Category Archives: Patriotism

Patriotism, Writing

What does NaNoWriMo mean to me?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

This morning I received an email soliciting funds from NaNoWriMo. 

NaNoWriMo was an annual writing challenge that took place every November. As it’s popularity has grown, it’s created NaNoWriMo, Camp NaNoWriMo and other annual, Internet-based creative writing contests that takes place throughout the year. The challenge is to a novel (50,000 words is the minimum length of a novel) between a scheduled start date and end date. The winner (anyone who writes the minimum number of words) gets an internet badge they can put on their website or facebook page or whatever. I have several on my site here, as I have often participated, supported, and won the challenges.

Continue reading →

Patriotism, Personal

Happy 224th Anniversary, United States Coast Guard!

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

The United States Coast Guard was created as the “Revenue Marine” by an act of Congress on August 4, 1790 at the request of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.  Not only is this branch of the military the oldest seagoing service of the United States, but also the only branch that has a racing stripe.

Yeah, I know the U.S. Navy lists it’s founding as 1775 – when the Continental Navy was formed – but we should all remember that the Continental Navy was disbanded in 1785, and the United States Navy wasn’t founded until 1794.

Continue reading →

Patriotism

The first Republican President’s speech: the Gettysburg Address

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

On this day, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address to a deeply divided country.  It wasn’t a long speech – 278 words, total – but it continues to be one of the most enduring.

Not once does the President use “I” or a teleprompter.  He doesn’t come to divide the country based on the color of skin.  He comes to unify.  He uses the word “we” over and over again to talk about a unified country.  Both the idiot who occupies the White House and all elected members of Congress could learn quite a bit from this speech and this man.

Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, and his ideas weren’t popular; liberals didn’t want to end slavery.  They were fighting and dying to save their way of life.  Republicans were a new party, and didn’t garner much favor in the south.  In fact, it was specifically because of the Republican party that liberals created the Ku Klux Klan.  Liberalism was then, and continues to be today, the most divisive and un-American ideal that was errantly imported to this great country.

The country has drifted far from where it was in 1863.  Liberalism continues to be a disease that spreads hate among the uneducated, and continues to insist on dividing people based on race, creed, color, religion, and sexual preference.  Once liberalism and all of it’s vitriol is removed from the landscape, we can have peace, unity, harmony, and a nation based on the belief that all men are, truly, created equal.

Continue reading →

National Parks, Patriotism

Two very different ways of celebrating Yosemite’s 123rd Birthday

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Today – October 1st, 2013 – Google is celebrating Yosemite National Park’s 123rd birthday with a Doodle.

Also today Yosemite (and other national parks) are closed due to the government shutdown.

The federal government partially shut down at midnight on Tuesday because of the continuing zany antics of the most hate-filled and divisive President and the Senate democrats (the Senate has the lowest approval rating of all time right now … go figure), who can’t pass a budget and who think that raising a debt ceiling is how you balance the books.  If you raise the debt ceiling you don’t run out of money, right?

As Jay Leno put it a few weeks ago: “The government will run out of money in just 3 weeks. I’m no financial whiz, but we’re 16 Trillion Dollars in debt. Doesn’t that mean we already ran out of money? Like 16 Trillion Dollars ago?”

Because of 536 inept elected officials, over 800,000 government employees can’t work and our national parks, monuments, and museums are closed.

Continue reading →