By Dr. R.M. “Zeb” Zobenica, Capt. USMC (Ret.)

I am an old man tired of being lied about. I’m tired of watching people destroy the country that I love and that my parents and my immigrant grandparents loved. I’m tired of being told that I’m a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, greedy, deplorable, irredeemable, gun-toting, Bible-clutching rube whose life-long achievements are due to “white privilege,” not to individual effort, a lifetime of study and learning, sacrifice, sound financial management, risk taking, sleepless nights, or concerns about employee well-being. I’m tired of media types and academics who opine that destroying our businesses is justified in the name of “social justice.”

Now, who am I? What’s my background? Why do I care? Why should you continue to read on?

I’m the grandson of immigrant Serbs who grew up in a hard scrabble mining town carved out of the forests of northern Minnesota and populated with people from over 30 nationalities.

Diversity was a fact of life, not social theory. The housing was barely functional. There were outhouses. Rural areas had no indoor plumbing. Central heat was uncommon. Yet, my grandfather loved his new nation. He was a poor miner, a subsistence farmer, and didn’t have “a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of,” but he and his family were free. Back in the old country, in August 1941, my great-grandparents and their entire extended families were exterminated by the Ustashe who had come to power in the newly declared Independent State of Croatia. However, on the Mesabi Iron Range, Serbians and Croatians lived side by side in harmony. They sent their sons off to World War II under the Stars and Stripes. They mourned their losses together at Catholic and Eastern Orthodox funerals. Old country massacres, old country injustices, and old country madness were to be left behind. The old country perpetrators may have escaped earthly justice, but they would have to face eternal judgement by the Creator.

It is against that background that kids of my generation grew up on the immigrant-laden Iron Range. A high value was placed on education and the schools were excellent.

My favorite athlete was Jackie Robinson. His #42 was on my jersey. Inspired by his life story, I began to read about race, religion, war and peace, and about the place where my ancestors came from. What were my “roots”? My kin came from an area called the Krajina or Military Frontier, a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It’s a no-man’s land squeezed against the Ottoman Caliphate to the south. They were military frontiersmen who agreed to fight the Muslim Turks on behalf of the Austrian emperor in exchange for religious and social autonomy. They were under martial law. They could not vote. But as long as they killed encroaching Muslims, they could worship in a Serbian Orthodox church and speak Serbian at home and in their schools. My ancestors were, in fact, slaves. They didn’t pick cotton; they were hired guns. If you look up “SLAVE” in one of those thick, heavy, unabridged dictionaries, you’ll see that “medievel Slav” is one of the descriptions.

Myth #1: Slavery is America’s original sin.

False. Slavery is as old as recorded human history. It was practiced by people of all races, colors, and creeds. It pre-dates Christianity. How then can responsible academics refer to slavery as America’s original sin? It didn’t originate here, but, ultimately, it was outlawed here. Reading anthropology tomes, the linguistic analysis of primitive tribal speech reveals that they all have words to describe “the other” — those outside the band or tribe.

Apparently, we carry awareness of “the other” in our genes. Those who landed at Plymouth Rock were seeking religious freedom. Of the 12 million slaves from Africa that were brought to the New World, 10 million survived the passage but only 400,000 were offloaded in the colonies. Slavery was practiced in some of the colonies. It did not originate in the colonies.

Myth #2: Whites are privileged.

False. It is argued that white accomplishments are not merit based but linked to their skin color. There is no doubt that slavery in America unjustly treated blacks. The Founders knew that “all men are created equal” meant precisely “all men.” They faced a dilemma over how to cobble together a country that allowed slave ownership. Their “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” was edited from “life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.” Slaves were property. Slavery could not be inadvertently codified. As a young man, I attempted to understand the black experience through reading books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Black Like Me, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X along with literature on the Tuskegee Airmen. I tried to make sense of complex human behaviors, man’s inhumanity to man, and the Holocaust.

In the summer of 1962, I was at Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Virginia, undergoing training as an officer candidate. We were under the charge of black NCOs. They were tough, no-nonsense Marines — but, at that time, they could not freely gain access to eateries and bathrooms in parts of the Deep South. They knew it was wrong. I knew it was wrong. MLK knew it was wrong. America knew it was wrong. In 1964, many of us in flight school at Meridian, Mississippi, were involved in the search for the missing civil-rights kids doing voter registration legwork. Forty years later, the local newspaper asked me to submit an Independence Day article.

* * *

“Lieutenant, ah nigras is heppy,” he said, all three hundred pounds of him under his Smokey hat. It was forty years ago this week and we were in his Mississippi Highway Patrol vehicle leading a gray school bus full of sailors to a search area platted by the FBI in rural Neshoba county.

On June 22, 1964, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Cheney, a young black man, were reported missing. They were civil rights activists engaged in voter registration drives in the deep south. Those of us stationed at McCain Field Naval Air Station, north of Meridian, were directed to assist in the search. The movie “Mississippi Burning” is Hollywood’s account of those events.

As we drove to our map grid, the patrolman and I conversed. He was a decent guy, but conditioned by the culture of the deep south. No klansman, he, nevertheless, accepted the “minor” deprivations suffered by black citizens. What did I think?

I chose my words carefully.

“I am an officer of Marines. We, all of us … white, black, brown, red … are sworn to defend the Constitution, and give our lives for this country if need be. No one who bears that burden should be denied service at a lunch counter, use of a bathroom, a seat on a bus or the right to cast a vote. It is really that simple.”

Our Founders asserted that our rights are derived from God, in our case, a Judeo-Christian God, and that “all men are created equal” before the law. Despite the words, it took us almost a century, and a civil war, to move closer to the expressed ideal. Another century later, my sailors and I were scouring the Pearl River littoral, dodging water moccasins, searching for the remains of a new breed of patriot.

My patrolman could not understand why these college kids were descending on the south and stirring up trouble. It made him uncomfortable. It upset the status quo.

I told him that the time was ripe. We backed away from the reality of slavery at the time of the founding because, in order to cobble together a nation, some problems had to be marginalized. The national ideals were nevertheless codified. People of good will, of high moral purpose, would rectify our national shortcomings in due time.

A patriot is defined as “a person who loves his country and will do all he can for it.” As we approach our 228th birthday, we recognize our patriots in all our shapes, colors, uniforms, jobs… all of us who love “this greatest country on God’s green earth.”

Happy Birthday. May God Bless America.

* * *

The Marine Corps taught us to trust one another. We were of one color — Marine Green. Our parachutes were packed by black Marines. Our planes were maintained by black Marines. Our crash crews and SAR teams were manned by black Marines. The trust and respect for each other practiced in the USMC became the foundation of my attitude toward all things racial. Our life depended on their performance and competency. It was an article of faith. They were up to the challenge.

Myth #3: America is systemically racist.

False. Are there still racists in America? Yes — and they come in all colors. It is a part of the human condition. It’s in our genes. It explains vocabulary words meaning “the other.” Lower animals exhibit “tribal tendencies”: flocks of birds, schools of fish, prides of lions, herds of cattle, pods of whales. It’s an instinctive survival mechanism. We humans, given higher brain functions, are capable of overcoming our basic genetic programming but primitive DNA is still deeply embedded and a part of our logic algorithms.

Systemic racism does not allow for black presidents, black attorneys general, black military generals, black astronauts, black billionaires, black police chiefs, black media mavens, black supreme court justices, or black surgeons.

Myth #4: It’s all the whitey’s fault.

False. We humans possess moral agency. It separates us from lower animals. We’re supposed to know the difference between liberty and license. We’re supposed to know right from wrong. We’re obligated to be our own cop and clergyman. We’re implored to do the right thing even when no one is watching. We’re taught that life is about choices and that choices have consequences. What then justifies looting, property destruction, and arson? What birthed this nihilism? Who dares assign blame for such conduct to people living hundreds of miles away from these cities? What explains this urban self-destructive social pathology?

Over the years, attempts have been made to understand the problems of the inner city. The Moynihan Report of 1965 was ignored because it was deemed too racially charged. Since that time, urban America has become less stable. Out-of-wedlock birth rates and fatherless families have skyrocketed. Inner-city education is failing, compounded by the attitude that being studious is “acting white.” Black females are referred to as “hoes and bit—s.” Pimps and drug dealers represent the entrepreneurial class. Drug abuse is rampant. Violent crime rules the streets.

Black America survived all of the deprivations of the pre-Civil War period. They survived the Jim Crow years. They survived the Ku Klux Klan. They were strong, resourceful, moral, and religious. The outside world threw everything at them and, like tempered steel, they got stronger.

Now, they are engaged in an orgy of self-destruction, and those of us who participated, in small ways, in their struggle for equality find ourselves sidelined and dismayed.

We are, in truth, powerless as we watch them destroy themselves from within.

(“Zeb” Zobenica is a longtime Patriot Post reader and supporter.)