Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 64

Is John Wayne a Racist Symbol?

I wrote John Wayne’s obituary for the Chicago Tribune in 1979. At the time, I was the newspaper’s West Coast Bureau Chief, and the “Duke” had just passed away at age 72 from stomach cancer.

It was a tough obit to write. I had grown up on John Wayne movies—especially classics like 1956’s “The Searchers,” and director John Ford’s iconic “cavalry trilogy” (“Fort Apache,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” and “Rio Grande”).

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There are so many unforgettable Wayne films that I can name from the 200 or so he made. There is 1948’s “Red River” about the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail. There was 1949’s “The Sands of Iwo Jima” in which he plays tough and demanding Sergeant John M. Stryker, and there is 1952’s “The Quiet Man,” in which he plays an Irish-born American and former heavyweight boxer who travels to Ireland in the 1920s to buy his family’s old farm.

And of course, there is 1969’s “True Grit,” Wayne’s only Oscar-winning performance as the cantankerous lawman Rooster Cogburn.

His last film, 1976’s “The Shootist,” was a poignant and prophetic look at an aging gunfighter named John Books who is dying of cancer. I still can’t look at that film without getting a lump in my throat.

Along with my father, John Wayne was a man I wanted to model myself after.

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I loved Wayne’s portrayal of strong, brave, and confident men who were courageous when faced with peril and self-assured in their power to overcome barriers.

He was the quintessential independent American— self-reliant and ready to fight for what he believed was right.

When it came to politics, he was just as tough and just as confident that the right thing to do was to stand up for freedom, for “the individual and his rights.”

He was a true patriot, a man who loved America. And of course, that’s precisely why the left hated him—and still does.

You would think that hatred would have dissipated a little in the 41 years since his death.

But it hasn’t.

With Wayne in his grave and unable to defend himself, the sleazy Democrat Party of Orange County California recently passed a resolution calling John Wayne a “racist symbol” and demanding that the airport in Orange County that bears his name, along with a commanding nine-foot statue, be renamed.

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How ludicrous.

The Democrats are basing this spurious indictment on a minor 50-year-old interview Wayne did with Playboy magazine. As they are inclined to do, one of their ilk apparently rummaged through his closet of ancient Playboy T & A magazines and stumbled upon the Wayne interview during which the outspoken Duke used what today is deemed inflammatory and racist words.

Tsk, tsk.

I have not read the interview, but in the 1971 interview, Wayne was apparently asked about white supremacy—a term that didn’t carry the same connotation then that it does today. His response: “Until blacks are educated to the point of responsibility. . . I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.”

Wayne also said that although he did not condone slavery, he didn’t feel personally guilty about what happened five or ten generations ago.

He also said he felt no remorse that Europeans supplanted Native Americans as stewards of the nation’s lands.

“I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them,” Wayne said. “Our so-called stealing of this country from them was a matter of survival.”

John Wayne’s son, Ethan, came to his father’s defense last week.

“It would be an injustice to judge someone based on an interview that’s being used out of context,” Ethan Wayne told CNN last Saturday. “They’re trying to contradict how he lived his life, and how he lived his life was who he was. So, any discussion of removing his name from the airport should include the full picture of the life of John Wayne and not be based on a single outlier interview from half a century ago. 

“My father worked in Hollywood for 50 years, and Hollywood is probably, you know, one of the most progressive and diverse communities on Earth. He didn’t care what race, gender, or sexual orientation you were. He cared how well you did your job. He took everyone at face value.

“They put my father’s name on that airport for the same reason that Congress voted to give him a Congressional Gold Medal, for the same reason that the President gave him a Medal of Freedom. It was recognition of a lifetime of significant contributions to this country, his community, and his industry.”

Were John Wayne’s words a bit injudicious in that Playboy interview? Yes, if you examine them in the context of a 2020 mindset.

When I was growing up in 1950s Kansas, I recall hearing the “N” word often, as well as derogatory terms to describe gays, Mexicans, Indians, Irish, Jews, Italians, Chinese, etc.

I didn’t condone them, but I still wouldn’t desecrate the memory or the accomplishments of those who uttered them so long ago.

That would be what Jesus rightfully called “casting the first stone.”

Would you hear those same words used today? I don’t think so. At least I haven’t.

It was a different time; a time when people were not sensitive to the pain a pejorative or deprecating word could have on others.

To hold people accountable for the attitudes and thoughtlessness of an era five decades past is, I believe, the height of unreasonable retrospection.

Of course, I sincerely believe there is another reason Democrats are so intent on destroying the formidable legacy of John Wayne.

He was an unapologetic American patriot. For example, he was one of the few people in Hollywood who continued to support American troops in Vietnam when his tinsel town colleagues were calling them baby killers, and some in this nation were spitting on them when they returned home.

As a veteran of the U.S. Army, I appreciated Wayne’s unrelenting support.

Wayne was no sunshine patriot. He put his mouth where his beliefs were. In 1944, he was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, the MPA. The group of actors, directors, and writers was organized to fight the leftist movement in Hollywood.

Iconic actors Clark Gable and Robert Taylor were presidents of the organization. Wayne became the MPA’s President in 1949 and served until 1952. Studio executives warned Wayne that his role at the MPA would wreck his career and kill him at the box office.

They were woefully wrong. A year after assuming the presidency of the organization, Wayne was the top box-office star in the country, up from a rank of 32nd.

“I never felt I needed to apologize for my patriotism,” Wayne once said. “I felt that if there were Communists in the business — and I knew there were — then they ought to go over to Russia and try enjoying freedom there. We were just good Americans, and we demanded the right to speak our minds. After all, the Communists in Hollywood were speaking theirs. (Ahem. They still are.)

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“If you’re in a fight, you must fight to win, and in those early years of the Cold War, I strongly believed that our country’s fundamental values were in jeopardy. I think that the Communists proved my point over the years.”

John Wayne was a defiant anti-Communist. He once explained his position by saying Communists “were rotten and corrupt and poisoned the air of our communities by creating suspicion, distrust, and hatred.”

Sound familiar? It should. It’s what we are seeing and hearing today as mobs rampage through our streets ripping down statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and attacking anybody who opposes them.

“We (members of the MPA) were the real liberals,” Wayne said. “We believed in freedom. We believed in the individual and his rights. We hated Soviet Communism. It was against all religions, and it trampled on the individual because it was a slave society.”

Ethan Wayne insists his father did not support ‘white supremacy’ in any way and believed that responsible people should gain power without the use of violence.

“It’s an injustice to judge my father based on a single interview, Ethan Wayne said. “The big picture paints a much different picture of dad, who called out bigotry when he saw it.”

Wayne’s son also pointed to his father’s lasting legacy, the John Wayne Cancer Foundation, and says his name will always embody courage, strength, and grit.

That’s the John Wayne, I know.

Click here to see my front page obit of John Wayne:

John Wayne dead at 72, Jun 12, 1979

The Remarkable Life of a Reluctant Hero

All authors are emotionally engaged with their protagonists. I am no exception. I want readers to love my characters as much as I do. That means creating a flawed, three-dimensional protagonist who still has “things to work out.”  The Finding Billy Battles series follows Billy from his roots in Kansas, through his career as a journalist, to his final years. Along the way, Billy makes both good and bad choices–just as we all do. He does some extraordinary things–things that some might call “heroic.” But is Billy a hero? 

Today’s post is meant to introduce the topic of “heroes”–and heroines–and get us all thinking about what kinds of heroes and heroines readers will love.

What Is a Hero?

The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission defines a hero as “someone who voluntarily leaves a point of safety to assume life risk to save or attempt to save the life of another.”

Does that describe William Fitzroy Raglan Battles, the protagonist in my Finding Billy Battles Trilogy?

Yes and no. There are definitely times in the three books when Billy risks his life for others. So, I guess Billy might fit the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission’s definition of a hero. But I don’t think Billy would think of himself that way. Does Billy display courage? Yes, but in most cases, those displays are in response to an attack on him, his family, or a friend.

In Book One of the trilogy (Finding Billy Battles), Billy learns at an early age that there is a thin line between courage and survival. He is just nineteen when he confronts the murderous Bledsoe clan on his old homestead in Western Kansas. During that confrontation, he accidentally kills the malicious matriarch of the clan. It’s an act that will follow and haunt him for the rest of his life. The Bledsoe gang, he soon learns, has long memories and this single violent act will make him a marked man for decades.

As the story evolves, a young Billy interacts with several legendary people who will shape his view of the world and how a man should behave in it. From Wyatt Earp, he learns about nerve and understated courage. From Bat Masterson, he learns about unswerving responsibility and steadfastness. Even the infamous and misunderstood Doc Holliday unwittingly schools Billy about loyalty to one’s friends and comrades. Then, there is his semi-outlaw cousin Charley Higgins, from whom Billy acquires the traits of mental toughness and strength.

Last, but not least, Billy learns a lot about dependability and rectitude from his mother, who was widowed on the wild Kansas plains less than five years after her marriage. Of course, Billy doesn’t recognize or appreciate these life lessons from his mother until much later when he approaches middle age. In that respect, I think he’s like a lot of us. We take our parents for granted, and then they are gone.

These are the attributes and qualities that Billy is fortunate to absorb early in life and shape his character until his dying day. All rolled into one, they provide Billy with the stuff with which to survive and persevere on the wild American frontier and later in places like French Indochina, the Philippines, Mexico, and Germany.

[image error] Long before the Vietnam war, the French sent troops to Indochina. This image was taken in the 1890s when Billy Battles stepped into a conflict zone.

Is Billy an “Everyman” Hero?

Does that make Billy an “Everyman” hero? Once again, he would contest that description. Billy describes himself best in his introduction to Book One:

“Let me begin by owning up to some pretty terrible things I did during my life. That way, you can make up your mind right now if you want to read further.

“I have killed people. And I am sad to say the first person I killed was a woman. It was entirely unintentional, and to this day, the incident haunts me. The next person I killed was that woman’s grown son, and that was intentional. If you decide to read on, you will learn more about these two people and how they came to die at my hands.

“You will also learn about other things I did—some of which I am not proud of, some of which I am. In the course of my life, I got into a lot of brawls where I had to defend myself and others in a variety of ways. I did so without regret because in each case, someone was trying to do me or someone else harm.

“Now I know the Christian Bible says it is a sin to kill, and in some of these imbroglios, I probably could have walked away and avoided the ensuing violence. I chose not to because I learned early in my life that walking away from a scrap is too often seen as a sign of weakness or cowardice and merely incites bullies and thugs to molest you later on. There were a few individuals who tried their damnedest to put an end to me, but fortunately, I was able to dispatch or incapacitate those malefactors before they could apply the coup de grâce.

“So there you have it—a forewarning about me and my sometimes-turbulent life. As the Romans used to say, “Caveat emptor,” if you decide to continue reading.”

The violence of frontier Kansas, Arizona, and New Mexico was the crucible that transformed a naïve nineteen-year-old teenager into a man. Without a doubt, the young men and women today who are serving in war-ravaged Afghanistan and the hostile Middle East are learning the same lessons Billy did.

Courage, however, is not just a physical manifestation. There is another kind of courage; that unspoken resolve deep within us that permits us to handle tragedy and heartbreak. That’s the kind of courage that Billy lacks early on and that he doesn’t find until later in life.

As Book One ends and Book Two (The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles) begins, Billy, who is now a successful journalist, is struggling with a profound personal loss. His response is to leave those he loves behind and journey to French Indochina. This is not the behavior of a courageous man. In fact, as Billy himself acknowledges, it’s the action of a selfish absconder. Yet, off he goes.

Cowardice and Heroism

As we soon learn in Book Two, Billy is not a physical coward. In fact, he becomes embroiled in the native uprising against the French in Indochina and later is roped into the war in the Philippines—first against the Spanish during the Spanish-American War and afterward against the native Filipinos who wage war against thousands of American troops who refuse to leave after defeating the Spanish.

In French Indochina, Billy is quite possibly the first American combatant in a country that will eventually become Vietnam. While there he reunites with a Vietnamese man he once met in the New Mexico desert. This man, Giang Văn Ba, is now one of the rebel commanders leading the insurgency against the French. Billy sees that the struggle is hopeless against a more powerful enemy with a trained military using superior weapons, but he respects Ba’s doggedness. This man, Billy comes to believe, is a hero, if a doomed one.

Later in the Philippines, Billy is persuaded to take a temporary commission in the Army. His job is to serve as a liaison officer between the commander of U.S. forces and the Twentieth Kansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment led by a fiery colonel named Frederick Funston—a fellow Kansan.

For the next year, Captain Battles finds himself fighting an enemy that he secretly respects and sympathizes with. The contradiction of that situation is painful for Billy to abide. Nevertheless, he performs with courage while feeling like the unwelcome invader he and the other American troops are.

The courage Billy displays inspires the men around him. But once again, if you were to attribute the “hero” label to him, Billy would undoubtedly object because he performed his duties as a liaison officer while swallowing a generous portion of guilt.

The Third Book Brings New Challenges

At the beginning of Book Three (The Lost Years of Billy Battles), Billy is fifty-four years old and content with his somewhat sedentary life as a newspaper editor in Chicago. He and his wife Katharina have just celebrated fifteen years of married life, and then the bottom falls out. They are persuaded to take on a secret surveillance assignment for the Army officer Billy and Katharina had befriended in the Philippines. Frederick Funston (now a general) sends them to the Mexican city of Veracruz.

[image error] Veracruz, Mexico Ca 1900

That assignment triggers a series of other dangerous missions that Billy undertakes. Once again, even at the half-century point of his existence, Billy’s life is charged with danger. If I were to interview Billy and ask why he decided to embark on such perilous assignments at his age, he would no doubt answer: “Because I felt it was the right thing to do.”

A Reporter in Real Life

There is an undeniable similarity between Billy’s later life and mine. For example, I decided to stop covering war when I hit fifty. Of course, unlike Billy, I never participated in any of the wars and revolutions I covered. I remained, as much as possible, strictly an observer.

[image error] Ron Yates in Bangkok, 1985.

That said, in El Salvador, I did carry a 9 mm automatic pistol on those occasions when I was in a dodgy area. El Salvador was maybe the most dangerous revolution I ever covered, and I was determined to go down fighting rather than allow myself to be helplessly executed by some revolutionary guerilla band or a government death squad.

I genuinely enjoyed writing about this time in Billy’s life because it mirrors my current stage of life and I could identify with him a lot more than I could a thirty-year-old man. Does that mean that after his adventures in Mexico I allowed Billy to retire to a rocking chair in Chicago? Not on your life. In the wake of another personal tragedy he once again fogs it out of the country and back to Asia where twenty more years of adventure and peril await.

At this time, Billy is living in the Philippines attempting to ease back into a conventional, non-violent life. And he does, up to a point. But after a few adventures in the Philippines, he once again finds himself in French Indochina helping an old friend and risking his life once again. That’s Billy, through and through. He is always there for his friends—even if it means putting his life on the line.

During this time Billy often thinks about those from his past who had an impact on his character—Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Bill Tilghman, his cousin, Charley Higgins, and, of course, his mother. By now, Billy is a man well into his sixties who is extremely comfortable in his own skin. He knows how he will react in a crisis or when his life, or that of others, is on the line.

He is, shall we say, “battle-tested.” There is a scene in Book Three when Billy is about ninety that he finds himself forced to respond to a minor threat. His “past self” kicks in and the men he’s facing back down, mumbling that even at his advanced age, Billy has “eyes that would chill a side of beef.”

The more I wrote the trilogy, the more I began to feel that Billy and I have a unique bond. After all, we lived together almost every day for the past six years as I told his story. I have no doubt that he knows me just as well as I know him.

Heroism and Flaws

As with most human beings, Billy made mistakes during his life—some pretty big ones. I did too, maybe not quite as big as Billy’s, but like his mistakes, mine had an impact on my life. As for Billy, at a couple of points, he looks back on his life and decides that despite some significant regrets, for the most part, he lived his life as he wanted—with courage and integrity.

Of those two words, I think Billy and I both find integrity the most important. Courage is a quality that can be summoned from somewhere inside us when it is required. Integrity, however, is an attribute that dwells closer to the surface of our being; a quintessence that guides our everyday conduct and actions and helps us live righteous and honorable lives. Billy and I are undeniably in agreement on that point.

Funny. Now that the trilogy is finished, I find myself having “conversations” with Billy. In a way, I wish I could resurrect him, but that’s impossible. Instead, I find myself sometimes wondering, “I wonder what Billy would do in this situation?”

Sometimes he answers.

That’s when I decide to retreat to the patio and drink a cold beer.

Here’s where you can order the Finding Billy Battle Trilogy:

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KHDVZI/-/e/B00KQAYMA8/

 

Stop Trying to Make Sense of it & Just Kneel, Guilty White Person

For the next several days I am reposting commentaries from Americans of all races and occupations who are as concerned as I am about this ongoing attempt to rewrite history and obliterate our country from within. I hope you will find them as illuminating and significant as I have.

Stop Making Sense

by Kurt Schlichter

It is not transcendently stupid for the alleged anti-racism rioters to destroy a Lincoln statue, though, to normal people, it looks like the act of drooling morons. Now, a good number of these “cesspeople” are drooling morons, but that does not change the fact that trashing POTUS #16’s statuary is brilliant.

They have confused their targets – us – by casting off the constraints of coherence.

Oh wait, you thought that these folks were trying to make a point about racism being bad. And you thought because that’s how those of us who weren’t raised on Instatwitbook, soy, and critical race theory, that if you point out that something is unreasonable then that will cause the person you were instructing to rethink it. After all, trashing some Honest Abe totem in order to illustrate how racism is double-plus-ungood is about a “12” on the 1-10 scale of unreasonability. And yet, you can point that out all day and they don’t care.

In fact, they laugh at you for doing so.

It’s not about making sense. It never was. It’s about making you kneel.

If you look at everything that is going on, the one common denominator is that every action the woke insurgents take is designed to strip you of your ability to defend your interests, or property, or rights, or life. The idea is to leave you utterly vulnerable, totally exposed, at which point they can do with you as they see fit. The nicer ones will merely reeducate you then demand humiliating submission and tribute. History (and their social media feed) teach that others will happily murder you. Doubt me? Just ask your local kulak.

Stripping you of defenses takes many forms. One form is defunding and abolishing the police. Oh, someone will be wielding force in society. It just won’t be people accountable to or inclined to protect you. Another form is literally stripping you of your defenses. Why is gun control such a fetish for these creeps? Because you with a gun have the ability to not just say “no” but to exact a price from those who wish to compel a “yes.” So, of course, they want to eliminate your ability to have weapons, but they also want to eliminate, as a practical matter, your ability to use them to protect yourself.

[image error] Kurt Schlicter

Look at what happened when the pink polo shirt gun guy quite reasonably grabbed his AR-15 as the savages descended on his property and the cops were AWOL. St. Louis’s Soros-bought DA – who last month released all the arrested rioters – threatened to prosecute him. The media is slandering him too. A pack of jackals threatened his property, his family, and even his dog, and he’s the bad guy for not showing his belly? You see the same fake furor every time some citizen has his car surrounded by a feeding frenzy of scumbags and plows through them to escape. Ignore that the slime are now shooting people they try to trap. The idea is to make you give up instead of fight back because if you fight back, the law comes down on you instead of the criminals.

Soros really is a shrewd investor.

The law – and the law generally says you can reasonably defend your life and property (please consult your local laws for specifics and get proper training) – means nothing if corrupt Democrats ignore the crimes of leftists and prosecute normals who dare resist the Blue Terror, which is kind of the point. You thought you could rely on the law and on the government to protect you. Nope. And now you can’t protect yourself either.

And then there’s reason. That’s a defense too. You can use reason, make arguments, present evidence, and convince people. Not if making sense is beside the point.

You cannot reason with these people. Forget trying to convince them. You are not going to talk them out of their quest for power over you by deploying bourgeois conceits like “facts” and “evidence.” Yet so many of us see what’s happening and still take to Twitter or (increasingly) Parler to point out the sheer ridiculousness of the enemy’s latest antics. But these actions are not ridiculous. They are tactically genius. Instead of confronting an impenetrable defense, they just scuttle around it and attack into our rear.

Now that’s not to say pointing out the fact that everything they say and do is bullSchiff  and pointless. It does help awoken the conservative unwoke. Normal people who are not neck-deep in the fight right now look at people trying to topple the guy who toppled the Confederacy and shake their heads. It does help with them, so keep it up with them.

But not with the wokesters. They just don’t care.

So how do we beat them?

Step one is to understand the nature of the fight. It’s not one of right and wrong, though that’s how they like to disguise it. It is one of power. Give them nothing. Concede nothing. Stop trying to be reasonable with people who think a reasonable compromise is just impoverishing and disenfranchising you instead of stashing you in a gulag or worse.

Are you still trying to prove to them you aren’t “racist?” Why? You aren’t, so the hell with them. You owe them no assurances or excuses. They’ll just claim your denial is more proof. You’re “fragile” if you surrender and you’re “fragile” if you don’t, so stop playing their game. You don’t have to prove anything to jerks who spew the same species of racial garbage Goebbels would have spewed, only with different names.

Step two is to understand the enemy and the information operation it’s running on you. The total number of these shrieking punks is infinitesimal, probably under 1 percent of the population. But the mainstream media seeks to make them seem pervasive and overwhelming by covering them 24/7, and it expects you to fall for it. Don’t. Look out your window. Except for that whiny woke wine mom down the street with the handwritten lawn signs parroting the slogans du jour, the one whose husband you often see weeping in the window, you are looking at peace and calm. That’s the reality, not the chaos in a few square blocks of occupied Grungeburg, Washington.

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Don’t allow yourself to be demoralized. Victory is at hand. The media’s polls are meant to crush your spirit, but ask yourself – do you know a single person who voted for Trump in 2016 but is now thinking, “Gosh, we need Grandpa Badfinger – he’ll get the economy moving again even though he helped preside over nearly a decade of ennui?” Or have you had people who whisper to you, because they fear cancellation, “This time I’m voting for Trump?” I know zero of the former and a number of the latter. How about you?

Don’t fall for the lies. Reject their goal of breaking your will.

Step three is to impose your will, ruthlessly and fearlessly, because this is our country and to hell with these schmucks.

It’s time for us to riot, not in the streets, because we have jobs and we’re not going to destroy our own stuff, but at the ballot box. That’s where we lay waste to their Venezuelan dreams. In the primaries, vote for woke conservatives, not establishment saps. And then in November, vote straight Republican down the ballot.

Sure, much of the GOP consists of spineless saps eager to join Mitt Romney – father of the Miracle Whip box set of sons Tagg, Tugg, Togg, Skip, Skoop, Skup, Freen, Ween, and Peen – in donning the latex and gimping out for the pleasure of their WaPo masters. But the nice thing about those cowardly sissies is that we can ensure they are more afraid of us than of the leftists they yearn to obey. We can fire them, and then they’ll have to get real jobs. This prospect scares them even more than a mean tweet from that desiccated crone Jennifer Rubin.

Finally, step four: Stop making sense. Unless it’s directed at the unwoke, making sense is a waste of your time. This is about power. Time to use yours.

Kurt Schlichter is a trial lawyer, and a retired Army infantry colonel with a degree from the Army War College who writes twice a week as a Senior Columnist for Townhall.com. His new novel “People’s Republic” is now available!

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/07/02/stop-making-sense-n2571665

A remarkable must-read story and highly recommended by Artisan Book Reviews. 5 Big Stars!

I am pleased to share this 5-Star review of The Lost Years of Billy Battles from Artisan Book Reviews. Here is a little about Artisan from its website:

“Artisan Book Reviews is passionate about books and the reading experience. Our goal is to provide readers with the very best hand-picked fiction books written by remarkable and talented authors who have over-the-top captivating imaginations, outstanding writing abilities and unique stories to tell.”

You can read the review and find out more about the book by clicking on this link: https://artisanbookreviews.com/2019/10/27/the-lost-years-of-billy-battles-by-ronald-e-yates or you can read only the review below:

Artisan Book Review

The Lost Years of Billy Battles by Ronald E. Yates is a remarkable, must-read story that has won some excellent notable awards (listed below).

Finding Billy Battles trilogy, The Lost Years of Billy Battles by Ronald E. Yates is a moving account of one man’s remarkable later years that include his fascinating experiences and profound life lessons.

The year is 1914 and after a chaotic past, Billy has finally settled down into a quiet and peaceful life with his second wife, The Baroness Katharina von Schreiber. Their laid-back lives are suddenly disrupted by a call from a brigadier general in the US Army whom Billy has served with before. In spite of their apprehension, Billy and Katharina leave for Mexico to serve as secret agents.

Life in Veracruz is marked with danger at every turn as Billy and Katharina navigate through the swarm of dangerous German agents, political insurgents, and pirates. Billy’s hair-raising adventures move from Mexico to the US-Mexico border where he encounters leaders of the Mexican Revolution. His escapades continue and for a long time, he disappears in the hope of keeping his family safe.

Proficiently written, The Lost Years of Billy Battles is a gripping novel that is told through detailed observations made from the perspective of the main character, Billy Battles. His petrifying adventures reveal parts of American history, especially those that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. The work remains absorbing to the very end not settling too long on any of the events in the book.

The characters are vividly described and their unique personalities are brought out. Some have a sense of humor, others are cunning, while others stand out because of their loyalty. Billy’s keen scrutiny of the people around him offers an in-depth description of the characters. The story is also enhanced by the language that is used in the conversations which transport you back to the era in which the story is written. Amidst the palpable action in the work, an overall look into the story reveals well-established themes of friendship, family, loss, and love.

A heartfelt novel whose scenes continue to linger in the mind long after completing reading the book, The Lost Years of Billy Battles by Ronald E. Yates carefully incorporates the events of the time it is set in while telling a powerful story.

A remarkable must-read story and highly recommended by Artisan Book Reviews. 5 Big Stars!

Amazon Purchase Link: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KHDVZI/-/e/B00KQAYMA8/

Book Awards


Grand Prize Winner Overall Best Book of 2018, Chanticleer International Book Awards.
Award for Excellence, Official Selection, New Apple Book Award, 2019
2018 Grand Prize Winner, Goethe Historical Fiction, Chanticleer International Book Awards.
Book Excellence Award, 2019
Purchase The Lost Years of Billy Battles by Ronald E. Yates today! 

An Ominous Fourth of July

I love the Fourth of July, but this will be the first Independence Day in my life that will leave me disheartened and sad.

In the past, this was a day to celebrate. After all, it was the day this country declared its liberation from the British Empire and embarked on a long and bloody war for independence.

Yes, I will fly the American flag as I always do on the 4th of July. I may even listen to patriotic music if I can find any on TV or radio. And of course, there are the fireworks displays at night—though they may have been canceled because of COVID-19 social distancing restrictions decreed by the state.

Patriotism and celebrating the founding of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world just doesn’t seem the same in our nation today—not with thousands of anarchists, communists, Antifa thugs, Black Lives Matter miscreants, and other America haters infesting city streets, defacing statues and monuments, and generally attacking anybody who opposes them.

This is not the America I know and love. This is an unfamiliar, alien world where the values I grew up with are being trashed; where hatred has replaced civility; where identity politics and tribalism has supplanted the idea of one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.

E Pluribus Unum (Out of many, one) apparently is no longer the motto of this strange new world. Instead, it is divide and conquer, and acquire political power at any cost—even if it means fomenting a coup d’état and the takedown of a duly elected president that you dislike.

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I recall the “burn, baby burn,” mantra of hippy-dippy anti-Vietnam War demonstrators in the 1960s, and the clashes with police during the 1968 Democrat Party Convention in Chicago. The Weather Underground and other radical groups were embarked on a campaign of bombing against “Amerika.” In California alone, twenty explosions a week rocked the state during the summer of 1970.

I was a newly minted reporter for the Chicago Tribune at the time and I thought the country was coming apart at the seams.

There were clashes between the so-called “establishment” and the self-appointed “revolutionaries” who were rebelling against their parents, “the man,” and anybody over 30.

As Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books wrote recently:

“A counterculture has really triumphed when it ceases to encounter significant resistance when its values seem not merely victorious but inevitable. America’s cultural revolution, launched in the late 1960s and never quite stopped, has always been a Janus-faced phenomenon. One face was the Boomers’ euphoric hedonism and disregard for the moral guardrails of tradition and authority — the “revolution” of easy sex and relentlessly bad taste that now defines our aesthetics and cultural arrangements.

“The other face was dour and vicious, masking a raw hunger for power under a preening moralism. This side of the revolution could be detected in many countercultural phenomena, not least the juvenile activism and noisy readiness for violence that were such conspicuous features of the age.”

Today, the vicious leftist radicalism of the 1960s is returning in spades to an apathetic America as the obsequious liberal establishment cow-tows before the BLM rabble in the streets in a sickening display of irrational and foolish white mea culpa.

Not me. I abandoned the freewheeling liberal dogma of the left decades ago when I recognized what its unfeigned plans were.

It was not about reforming the government. It was about ripping it down and replacing it with a hybrid brand of Marxist-Leninism, otherwise known as “Democratic-Socialism.”

Sorry, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and other members of the Congressional leftist aristocracy. Your brand of rose-tinted Communism is not for me.

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I still believe the founding fathers of this country had it right in 1776, when, in the Declaration of Independence, they wrote:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

They followed that up in 1789 by ratifying The U.S. Constitution and then adding to it the first 10 Amendments to that document, otherwise known as the Bill of Rights.

Those rights guarantee, among other things, freedom of speech, religion, and the right to bear arms—all of which are currently under ferocious attack by the leftist hordes.

If the radicals and thugs currently infesting our city streets are successful in abolishing the nation’s police forces via their campaign of civil obliteration and lawlessness, they will have accomplished what none of our enemies were able to accomplish in all of the wars we have fought.

They will have engendered chaos and conflict in America with the willing assistance of thousands of imbecilic elected officials who are inexplicably surrendering to the mob.

What’s next? The public guillotining of “enemies of the state,” also known as Republicans, conservatives, Christians, the police, Jews, Libertarians, capitalists, pro-lifers, veterans, and patriotic Americans?

As Don McLean sang: “Bye, bye Miss American Pie . . . . That’ll be the day that I die.”   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

America Doesn’t Need a New Revolution

For the next several days I am reposting commentaries from Americans of all races and occupations who are as concerned as I am about this ongoing attempt to rewrite history and obliterate our country from within. I hope you will find them as illuminating and significant as I have.

 America Doesn’t Need a New Revolution

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Outrage is the natural response to the brutal killing of George Floyd. Yet outrage and clear, critical thinking seldom go hand in hand. An act of police brutality became the catalyst for a revolutionary mood. Protests spilled over into violence and looting. Stores were destroyed; policemen and civilians injured and killed. The truism “black lives matter” was joined by a senseless slogan: “Defund the police.”

Democratic politicians—and some Republicans—hastened to appease the protesters. The mayors of Los Angeles and New York pledged to cut their cities’ police budgets. The Minneapolis City Council said it intended to disband the police department. The speaker of the House and other congressional Democrats donned scarves made of Ghanaian Kente cloth and kneeled in the Capitol. Sen. Mitt Romney joined a march.

Corporate executives scrambled to identify their brands with the protests. By the middle of June, according to polls, American public opinion had been transformed from skepticism about the Black Lives Matter movement to widespread support. Politicians, journalists and other public figures who had denounced protests against the pandemic lockdown suddenly lost their concern about infection. One Johns Hopkins epidemiologist tweeted on June 2: “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”

Although I am a black African—an immigrant who came to the U.S. freely—I am keenly aware of the hardships and miseries African-Americans have endured for centuries. Slavery, Reconstruction, segregation: I know the history. I know that there is still racial prejudice in America, and that it manifests itself in the aggressive way some police officers handle African-Americans. I know that by measures of wealth, health and education, African-Americans remain on average closer to the bottom of society than to the top. I know, too, that African-American communities have been disproportionately hurt by both Covid-19 and the economic disruption of lockdowns.

[image error] Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Yet when I hear it said that the U.S. is defined above all by racism, when I see books such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” top the bestseller list, when I read of educators and journalists being fired for daring to question the orthodoxies of Black Lives Matter—then I feel obliged to speak up.

“What the media also do not tell you,” I tweeted on June 9, “is that America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you. We have our problems and we need to address those. But our society and our systems are far from racist.”

America looks different if you grew up, as I did, in Africa and the Middle East. There I had firsthand experience of three things.

First, bloody internecine wars between Africans—with all the combatants dark-skinned, and no white people present.

Second, the anarchy that comes when there is no police, no law and order.

Third, the severe racism (as well as sexism) of a society such as Saudi Arabia, where de facto slavery still exists.

I came to the U.S. in 2006, having lived in the Netherlands since 1992. Like most immigrants, I came with a confidence that in America I would be judged on my merits rather than on the basis of racial or sexual prejudice.

There’s a reason the U.S. remains, as it has long been, the destination of choice for would-be migrants. We know that there is almost no difference in the unemployment rate for foreign-born and native-born workers—unlike in the European Union.

We immigrants see the downsides of American society: the expensive yet inefficient health-care system, the shambolic public schools in poor communities, the poverty that no welfare program can alleviate.

But we also see, as Charles Murray and J.D. Vance have shown, that these problems aren’t unique to black America. White America is also, in Mr. Murray’s phrase, “coming apart” socially. Broken marriages and alienated young men are problems in Appalachia as much as in the inner cities.

If America is a chronically racist society, then why are the “deaths of despair” studied by Anne Case and Angus Deaton so heavily concentrated among middle-aged white Americans? Did the Covid-19 pandemic make us forget the opioid epidemic, which has disproportionately afflicted the white population?

This country is only 244 years old, but it may be showing signs of age.

Time was, Americans were renowned for their can-do, problem-solving attitude. Europeans, as Alexis de Tocqueville complained, were inclined to leave problems to central authorities in Paris or Berlin. Americans traditionally solved problems locally, sitting together in town halls and voluntary associations. Some of that spirit still exists, even if we now have to meet on Zoom. But the old question—“How can we figure this out?”—is threatened with replacement by “Why can’t the government figure this out for us?”

The problem is that there are people among us who don’t want to figure it out and who have an interest in avoiding workable solutions.

They have an obvious political incentive not to solve social problems, because social problems are the basis of their power. That is why, whenever a scholar like Roland Fryer brings new data to the table—showing it’s simply not true that the police disproportionately shoot black people dead—the response is not to read the paper but to try to discredit its author.

I have no objection to the statement “black lives matter.” But the movement that uses that name has a sinister hostility to serious, fact-driven discussion of the problem it purports to care about. Even more sinister is the haste with which academic, media and business leaders abase themselves before it.

There will be no resolution of America’s many social problems if free thought and free speech are no longer upheld in our public sphere. Without them, honest deliberation, mutual learning and the American problem-solving ethic are dead.

America’s elites have blundered into this mess. There were eight years of hedonistic hubris under Bill Clinton. Then came 9/11 and for eight years the U.S. suffered nemesis in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the financial crash. After that we had eight years of a liberal president, and the hubris returned. Sanctimonious politics coincided with deeply unequal economics.

Through all this, many Americans felt completely left out—of the technology boom, of the enterprise of globalization. I never thought I would agree with Michael Moore. But at an October 2016 event, he predicted that Donald Trump would win: “Trump’s election is going to be the biggest [middle finger] ever recorded in human history.” I still think that analysis was right. Mr. Trump wasn’t elected because of his eloquence. He was elected to convey that middle finger to those who had been smugly in charge for decades.

But you can’t give the middle finger to a pandemic, and 2020 has exposed the limitations of Mr. Trump as a president. Yet when you look at the alternative, you have to wonder where it would lead us. Back to the elite hubris of the 1990s and 2010s? I can’t help thinking that another shattering defeat might force sane center-left liberals into saying: That wasn’t a one-off; we’ve got a real problem. They’ll be in the same position as the British Labour Party after four years of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and two election defeats, when eventually the moderates had to throw the leftists out. One way or another, the Democratic Party has to find a way of throwing out the socialists who are destroying it.

The Republicans, too, have to change their ways. They have to reconnect with young people. They have to address the concerns of Hispanics. And they have to listen to African-Americans, who most certainly do not want to see the police in their neighborhoods replaced by woke community organizers.

We have barely four months to figure this out in the old American way. To figure out how to contain Covid-19, which we haven’t yet done, because—I dare to say it—old lives matter, too, and it is old people as well as minorities whom this disease disproportionately kills.

To figure out how to reduce violence, because the police wouldn’t use guns so often if criminals didn’t carry them so often. Perhaps most pressing of all, to figure out how to hold an election in November that isn’t marred by procedural problems, allegations of abuse and postelection tumult.

Who knows? Maybe there’s even time for the candidates to debate the challenges we confront—not with outrage, but with the kind of critical thinking we Americans were once famous for, which takes self-criticism as the first step toward finding solutions.

Ms. Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

 

Racism Redefined, Etc.

For the next several days, I am reposting commentaries from Americans of all races and occupations who are as concerned as I am about this ongoing attempt to rewrite history and obliterate our country from within. I hope you will find them as illuminating and significant as I have.

RACISM REDEFINED, ETC.

By: Marvin L. Covault, Lieutenant General, US Army retired

Politics, combined with bad events too often leads to a rush to bad policy. This is not breaking news, but it is, unfortunately, too often true. Why is that the case?

One of the principal reasons is that we get caught up in the moment and consumed by emotion and perceptions rather than taking a deep breath and looking at the facts associated with the issue.

This article is about a little history, current events, and two questions:

1) Have we, in the past month, redefined racism?

2) Are we consumed with emotion and ignoring the facts?

RACISM, HISTORICAL CONTEXT

General Ulysses Grant, commander of the federal forces in the Civil War, believed in abolishing slavery. He was a champion of African- Americans and throughout the Civil War used his influence and leadership to assist slaves escaping from the Confederate states. President Lincoln, a Republican, agreed with General Grant.

Although President Lincoln had previously “freed” all slaves by signing the Emancipation Proclamation, January 1863, during the siege of Richmond Virginia, the final months of the Civil War in 1865, General Grant and President Lincoln frequently met to discuss and plan for what freedom and equality should mean for the freed slaves.

[image error] Lt. Gen Marvin L. Covault. (U.S Army Ret)

Their plan included the right to own property, to vote, and hold office. The freed slaves would have access to all educational opportunities, public transportation, and commercial activities, the rights enjoyed by every white citizen. Black Americans would finally be aligned with the basis of our democracy guaranteed in the Constitution that “all men are created equal.”

The Civil War ended when General Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9th, 1865. Five days later, President Lincoln was assassinated. The vision President Lincoln and General Grant had for the freed slaves died with the President.

Lincoln’s Vice President, Andrew Johnson, was sworn in as President. Johnson was a weak, indecisive president and sided with the powerful Democrat leaders in the Confederate states to restrict the freedoms for the freed slaves. The grand Lincoln/Grant plan for post-war Reconstruction never came to fruition.

One of the darkest periods in American history, from 1868 through the early 1870s, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) functioned as the Democrat Party’s loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. The Klan’s goals included the political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by southern blacks.

THAT WAS PURE RACISM.

It is estimated that there was a KKK organization in nearly every county in the former Confederate states. President Johnson turned a blind eye to the KKK devastation.

After becoming President in 1869, Grant used US military forces to attempt to crush Klan activity in the South. However, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South as support for Reconstruction waned; by the end of 1876, the entire South was under Democratic control once again.

At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide. Today the Klan’s identity is unclear, and their numbers are estimated to be less than three thousand.

For 99 years, from 1865 until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Democratic Party was the party of segregation. Black Americans could not walk into a restaurant of choice, sit down, and order a meal.

NO BLACKS ALLOWED, the sign on the door read. Blacks could not attend a school of choice; segregation meant 100% black/white separation in education. Blacks could not take a seat of choice on public transportation. BLACKS SIT IN THE BACK OF THE BUS, the sign said. WHITE ONLY WATER FOUNTAIN, the sign said.

Racism defined: Segregation, supported by the Democrat Party for 100 years, was pure, unadulterated, unambiguous, in-your-face racism. That was racism defined by facts.

Finally, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made segregation illegal in all states. But the Democrat Party did not relent easily. Ninety percent of lawmakers from states that were in the Union during the Civil War supported the bill compared with less than 10% of lawmakers from states that were in the Confederacy.

Fast forward to today, where we define racism and racist in a different way. I believe we can credit Hillary Clinton for the new methodology.

On September 9th, 2016, during a presidential campaign speech, Hillary stood behind a tel-prompter and read these prepared remarks:

“You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic. You name it.”

In two short sentences, she defamed about 75 million of my closest friends and me. Which, by the way, many believe was the beginning of the end for her campaign.

The lasting impact of that insane Clinton speech was to make it OK to throw around the word “racist” with complete disregard for facts to the contrary. For example, it is now proper to label all nine hundred thousand cops racist because of a very few tragic interactions between police and black men.

When I say “very few,” I mean it. Back to some facts. In 2018 police, while they had an estimated 50 million official interactions with the public, killed 47 unarmed persons; 23 white, 17 black, 5 Hispanic, and two unknowns.

Looking at the numbers, each of those deaths was, literally, about a one-in-a-million happenstance. Each one was tragic, especially for family and friends, but, back to facts, we do not live in a perfect world; bad things happen. Bad things will always happen.

Case in point; On June 17th, officer Garrett Rolfe and Rayshard Brooks, according to the videotape, were having as calm, cool-headed conversation about intoxication when in an instant the situation escalated to a point wherein two men were faced off each with a “deadly weapon,” a taser and a gun.

Yes, bad things can and will happen; another one-in-a-million. But one could conclude that one-in-a-million illustrates tremendous restraint on the part of the police.

But, you say, those 17 unarmed blacks killed by police in 2018 represent 36% of the 47 fatalities while Black-Americans make up only 13% of the population. You are correct, BUT. In 2018 those Black-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders and committed about 60% of robberies.

In the current environment, calling someone or some group racist no longer needs to be backed up by facts. It is now acceptable to put a racist label on someone you don’t even know, but do it because you are angry at them for something they said or did. But, what is even worse, individuals and groups are often publicly called racist for merely having differing opinions on public matters and public policy.

Where has all of this ugly, loose, racist talk gotten us? George Floyd died a tragic death at the hands of Minneapolis policemen. Under the new “rules” for defining racism, at warp speed, accusations were made, and conclusions drawn that the Minneapolis police force is fundamentally racist. From that incident, politicians and extremist groups across the nation came to the same conclusion about their cities’ police forces. Defund/disband them. This is a classic example of politics combined with bad events too often leads to bad policy.

Furthermore, what has flowed on from the defund/abolish policy is the conclusion that anyone who disagrees with the new policy must, therefore, also be a racist. Just that easily and just that quickly, America became divided on another issue. Why, because sides were drawn up based on emotion and perception vs. facts.

Discussions over slavery further inflame the racism issue. Senator Tim Kaine, 2016 Vice Presidential candidate, Harvard Law School graduate, emphatically exclaimed recently that “slavery was created in the United States.” Ergo, the US is solely to blame for racism.

This type of inflammatory rhetoric does not pass the history test but does throw gasoline on the racism fire.

The facts, Senator Kaine, are as follows: Man’s inhumanity in the form of slavery has been one of the great travesties in the history of humankind.

Slavery has existed in almost every civilization, dating back 3500 BC. Furthermore, about 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War to decide that slavery should no longer live in the US. President Lincoln made the ban on slavery official on January 1st, 1863, when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, thereby freeing all slaves.

Leftist Minnesota Governor Tim Walz declared, after a few days of protests and violence, “The sheer number of unarmed black people who are killed by police as compared to other groups reveals police brutality for what it is: systemic racism. You have to look at the systemic patterns of policing and how they disproportionately result in the deaths of Black people.”

Governor Walz’s statement is another prime example of emotional, fact-less rhetoric combined with politics leading to a rush to lousy policy – defund/disband the police. How would that work out in Minneapolis given that car-jackings were up 45%, homicides 60%, arson 58% and burglaries 28% from January through May 2020 compared to the same period last year.

Minneapolis is not alone with respect to increasing significant crimes. In San Francisco, homicides before the riots this year had increased by 19%, burglaries by 23%, and arson by 39%. Philadelphia reported a 28% increase in commercial burglaries, 51% in shootings, 22% in auto theft, and 28% in retail robbery from last year.

Will defunding/disbanding police forces make these crime stats better? Quite the contrary. I would expect the following to begin happening immediately. Breaking and entering will go off the charts rapidly. This will lead to massive new “community watch” initiatives. Gun sales spiked more than 80 percent in May as consumers responded to safety concerns and civil unrest.

Remember Travon Martin, the 17-year old Black man who was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman? The case was headline news for months. Hold on to your hat because there will likely be a Martin/Zimmerman situation happening nightly across America when the police are gone, or at least in scarce numbers, or untrained resulting from lack of funds and/or unable to function under new restrictive rules of engagement.

All this mess is the application of the classic, “people are entitled to their own opinions, no matter how wrong or off base, but they aren’t entitled to their own facts.”

But as Joe Biden said, “We choose truth over facts.” In other words, what feels like the truth takes precedent over the facts. Nice going Joe, and where has that great proclamation gotten us over the past few weeks? I’ll tell you where; more dead people, hundreds of injured police, more hatred, tens of millions in damaged property and a little anarchy in Seattle (or, as the Seattle mayor called it, “a summer of love.”)

If we want to be proactive and actually try to reduce the number of one-in-a-million tragic police actions, why not first look at the hot-heads, the poor performers, the anger management failures inside the police ranks, and then do something about it. The police know who these malcontents are but have negotiated such ridiculous agreements with the police unions that they are nearly powerless to get them off the streets.

The union leaders say, “The job of a union is to protect the interest of its members, at any cost.” “At any cost,” translated means policemen like Officer Chauvin charged with murdering George Floyd are still on the street despite being investigated 17 times in 19 years for misconduct in the line of duty and only disciplined once.

I began the above discussion with two questions:

1)         Have we in the past few weeks redefined racism? Yes, I believe the jury is in, and they have spoken. We do have a new definition of what racism consists of; emotion and perceptions.

2)         Are we consumed with emotion and ignoring the facts? Yes, consumed by, obsessed with, and led by emotion and perception. The facts be damned.

This overall impact of all this across the nation is? We have for several years been consumed with a culture of hate and blame. That just got multiplied by some factor yet to be determined. We have made continued progress in reducing factual, in-your-face racism since outlawing segregation in 1964. Have actions over the past few weeks, led by the “left” set us back a few years or decades? Unfortunately, probably yes.

Oh, and don’t forget, by some deductions that I am at a loss to understand, all this mess is the fault of the Republicans?

A final question. What do you do when you have an emergency, call 911 and it goes to voicemail?

Think about it.

MARVIN L. COVAULT LIEUTENANT GENERAL, US ARMY RETIRED Marv Covault has 32 years of military experience in leadership positions, strategic analysis, teaching, organizational development, mentoring and advising senior leaders. As commander of an Army Division, he managed budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars and was responsible for the readiness of the Army’s most rapidly deployable Division. He holds a BS in business from the University of Iowa and a Masters in Public Administration from Shippensburg University. He is President of Global Perspectives Inc., a consulting company.

 

The Lost Years of Billy Battles Wins Award

Happy to share some good news regarding Book 3 of the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy. 

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In case you aren’t familiar with the trilogy or Book #3, here is a little teaser about both:

About the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy

The Finding Billy Battles trilogy tells the story of a man who is born in 1860 and who dies in 1960. In between Billy Battles lives an improbable and staggering life of adventure, peril, transgression, and redemption. At one point in his life, Billy mysteriously disappears. For several years his family has no idea where he is or what he is doing.

Finally, with his life coming to an end, Billy resurfaces in an old soldiers’ home in Leavenworth, Kansas. It is there when he is 98 that he meets his 12-year-old great-grandson and bequeaths his journals and his other property to him — though he is not to receive them until he is much older.

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Years later, the great-grandson reads the journals and fashions a three-volume trilogy that tells of his great-grandfather’s audacious life in the old west, as well as his journeys to the Far East of the 1890s—including French Indochina and The Philippines—and finally, in the early 20th century, to Europe and Latin America where his adventures and predicaments continue. Trouble and tragedy dog Billy his entire life. In each book of the trilogy, we witness Billy’s ability to handle setbacks and misfortune as well as his successes and relationships.

Each book in the trilogy blends historical fact with fiction. The books are meticulously researched down to the last detail so readers not only find themselves immersed in a compelling story, but are exposed to historical events and real people that make the worlds of the late 19th and early 20th centuries come alive.

My purpose in writing the trilogy was to tell a compelling story that, while fiction, is grounded in accurate historical fact. As such, I was careful to use the vernacular of the time and to describe places and events as they were in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

There is no great literary message in the books, other than to demonstrate that many people in the past lived remarkable lives filled with adventure, sadness, struggle, joy, and love just as today. They were not, as so often portrayed in the pallid black and white photographs of the time, stiff, lifeless figures without vivacity and depth.

The Finding Billy Battles trilogy is targeted at readers who enjoy historical fiction topped off with a generous helping of action and adventure. It takes readers to an earlier time devoid of the relentless intrusion of today’s prevailing technology.

People who lived during Billy’s prime were not dominated by and yoked to technology the way so many of us are today. It was a time when the notions of “honor,” “fidelity,” and “duty” were guiding principles in most people’s lives. People were less harried and stressed and more disposed to stop and smell the flowers than their 21st-century counterparts.

If there is one message my books have it is this: Reading a book is a lot like life; you live it one page at a time. 

Synopsis: The Lost Years of Billy Battles (Book 3)  

Where in the world is Billy Battles?

As Book Three of the Finding Billy Battles trilogy begins we know where Billy is. He is in Chicago with his wife, the former Baroness Katharina von Schreiber living a sedate and comfortable life after years of adventure and tragedy. That changes with a single telephone call that yanks Billy and Katharina back into a life of turmoil and peril.

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Persuaded by a powerful old friend to go undercover for the U.S. government the two find themselves in Mexico during the height of the violent 1910-1920 revolution. There they grapple with assorted German spies, Mexican revolutionaries, devious political operatives, and other miscreants. Caught in the middle of the 1914 American invasion of Veracruz, they must find a way out while keeping their real identities secret.

After managing to extract themselves from danger, disaster strikes. It’s an ordeal Billy is all too familiar with and one that will send him plummeting into a painful abyss of despair and agony. Consequently, Billy vanishes leaving family and friends to wonder what happened to him. Where is he? Is he dead or alive? What provoked his disappearance? In Book Three of the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy, those questions are answered, and the mystery behind Billy’s disappearance is finally revealed.

If you haven’t read any of the books I hope you will take a look. If you have, many thanks, and if you haven’t already don’t be shy–go ahead and write a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Barnes & Noble.

 

 

 

OMG, the United Kingdom is Sunk

I recently received the following commentary from one of my followers in the UK. The author wishes to remain anonymous. I have left the British spelling intact. 

We have had a minute’s silence in the House of Commons for George Floyd. The mark of ultimate respect from the highest political authority in the land.

Respect for a man who was a drug addict, a father of multiple children he abandoned, a lifelong criminal, a violent thief, and a man who placed a gun to the belly of a pregnant woman.

All the honourable gentlemen and self-professed feminists of the House supported that kind of man. Respected him. Honoured him.

How many wonderful people have died, British people, without such a tribute? How many soldiers who gave their lives for this country, or policemen or women who did the same when we had a real police force, or firemen, or brilliant inventors, or renowned thinkers? How many people, ordinary people, do you know who deserve more respect than George Floyd did? Will they all be receiving a minute’s silence in their honour? What do you think?

Some of these people that died for this country were honoured, many years ago. Some of them who were brilliant, or brave, hugely successful or inspiringly heroic were given statues to tell future generations of their deeds. Future generations have looked upon the promises of eternal gratitude those monuments represent, and defaced them, vandalised them, pissed on them, imposed their barbarian ignorance and worthless spite on the memory of much better men than themselves.

Better men like Henry Havelock, who fought with honour and distinction in multiple conflicts, who had the kind of brilliance that allowed him not only to be the sort of military strategist who regularly defeated far larger forces arrayed against him, but who also taught himself Persian and Farsi so well that he became an official translator.

Havelock’s monument in Sunderland was defaced, the word parasite scrawled upon it. Parasite. Applied to a brilliant man who served his country well, by barbarian filth who hate the country they live in.

We honour filth who died, ultimately, as a consequence of their own lifetime of selfish, violent, repeated criminality. And we dishonour our own ancestors, the bravest and the best of earlier generations, men who gave everything for this country.

We imported millions of barbarians who have never known anything better, but we also have taught untold millions of our children to prefer barbarism to civilization, and to celebrate or defend, automatically, the worst of one skin colour whilst hating or attacking, automatically, the best of another skin colour…all in the name of escaping racism.

Criminals are no longer criminals if they are black. And heroes are no longer heroes if they are white.

Now we must live in this brave new world. And its capital is London.

 

A Black Man’s Letter to Black Lives Matter

For the next several days, I am reposting commentaries from Americans of all races and occupations who are as concerned as I am about this ongoing attempt to rewrite history and obliterate our country from within. I hope you will find them as illuminating and significant as I have.

  A Black Man’s Letter to Black Lives Matter 

  By Lt. Col. Allen West 

In the aftermath of the George Floyd incident, everyone seems to want to have a conversation about race in America.

Just recently, presumptive Democrat presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, asserted that if you couldn’t decide whether to vote for him or President Trump, “you ain’t black.”

”So, let me clarify something: I was born in February 1961 in a “Blacks only” hospital, Hughes Spalding, in Atlanta, Georgia. I was raised by a proud Black man, Herman West Sr. and woman, Elizabeth Thomas West in the historic Old Fourth Ward neighborhood in Atlanta. My Mom and Dad are buried, together, in Marietta National Cemetery because of their service to our Nation.

BLM is just another leftist organization created by the same ilk of progressive socialists who created the NAACP.

The Old Fourth Ward is the same neighborhood that produced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and where the American civil rights movement emanated, “Sweet Auburn Avenue.”

There is a high possibility that I have forgotten more black history than some may ever learn — or certainly know. I just authored a book titled, “We Can Overcome, An American Black Conservative Manifesto.”

I do not need to “qualify” my being Black based upon some pre-determined ideological agenda. I was raised to believe that I was an individual who could think and believe as I determined. I was taught that America is a place where regardless of where you were born, where you came from, there was an equality of opportunity.

That equality of opportunity has enabled me to attain immense success for myself and set the conditions for the success of my two daughters. My wife Angela, an accomplished former marketing professor and financial adviser, and I now teach our daughters about the perils of equality of outcomes, and those who cleverly disguise that intent within the cries of social justice.

With this being stated, I am tired of our Nation cowering, appeasing, acquiescing, and surrendering to this absurd organization calling itself Black Lives Matter (BLM). There is nothing true or sincere about this ideologically aligned progressive socialist, cultural Marxist organization.

BLM is just another leftist organization created by the same ilk of progressive socialists who created the NAACP. When one reviews the goals and objectives of BLM, they have nothing to do with the real issues facing the Black community in America. The focus of BLM is to cleverly advance the leftist ideological agenda under the guise of a witty name that forces people into guilt, shame. I am tired of these businesses and corporations being shaken down by BLM.

I do not need any white person in America to kneel before me, apologize, wash my feet, or as the insidious comment of Chick-fil-A CEO, Dan Cathy, shine my shoes. I did a doggone good job of shining my own boots during my career in the US Army — that was my individual responsibility, in which I took great pride.

I am tired of these businesses and corporations being shaken down by BLM to the tune of some $464M, $50M right here in my home of Texas. Why?

Black Lives Matter does not support the critical civil rights issue of this day. The major civil rights issue in America today is educational freedom. How many young black kids are relegated to failing public schools in failing neighborhoods? Where does BLM stand on that issue? They stand with the progressive socialist left and the teachers’ unions. Ask yourself, has BLM ever condemned the action of Barack Obama in April 2009 to cancel the DC school voucher program?

Yesterday was Father’s Day. How many young black kids are growing up without a father in the house, a strong positive role model, like my Dad, US Army Corporal Herman West Sr.? The policies of the progressive socialist left decimated the traditional two-parent household in the black community. What does BLM say about the traditional, nuclear, two-parent (man and woman) household? They say that is a tool of white supremacy.

If there is to be a conversation about the rule of law in America and the black community, let’s have that honest conversation. However, BLM wants us to believe that there is some focused, dedicated, intentional genocide being enacted against the Black community by law enforcement.

In 2019, there were a total of nine white law enforcement officer shootings of unarmed black men. Yet, how many blacks have taken to the streets to kill other blacks? And where is the outrage from BLM?

I have never heard Black Lives Matter speak up, speak out, or speak against Planned Parenthood. Why?

But, even worse, since 1973 there have been over 20 million unborn black babies murdered in the wombs of Black mothers. The organization mostly responsible for the industry of murdering unborn babies is Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood was founded by a known white supremacist, racist, a woman who spoke at Ku Klux Klan rallies — Margaret Sanger. Planned Parenthood has over 70 percent of their “clinics” located in black communities across America.

I have never heard Black Lives Matter speak up, speak out, or speak against Planned Parenthood. Why? Simple, the white progressive socialist masters who fund, resource, and enable Black Lives Matter don’t give a darn about the lives of Black children.

[image error] Allen West

I could go on, but I think you get my point. Black Lives Matter is an oxymoronic and disingenuous organization. As a proud American Black Man, I find Black Lives Matter an offensive and condescending organization whose hypocrisy is blatantly evident. Yet, thanks to the lucrative support of the white progressive socialist collective elitists, it survives and extorts financial support from the useful idiots in our corporate structure.

All lives matter, but this radical organization, Black Lives Matter, is the ultimate Trojan Horse. The consistent purveyors of systemic racism in America is the Democrat Party. They have smartly devised this organization to enable their ends, the proliferation of the 21st century economic plantation. Black Lives Matter serves as overseers on this plantation, stoking the irrational emotionalism and angst to support their agenda, their purpose.

What is the purpose? Simple. The new plantation of the left is not about producing cotton. It is about creating victims who will be dependent, and produce the new crop — votes.

Allen Bernard West is an American political commentator, retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, author, and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. A member of the Republican Party, West represented Florida’s 22nd congressional district in the House from 2011 to 2013. He is a member of the Citizens Commission on National Security