The American Spectator

Aaron Goldstein is right in this morning’s “Second Inaugural Blues.” The next four years will feel like a lifetime in durance vile to conservatives and all red-blooded Americanos. It would be timely now for some patriotic song-writer to put the charges and specifications against our dreary little statist president to “Re-Enlistment Blues,” Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt’s tuneful lament in From Here to Eternity.

During my early years, it was more than just suggested that young men of a certain age spend a little time as members of the defense team. Those who didn’t volunteer for one of the other services were pressed into the Army for two years. But one paid a price for not going olive drab. All the other services had longer enlistments than the draft’s two-year rap.

I’ve been a patriot, man and boy, and so didn’t mind doing my duty (as so many young Americans objected to later). But I had spent a couple of years in Army junior ROTC in high school and been obliged there to wear a starched khaki shirt with tie, which I found loathsome. (I also found marching an awfully silly thing to do.) So the Navy with its open-necked jumper (and minimal marching) was for me. Misfortunately, the standard Navy enlistment then was four years, which seemed as interminable to me then as Obama-days do to me now.

So imagine my delight when a little research revealed that by going to the Navy Reserve Center in Port Tampa rather than to the Navy recruiters downtown I could get a two-year gig in the Navy (with some reserve time afterwards at home). Jubilee! This way I could take my turn on watch while not being strangled by a stiff shirt and tie. I could also get on a ship and see part of the world rather than being stuck at Fort Dog Butt, Arkansas for two years. All this with an enlistment that didn’t stretch as far as my young eyes could see. So it was anchors aweigh for me.

But there seems no way now to cut our enlistment in half with Obama. We’ve elected the little sod, so we’ll just have to endure him and the damage he will inflict until January of 2017. We can only pray that at least some of the republic is still standing when we sew on our second Obama hash mark. We should also pray, against reasonable expectation, that the Republican Party gets its act together by then. If it doesn’t, the freedom and prosperity-strangling statism Obama promised us yesterday will be our lot for the duration, and the greatest civilization the world has ever known will be taxed, regulated, and entitled to a slow and painful death.

It ended badly for Private Prewitt. God willing, there will be a better end for the last great hope of mankind.