The YDVA
Now that I have written that I endorse Scott Brown several issues must be clarified in regards to my actions. He in no way supports or endorses my ideas as far as I know. That Senator Brown is a member of the same National Guard formation that I was, and I never met him while I was in, I explained that this was not the reason I support him. Congressman Ed Markey was also part of that formation for at least six years that I know of, and I have never thrown any show of support his way.
Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman were both adamant supporters of the National Guard. TR stated all he knew about politics he learned in the New York Militia. I would concur that in my youth as a member of the Massachusetts National Guard, I as well got a crash course in local politics. All one had to do was pay attention to what was going on and you would quickly see that it was a very political organization.
This country really has been through major cultural and social change over the last several decades, and the majority of civil governments efforts have been in this regard. Race, sexual orientation an abortion to name a few. Even if you disagree with these issues they have become the laws, and it is not very likely this will be reversed. So now that the majority of these issue have been tackled I have advocated tightening up the current appendages government already has.
One issue I discussed was putting the National Guard in Homeland Security as opposed to the Defense Department, using the precedent established by the Coast Guard and how it moves to and from both. This would allow a more effective use of the Guard’s assets in civil infrastructure. Read this to mean that disaster that happened in New Orleans would be much more effectively handled under this system than under the old way.
I must disclose that the General who is the primary advisor to the Joint Chiefs from the National Guard is a person that served in the command element of the 110th Cavalry at the same time that I was in that formation in the mid 1990s. I have never met this person, that I know of, and have no connection to him at all.
There are no secret plots going on, so even though I am a member of the Yankee Division Veterans Association, that group does not endorse political candidates. I initiated this discussion with the head of the Cape Cod Chapter the other day, and informed him that I do not mix my membership in that group with politics.
Just as the defense and homeland security structures are changing, so will the nature of fraternal veterans groups that are smaller unit specific organizations, but they should never be actively involved in political endorsement because that is the realm of the lobbying groups of the larger veterans organizations such as the VFW and the like. So I may be a member of the YDVA, I do not speak on its behalf when I write in this format, and in the event I were to have an elected position in that group it would be appropriate that I disclose on the basis of whom I am representing, myself or the organization.
None of this, change that is, is new, in a society where people join and leave non profit groups all the time this has essentially always been the accepted protocol.
