Watch: Gene Simmons Chokes Up 8 Times Talking About His Love for America
Gene Simmons, the legendary rocker and frontman of KISS, has spent the better part of decades filling arenas around the world with tens of thousands of adoring fans.
But earlier this week, he found himself in a much different venue, speaking to a much smaller crowd made up of staffers and military personnel and yet still managed to give everyone goosebumps by telling a deeply personal story of American patriotism — one that nearly brought him to tears on multiple occasions.
According to McClatchy DC, Simmons used the Pentagon’s briefing room to help promote a new push to make the public more knowledgeable about military service and different career paths.
The mission is increasingly important due to the alarming number of young Americans who aren’t eligible to serve for a variety of reasons.
While at the podium, Simmons told the group about his recently deceased mother, who was a survivor of a Jewish concentration camp.
“I’m a proud son of a concentration camp survivor of Nazi Germany. My mother was 14 when she was in the camps,” Simmons said, while understandably choking up several times.
He explained that when he was a child, he used to watch television with his mother at night. When the stations were done for the evening, they would usually go off the air and an American flag, waving in the wind, would fill the screen. The National Anthem would begin to play shortly after.
With another lump in his throat, Simmons gently told the crowd that every time his mother saw the American flag on the TV, “she’d start crying.”
“As an 8-year-old boy, I didn’t understand why, but, from my mother’s point of view, we were finally safe,” he said.
Simmons — who was born in Israel — told the group, “I may have been born in the country that people throughout history have referred to as the promised land, but take my word for it, America is the promised land, for everybody. And don’t be ashamed, don’t hesitate… we need to teach young people to be comfortable with saying ‘God Bless America.'”
To say it was refreshing to hear a celebrity of his stature express real love and patriotism for a country that has given him so much would be a massive understatement. It’s easy to see that Simmons is genuinely proud of this great nation.
And from how he described his sweet, hard-working mother, she would be equally proud to hear what he said.
Hollywood is filled to the brim with America-hating, liberal elitists, but Simmons’ words drown them all out.
Celebrities should do themselves a huge favor and take notes because, somewhere along the way, disrespecting the United States somehow became cool. It’s truly shameful and a far different culture from the America our parents and grandparents grew up in.
Children need to hear messages like Simmons’ because, sadly, Hollywood has far too much influence on younger generations and, as a result, their anti-American sentiments tend to filter down. Hopefully, messages like Simmons’ will resonate among the youth of our nation.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
