Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

 There are many things coming from the Communists these days that get under my skin but there is a commercial produced by a group called Love Has No Labels that really cooks my grits. It shows biracial and homosexual couples kissing behind a scanner and the couple exits from the right and left of the scanner to the laughter and surprise of the audience. As if they have never seen bi-racial or homosexual couples before. This is just another preachy, woke commercial that fosters the image that America is a country full of bigoted knuckle dragging Neanderthal's. My question is this. If we are so intolerant and backward thinking why is everyone kicking down our door to get here? If you are a person of color from Africa, the West Indies, Pakistan, Mexico, Central or South America, why would you come here if we are so racist and close minded? Why would a homosexual want to come to this country? Maybe they think that they can cut a better deal in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia wher

 The following are excerpts from two articles that appeared in the Cleveland Herald in April of 1863. Night on the Battle Field of Stones River---The Old Year Out---the New year's Ride Carefully, driver, carefully! Let the hard iron of the wheels roll slowly over the pounded stone of the [Nashville] pike. The young soldier still lives. His breath is short, but we may yet reach the hospital nere he dies. Guide steadily past the shattered wagons---round the heaps of dead horses---through the long rows of corpses; watch that no foot of a horse jars against the fallen dead---the heroes of the last day of 1862---resting now, where they fell, or where friends have laid them. Here they lie in rows of miles, sleeping out the old year. On the last day of Sixty-two they stood for their country and for Freedom. At its midnight hour they sleep, no more to awake to war's ringing bugle call. Well might thoughts of the old year and of eternity crowd upon the mind of the soldier whose duty to

 Pastor Henning Jacobson was a Swedish immigrant that was living in Massachusetts during a smallpox epidemic in 1902. Massachusetts was one of eleven states at the time that had a compulsory vaccination law. Mr. Henning and his son would have to get a smallpox vaccination or they would pay a five dollar fine. Five dollars in 1902 was about 150 dollars in modern currency. Pastor Henning and his son had lived through a smallpox epidemic in Sweden before coming to the United states. Sweden also had a compulsory vaccination law. They both took the shot in Sweden and suffered horrible complications. For this reason they refused to take the shot in 1902. The state of Massachusetts fined them five dollars. Pastor Henning sued and the case reached the US Supreme Court three years later in 1905. This case was called Jacobson VS. Massachusetts and Henning lost. The court ruled that Jacobson's 14th Amendment rights had not been violated. Judge John Marshall Harlan spoke for the majority in a

In 1814 we took a little trip  Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip We took a little bacon and we took a little beans And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin' There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago We fired once more and they began to runnin' On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico These are the opening lines and chorus for Johnny Horton's big crossover hit "The Battle Of New Orleans which became popular in 1959 when I was nine years old. It has always been one of my favorite songs and every time I hear it I am filled with pride as a Tennessean and as an American. Although many on the left would condemn the song as xenophobic, I think it captures the traditional spirit of American exceptionalism that I believe in. Jackson was a very flawed man but like him or not he had a huge impact on the history and direction of this country. Between Jackson and his protege James

 In March 2021 we had to opportunity to revisit the city of New Orleans. Our first trip there was in the summer of 1986 during one of my guard camps with the Tennessee Air National Guard. At that time we visited the zoo and skirted past Bourbon Street and the French Quarter. My wife and sister-in-law have never forgiven me for not going down Bourbon Street but we had a bunch of small impressionable children with us, which included our own children, that I didn't think should be taking a stroll down Bourbon Street. On this trip we had our daughters, who are adults now, and we finally got to see Bourbon Street. My 11 year old grandson Russell was with us but he is pretty level headed for his age. Like me, he wasn't impressed. We were there before lunch and I don't think that I have ever seen that many drunk people so early in the day.  Another goal of mine this time was to see the site of the Battle of New Orleans. The Chalmette National Cemetery sits on land that was part of