Are We the Champions?
We face a critical decision this November 5th, which will determine if we are champions.
Greetings, y’all! I am still on cloud nine after my alma mater, the Tennessee Volunteers, won the College World Series and completed a record-setting 60-win season. It has been a while since we had a national championship on Rocky Top. I remember when the Vols won the first BCS college football championship against Florida State in Tempe, Arizona. I was stationed at Ft. Bragg (yeah, that’s what it is) and ran out into a freezing cold North Carolina evening to scream. The topic of this missive is a play on the words from the song by the rock band Queen, “We Are the Champions.” We all know the words to that song and the refrain.
“We are the champions, my friend,
And we’ll keep on fighting ’til the end.
We are the champions, we are the champions,
No time for losers ’cause we are the champions…of the world.”
Last week, the Florida Panthers won the NHL Stanley Cup. After retirement from the US Army, we lived in Plantation, Florida, for ten years. Our home was down the street from the arena where the Panthers play. I took our daughters to see a couple of hockey games. We now live in Garland, Texas, and North Texas has been a buzz since the Texas Rangers won last year’s baseball World Series. Not to mention that the Dallas Mavericks had a phenomenal season, winning the NBA Western Conference and playing in the NBA Finals. The Dallas Stars had another great season, knocking off defending Stanley Cup champions, the Vegas Golden Knights, in the playoffs and almost winning the NHL Western Conference.
As World War II General George Patton said in his speech, “America loves a winner.”
But does America itself want to be a winner? A champion?
We face a critical decision this November 5th, which will determine if we are champions. If we want to not just be winners ourselves but reestablish a legacy of championships, like the 18 banners of the Boston Celtics. Or, as I write this, I am sitting in Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of Titletown. If we all go out, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green, you name it, and cheer for our local sports team to be winners . . . why do we not all want our nation to be a winner?
When we have Americans taking to the streets to support losers like Islamic jihadist groups, that is not what a champion does. To dismiss it, or even allow it to happen in the first place, is not indicative of a champion mentality. When we open up our border so that anyone and anything — and I mean criminals, terrorists, and drugs — can pour into our country to assault, rape, and murder our team, is that a champion’s attitude?
Go back and watch George C. Scott’s portrayal of the speech by Gen. Patton to the US 3rd Army, linked here. Can you imagine a military leader speaking in such terms today? Heck, leftists went apoplectic over the killing of Iranian Quds force leader Gen. Suleimani. Just recently, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, openly stated in an interview that America would not be capable of lending military assistance to Israel if the situation with Hezbollah escalated. Let me remind you that this is the same Hezbollah that killed 234 US Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers on October 23, 1983.
As you watch the video from the movie Patton, remember what was happening 80 years ago: we fought evil and defeated it. We were champions, victors, winners, and we liberated an entire continent . . . and trust me, when you go to Normandy France, they still remember.
Yet, recently, in NYC, we witnessed disturbing words and behavior from people who are saying that Hitler should have been allowed to finish the job. We have seen signs referring to going back into ovens. As a matter of fact, that was something that Hamas did to babies on October 7th. Yet, we have people in our America who stood outside the memorial exhibit on October 7th and protested on behalf of an Islamic terrorist organization.
Champions and winners do not lower themselves to the standards of losers, and America should not be allowing vile, barbaric, and heinous losers that would behead babies, rape and murder women, to have a foothold in our country.
The progressive socialist leftists, Marxists, are losers, and America gets to decide this November if it wants to be a champion or not. This election is not about two individuals; it is about an indomitable spirit that was once, and must again be, the envy of the world. It is about standing for the preeminent principles of individual rights, freedoms, and liberties, not this collective subjugation nonsense telling us what type of food, car, and appliances we can have. It is an indomitable spirit that stands up to evil and fights like hell against it with no regret, no quarter and does not embrace it in our streets.
I am a native of Atlanta, Georgia. I used to sell Cokes at the Atlanta Braves baseball games. There were times when you would maybe have 3,000 or 4,000 people at a game, to the point where some of us would be turned back based upon the section of the Atlanta-Fulton County stadium you worked. I remember James Brown’s future shock concerts at some games to boost attendance. No one wanted to go see a losing team. Then the magical season of 1991 came, the same year I was in Desert Shield/Storm. The Atlanta Braves became the first team to go from the worst record in MLB to the World Series in just one year. I will never forget sitting in my living room the following season and standing up and running with Braves first baseman Sid Bream as he rounded third base, heading for home plate, chugging along, and sliding in just under the tag of the Pittsburgh Pirates catcher to win the National League championship and send the Braves to the World Series. It was the season that started a dynasty, a legacy.
This article first appeared at Townhall.com