The Indecent Sheep Bleat

In Cartoonist Tom Toles’ January 29th Washington Post editorial cartoon, he belittled the sacrifices of our wounded servicemen in his attempt to criticize the Bush administration. People like Toles have the right to express their feelings; but they lack wisdom; and they are ungrateful for those whose efforts guarantee the right of free expression. In response to the Toles cartoon, Russ Vaughn, a Vietnam Veteran, wrote an oppositional poem entitled, “WaPo Weasels. Russ submitted the poem to me for publication, and I posted it here. It is posted on the Internet elsewhere as well. Predictably, I got comments on my posting from an “ungrateful American.” Russ, naturally, got many such comments from other postings. Russ Vaughn has now written a piece for the American Thinker entitled, “Going to the Dogs.” Russ is a clear thinker and a good writer. He builds off the analogy of our military and general public as sheep dogs and sheep respectively. I recommend his work to you.

Of course, there are many people who agree with Toles’ opposition to the Bush administration and to the war in the Middle-East in particular. I take Toles’ cartoon at face value to reflect his opinion. That does not suggest that Toles finds anything humorous in his position or his cartoon.

There is a whole subset of American sheep, best described as ungrateful for the sacrifices of others, enjoying the benefits of freedom. Among the subset of ungrateful American sheep are people who find humor in this Toles editorial cartoon. They lack common decency. My reader wrote, “laughed 'til i cried. dead accurate commentary on the part of toles.” People like my reader are not worthy of calling themselves members of the American tradition. They are not worth the sweat off an American military serviceman's brow.

The good side to Toles and the indecent sheep phenomenon is that the rest of America gets to witness and learn that the philosophies driving such commentary are a cancer in the body of freedom.