Tea at Trianon: Stolen Valor

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, August 8, 2024

Stolen Valor

From The Free Beacon:

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz claimed to have carried guns "in war" during his career in the Army National Guard, according to a video released by the Kamala Harris campaign Tuesday. There’s one glaring problem with his claim.

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, served 24 years in the Army National Guard but never saw combat, according to his own résumé. Walz responded mostly to natural disasters in Minnesota and Nebraska, he told Minnesota Public Radio. He served overseas on a few occasions, but far away from any war zone: in Italy to support the European security force during the war in Afghanistan and Norway for joint training exercises with NATO forces.

According to Minnesota Public Radio, Walz said he reenlisted in the National Guard following the 9/11 attacks, but did not see combat before his retirement in 2005. "I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that," Walz told the outlet in 2018. But Walz left a far different impression of his military service at a townhall event that the Harris campaign highlighted shortly after his selection as VP.

"I spent 25 years in the Army, and I hunt," Walz says at the beginning of the clip. He said he supports "common sense legislation" that "protects the Second Amendment," but said he favors extensive background checks.

"We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is [sic] the only place that those weapons are at," he said.

Walz handled firearms and heavy artillery during his National Guard stint. According to Minnesota Public Radio, he said he won proficiency awards in sharpshooting and hand grenades. Walz suffered hearing loss from working with heavy artillery, an affliction he cited after his DUI arrest in 1995.

Walz’s military service is reportedly one of the top reasons Harris tapped the 60-year-old Midwestern governor to serve as her running mate. A Harris campaign spokesman posted a photo of Walz in uniform shortly after he was added to the ticket. And Walz has made his career as a "citizen soldier" a central theme of his political appeal. But Walz has been accused of overstating his military career before. (Read more.)

From The Blaze:

For one thing, sometime in early 2005, Walz and other members of his battalion received word that they would be deployed to Iraq soon. Walz, the highest noncommissioned officer in the unit, then abruptly retired in May, leaving the unit without a designated leader.
Thomas Behrends, a former member of Walz's unit and now a retired command sergeant major of the Minnesota National Guard, said he stepped in to take Walz's place and eventually spent nearly two years fighting in Iraq while Walz stayed home and campaigned.
"I was like well, for Pete’s sake, if this guy quits, if I say I’m not going to do it, I mean, what the hell kind of leadership is that?" Behrends told Alpha News back in 2022. "If a company would say we’re going to deploy to Iraq and the foreman says, 'I’m not going,' what does that say to the 500 that work in that factory?"
Another problem with Walz's retirement in May 2005 is that it falls several months short of a four-year enlistment and more than two full years short of a six-year enlistment.
Yet according to Alpha News, which ostensibly viewed Walz’s Report of Separation and Military Service form, Walz initially pledged to serve six years when he re-enlisted in September 2001, meaning his contract with the Army National Guard would not be fulfilled until September 2007.
In apparent contravention to that document, Walz insisted that when he retired in 2005, he had put in four years as promised.
"After completing 20 years of service in 2001, I re-enlisted to serve our country for an additional four years following Sept. 11 and retired the year before my battalion was deployed to Iraq in order to run for Congress," Walz wrote in the Winona Daily News in 2006. (Read more.)