Democracy comes at a cost. Memorial Day.

0:00 Speaker 1 This is Memorial Day weekend, and with us today is a Medal of Honor recipient Colonel Jack Jacobs to tell us what he really feels Americans are feeling this Memorial Day weekend. Colonel Jack Jacobs, it was good to see you on the Intrepid the other night, and it was good to have the feelings that we had. I listened

0:28 to the Secretary of the Navy second half, mister Carlos del Toro, and he spoke very well. Give us your feelings on what’s going on in America today and how our veterans are feeling, and how our soldiers are feeling.

0:47 Speaker 2 Well, you know, when you’re at the at the bottom of the food chain and people are ardently trying to kill you. You’re on the battlefield, you’re on a ship, you’re in a plane, and you’re working to preserve freedom, advance america interests, keep us safe, and keep our allies safe too. You don’t think much about politics, but when

1:07 all the shooting stops, you realize that you may be the only guy out there who’s trying to do what you’re doing. You know, back years ago, to the extent that I grew up at all I grew up in the shadow of the Second World War. My father fought in New Guinea and the Philippines and the Army. When

1:26 he came home. I was already six or eight months old. He had never seen me. I was born while he was gone. He hated being drafted and hated getting shot at. Nobody likes that. But when he got to be my age, all he would talk about was how proud he was at having saved the world and his generation had done that.

1:48 Today we have a very small number of young men and women who were out there willing to protect us, and we lose. We forget about him. When everybody you couldn’t forget about it. But now that there are very few serving, we don’t think about them. We only think about them from time to time, and Memorial Day is

2:12 one of those times we need to think about those and the young people who went out to defend us who never came back. I think about I think people who have served think about that all the time, particularly those people who have served in combat. I always thought that if you’re lucky enough to live in a free country,

2:35 you owe it something in the form of service, military service, service to your community, and so on. Far too few people think about that. They think about themselves instead of thinking about their country and the sacrifices that give them the opportunity to be free. A wide gulf I think has opened up between those who loved this country and

2:59 those who don’t care about it. One way or the other is as long as they’re happy, they don’t care about it. I think that’s a very dangerous situation, John, I.

3:08 Speaker 1 Agree with you. I thought when we go back to the time of the nineteen sixties nineteen seventies, where all Americans were obligated to serve maybe six months in one of the Navy, the army or whatever, or if you are conscientious object objector serve six months in the Peace Corps, but serve our country was a better time right now?

3:39 You know, you scratch your head. I scratch my head at least, and I wonder what was best, and I feel Jack and we know each other. Wrong time is that our country is under attack in many ways, subservient ways, through what other governments are doing to us, whether infiltrating our borders, whether sending drugs through our borders, whether paying

4:10 off our universities to change around their systems where kids are not allowed to hear both sides of the story. It’s a different kind of world war right now.

4:20 Speaker 2 We’re in jack Yeah, we’re there are We have threats on many, many fronts, in my view, farm more threats of a more difficult kind than we ever had before when when we were young. You’re absolutely right, we we don’t address them properly. It takes leadership to galvanize resistance against those who want to do us ill. We’ve got

4:48 to We’ve got to become much more serious about taking care of us and our allies and our interests than we are today. We spent a lot of time, unfortunately, doing things that don’t matter at the end of the day.

5:09 They don’t make a contribution to our defense and to our well being economically, diplomatically, politically, and militarily. Where there are lots and lots of people out there who want to do us ill, and unless we pay some more attention to that, I think we’re not going to like the outcome.

5:32 Speaker 1 John, I am afraid for our country. I feel that this Memorial Day weekend, a lot of Americans have to have to think about what’s going on and the different ways we’re under attack. We’re losing a lot of our allies money because of what’s been done in the oil markets.

5:57 Money wealth has been moved from North America to Russia and to the Opic nations and to China. It’s just I ask all Americans to reflect on this Memorial Day weekend of what’s going on in America and if we want to save America for twenty twenty six, twenty for the two hundredth year anniversary, the two hundred and twenty

6:24 five year anniversary, right right, what is it? Two hundred and fiftieth, and then to twenty seventy six for the three hundredth year anniversary, and to preserve America, I think we have to We really have to take stock and what’s going on.

6:39 Speaker 2 The one thing I think about and a lot of people that I know you do, is to reflect on the service and sacrifice the people who brought us to this point where we enjoy freedom. We have economic stability to the extent that we can, we can keep it.

6:59 And there are people who gave everything so that we could enjoy today. And if we focus on ourselves, we’re gonna we will not keep faith with the with the people who who sacrifice to give us what we have today.

7:17 We have to do our bit too. There are a lot of threats and we need to pay attention to them. Otherwise we’re not keeping faith with those people who who brought us here. That’s something to think about on Memorial Day.

7:31 The people who sacrificed so that we can enjoy freedom. It’s a bit like the story about Benjamin Franklin when he came out of the count the constitutional commit not constitutional convention, but they just well, we decided that we were going to we were not going to be part of Britain anymore. We were going to be independent and free.

7:54 And a woman asked him as he came out in Philadelphia of the building. She said, what kind of government have you crafted? And he said he said, a democracy, madam. Just as long as you keep it, well, we better keep it. And we have a lot of work to do.

8:14 We can’t be complacent. We have a lot of work to do to keep it.

8:18 Speaker 1 Job Jack Jacobs, Colonel Jack Jacobs, a recipient of the Medal of Honor. Let’s work hard and save America one more time.

8:29 Speaker 2 Thanks so much, John