Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

 Florida recently passed a law that people sixteen years and above cannot wear a mask or cover their face while protesting. I love this law and have advocated for this going back to the Obama administration when rioters were covering their faces. I refuse to call them protesters. They are the true insurrectionists and like their forefathers the Ku Klux Klan they are cowards. Groups like Antifa, Black Lives Matter and other Communist groups serve the same purpose as the Klan, and Hitler's Brown shirts. The Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democrat party and these modern groups are also terrorist arms of the Democrats. Their primary purpose is to intimidate and obstruct. The Klan was used to intimidate and terrorize black voters in the South as well as white Republicans who were trying to enforce Federal law. Today the purpose of these modern thugs is to obstruct the enforcement of Federal immigration laws and to intimidate any political opposition to Democrat policies. We need a Fe...

 Patriotic American's are rightfully up in arms about the possible election of the Communist/Islamist Zohran Mamdani in New York City. I totally understand this but news flash, we have had Communist mayors for years. There is not a dimes worth of difference between the mayors of Seattle, Portland, Nashville, Memphis, Chicago and Los Angeles. Heck LA mayor Karen Bass was a former member of a Communist guerilla group with ties to Cuba. The difference here is that Mamdani is more open about the fact that he is a Communist and that he is unashamedly wanting to destroy capitalism. Even a Communist blue city like Nashville would never elect a mayor as candid about their real political beliefs as Mamdani. Depending on the demographics a Democrat candidate has to exercise some discretion in order to be elected. Mamdani, however represents the cynical alliance between Communists, Islamists, and anarchists to destroy the West. This is a dangerous game that they are playing. There is an old s...

 Our family is coming up on the 4th anniversary of my son Jon Segroves death from complications of COVID on August 24, 2021. Some in my family might be upset by this article. They might think that I am politicizing his death but I feel a need to shed some light on what happened. Something like COVID should never be able to happen again. When COVID first hit I was like everyone else. I knew very little about it. Too late to save my son I have gotten a pretty thorough education on the subject since his death. I was always suspicious of the timing of COVID. President Trump was finishing up a very successful first term in spite of Trump Derangement Syndrome, Russia Gate, impeachments, lawfare, investigations, and his establishment staff stabbing him in the back at every turn. Most people would not have survived these trials much less been as successful as president Trump in spite of this assault on his character. Political analysts on the left and right were saying tha...

 A few years ago it dawned on me that the modern day Democrat party is basically the same party that started the American Civil War in 1861. At that time Lincoln was their Donald Trump. Democrats had LDS, or Lincoln Derangement Syndrome. No president was more hated in his lifetime than Abraham Lincoln. That is until Donald Trump came along. For the Democrats it is always a power thing. All they care about is gaining power and holding on to it. In Lincoln's day blacks were their target of oppression. Today, the straight white male, or anyone who declares themselves to be a Conservative regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation is their target if they side with the Conservative movement. Divide and conquer has always been the Democrats strategy. The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass stated that the Democrat master placed a wedge between the black slave and poor whites. The poor white had more in common with the slave than he did with the master. Douglas said "they di...

     Okay patriots let's get real. President Trump, based on his foreign policy accomplishments alone, in both his first and second terms, will rank in history as one of our greatest presidents. Personally, I rank him third behind Washington and Lincoln. He took out ISIS in three weeks, isolated Iran, produced the Abraham Accords and compelled European nations in NATO to provide more funding for their own defense. In his second term by planning in coordination with Israel they have eliminated threats in Iran by destroying their air defense capabilities, killing their nuclear scientists and decapitating their military leadership. Israel also diminished much of their nuclear capabilities on the ground. They have marginalized the threat from Iranian proxies on their borders such as Hamas and Hezbolah and we took out the Hoothies in Yemen. All this to set up the final coup de grace by American B-2 bombers that destroyed their nuclear capabilities for the indefinite future. Pr...

 Justice can be defined this way. When laws are enforced and justice is fairly served. Or it can be defined as just or fair treatment. Vengeance on the other hand is punishment inflicted or retribution exacted for an injury or wrong. In my view vengeance can also be part of the justice process. These definitions only apply in a perfect society, or a society that is striving for perfection. It has not been the case in America for a very long time. We have a two tiered justice system where Democrats can virtually commit any crime and never be held accountable. That is Democrats who walk the party line and never buck the system. This doesn't apply to Democrats like RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, or Eric Adams who have the nerve to think for themselves. Because of Democrats we are seeing law abiding good Samaritan citizens like Daniel Penny and Kyle Rittenhouse prosecuted for defending themselves and others. While at the same time perpetrators are ignored, slapped on the hand, released from ja...

Although I voted for Jimmy Carter twice, now I consider him one of our worst and most incompetent presidents in American history. I was a delusional Democrat in those days. Having said that even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally. Most of what he did was bad but I will give the devil his due in one area. Carter was able to negotiate an effective peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1978 called the Camp David Accords. It was through Carter's persistence that the Israeli prime minister Manachem Begin was able to sign a peace treaty with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Sadat was a rarity in the Muslim world. He was a secular Muslim who became a true statesman. A man who was looking out for the interests of Egypt and not Islam. Since Israel's founding in 1948 there had been four major wars between the Arab states and Israel. There had been a major war in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. The Camp David Accords was strategic in the sense that as long as Egypt honored the treaty ...

The Downtown Nashville Presbyterian Church on Church Street. formerly the First Presbyterian Church was the third church built on this site in 1848. The first two burned down. It was built in Egyptian Revival style by William Strickland who designed the Tennessee State capital building. General Andrew Jackson accepted a ceremonial sword on this site after his victory at the battle of New Orleans. During the Civil War this building became Union hospital number 8 with 208 beds. A stone Mason who carved gravestones had a business across the street as seen in this picture. The last picture is of a Union nurse treating wounded men in another Nashville tent hospital during the Civil War.

The Maxwell House Hotel was at the corner of 4th and Union in Nashville. Construction was begun in 1859 by John Overton Jr. who was the son of Andrew Jacksons campaign manager and long time friend John Overton. The hotel wasn't completely finished until 1869. It was named for Overton's wife Harriet Maxwell Overton. The hotels coffee was marketed in the late 1800's and became Maxwell House coffee. During the Civil War it was used as a hospital, barracks, and prison for Confederate POW's. Several Confederate prisoners were killed when a stairway collapsed in 1863. Although the KKK originated in Pulaski Tennessee in 1866, it was a harmless social fraternity created to relieve the boredom of six former Confederate soldiers. They dressed up in Halloween type costumes and rode their horses around town scaring local citizens for fun. They also outfitted their horses in similar costumes. The modern day white robes and hoods did not come along until the rebirth of the Klan in 19...

 In Trump's first term he adopted Reagan's Soviet Union strategy directed at bringing down the Iranian regime. Trump knew that the Iranian people, like the Russian people of the 1980's were unhappy with their government and wanted change. Without targeting the Iranian people Trump targeted the regime itself by isolating it economically from the world. Trump promised severe economic sanctions against any country that did business with Iran. Iran's oil exports dropped significantly and by the end of his first term in office Iran was on the verge of bankruptcy. They were also unable to fund their proxy terror groups like Hamas, Hezbolah and other terrorist groups. Trump was hoping that this economic punishment would spur a popular uprising in Iran. It would probably have happened had he been reelected in 2020. His sanctions were also designed to kill their attempt to build a nuclear weapon. The most clear and present danger to Israel, the United States and the entire world...

 On the late afternoon of April 4, 1968 I was working the 2nd shift at Baird-Ward printing company in Nashville when I heard the news about the assassination of Martin Luther King. All hell broke loose in Nashville and Memphis that night. Cities all over the country were burning and looters were running rampant. A state of emergency was declared and by the next day National Guard tanks and armored vehicles were deployed throughout Nashville. Our plant was right across the street from the Tennessee National Guard headquarters. On my breaks I watched as the troops were being mobilized. By the next day a six PM curfew was declared by then Democrat governor Buford Ellington. The Mayor of Nashville was Democrat Beverly Briley. Both handled the situation masterfully. After six o'clock the only people allowed on the street were people like myself who were going to work or were enroute to a hospital for emergency care. Everybody else would be arrested. I was a senior in high school at the ...

   It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. These are the opening lines to Charles Dickens book "A Tale Of Two Cities". This could describe the life with my father Willard Aaron (Bill) Segroves for the almost thirteen years that I knew him. All of his friends and family called him Bill but he was just daddy to us. The best of times were from my birth in 1950 until I was about nine years old. The last three years of his life from 1959 to January 16, 1963 were the worst of times. How does a man evolve from the best father in the world to being a monster? I have asked this question thousands of times in the last 62 years but I can only speculate. On this Fathers Day I want to honor the good dad that I knew. Many people can honor their father on Father's day without reservation but it is more difficult for me. I have tried very hard not to hate him over the years, which I could easily do. Through the years members of my family and friends have tried to console ...