As a western author, I am extremely proud of our rich, American heritage, our Westward expansion, the rugged individualist, and the man alone in the saddle.
The Gunfight at the OK Corral isn’t just a tale from our history; it is part of the fabric of our great nation.
Cowboy hats, boots, and six-guns are the items that often defined us as Americans.
We are cowboys.
Americans are the people who charge into machine gun fire on blood-stained beaches. We are the ones who dare to travel across vast and dangerous seas in tiny wooden ships. Our men are the ones who brave the challenges of space and place our footprints on the surface of the Moon.
We are Americans. We are cowboys.
Those in other countries are intimately familiar with our culture. They know all about our Western films and actors. They routinely expect our leaders to behave like a combination of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and J.R. Ewing, tough, shrewd, and unwilling to lose.
With so many of our nation’s presidents having served in the military, our enemies also expect our presidents to know something about having the courage and the willingness to fight.
Perhaps that is why things go so wrong militarily whenever we have a president who deliberately fails to adequately step into his proper role.
Not only does it make us look weak before the world; it damages our place in this world. It places every American citizen at risk from foreign attack.
Wimps don’t belong in the White House.
They belong at the Cheesecake Factory.
Go back and look at your own childhood. Nobody ever went around picking a fight with the toughest guy in the neighborhood.
And throughout our history, America has always been the toughest kid on the block.
That is how Americans have seen it. That is how the world expects it. And that is how it needs to be.
Americans expect to have a cowboy in the Oval Office. They expect our Commanders-in-Chief to bow before no one but the Lord of Heaven.
George Washington guiding the Revolution, Teddy Roosevelt leading the Rough Riders, John Kennedy facing down Kruschev, Harry Truman dropping the A-Bomb, Reagan bringing down the Soviet Union, and Bush, with one hand holding a bullhorn and his other arm around a firefighter, telling the rescuers that the world would be hearing from us all soon, that is true American leadership.
That is the heart of a cowboy. That is the soul of America.
America is the greatest force for good that the world has ever seen. And when the Ransom Stoddards of this globe are being threatened, it is we who come to their aid.
Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were often mocked for being “cowboys,” as if the term was something for which they should greatly be ashamed.
No doubt there are a number of things that Bush should be ashamed of, such as his failure to ever follow a conservative budget policy, but his committed focus to protecting our country certainly wasn’t one of them.
In fact, most of the mocking of Reagan and Bush came from the two men who both shared their office, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
After he was elected, Obama traveled around the globe and apologized for America and the place it’s assumed in the world.
In fact, Obama boldly proclaimed that he was going to have a better relationship with our enemies and finally show the world the proper means of how world diplomacy should actually be conducted.
Jimmy Carter tried much of the same thing.
And you see how well that’s worked out for us.
What you are watching take place right now on the world stage, between Russia and the United States, is exactly what happens when you have a president who thinks you can keep the peace by holding out an olive branch instead of gripping a six-shooter.
Our allies don’t trust us and our enemies don’t fear us. And that makes our world a more dangerous place in which to live.
Vladimir Putin isn’t only mocking and defying President Obama; Putin is the beachside bully kicking sand in the face of our weak-sister, boy-president before the entire world.
Putin clearly doesn’t respect Obama. He doesn’t fear him. And Putin doesn’t see any reason to treat the man with anything but the most blatant form of public contempt.
Why should he?
Obama is much more concerned with riding herd on the good people of the Tea Party than he is with dispensing cowboy justice to the cowardly, murderous forces of Radical Islam, who murdered his own ambassador.
I am not suggesting that the United States needs to go to war over every action taken by our enemies abroad; however, I am suggesting that our enemies need to believe that we might.
And our people have a right to expect those things from our leader.
We are a nation of cowboys.
Our presidents need to have a little swagger, a confidence borne not out of arrogance.
It is confidence borne out of pride, a respect for our heritage, a knowledge of our history and traditions, and a proper acknowledgment of our country’s firm reliance on the God of Heaven.
That is a hero. That is a cowboy. And that is what we are missing in our president.
Image: Courtesy of: http://asbaquez.blogspot.com/2011/06/cowboy-history-and-definition-of-cowboy.html
