INDY REPUBLICAN’s Tribute to Advance Indiana’s Gary Welsh

Gary Welsh Blogger and Friend to all Good Americans 

We wanted to say something to all of our friends and readers. IR has enjoyed writing for the last three years and we intend to blog until we leave this world. It has just dawned on us now. That in all the time we have been blogging, we have never taken the time to express how much we appreciated, honored and loved our dear friend the late great Gary Welsh. The talented, charming, much beloved genius who authored the irreplaceable blog Advance Indiana. We did mention briefly now and then we missed him. And this blog is dedicated to carrying on his crusade for freedom and good government. However we all were so determined to write this blog, and to help our brothers-in-arms Paul Ogden, and Jon Easter. We never paid a proper tribute to Gary. Well that changes now. Gary Welsh was in the highest and greatest sense a man. He fought for the rights of all, and inspite of the odds he won more often than he knew. His writing style and prose were of the quality that all should aspire to. He was willing to stand alone if need be. We miss him to an extent, that our sorrow cannot be adequately expressed by the limitations of human speech. 

His blog is still read by all of us to this day. We can never bring ourselves to remove the link to his blog. To do so would make us guilty of impoverishing all who visit this blog. We are proud to have been his friends for over a decade. He helped many of us survive times that almost destroyed us. Though we miss him like we miss a father, teacher and friend. All of us are blessed to have known him. We have no doubt that regardless of whatever differences he might have had with IR and Paul Ogden. Gary Welsh was a true men, and a patriot without equal. He was and would have been proud to continue working beside us. We beseech you our readers to remember that inspite of our differences as Lincoln put it: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Yes the tensions along political, religious and partisan lines are immense today. We have faced far darker moments than we find ourselves in. We will survive this. Don’t let yourself become discouraged. Even if it seems the whole world is against you. Hold fast to your principles, your values. Make them matter to YOUR lives. Develop within yourself the satisfaction that although thanks and approval from others are not inherently bad. And you will sometimes receive them. It will not always come right away or every time you do right. As long as you hold to the knowledge and firm conviction that what you are doing is right. Your actions, your life will and does matter. The seeds you plant will eventually bear fruit. Rome was not built in a day. Our task, our calling will be lifelong. 

Our ultimate goal as expressed once again by that great republican Abe Lincoln is this: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Farewell Gary Welsh! You will never be forgotten. Your detractors as some have already will wither away. Your life, your work will forever stand resolute against the powers that be. Exactly as the 300 at Thermopylae held firm. As we close this tribute to the master himself. We issue a call to arms to any and all to aid us, Paul Ogden and our allies in pursuing the holy cause of freedom.

Here’s a little civil war song to get you all motivated to fight the good fight! Praise be to God! AMEN!