Fr. Lieutenant Andrew Kinard, USMC, Receives the Freedom Alliance's 2008 Defender of Freedom Award

On Thursday night, the R.C. Blog was in attendance for the Freedom Alliance's "Defender of Freedom" dinner in Washington, D.C. The recipient for this year's Freedom Alliance's Edward J. Bronars Defender of Freedom Award was First Lieutenant Andrew Kinard, USMC.

There was not a dry eye in the room as 1stLt Kinard, 25 years old, talked about his battle for life following an IED explosion in Iraq during his patrol and his heartfelt apprection to God and the Marines. Kinard was severely injured resulting in the loss of both of his legs. He spent the next four months undergoing 57 surgical procedures to restore his normal body functions and the next year recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In January 2008, President Bush invited 1stLt Kinard to the State of the Union address, where he sat next to First Lady Laura Bush. Remarkably, 1stLt Kinard is today still serving his country as an active duty Marine.

He inspired the audience with his positive outlook and smile and he expressed how blessed he feels today to be alive. He attributes his ability to still be alive to God, the support of his family, and to the dedication of the Marines and other military and medical personnel who kept him from dying throughout various phases of his injury and recovery.

The dinner event also featured speeches from Freedom Alliance Founder and Honorary Chairman LtCol Oliver North, USMC (Ret.) , Freedom Alliance President Tom Kilgannon, and radio talk show host, commentator, and author Laura Ingraham. A very special "thank you" to the Kilgannons for their invitation to this remarkable event.

As always, the R.C. Blog proudly supports the Freedom Alliance and encourages all readers to visit their web site (freedomalliance.org) and consider making a tax-deductible donation to this extremely worthy cause.

"Are You Happy Yet?"

A Positive Story in College Football

From a college football program that is renowned for its wins, head coach, national championships, and, unfortunately, troubled inner-city athletes, the "feel good" story of the 2008 college football season surprisingly comes out of Tallahassee, Florida, home of the Florida State Seminoles.

Seminoles junior safety Myron Rolle announced yesterday that he will bypass his senior year of eligibility to accept his Rhodes Scholarship and study in Oxford, England, starting next October. Rolle was projected to be a high NFL draft pick in either the 2008 or 2009 draft.

Rolle, an aspiring neurosurgeon, was awarded the scholarship last weekend. He is the first Florida State football player to be so honored.

Rolle said he cannot delay the Rhodes Scholarship and is trying to decide whether he will participate in the next NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis in February. He also is considering training before and after his studies at Oxford and trying out for the NFL afterward.

"I want to be a neurosurgeon," Rolle said. "And I want to help impoverished nations build up their vaccination programs. I think in many poor countries, vaccination programs and mental health programs are wrongly pushed aside."

Thank you Myron Rolle for serving as a role model for student-athletes in an era where the only non-sports news they typically produce revolve around suspensions, arrests, and violence. Sadly, Rolle's positive story has not had much of an impact on his own teammates. This past week, two Florida State freshman wide receivers were arrested on misdemeanor battery charges stemming from a fight in the student union two weeks ago.

The 10,000-Hour Investment

Malcolm Gladwell has written a fascinating study, "Outliers: The Story of Success", which should make a lot of people feel much better about not achieving instant success. In fact, he says it takes about 10 years, or 10,000 hours, of practice to attain true expertise.

"The people at the very top don't just work harder or even much harder than everyone else," Gladwell writes. "They work much, much harder." Achievement, he says, is talent plus preparation. Preparation seems to play a bigger role.

For example, he describes The Beatles' rise to fame: They had been together seven years before their famous arrival in America. They spent a lot of time playing in strip clubs in Hamburg, Germany, sometimes for as long as eight hours a night. John Lennon said of those years: "We got better and got more confidence. We couldn't help it with all the experience playing all night long." Overnight sensation? Not exactly. Estimates are that that the band performed live 1,200 times before their big success in 1964. By comparison, most bands don't perform 1,200 times in their careers.

Neurologist Daniel Levitin has studied the formula for success extensively, and shares this finding: "The emerging picture from such studies is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything. In study after study of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, the number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn't address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery." Two computer giants, Bill Joy, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, and Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, also were proof of the 10,000-hour theory. Their years of hard work paid off, don't you think?

As Gladwell puts it, "Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good."

Consider these thoughts from successful folks in all walks of life:

-- "A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals." -- Larry Bird, basketball star turned coach/team president.

-- "No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent; work transforms talent into genius." -- Anna Pavlova, ballerina.

-- "I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen." -- Frank Lloyd Wright, architect.

-- "The way to learn to do things is to do things. The way to learn a trade is to work at it. Success teaches how to succeed. Begin with the determination to succeed, and the work is half done already." -- Mark Twain, writer and humorist.

-- "Things may come to those who wait. But only the things left by those who hustle." -- President Abraham Lincoln.

Do you detect a theme here?

The abilities these people possessed were far-ranging, yet the formula for success was the same: hard work and lots of it. I don't know anyone who has succeeded any other way. Some people just make it look easy. Of course, you probably didn't see the first 9,999 hours of hard work. And you don't just have to work hard; you have to work smart, too.

What Every Child Should Know About Thanksgiving

The following piece was written by former Speaker Newt Gingrich for Human Events. The R.C. Blog wishes everyone a happy, safe, and faith-filled Thanksgiving!

Second only to Independence Day, Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. And as an American holiday, it is rooted deeply -- like our nation -- in faith in God.

The earliest Thanksgivings were celebrated by Americans who were keenly aware that their blessings -- like their rights -- came from God. In times of hardship unimaginable to us today, they took time to give thanks to their Creator.

Throughout early American history, when they suffered from drought, famine or war, Americans paused, not to seek vengeance or to question their faith, but to give thanks to God for the blessings they still had.

At a time when the economic news seems to get worse every day, it’s important to remember the humble faith of these early Americans. They didn’t just give thanks when times were good, they gave thanks when times were bad -- especially when times were bad.
Today is a decidedly different time in America.

Not only have many Americans forgotten or never learned the historic origins of our Thanksgiving -- to pause and give thanks to God for our abundance -- but radical secularists are intent on removing God and faith from our national life altogether.

Many of the entertainment and political elite seem to be threatened by religious faith.

Others seem intent on denying or whitewashing the central role that religious faith has played in American history, such as the attempt to whitewash God out of the Capitol Visitor’s Center. These radical secularists seek to portray those who acknowledge this historical fact as theocrats intent on imposing their religion on others.

In fact, to acknowledge the centrality of God in American history is to acknowledge America’s great freedom of religion -- the freedom to worship and the freedom not to worship. Many Americans have taken advantage of this freedom by drawing closer to their Creator. They understand, even if so many of our media and political elites don’t, that religious freedom is the cornerstone of all of our freedoms.

The centrality of God in Thanksgiving in America comes through in the words of some of our greatest national leaders:

Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson, in 1779: “[I] appoint … a day of public Thanksgiving to Almighty God … to [ask] Him that He would … pour out His Holy Spirit on all ministers of the Gospel; that He would … spread the light of Christian knowledge through the remotest corners of the earth … and that He would establish these United States upon the basis of religion and virtue.”

President George Washington’s first federal Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789: “Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.… Now, therefore, I do appoint Thursday, the 26th day of November 1789 … that we may all unite to render unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection.”

President Abraham Lincoln, making Thanksgiving an annual national holiday in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War: “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.

Our leaders have not been alone in celebrating God’s gifts at Thanksgiving, of course.

I conclude with a poem by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer, an African-American poet writing at the turn of the 20th century. Her generous, hopeful view of Thanksgiving is made even more remarkable by the suffering and discrimination she endured as an African-American in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Thanksgiving

Let us give thanks to God above,
Thanks for expressions of His love,
Seen in the book of nature, grand
Taught by His love on every hand.

Let us be thankful in our hearts,
Thankful for all the truth imparts,
For the religion of our Lord,
All that is taught us in His word.

Let us be thankful for a land,
That will for such religion stand;
One that protects it by the law,
One that before it stands in awe.

Thankful for all things let us be,
Though there be woes and misery;
Lessons they bring us for our good-
Later 'twill all be understood.

Thankful for peace o'er land and sea,
Thankful for signs of liberty,
Thankful for homes, for life and health,
Pleasure and plenty, fame and wealth.

Thankful for friends and loved ones, too,
Thankful for all things, good and true,
Thankful for harvest in the fall,
Thankful to Him who gave it all.