Loose Lips Sink Ships

That saying was widely publicized during World War II.

I grew up in Kansas City, where there was, indeed, some activity for the war effort. At the confluence of the Missouri River and the Kansas (Kaw) River, an industrialist named Harry Darby built a small shipyard where he manufactured landing craft. I can no longer remember if they were LCPs (Landing Craft, Personnel) or LCTs (Landing Craft, Tank). But they were clearly instruments of war.

A short distance away was North American Aviation's plant where B-25 bombers were built. Crews were brought into Kansas City to match the timing of the completion of each aircraft. I remember formations of these airmen marching down the street in downtown Kansas City, singing in cadence a popular song of the day "In Der Fuehrer's Face", which made fun of Adolph Hitler. When their aircraft rolled off the assembly line, the crews took their planes off to war.

A little farther away was the Pratt & Whitney plant which manufactured engines for military aircraft.

There may have been other wartime industries of which we were aware, but the important fact is that we all realized that anything we may have casually observed must not make its way to enemy intelligence.

My parents were Republicans, as were most of their friends. Our president was a Democrat and Congress was controlled by the Democrat Party. But we would have died before we talked about anything that could leak secret information. We certainly did not want to have Loose Lips.

Further, if some bit of classified military information were learned by a newspaper, magazine or radio station, it is dead certain they would not have made that information public.

Compare that to what is happening today. Leakers, considering themselves "Whistle Blowers" leak classified information to news media on an almost daily basis. The media gleefully publish those portions of this classified information which they feel may support their point of view..

Suddenly some publisher or broadcaster feels the absurd idea of "the public's right to know" trumps the protection of the lives of our military personnel.

Worse, politicians happily use this classified information in any way which may help their re-election chances.

Suddenly partisan politics is more important than winning the war.

The United States was widely admired and respected at the end of World War II. There was one reason, and only one reason for this... the United States had won the war.

America was not admired because we insisted on being "nice" to our enemies. We were admired because we beat them on every front.

The world loves the winner of a tough fight. It has no respect for a loser, even if that loser can stand up and say, "Hey, it was more important to fight fair than to fight to win."

Today, we must describe our war effort by stealing a phrase from professional football... "Winning isn't everything... it is the only thing."

The Future of America.

The current rant of perennial ranter Pat Buchanan likens America's present immigration issues with those of the Romans, some 1530 years ago. We are told that so many people wanted to immigrate to the Roman Empire, the population of true Romans was seriously diluted. Even the mighty Roman Army had enlisted so many persons whose loyalties lay elsewhere, that army had no stomach for the fight that confronted them when the Barbarians invaded the empire in 475 A.D.

The Roman empire ceased to exist, institutions of civilization were destroyed and the world fell into the "Dark Ages" for the next thousand or so years.

Is that beginning to happen to America, as Buchanan warns? Perhaps.

But there is a more certain cloud hanging over our future.

In his excellent book "How The Irish Saved Civilization" (Doubleday, 1995), historian Thomas Cahill causes us to seriously consider our future beyond Buchanan's predictions.

In 1995, Cahill wrote: "As we, the people of the first world, the Romans of the twentieth century, look out across our earth, we see some signs for hope, many more for despair. Technology proceeds apace, delivering the marvels that knit our world together - the conquering of diseases that plagued every age but ours and the consequent lowering of mortality rates, revolutions in crop yields that continue to feed expanding populations, the contemplated "information highway" that will soon enable all of us to retrieve information and communicate with one another in ways so instant and complete that they would dazzle those who built the Roman roads, the first great information system.

But that road system became impassable rubble, as the empire was overwhelmed by population explosions beyond its borders. So will ours. Rome's demise instructs us in what inevitably happens when impoverished and rapidly expanding populations, whose ways and values are only dimly understood, press up against a rich and ordered society. More than a billion people in our world today survive on less than $370 a year, while Americans, who constitute five percent of the world's population, purchase fifty percent of its cocaine. If the world's population, which has doubled in our lifetime, doubles again by the middle of the next century, how could anyone hope to escape the catastrophic consequences - the wrath to come?"

The Buchanans of our time may build a fence along our border. Such a fence could stop dozens of people trying to cross our borders on any given day. But what happens if that number swells to hundreds? To thousands? To hundreds of thousands? And, suppose those people are not just trying to find work or peddle some drugs. Suppose instead that they are desperately hungry, armed and determined?

Will that happen in fifty years? One hundred years? Will it happen at all in the future of America?