Big Red Car here. Well yesterday was the Inauguration of President Obama for his second term as President.
One of the traditions of Inauguration Day is the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Boss is a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, the Nation’s oldest state military college often called the West Point of the South. [VMI grads think of West Point as the VMI of the North.]
When he was there, the cadets marched in the Inaugural Parades of Richard Nixon.
Here is a video of the VMI cadets marching past the reviewing stand in front of the White House.
These are the young men and women who fight America’s wars and whose graduates have fought our wars since the Civil War. It is their blood amongst many others which waters the tree of liberty.
During the Civil War, the VMI Corps of Cadets fought as a unit at the Battle of New Market at which they executed a bayonet charge and swept a hill from the Union forces capturing Union artillery batteries at the point of a bayonet. This is the time in history that a military academy has fought as a single unit and emerged victorious.
It was a VMI graduate, General of the Army George Catlett Marshall, who commanded all American forces in World War II. Winston Churchill described Marshall as the principal Architect of Victory.
Ronald Reagan starred in a movie about VMI called Brother Rat. It is a good story. When you attend VMI your first year is Hell. You are called “Rats” by the upperclassmen and you call your classmates “Brother Rat”. It is a strict and forbidding tradition of breaking down and rebuilding young men. It has worked the same since 1839 almost unchanged. If you can survive VMI, you can survive anything.
If you look carefully, you can see the VMI cadets in the video are shouldering M-14 rifles with fixed bayonets. Bayonets and bayonet drill are still important to instill fighting spirit in soldiers and cadets.
The Boss is very proud of having graduated from VMI and rightfully so. It is a tough place to be but a great place to be from.
BRC,Enjoyed the video. Very familiar with VMI. Someone I knew well growing up was the football coach there recently: Calvin McCombs. Calvin is just good people and was the star athlete at our high school. Made quiet a name for himself at the Citadel and the Air Force Academy. .
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Coach McCombs is the most experienced military school football coach ever. Coaches like military schools because the cadets have to obey them.
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I liked the sound of the bagpipes at the very beginning, and again around 2:30. Cut to President Obama chewing gum was slightly odd. He looked happy though. BigRedCar, you have the fanciest media player of any website I have seen! Ahhh, okay, you are using WordPress dot org, with features. It is great!
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Thanks, Ellie K, you have to love bagpipes.
Have you ever heard Amazing Grace on the pipes? That will be the tune at my burial.
Yes, we have a gum chewing President only because he could not smoke in public, eh?
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The BigRedCar is telepathic! I love Amazing Grace on bagpipes! I even paid $20 to a local band of bagpipers at a street fair to play Amazing Grace for me! They were trying to be modern, didn’t want to do traditional, but capitulated under duress. And yes, of course, I should have thought of that, about smoking cigarettes. I used to love Virginia Slims, they were at least 110 centimeters, maybe longer.
I spent a little while vetting that investment website that you suggested, advisorperspectives. I’ll leave a comment on the relevant post. It has some characteristics that are unusual, in a good sense.
* You are so congenial, cordial. It is very apparent. I knew that when you left a comment with WAC Counselor at Law that you were either very young or quite mature. In fact, a disciplined, structured background was the key. I like attorney blogs, find them hospitable. Comments are detailed, and always respectful. You might like the Volokh Conspiracy. They are a pseudo-cabal of law professors, somewhat Libertarian, not aggressively though, and friendly in their own way.
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Thank you, Ellie K, you are so nice to say that.
I am a bit older than the average bear but as to maturity, hmmm.
I have always said that maturity is way overrated — not in the sense of being a gentleman or behaving oneself but in the sense of not doing stuff that is construed as youthful and maybe even indulgent.
I aspire to do more surfing.
JLM
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