{"id":18569,"date":"2012-07-19T01:47:55","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T04:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=18569"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:13:11","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:13:11","slug":"general-dempsey-leads-thanksusa-in-god-bless-america-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/19\/general-dempsey-leads-thanksusa-in-god-bless-america-video\/","title":{"rendered":"General Dempsey Leads ThanksUSA in God Bless America (Video)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/images\/thanks.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"200\" \/><\/p>\n<p>General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.defense.gov\/\/news\/newsarticle.aspx?id=117091\">gave the &#8220;keynote speech&#8221;<\/a> at a ThanksUSA gala.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thanksusa.org\/main\/index.html\">ThanksUSA<\/a> was founded by an 8 and 10 year old in 2006 as a means to provide scholarships to children and spouses of US troops.<\/p>\n<p>Never one to let a good deed go unpunished, Michael Weinstein will probably soon be calling for the General&#8217;s court-martial for &#8220;endorsing a non-Federal entity&#8221; &#8212; especially when Weinstein finds out who&#8217;s on their board of directors.<\/p>\n<p>Even better, General Dempsey &#8212; widely known for his public singing &#8212; concluded the presentation by bringing the entire event to its feet when he led them in\u00a0&#8220;God Bless America,&#8221; and chided those who didn&#8217;t know the words:  <!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;If you know the song, you should join in, and if you don\u2019t, you should be ashamed of yourself,&#8221; [General Dempsey] added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zqny3xXGOU0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><br \/>\nDespite some <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/02\/analysis-of-the-pentagon-ig-report-on-christian-embassy\/\">tortured interpretations<\/a>, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with praising an organization that has done much for someone personally in the military &#8212; or, in General Dempsey&#8217;s case, for the military as an institution.\u00a0 As the top General in the military showed, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with praising or supporting organizations that benefit the community &#8212; despite claims troops are <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/07\/did-usafa-cancel-operation-christmas-child\/\">only allowed to support non-religious organizations<\/a>. It&#8217;s also encouraging &#8212; and a bit entertaining &#8212; to see the top General of the US Armed Forces leading a group in &#8220;God Bless America.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Seeing a military leader call on God to bless America is like fingers on a chalkboard to Weinstein, though.\u00a0 We&#8217;ll see if Weinstein judges this to be the &#8220;right kind&#8221; of religious faith in the military, or if he decides to protest&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave the &#8220;keynote speech&#8221; at a ThanksUSA gala.\u00a0 ThanksUSA was founded by an 8 and 10 year old in 2006 as a means to provide scholarships to children and spouses of US troops. Never one to let a good deed go unpunished, Michael Weinstein will probably soon be calling for [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3414,1281,1958,85,2,5218,7,3415,3413],"class_list":["post-18569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-god-bless-america","tag-joint-chiefs-of-staff","tag-marty-dempsey","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-singing","tag-thanksusa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}