On rights, on earning rights, and on responsibility

I wish I could take credit for this, but I can't - someone else put me onto it. It's worth reading.

Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock , did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom. When the first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were no desks.

'Ms. Cothren, where're our desks?'

She replied, 'You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn the right to sit at a desk.'

They thought, 'Well, maybe it's our grades.'

'No,' she said.

'Maybe it's our behavior.'

She told them, 'No, it's not even your behavior.'

And so, they came and went, the first period, second period, third period. Still no desks in the classroom.

By early afternoon television news crews had started gathering in Ms. Cothren's classroom to report about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.

The final period of the day came and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the deskless classroom, Martha Cothren said, 'Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what he/she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom. Now I am going to tell you.'

At this point, Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it.

Twenty-seven (27) U.S. Veterans, all in uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk The Vets began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand alongside the wall. By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place those kids started to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned.

Martha said, 'You didn't earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you. Now, it's up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don't ever forget it.'

By the way, this is a true story. (Click on this link if you want more information: http://www.snopes.com/glurge/nodesks.asp .)

Please consider passing this along so others won't forget that the freedoms we have in this great country were earned by the Veterans of the United States Military.

This lesson is no longer taught in schools, and in many places the military is ridiculed as the last place for those who otherwise might be homeless. The notion that the military is a place for losers is belied by the fact that we still speak English - had our military been other than dedicated, we might be speaking German or Japanese right now. All the talk by the appeasement monkeys accomplishes very little unless others recognize that there is intent to follow through on all promises of reaction.

In the last few days, we have remembrance of events in the world - the wall in Germany coming down and 9/11 here on our own soil.

It's also a time for remembering heroic efforts like the Berlin Airlift which helped keep a city from starving, and convinced the Bear that we were sincere in our wishes that the city stay at least partly free and its occupants not be starved into submission. It was thought to be an impossible task - our military personnel and civilian personnel showed that not to be the case.

We have lost most of that generation, but a few remain. We must be certain never to lose the memory of those heroes of yesteryear lest we repeat the actions that brought about the need for them.

/dismounting soapbox