I would not be surprised to find Bob Touhey’s picture in the dictionary under “American Patriot,” but Bob – a retired Navy Captain, former Navy test pilot, and highly decorated Vietnam War helicopter gunship pilot — would be surprised. He didn’t and still doesn’t think what he did was anything special. He believes that everyone should be willing to fight and possibly die for his country. Enough of the friends with whom he served died as a result of Vietnam to give him the right to speak on that topic.

Bob, who lives outside of Warrenton, VA, came to me because he needed help getting his story out of his head and onto paper. His book is Seawolf, Where You From?: A Warrior’s Tales. “Seawolves” were Navy helicopter gunships that were so effective against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars that they had a bounty on their heads of what would in today’s dollars be about $33,000 per crew member. Bob was a command pilot and a detachment commander in a Seawolf squadron. He only got shot down once, but it wasn’t for lack of being where the bullets were flying in both directions.

In his book, Bob reflects on the beauty of Vietnam.

Vietnam was an amazingly beautiful country. With the yearly monsoons, the inland vegetation is lush and full…. Vietnam is part of what was once known as French Indo-China, and the French military stationed units there to protect their interests. Many of the French soldiers married or lived with Vietnamese women. Their children, especially their daughters, were some of the most beautiful people I had ever seen.

Bob uses his book as an outlet to tell about the ugliness of war.

Some of the beautiful women would walk up to guard shacks protecting the entrances to some of our bases. They would start flirting with the guards there until all the soldiers or marines had gathered around them, and then they would blow themselves, the guards, and the gates up with bombs strapped to their bodies. Then the regular communist troops would attack during the resulting confusion.

In the honesty of his book, Bob speaks of the unspeakable.

In January 1969… my friend Ed Palowski was shot down…. He was in his early twenties, a good pilot, and a really nice guy. We had become friends. His fire team had made the mistake of trying to attack a mountain near the Vinh Tay Canal….

…[I]t backfired. There were all sorts of .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine gun bunkers in the mountain. So when these two gunships tried to fly straight up to the mountain, a massive crossfire of machine gun bullets hit one of the helicopters and shot it down. When it crashed, it burst into flames.

Ed was trapped in his seat…. Ed was screaming because he was burning, and the SEAL [who had come on the mission to spot Chinese advisors] saved Ed from burning alive – which was the only other option. He used his .45 to save Ed from that agony.

Seawolf, Where You From? covers Bob’s life from his patriotic upbringing in upstate New York to the weird event that allowed him to attend the Naval Academy to his stint in the Caribbean during the Cuban Missile Crisis to the perfect storm that almost sank his carrier in the Atlantic to his assignment testing captured Soviet aircraft as a Navy test pilot to his tour of duty in Vietnam to his post-retirement career as a counter-terrorism consultant – with some very interesting chapters at the end of his book.

Bob earned so many medals in Vietnam that he finally asked his commander to quit putting his name in for them. Many writers will try to define what it means to be an American hero. Bob demonstrates it.

If you would like a copy of this highly entertaining and informative, hardbound book, you can get it through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or just send $35 to Bob Touhey, P.O. Box 577, Warrenton, VA 20188. If you tell him that you heard about it from me, he will ship it to you at no extra charge. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

When my wife and I bought our first house, the first thing my wife did was paint the hallway. Unfortunately, she painted it before I could tell her about my project. I walled over the door from the hallway into the half bath and opened a new door from the half bath into our bedroom to make it more of a master bedroom. Of course, we had to paint the hallway – again. We’ve learned to communicate much better since then

After we had lived there a couple of years, one of our neighbors mentioned that the huge patio on the front of our house was installed by the previous owners to keep water away from the front basement wall. It seems that external water pressure had at one point collapsed the basement wall. The previous owners spent thousands of dollars cleaning up the mess and rebuilding that foundational wall. I went down and looked carefully at that wall – took a level to it – and saw that it was leaning in. That concerned me. Since I didn’t have thousands of dollars to spend on replacing a basement foundation wall (still don’t), I got inventive. I built a heavy duty set of storage shelves against that wall. I framed the shelves with double studded 2x4s bolted at the bottom into the concrete floor and at the top into the joists of the floor above. Then I screwed ¾ inch plywood into 2×4 cross braces so that these 2-foot deep shelves tied the strength of the 2x4s at the front of the shelves into the strength of the ones at the back of the shelves. I don’t know whether that wall would have caved in again had I not braced it, but I made very sure that it could not.

The point of these two stories is that cosmetics such as fresh paint is wasted if the structure isn’t right, but it doesn’t matter what you do to the structure of the house if the foundation is bad. Conservatives need to learn that lesson quickly. There is a lot of pressure pushing against the foundation of our society. There are people both foreign and domestic who are trying to tear down the very foundation of our way of life. Yet conservatives seem focused on building their lives without paying attention to the foundation on which their lives are built. People should build a career, grow a family, and enjoy the benefits of life in America. But people mindlessly risk it all if they ignore the blatant threats very publicly trying to destroy that foundation. Without that foundation, everything else collapses.

An article entitled “Beware the Useful Idiots” has been circulating on social media. It is a summary of the areas of control communist Saul Alinsky says socialists need in order to take over a country. It is an accurate though abridged list of what we are facing. (Hillary Clinton wrote her college honors thesis in tribute to this guy.)

Alinsky says if socialists control healthcare they will control the people. He says socialists need to increase poverty because poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if the government is providing everything they need to live. To increase welfare is to allow the government to control every aspect of citizens’ lives (food, housing, and income). Alinsky advocates increasing public debt to unsustainable levels so the government can increase taxes and create more poverty. He insists on gun control so the people cannot defend themselves from the government. That also opens the way to a police state. Take control of education so socialists can control what the next generation learns about history and our society. Remove belief in God from public life so that there is no moral standard. And create class warfare by dividing people into wealthy and poor. This will allow the government to tax all the money away from the wealthy so that everyone will be poor. Every one of these agendas is being pushed in America today. Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin described the people who bought into these ideas as “Useful Idiots.” These Useful Idiots have destroyed every nation in which they have seized power and control – as they are currently trying to do in America.

Conservatives – particularly the evangelical church – are letting this happen. Some don’t want to believe that our way of life could ever be at risk, so they go on as normal while blindly assuming the foundation is forever good. Some naively hope that all the bad news will go away without them having to get involved. Some claim that they don’t know what to do – even though it isn’t that hard to figure out. And some are just too busy building the structure of their lives to pay appropriate attention to the very foundation on which they build.

If conservatives will take a little time away from building the structure of their lives, they still have time to invest in bracing and strengthening the foundation of American society so that everything they are building does not collapse because of a broken foundation. The logic is simple. The doing of it is not so simple. Getting people to actually do it is the hardest part of all.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Rumors are flying about the Republican nomination situation in House District 30. I talked with several of the major players to find out what is really going on. Nick Freitas, the incumbent delegate from District 30 filed his paperwork with the State Board of Elections (SBE) in a timely manner. He also sent a copy of his paperwork and his filing fee to the District 30 Legislative District Committee (LDC30). In due course he received both his cancelled check and an email from LDC30 telling him that his paperwork had been filed. Then a few days later he discovered his name was not on the ballot. He checked to find out why, and the SBE said they could not find one of Nick’s forms and they could not find a record of LDC30 having filed a copy of his paperwork. Nick and his legal team asked for an extension to allow them to refile the missing documents, but the SBE refused. The SBE allowed five other candidates to have extensions so that they could get their paperwork in order after the filing date, but every time the GOP member of the SBE made a motion to approve an extension for Nick neither of the Democratic members would second it, so the motion died without being heard. (Parenthetically, the SBE is made up of one Republican member, one Democratic member, and one member representing the Party of the Governor. This is another reason why winning statewide offices is so important.)

When the SBE ruled that under no circumstances would Nick’s name be on the ballot, his legal team told him that he could spend $100,000 and fight the ruling in court with a less than even chance of winning or he could run as a write-in candidate. Or LDC30 could select a different candidate and go to court with a good chance to get that candidate on the ballot. Nick was more concerned about having a Republican candidate on the ballot than about that candidate being himself. He told LDC30 members to go ahead and select someone else. They refused. They think he can win a write-in campaign, and they intend for him to run one.

Some among the GOP leadership, including House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert, are deeply concerned about maintaining at least 51 seats in the House of Delegates. If Democrats gain the majority, everything conservatives have gained over the past generation will be lost in two afternoons, and Virginia will become California east with rat problems like Sacramento, homeless problems like San Francisco, outrageous taxes, an unending stream of illegal immigrants, unlimited government spending, unlimited abortion, and almost total gun control. Todd is deeply concerned about the future – or lack of it – that his children would have in Virginia should Democrats take control of the General Assembly. Court ordered redistricting has turned several solidly Republican districts into toss-up districts. House District 30 was not at risk until this SBE filing foul up. Todd and other House leaders wanted LDC30 to choose a new nominee as the best option going forward. In District 30, an R by a candidate’s name is almost all that candidate needs to win. Without a candidate on the ballot, the seat is not secure. When LDC30 chose to have Nick run a write-in campaign, Todd and several other leaders tried to find some way or someone to convince them to change their minds. At no time did Todd try to get any member of LDC30 replaced.

Then during a recent conference call, RPV’s consulting lawyers said that a new nominee’s chance of getting on the ballot via a court order were little better than Nick’s chances. That drastically changed the dynamics of the decision. As things now stand Nick is running as a write-in candidate, and he has a good chance of winning the seat again. He has an extra month to campaign (since he doesn’t have to wait on the resolution of a court case), he has raised a half million dollars, and he has retained the team that helped Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski win her seat with a state-wide write-in campaign.

Todd Gilbert and others did NOT try to change the makeup of LDC30. They did try to convince LDC30 members to change their minds out of a deep concern for the wellbeing of Virginia as a whole. We Republicans need to learn to talk with each other about what we want rather than assuming those with whom we disagree do so from evil motives. Nick has pointed out in a public post that his discussions with Todd and others have been about finding the best strategy for moving forward. He still considers Todd to be a good friend

Finally, since Nick Freitas is running a write-in campaign, he will need everyone to get on board in support of his campaign. It is winnable. We must win it. We must work together to win it. Passions have been high because the stakes are high. Let’s turn that passion into effort for Nick and all of our Republican candidates this fall.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Conservatives view liberals’ political proposals as outlandish and wonder how anyone with a true knowledge of history can support them. That’s why conservatives discount those liberal proposals and assume that all people of reason will do the same thing. However, conservatives do not take into account that liberals have taken over our educational systems and are giving the next generation of Americans a false sense of history and a false sense of right and wrong. As a result, conservatives’ solutions are successfully mischaracterized unless conservatives make a point to explain their solutions to America’s problems in the context of who America really is.

For example, liberals preach that conservatives don’t care about other people, that they are selfish and want to keep all their money for themselves. The facts do not support that notion, but conservatives have done a poor job of explaining both their long history of caring for those in need and the advantages of the means by which they do so.

“The New York Times” published a story last November highlighting a research study that shows that people in Republican-leaning counties give more to charity than do those in Democratic-leaning counties. The article notes that “this finding fell within the broad political tendencies of traditional Republicans who favor less government intervention and more donations from the private sector to make up for the lack of government assistance.” In reality conservatives back up their ideas with their money. Additionally, they believe that the poor can be better helped by private charities that must work efficiently and effectively to remain viable. Conservatives need to make a point of comparing their model to the wastefulness of a government monolith whose existence is guaranteed by self-serving politicians who want to swell the size of government in order to boost their own position, power, and prestige.

Conservatives know that private charitable organizations are more effective because they are much closer to those who receive the aide than are a bunch of bored bureaucrats in a marble office building in a high-cost-of-living city like Washington, D.C., who create one-size-fits-all rules that are easily scammed. For example, an unmarried couple with two children, if they play the game right, can get up to $72,000 per year in government aid while a married couple with two children not only gets nothing from the government, but actually has to pay taxes to support the give-away to the scammers. In addition to being wasteful of tax dollars, the bureaucratic rules that allow this are a significant financial attack against the institution of marriage, which has since the beginning of time been the glue that holds societies together. Conservatives aren’t against helping people. They are just in favor of small governments and the sanctity of marriage. Conservatives just need to do a better job of expressing those ideas.

Conservatives believe that instead of just “giving a man a fish” (to feed him for today as is done by welfare entitlement programs) one should “teach the man to fish” so that he can feed himself (and his family) every day without help from others. In other words, conservatives want to make the needy self-sufficient so that they no longer need to be dependent on someone else’s charity. That is why conservatives support “workfare.” Conservatives can – if they would – make a pretty convincing argument that people who refuse to use charity to get themselves into a position where they don’t need charity are not worthy of charity. Government programs on the other hand just keep doling out somebody else’s money (our taxes) with little regard to whether it is doing any long term good. After all, bureaucrats get paid regardless of how effective their work is.

This fits with the finding of the aforementioned study that “wealth redistribution is higher in Democratic-leaning counties.” Taxes are higher and entitlement payouts are likewise higher. One may claim this as a take-from-the-rich-give-to-the-poor situation, but neither bureaucrats en massenor the government as a whole make a very good Robin Hood. Conservatives take the position that the people who earn the money deserve the right to distribute the money that they earn. And many conservatives distribute significant percentages of their money to help those who genuinely need help. Conservatives do NOT like to give money to those who make no effort to provide for themselves. Some people do need help. Conservatives have proven time and again that they will help those people. But conservatives deny that a bloated, disinterested, distant government is the best way to distribute that help.

Liberals want to make conservative ideals look bad because conservative ideals run counter to the liberals’ goals of remaking America. Conservatives must do a better job of presenting a credible picture of their superior solutions to America’s problems. Until they change that dynamic, their ideals will get short-changed in the arena of public perception. Conservatives don’t lose elections because there is anything wrong with their ideals; there isn’t. Conservatives lose elections because they do a poor job of articulating their ideals to the electorate.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Try to come up with a definition of “conservative” that satisfies everyone who considers him or herself to be a conservative and your brain will melt. That happens because conservatives don’t rally around a single cause. Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, wrote a fairly deep article last year entitled “Fifty Shades of Red” that expounds on many of the differences in the “conservative movement.”

Progressives, Berkowitz opines, don’t have that problem. They unite in “the pursuit of an increasingly egalitarian society through ever more comprehensive government regulation and redistribution.” If you think about it, that’s the definition of socialism.

Conservatives on the other hand have splintered goals that can be loosely incorporated within two camps. One camp believes conservatism should focus on individual freedom. The other camp believes in conserving our traditions.

Donald Trump was elected in no small part by working class people who had given up on government because they felt that the government was contemptuous of their concern about the lack of good jobs, the influx of illegal immigrants, foolish wars, and an expanding culture of political correctness – all issues that damage their personal freedom. Thousands upon thousands of those people registered and voted for the first time because at last they had a candidate who actually listened to them and cared about what they cared about.

Never-Trumpers, on the other hand, didn’t like Trump because he was not a traditional candidate. He did not fit the traditional mold, and therefore they felt his commitment to American traditions was suspect.

Now here is where my brain starts to hurt. Those who are focused on their personal freedoms depend on our constitutional law and the traditions of our founding fathers to defend those freedoms. Traditionalists think that one can go too far with individual freedom by failing to honor the very traditions that preserve those freedoms. Traditionalists rail against the “radical remedies” employed by those in the “individual freedom camp” who are disgusted with the hidebound intransigence of the “traditionalist camp.”

Neither side thinks they are the bad guys. They often think the “other” side are the bad guys. And we have enough Individualist and Traditionalist conservative Republicans in Congress who are at odds with each other that even when Republicans are in the majority, they can’t get anything done. Democrats don’t have that problem. They are focused on a single goal, and they are united in reaching it. Recently, that unity seems to be splintering over methodology and tactics. But that’s been the problem with Republicans for more than 30 years. (Some Republicans are not conservative by any stretch, but this article is about conservatives not RINOs.)

Ronald Reagan was the last Republican leader to be able to pull conservatives together, Berkowitz says, “Ronald Reagan was an exception among spokesmen for conservatism; he disarmingly harmonized dedication to individual liberty and limited government with respect for traditional morality and biblical faith.” That statement requires some thought. Individual liberty and limited government are not antithetical to traditional morality and biblical faith. In fact, traditional morality and biblical faith are the solid ground upon which our individual liberty and limited government are founded. Either Berkowitz is wrong in how he characterizes conservatives, or he is saying something we aren’t hearing.

I don’t think he is wrong because later in the article he says, “To pursue happiness… individuals, families, and communities require a limited government capable of protecting a robust civil society and a broad private sphere where citizens are largely left alone to govern themselves and advance their material and moral interests as they define them.” Then he adds, “At the same time, democratic self-government and free markets rest on citizens well-endowed with self-restraint, industriousness, perseverance, tolerance, prudence, and a host of other virtues cultivated best by family, faith, and community.”

Here is the take-away: Individualists and Traditionalists need each other. We want much the same core things. Our problems come in the disagreements over how to go about reaching the goal of preserving our American way of life. Our real enemies, the progressives and socialists who aim to destroy the traditional freedoms we want to preserve, have no such handicap.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.