Anthony Aguilar sits in an over-stuffed chair, wearing an orange-ish pullover, jeans and some hiking boots. We’re conducting our interview in a coffee shop that serves gluten-free bagels and mango smoothies.
Not exactly the image of a John Wayne Green Beret.
But that’s what he is.
He’s also embarking on a mission that would make any Green Beret quiver: He’s going to challenge the members of the United States House of Representatives to live up to their commitment to the United States Constitution.
Heavens to Murgatroyd!!!
Anthony is explicitly clear on his primary reason for running for Congress in North Carolina’s 13th district: He wants to serve the people of his district.
What a concept…
Here are some of what Anthony wants for his constituents:
- A living wage
- Affordable housing
- Affordable health care
- Affordable child care
Somehow, these don’t seem like over-the-top demands. But they’re not being delivered.
Anthony is a good egg. He’s just a little bit annoyed with the bad eggs populating the building at the end of East Capitol Street. (For those not familiar with Washington, D.C., East Capitol Street terminates at the U.S. Capitol.)
Terminates. Interesting choice of words. Please, dear reader, read on.
Rotten dairy products are not the only reason for Anthony’s ire. He’s also pretty wrapped-around-the axle over a particular government agency: Immigration and Customs Enforcement: ICE.
Here’s what Anthony has to say about ICE:
“I absolutely stand for, call for and support the abolishment of ICE. In doing so, it must be done immediately, but it must also be done responsibly in terms of how do we preserve the funding and the functions to have responsible immigration, responsible naturalization, responsible pathways to immigration that are responsible and enforceable because the way ICE is funded through DHS, through appropriations in the National Defense Authorization Act. If we simply abolish the agency, which I do strongly support, we have to ensure that we preserve the line of funding to where Democrats or Republicans cannot fail to fund.”
Clearly, Anthony is not for open borders:
“What should replace ICE being Immigration and Naturalization Services as we had. ICE has not been the U.S. enforcement [mechanism] of immigration for the entirety of our nation. This country has had responsible immigration since 1790, and ICE did not exist until 2003.”
It seems ICE has been doing some terminating of its own. Not exactly what Anthony has in mind for responsible immigration control.
You see, since Anthony is a retired Green Beret with 25 years of military service, he has some idea of how military, or military-like, operations should be controlled.
Which brings us, in some circuitous way, to the reason why Anthony is involved in this endeavor in the first place.
Anthony retired from the Green Berets in 2025. He had an exemplary operational record, complete with multiple awards and citations. You can find them on his campaign website.
As a retired Special Operations type, Anthony was contacted by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). GHF was looking for eggs of a particular type to employ in Gaza, with the not-too-concealed objective of herding starving Palestinians toward scarce food supplies, and terminating them. (There’s that word again…)
Well, as you might recall, Anthony is a good egg. Not, apparently, the type of egg GHF was looking for.
Boy, was GHF in for a surprise…
Anthony discovered, much to his chagrin, that what the GHF was actually doing in Gaza far exceeded the horrors he had observed in any of his many tours of duty in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, the Philippines (the Philippines?), and Tajikistan (Tajikistan?). One might wonder what a Green Beret was doing in the Philippines or Tajikistan, but that’s a story for another day.
Anthony was so revolted by what he observed in Gaza that he quit the GHF. That would have been commendable if it were all that he did. But just quitting the GHF was not enough for Anthony.
Anthony decided to go public with what he had seen.
Uh oh…
Now back to the bad eggs at the end of East Capitol Street. While the bad eggs were not out to (a-hem) “terminate” Anthony himself (although some cowardly lions outside the Beltway have suggested it), they certainly wanted to (a-hem) “bury” his narrative.
I might be wrong here, but I think attempting to thwart a Green Beret is not a particularly good idea, nor one destined for success.
Because with all that, Anthony’s bubble had been burst.
A cynic might ask, “After observing the imperial nature of United States foreign policy for 25 years, what took you so long to wake up?”
The answer is simple: Anthony is a human being. A human being who lived inside of an institution that insulated him and his fellows from the realities of the larger picture, and what that larger picture was perpetrating.
But in Gaza, the veil was lifted, not just from his eyes, but his conscience. And his soul.
I hate to keep saying this, but Anthony is not just a good egg. He is a bona-fide hero of an egg. He is an egg with more courage and commitment to justice than any of the bad eggs at the end of East Capitol Street.
Or in the halls of the DNC or the RNC, for that matter.
So now it’s time to remember Matthew Hoh. Another good egg.
Matthew Hoh? Who’s Matthew Hoh?
You know, the Marine who served in Iraq, then went to work for the State Department in Afghanistan to try to correct some of the ills there, got disgusted, quit the State Department, then tried to run for Senate in North Carolina in 2022.
Oh, that Matthew Hoh…
Well, in 2022, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and the North Carolina Democratic Party, those paragons of (anti-)democratic virtue, went to work to submarine Matthew Hoh’s campaign.
They engaged in a host of efforts to keep Matthew and the Green Party off the ballot, including pressuring people to remove their names from Matthew’s petitions by (1) falsely identifying their operatives as state officials or Green Party members, and (2) colluding with the State Board of Elections to smear Matthew’s campaign and falsely accuse it of fraud.
Oh, those guys.
It turns out Matthew and Anthony are good friends. Suffice it to say, Matthew is lending his brass panties to Anthony for his campaign.
This raises the obvious question: “Why would someone need specially fitted brass panties just to run for Congress?”
Well, dear reader, it’s like this…
In a normal two-party system, you would expect the two parties to be, sort of, you know, mirror images of each other. Like, when you look in the mirror, left is right, and right is left.
(Or something like that, I’m really not that good at exotic metaphors.)
Okay, forget about metaphors. The point is, there should be some kind of, I don’t know, CHOICE???
Well, there is “choice.” Sort of…
Sadly, when it comes to Republicrats and Democans, when constituents try to suggest choices, the response almost always boils down to:
“NO”
Or, alternatively:
“Eat sh*t and die”
Which is marginally better than simply “NO,” but not by much.
(Note to censors: The last phrase was not from me. It was a direct quote from a guy who lived in my dorm at college. He was from New Jersey. They talk like that there.)
(Editor’s note: I wanted to get verification on the New Jersey crack from Bruce Springsteen, but he wasn’t available for comment.)
But wait a minute, this article is supposed to be about Anthony. Remember Anthony? He’s the Green Beret running for Congress in the North Carolina 13th.
If there’s one thing the Green Berets are good at, it is survival skills. For example, when out in the wild, where there are no 7-11s or grocery stores, a Green Beret must be able to, I don’t know, eat. Well, one option is, in order to survive, a Green Beret will resort to SCRAMBLING some EGGS.
Sooner or later, I’m going to quit using this idiotic “egg” metaphor, just not quite yet…
So, you have bad eggs at the end of East Capitol Street. Bad eggs at the GHF. Bad eggs in the MIC (Military-Industrial-Complex). Bad eggs at the CIA/NSA/DIA, etc. Bad eggs everywhere you look. And bad eggs have an additional quality: They stink.
So is it any wonder that Anthony needs to inherit a pair of brass panties from Matthew, brass panties already dented from Matthew’s 2022 Senate campaign, in order to protect his derriere from the slings and arrows being flung at him by all these “Bad Eggs”?
(No, eggs cannot sling or fire arrows. It’s just a metaphor. Get over it.)
Anthony Aguilar is a Patriot.
How do I know?
Sometimes, things are identified as much by what they are not as by what they are.
Let’s take Patriots vs. Nationalists.
Nationalists are defined by who or what they hate. Nazis hate Jews. Israelis hate Arabs. Proud Boys hate Immigrants.
Patriots are defined by who or what they love.
Anthony Aguilar loves his country. He proved that by devoting 25 years of his life, and his life itself, to the defense of his country. Anthony Aguilar loves his fellow citizens. He’s proved that by running uphill against all the bad eggs. Anthony Aguilar loves, moreover defends, as best he can, the innocents who are being murdered in Gaza. He’s proven that by having the courage to stand up to some rotten, not to mention dangerous, eggs.
That’s how I know Anthony Aguilar is a Patriot. With a capital “P.”
I am a peacenik. This means I look up to and admire courageous people like Gandhi, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other lesser-known heroes like Scott Horton of Antiwar.com.
So why am I writing about a Green Beret? The Green Berets don’t have a particularly stellar reputation amongst us ex-hippie long hairs who wear sandals and burn patchouli incense.
I am personally terrified as I watch my country, the United States, careen around the world spreading death and destruction both domestically and internationally. Anthony Aguilar is trying to stand in the way of this apparently driverless steamroller with apparently no brakes.
That’s why.
Anthony will be running for Congress in the North Carolina 13th in November. Due to changes in North Carolina’s voting laws, he can’t be knocked off the ballot. Besides, he’s got a broken-in pair of brass panties.
Third-party candidates don’t have a very good record of winning elections. But Anthony is a Green Beret who has survived the wilds of Afghanistan, Iraq, Tajikistan and other not-so-friendly places.
Perhaps this time will be different.
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About the Author
Chip Burns earned degrees in US History and Engineering from the University of Maryland.
Born in George Washington University Hospital in Washington D.C., Chip is an American citizen who views the U.S. Empire through the dispassionate eyes of an historian.
“History is the roadmap to the present and the best predictor we have for the future”
Chip can be reached at chip@cruzio.com.
