Veterans Day speaker expresses concern over socialist push

   MONONA — Longtime United States Air Force veteran Larry Timmerman talked about his concern about the United States’ move toward more socialist values during a Veterans Day speech at MFL MarMac High School Monday.

   Timmerman talked about the work ethic that he learned while growing up around Monona and that he said is still important today as well as the reception of the Vietnam War in which he served.

   “It was not a very popular war, and if you listened to the media at that time you would have thought that the troops on the ground in Vietnam had lost every battle that they fought. But in reality the ground troops never lost one battle.”

   He said one reason that the United States went to Vietnam to control the spread of Communism, which had spread into eastern Europe and parts of Asia by that time. He said many people do not realize that South Vietnam was the last country that fell to communism.

   “Our armed forces did not lose the war in Vietnam, it was our politicians that lost the war,” he said. “Our military left South Vietnam two years before it fell.”

   He said that communism is another form of socialism and cited surveys that indicate that 70 percent of millennials in the United States support socialism.

   “I know I’ve been using this politically incorrect term communism and that the politically correct word today is socialism or progressivism,” he said. “That concerns me today that 70 percent of our millenials think socialism is a good thing.

For more of this story see the Nov. 13 Outlook.