Common Sense

“Outtasight, outta mind!”

Heard that before?

Things we don’t see, hear, smell, or touch in front of us, are easily dismissed as not relevant, not worth thinking about, not worth remembering, even. Thereby, unimportant. (Even as those more thoughtful among us understand, “it’s not about us…”)

They certainly don’t have the impact on us which things which are happening NOW, in front of us, do.

And in the truth of those statements lies a lot of otherwise-avoidable human pain and suffering.

We should never forget - but we will - and we do, everyday - that morality is permanent.

Facts are permanent, as well.

So a murder a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago, is morally the same as a murder today.

The murder is a fact, so it always exists, even if we forget it.

The murder is a moral crime, and the immorality of it always exists, even if we forget it.

Sure, if you’re there, when the murder takes place, and blood flies, and the death rattle echoes in your ears, you sure are shocked by it.

Far better and easier to read about a murder far away from you in time (a hundred years) or space (a thousand miles).

Because then, it’s easily read about - and forgot.

Yet, the facts and the morality are the same.

The same as if it took place right there, in front of you.

Not the same in the impact on you, ’cause of that evolutionary wiring which makes things close in time and space to us the things we look out for.

So despite the PC-weeping every year at the atom bombing of Japan three generations ago, the dastardliness of the Dec 7, 1941 attack on unprepared US sailors, soldiers and airmen at Pearl Harbor stinks morally now just as much as it did then.

Even if most Americans don’t think so. (Can you dispute the notion “a people gets the government it deserves?” [See if you can figure out why I added that seemingly off-topic comment...])

Likewise, the courage, bravery, commitment and anger shown by Americans (or soon-to-be) along a country lane between Concord and Boston back on April 19th, 1775 is just as bright a beacon for us today as it was for the founding generation.

It’s up to us to see it, is all.

We can shut our eyes tight enough not to.

The Jews say “Never forget!” about the Holocaust.

They are correct.

In fact, none of us should ever forget the Holocaust.

And it makes no difference if the Holocaust happened 50 years ago, 500 years ago, or 50 days ago.

It should never be forgot. Never outta sight, never outta mind.

About April 19th, 1775, we should also say, “Never forget!”

Because it’s the part of your heritage you should never forget.

The pain, the suffering, the courage, the blood shed, the lives lost, the houses burned - those are all moral facts which should never be forgot.

Maybe they represent a debt few of us will ever be able to pay off.

But we can try. Appleseed, you can argue, is a “debt-payment plan”.

There are other ways to pay the debt.

Recently, Appleseed instructors were tasked to give rifle marksmanship training to a unit prior to deployment overseas into a combat role. (The Army has asked us not to give the unit’s designation, destination - or even marksmanship scores!)

Over a lengthy period, at an unnamed Army post, our instructors taught two platoons (approx 80 men) a day basic Appleseed.

Each man therefore received the first day’s training of the typical two-day weekend Appleseed…

While I can’t mention specific marksmanship scores, I can say those men’s rifle skills increased, according to their officers after comparing prior scores to this (Appleseed) training, between 250% - and 300%!

Not bad, for a one-day training event, where the qualification course was fired at the end of a long, tiring day of shooting hundreds of rounds, in full military gear.

As we like to say, “Appleseed works. Every time it’s tried.”

You can view this action as something Good.

Teaching our troops the skills they need to come back alive. Improving those skills way over 100%.

And our instructors did it voluntarily, for a length of time equal to several Appleseeds.

Some of those men and women may come back because of the training they received.

Some of them who use their new marksmanship skills will now live to see their grandkids, and hopefully, tell them about Appleseed - and maybe make sure they get to one.

We don’t know, and prob won’t know.

But what we (Appleseed) did was Good, on the moral scale.

The fact of it, exists. The morality of it, exists. And will exist, for all time.

Our instructors ranged in age from young enough to be on active duty (a few were on active duty!) to those past retirement age.

One was the famous Reluctant Housewife and Grandmother who was drug by her husband to an Appleseed, protesting all the way - and wound up as an RWVA Appleseed Instructor, teaching boys bound for overseas how to make their enemies “pay the price.”

Grandmothers, able to outshoot trained military personnel? Yep. Grandmothers, teaching that skill to young men and women of the armed forces? Yep.

Did our Grandmother, filled with dread whilst en route to that first Appleseed, forsee she’d soon be making a concrete contribution to the nation’s security? Did she foresee that she’d be training our men and women in skills they’d soon be putting to use on a real battlefield?

I daresay she didn’t.

It’s a typical Appleseed story.

Life, it seems, does not have to be a rut.

Life can be unusual, interesting, challenging, fulfilling - if you Appleseed.

And so a lowly housewife, a civilian, a grandmother, becomes an instrument by which our enemies can count up their pain and loss…

Amazing!

At least one troop comment overheard was “I have a new-found appreciation for Americans in this country” - because some volunteer civilians gave up their time and traveled hundreds of miles, some of them thousands, to help out with this training.

Outtasight!

Come, join in this rapidly-expanding program.

Find out why it’s expanding so rapidly. Why so many of your fellow Americans are electing to become part of it.

It’s easy. Simply go to www.rwva.org, click on the “Appleseed” button in the top left, and click on “schedule” to find one near you (you may have to drive an hour or two, because even with a goal of 800 Appleseeds in 2010, there’ll be places you’ll have to drive several hours - but beats early in the program, when some people drove days…).

Then read “what to bring” and “how to prepare” without fail - people continually bemoan the fact they neglected to “do their homework” before coming to an Appleseed.

Next, click on the ‘register’ button next to the AS you want to sign up for. Women and kids 20 and under are free, as are military - active, reserve, and guard.

Next, write out a list of all your friends, family/relatives, neighbors, co-workers - everyone you know - and talk about the program with them. Your goal is to get one or more to come with you, so you can share the experience (and so, when you get home, you’re not the “only rifleman on the block” ).

You’ll meet rejection, so don’t get discouraged. Few want to get out of the deck chairs to bail out the sinking ship.

Instead, be smart. Sly, even.

Your neighbor an old guy, not too active? Does he have grandkids? They shoot free! (Duh!)

Don’t forget your spouse, your neighbor’s spouse - everyone’s spouse.

Some of the most effective people in this program are women (and some of us in the program despair if the men of this country will ever wake up - and put our faith in the women as our last, best hope… ). [The 'face' is not about the "last, best hope" being "women", but about the seeming worthlessness of lazy, ignorant-and-determined-to-stay-that-way men, even in face of what is rapidly becoming an obvious fact - that the USS America is in sinking condition.]

What you will be doing in all this is something important: “getting the word out” about Appleseed.

We NEED this program to succeed. YOU need it to succeed.

When there’s a program geared to “saving a country”, WE ALL need it to succeed.

Nice thing is, we can do it.

If we want to…

Outtasight!