Daniel Shays And SEAL Team 6

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Few people know really what happened, the real story of Daniel Shays. Shays disappeared after Benjamin Lincoln fired those three cannon shots into his rebel crowd in November of 1786.  Shays was basically never heard from again but went into New York or the Adirondacks.  Legend says he became a mountain man.  There were people that knew Shays and knew the entire story.  I was going to bring that in, and your boy with SEAL Team 6 was the inspiration.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

AG:  That’s how I first got that Esquire article on the shooter that allegedly was the guy that —

Mike:  The SEAL Team 6 guy?

AG:  Yeah, putting three rounds into Bin Laden’s head.  It started getting tweeted around that he was a Redskins fan.  One of the DC guys wrote: This is a great article, plus he’s a Redskins fan.  I read the article and saw that.  It’s an amazing article in Esquire.  I would suggest everybody read it.

Mike:  I posted it in today’s Pile of Prep.  I didn’t read all of it.  It’s really long.

AG:  It kind of details how he’s gotten out of the SEALs and having a tough time transitioning into civilian life, whether that be at home — he’s living under the same house as his wife and kids although he’s separated.  He doesn’t have a job per se.

Mike:  Yeah, but he’s separated so that they don’t find the identity of the wife because she’s going to change her name.

AG:  They’re also separated like getting a divorce separated, too.

Mike:  I was reading that as they were doing that for the good of the family.  Maybe I read it wrong.  As I said, I didn’t read the whole thing.  It’s a really lengthy piece.  I probably read about 30 minutes worth.

AG:  It took a while.  His family life is in shambles.  I guess there’s some controversy over whether or not the health insurance, he made a mistake or wasn’t aware of it.  When he left the SEALs, they told him: You no longer have health insurance with us.  The Marine Corps has come out and said every veteran has five years available to them.  They have to go to the VA to get that.  He was apparently unaware of that being a possibility.  He thought they just said: You’re no longer part of the SEALs so thanks for your service and we’re done with you.  There’s that whole situation.

He had a couple different business ideas with other SEALs but has been unable to make those come to fruition.  At the same time, he doesn’t want to capitalize off the work he’s done in being the guy that actually killed Bin Laden, unlike the SEAL Bissonnette who wrote the book a couple months back.  He’s kind of conflicted in that sense.  It’s a really interesting timeline of the different missions he served.  He walks the reader through the Bin Laden raid.  I haven’t seen Zero Dark Thirty yet, but he goes over what was right about it, what was wrong about it, where they “Hollywooded” it up for the big screen.  It’s a very interesting read.  It’s really sad when you see the troubles that a lot of these men and women coming back from serving overseas are having as they try to get back into civilian life.  There are no real private programs or even public programs for these people to get integrated back into private companies outside of working for private security.

Mike:  Or defense contractors.

AG:  He just flat out says: I don’t want to hold a gun anymore.

Mike:  Can you blame him?

AG:  He can’t find work outside of holding a gun.

Mike:  Obama is going to talk about brand-new training programs.  Is he going to outline a training program for former members of SEAL Team 6?  That’s an actual job the government ought to take up.  We sent them over there, after all.  We taught them how to use those weapons, trained them, basically made their careers based upon those skills at the expense of any others.  Don’t we kind of owe them that?  I would say that’s not corporatism or welfare.  That’s payment for service.

When you sent me that, my immediate thought was — I was going to do this today, but I have to go in the library and find the pamphlet.  It was hard to find the first time around.  I have a pamphlet I found when I was researching Fame of Our Fathers.  Not many people know the real story of Daniel Shays.  You’ve heard of Shays’ Rebellion.  Few people know really what happened, the real story of Daniel Shays.  I’ve actually read maybe four contemporary accounts of what Shays’ Rebellion and Daniel Shays was all about.  There’s at least one account that was written by someone who was with Shays.  Shays disappeared after Benjamin Lincoln fired those three cannon shots into his rebel crowd in November of 1786.  Shays was basically never heard from again but went into New York or the Adirondacks.  Legend says he became a mountain man.  There were people that knew Shays and knew the entire story.  I was going to bring that in, and your boy with SEAL Team 6 was the inspiration.

Daniel Shays was decorated for bravery in the Battle of Saratoga.  He was decorated for bravery beyond the call of duty, so much so that the Marquis de Baron de Rothschild de Rochambeau de Lafayette — the Marquis de Lafayette gave Shays his battle sword, gave it to him.  I’m not talking about some five and dime sword you buy at the French army surplus store.  I’m talking about Lafayette’s gilded battle sword.  He gave it to Shays.  Shays ultimately quit the army, basically was too injured to perform any longer.  He went back to Pelham, Massachusetts and began farming.  That’s what he loved to do, and most men of that day did.  When Governor Bowdoin came in, the taxes he imposed to try to pay war debts back were basically imposed on landowners.  People in Boston didn’t own land so they didn’t care.  Men like Daniel Shays did and they were harassed by the constables to pay their shares of the taxes.  Many of them just couldn’t pay them.  Many of them were veterans like Daniel Shays.

You know what Shays had to do to pay his taxes, Andrew?  He had to sell that sword.  That is a story of sacrifice, like your boy in SEAL Team 6 was talking about.  You see the parallel there?  No one wants to thank Daniel Shays for being one of the heroes of the Battle of Saratoga.  You certainly will bring his name up in infamy when it comes to Shays’ Rebellion, which basically is a man feeling as though he has been totally jilted by his own government and is being persecuted by it after he served to make independence possible, to make self-government possible.  He’s tormented by the aristocrat class in Boston, to the point where he has to take that most prized of all possessions, that battle sword given to him by the Baron de Rothschild de Rochambeau de Marquis de Lafayette — there’s a du Motier in there somewhere, too.  He has like ten names, Lafayette.  He has to sell that sword.

Can you imagine parting company with that?  Your cousin that’s in the Cincinnatus, what if he had a sword that was handed down that every Cincinnatian got, some heirloom that used to be Washington’s or something like that.  What if your cousin was deployed and came back and couldn’t find a gig to do anything else and had to sell that heirloom?  You’d feel pretty bad about that, wouldn’t you?  You’d think that was a grave injustice, wouldn’t you?

AG:  Absolutely.

Mike:  As I believe that Shays has been dealt a grave injustice.  It’s true he was protesting legally-passed taxes and constables that were legally trying to enforce them.  That is true.  That doesn’t make the injury that much less destructive.  You can hear that entire story, by the by — if you get Fame of Our Fathers, great.  Get it because you want to get it, not because I’m plugging it here.  My docudrama Fame of Our Fathers, I felt compelled because some members of the founding generation used “Shays’ Rebellion” as the reason why we had to have a national government to put down such atrocities.  As you read up on Shays’ Rebellion, you find out that Shays was really the victim in all that.  You have to know the whole story.  That’s why I included it in Fame of Our Fathers.

End Mike Church Show Transcript