperate foothold in an inherently bigoted country in hopes of building a better life. Pull the trigger on such an innocent victim, and prepare for the wrath of God to descend in full fury. Local law enforcement, federal hate crimes commission, even Homeland Security could get in the middle of something like this, not to mention the blood-sucking media hyenas who inevitably crawl out of their roach holes looking to make a name for themselves.

So, no police report.

And thereby hangs my explanation as to why I have been so conspicuously absent from this forum.

My doctor examined my head at the Wednesday night Bible study the following week. He said I could have used three or four stitches and to come by his office. I didn’t. It’s one thing to avail yourself of the kindness of people whose hearts are in the right place. It’s quite another to take advantage of it. Besides which, my scar gives me yet another opportunity to lie about my war record (“This is where that NVA colonel wrestled my K-BAR away from me and tried to stab me through the head before I killed him with my .45, honey.”) Women love that kind of stuff. No matter that the scar is less than two months old. They’ll believe anything. Some of them, anyway.

So, I spent another six weeks recuperating from my war wounds, only to come down with pneumonia again. That’s twice in one year, no less. After kicking it a second time, I ended up with a severe case of sinusitis, made even more miserable by breathing in clouds of smoke as every firebug with a book of matches came out of the woodwork and attempted to burn down the entire state of California.

If that wasn’t enough, no one told me that a steady diet of antibiotics over several months tends to dehydrate the patient. Never being one to drink enough water anyway, I managed to squeeze out five (count ‘em) kidney stones in the process. That brings my grand total to eighteen over the past twenty years.

So, assuming my troubles have taken a temporary hiatus, I look forward to offering more commentaries on the state of the nation as the year winds down. In the meantime, let me wish everyone who participates on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed a very Happy Thanksgiving. It is by far my favorite holiday. I have no idea what’s going to be left of America – probably nothing if we’re faced with eight years of Hillary – but I hope and pray this holiday survives the twin vise grips of globalization and third world invasions.

There’s something to be said for tradition, after all.

by Euro-American Scum
(contributing team member of Allegiance and Duty Betrayed)