November 11, 2020 AsktheBuilder Newsletter

Veterans Day & Revised Columns

This is a very special edition of my newsletter. This Veterans Day is especially meaningful for me, and quite possibly you too. This year, more than ever, I'm intensely aware of the freedom and liberty all veterans have given to me as a most precious gift and prize.

Today, we honor living veterans who put their lives on the line for each moment of their service to our great nation. I'm humbled by your service. My Dad was a veteran. CLICK or TAP HERE to read his story.

My best friend Richard volunteered for two tours of duty in Vietnam. CLICK or TAP HERE to read about Richard's great accomplishments during the war.

Dick Daniels flew F-4 Phantoms in Vietnam, was shot down, and survived. He's a subscriber to this newsletter, and over the years we became very close friends.

Bill, who I met at an Internet conference, is a veteran. Chuck, another Internet buddy of mine, is a veteran. Anne, yet another Internet friend, is a veteran. The list of folks I know who are veterans is endless.

You may be a veteran too and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for putting your life on the line to preserve the liberty we all enjoy here in the USA.

Live Free or Die

Having moved to New Hampshire twelve years ago, I've become more acutely aware of what you may think is a whimsical state motto:

Live Free or Die

This colorful NH state motto sign is above my desk. Each day when I enter my man cave, it's the first thing I see. I put it there on purpose as a reminder of what forms the inner core of my DNA - as if I need to be reminded!

Those words were written in a letter by General John Stark, thirty-two years after he led his men in a victorious battle over the British red coats. The conflict took place in Bennington, Vermont on August 16, 1777, during the Revolutionary War. I've driven by the massive obelisk monument no less than forty times in my trips to and from NH to Cincinnati, Ohio.

General Stark was too sick to attend a reunion of this battle and sent a letter honoring the men he commanded. A part of that letter is just below. I feel what General Stark said all those years ago applies to what is currently going on here in the USA today:

“They were men that had not learned the art of submission, nor had they been trained to the art of war. But our astonishing success taught the enemies of liberty that undisciplined freemen are superior to veteran slaves.”

At the end of his letter, Stark included the famous line that had been touched upon years before in other historical conflicts of good vs evil. He intended this line to be said in a toast to his men at the reunion so the story goes:

“Live free or die. Death is not the greatest of evils.”

Think about that. You, as a veteran, or that loved one of yours who is a veteran, surely realized that in putting yourself in harm's way, you were putting more importance on liberty - the freedom to exercise your God-given rights - over death!

It's heady stuff when you stop and think about it, right? General Stark had lived his early life under tyranny and knew the true value of freedom and liberty.

Not a day goes by that I don't ponder this. I often think about those moments of paralyzing fear my Dad must have felt as the Hun soldiers came clomping down the basement stairs of the farmhouse where he was alone attending to wounded soldiers.

He was quite possibly about to meet his Maker thousands of miles from home from his family and sweetheart. He was a young man of just 27-years-old protecting the injured soldiers and the liberty you and I currently enjoy. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his bravery.

Living free, and not under the thumb of a tyrannical government of any type, is such a unique and special prize when you stop and think about it.

You may not want to think about the end game of what can happen as liberty and freedom are sometimes slowly stolen and snatched from you.

One day, you may have to decide how you're going to die. Do you want to die on your knees next to a freshly dug trench, or do you want to die protecting the liberty and freedom you now currently enjoy and can pass on to your children and grandchildren?

I've thought it through myself.

Knowing what you may have sacrificed for me in your years in service to our great nation, what my Dad suffered through, and all my other friends, well, there's no way I'm dying on my knees with a pistol aimed squarely at the ever-enlarging bald spot on the back of my head.