It is poor business measuring the mouldered ramparts and counting the silent guns, marking the deserted battlefields and decorating the grassy graves, unless we can learn from it some nobler lesson than to destroy. Men write of this, as of other wars, as if the only thing necessary to be impressed upon the rising generation were the virtue of physical courage and contempt of death. It seems to me that is the last thing we need to teach; for since the days of John Smith in Virginia and the men of the Mayflower in Massachusetts, no generation of Americans has shown any lack of it. From Louisburg to Petersburg-a hundred and twenty years, the full span of four generations-they have stood to their guns and been shot down in greater comparative numbers than any other race on earth. In the war of secession there was not a State, not a county, probably not a town, between the great lakes and the gulf, that was not represented on fields where all that men could do with powder and steel was done and valor exhibited at its highest pitch…There is not the slightest necessity for lauding American bravery or impressing it upon American youth. But there is the gravest necessity for teaching them respect for law, and reverence for human life, and regard for the rights of their fellow country-men, and all that is significant in the history of our country…These are simple lessons, yet they are not taught in a day, and some who we call educated go through life without mastering them at all.
Rossiter Johnson, Campfire and Battlefield, 1884
The suppression of these simple lessons by the “educator” class over the past few generations has brought us to where we stand today, in a culture that not only fails to value them, but seeks forever to erase them from the national consciousness. How to reverse this decline is the daunting task of those who have not yet been co-opted by it.
Oh gosh – that photo. No words.
I pray that woman understands that her loved one is not there, that she prays for him, and knows in whose care he now resides.
Grief appears in a hundred different shapes, and no bad thing that, but let us remember the truths we have been taught and have confidence in Him who taught us.
I certainly know where my son’s soul is, and that does not stop me, my Bride and his brother from visiting his grave weekly and having a conversation with him, to catch him up on the family news. I find that soothing and I am sure Larry does not mind.
[…] Welfare Crowds Out Beneficial Social Behavior – Donald J. DeVine at AIERWar Debt – Donald R. McClarey, Esq., at The American CatholicThe Americans Who Long for Caesar – […]
I once performed the burial ceremony for the second of two sons killed in action serving with the Marine Corps. From the meeting with the parents (the father was an Air Force veteran) to the presentation of the flag “on behalf of a grateful nation,” there have been few things more sorrowful in my life. Maybe you all could pray for their souls, and for their parents?
Indeed. May God grant them grace and peace and may their two valiant sons be enjoying the Beatific Vision. I cannot imagine their abyss of grief.
Fr J, Will pray for the parents and their KIA marine sons at a First Communion Mass this morning. The celebrating priest is a marine vet. Taking Chance (2009) is a true story about escorting a KIA marine’s remains from Dover AFB to his hometown for interrment. Very moving.