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Alec Penstone Was Right
Darrell Castle talks about an interview of a British veteran that was conducted on Good Morning Great Britain on Veteran's Day earlier this week and the "viral" result of his comments.
Transcription / Notes
ALEC PENSTONE WAS RIGHT
Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 14th day of November in the year of our Lord 2025. Last Tuesday the 11th was Veterans Day here in America or what they still call Armistice Day in Great Britain. I will be talking about that by using an interview of a British veteran named Alec Penstone that was given on British television and the “viral” result of his comments.
Mr. Penstone was selected as the veteran to be interviewed and to represent all British veterans on the British television show Good Morning Britain. His interview was live and obviously intended to convey to the British public that the TV show, its hosts, and the network in general are just as patriotic and honoring of veterans as the general public. In other words, they intended to traffic from his honor and his willingness to serve in a time when service required great sacrifice.
Mr. Penstone, now 100 years old served in the British navy on Arctic Convoy duty. The convoys carried goods from Great Britain and America around the Arctic route to Russia. Without those convoys Russia might have been defeated and knocked out of the war and the 3 million men, 3000 tanks, and 4000 aircraft committed by the Nazis to the defeat of Russia could have been used on the Western front to oppose the D-day landings so it was vital service.
Yes, it was vital but also very dangerous because ships were hunted by German submarines and surface raiders. Being hit by a German torpedo or naval gunfire was certain death in a freezing Arctic ocean but men like Mr. Penstone were there and willing to endure the conditions to prevail. I tell of his exploits to show you that the man was and is a genuine war hero and not just someone sitting in an office drinking coffee while others were out in the mud and blood.
So, the hosts of the show sought to bask in the honor and dignity of the man and I suppose absorb some of it onto themselves but it just didn’t go according to script. The question was ‘what are your thoughts on Remembrance Day and what does it mean for the country”. The old sailor responded like this.
“I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones. All the hundreds of my friends, everybody else who gave their lives. For what? The country of today. No, I’m sorry the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that it is now.”
The female host taken aback by the man’s honesty said, “Oh Alec, I’m sorry you feel like that” Perhaps Alec has some mental illness or a touch of dementia, after all he is 100 years old. The male host decided to give him a chance to explain his answer. “What do you mean by that, though? “Maybe this would, give the man a chance to denounce all those British people who have been protesting the fact that Great Britain, the country he fought for, is no longer British. If that is what they expected, he left them disappointed. “What we fought for was our freedom. We find that even now, it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.” Yes, that was his answer and the hosts were a little unprepared for it. I’m going to use a little poetic license and say that he fought so that Western Civilization might endure and he, with tears in his eyes, knows that it has not.
The host in conclusion of the interview said, “it’s our job now, isn’t it, to make it the country that you fought for.” I will answer Mr. Penstone and say no that isn’t your job because your job is to make it the opposite of the country he fought for. I don’t think you want this to be a Christian nation with traditions and people who defended that concept against Vikings, Romans, and Nazis, but that is why he fought. Well, I have put my words in the mouth of this Centenarian war hero who fought Nazi Germa...
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The Marine Corps Lives Forever
Darrell Castle talks about the 250th Birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps, the NYC mayoral election held last Tuesday, and how a self-described socialist won the election.
Transcription / Notes
THE MARINE CORPS LIVES FOREVER
Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 7th day of November in the year of our Lord 2025. Next Monday the 10th of November is the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States Marine Corps, an organization that I served with for four years more than 50 years ago. The title comes from a belief drummed into our heads back then, Marines live and they die but the Marine Corps lives forever.
I am not going to spend this entire report taking you down memory lane because there are just too many bad things to talk about. This Report that I do each week is in a way a journey through the sewers of the world. People often ask me why don’t you ever talk about any good news and my answer is, because I just don’t see any. Often, good news is in the eye of the beholder and it depends, to quote an old saying, on whose ox is being gored. The point is though that someone’s ox is always being gored and politics seems to be the art of making it the other guy’s ox.
I wonder if other people with military experience remember it the same way I do. I remember mostly the pleasant times of friendships with my buddies, of sitting in bars with them all over the world. When I served in the Marine Corps the number of Lieutenants was very small so you could walk into a military bar anywhere in the world and odds are you would see someone you knew. We all had the same thing in common and that gave us purpose and camaraderie. That’s what I remember most of the time and I forget the moments of sheer terror and extreme boredom that went along with it.
I take great pride in my Marine Corps service and in its 250-year existence. I guess its one of those, you had to be there kind of things, but this 250th reminds us that next 4th of July will be the 250th anniversary of the United States. That’s right the Marine Corps existed before the country a fact that was pounded into us by our leaders in the early days. Those are some of the things I remember as I look back over more than 50 years but now it’s time to move back into the real world of today.
Sometimes even the real world doesn’t seem real or we might say that can’t be real and with AI you never know for sure. We try one fantasy and when it fails we try another. We use one imaginary problem to escape from a different problem that perhaps was not a fantasy but was caused by reliance on a fantasy. For example, last Tuesday New Yorkers tried to escape from one of those fantasies by embracing an even more toxic fantasy. Time will show the results but if history is any indicator the results will be horrendous. That is the result history has given each and every time populations have tried to indulge in the New York fantasy. Yes, the people of New York elected a self-described socialist as their mayor. The race was not very close and Republican Curtis Sliwa did not get enough votes to deny the second-place candidate the race, but Andrew Cuomo lost despite spending more than $65 million. He did not have the message and New Yorkers apparently are tired of the same old corrupt politicians so they voted for a new George Sorus funded candidate. Yes, George, it seems, owns a lot of American politicians.
I obviously don’t know the mind of each individual New York voter but apparently Mamdani found his appeal among the young and that generation, the one coming behind my daughter voted him into office. That generation knows they are struggling and they know that what they were promised turned out to be a fantasy that could not deliver anything but promises. Go to college using debt to obtain a meaningless 4-year degree and have a pretty good middle class job which doesn’t provide nearly enough to live in this new credit-based econom...
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The Best and Worst of Times
Darrell Castle speaks to the best and worst of times as a good description of our times, today.
Transcription / Notes
THE BEST AND WORST OF TIMES
Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 31st day of October in the year of our Lord 2025. Yes, this is Halloween day, a traditional spooky, bad news day, but I have decided to use this spooky day and borrow a bit from the classic novel written by Charles Dickens entitled “A Tale of Two Cities”. Mr. Dickens opened his novel with “It Was the Best of Times; It Was the Worst of Times” and that is a pretty good description of our times, today.
Dickens wrote those words in 1859 as the title and opening of his novel which was set in London and Paris during the French Revolution. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.” That sounds so much like today because the more things change the more they stay the same and as we all know technology constantly changes but human nature does not. The setting of Dickens’ novel was an age of radical opposites that faced each other much like today, but today they are not cities but political divisions.
Here in present-day America, we have opposing forces and contrasting views everywhere you look. In New York City, for example, there seems to be a very good possibility that the people of that once great city will elect a man named Zohran Mamdani as mayor in the upcoming election. The man is often described as a communist as well as an Islamic fundamentalist at the same time. Those two terms are, of course, contradictory because communism was founded and still is based on atheism while Islam is obviously based on a belief in God.
He does seem to have some radical ideas based on economic theories which have been failures everywhere they have been tried. He is not the first to suggest that public transportation be free without any corresponding explanation of where he would get the money to pay for it. See folks, nothing government does is ever free because someone always pays and the politicians want the people to give them the authority to decide who they will steal the money from. I suppose that is true democracy whereby the mob is empowered to loot anyone not voting with the majority. Once again it proves the wisdom of the founders who believed in individual rather than collective rights.
Just wind the clock back a century or so and you will find the words of Thomas Paine who wrote a revolutionary pamphlet called Common Sense. One article or series of articles in the pamphlet was called The Crises. He began that section with the words, “These Are the Times That Try Men’s Souls” and that phrase seems more appropriate today than ever. That phrase is especially true here on Halloween Day as many vitally important things hang in the balance such as NYC and whether that city will ever be great again or whether it will continue its slide into the abyss.
So, Mr. Mamdani is an example of the worst of times. The best of times is an amazing contrast whereby the people of Argentina, after decades of socialist experiments, which left that once powerhouse of an economy in a state of collapse decided to change course. What could be more wonderful than the joy of seeing voters reject the allure of socialism for the second time. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, has led his party to a landslide victory in the elections held last Sunday. Radical spending cuts and free-market reforms defined the two years of his presidency and the people of Argentina have endorsed his efforts and decided to continue the road to recovery. That’s the very good news from Argentina.
The bad news or at least I have decided to see it as bad news is that Donald Trump agreed to extend a $40 billion loan to Argentina which has defaulted three times since the year 2000.
