Do as he Said, Not as he Did
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Tangentially related (on the do as I say front) – our campus minister was in Rome on pilgrimage and he FaceTimed the student body during our daily morning meeting from St. Peter’s Square earlier this week.
During the visit he asked us to pray for the Pope’s intentions of peace and disarmament – while literally walking by a police officer dressed in full tactical gear carrying a machine gun.
Israel and Switzerland operate on a qualification of that dictum. Do not believe it is advisable for most countries.
His statement was commonplace at the time among the Enlightenment literati. Levee en masse resulted in France, allowing the creation of huge armies, and leading to a quarter century of war in Europe. Jefferson also spoke glibly of watering the tree of liberty with blood every generation. I suspect that if he had served for a few years with the Continental Army, his fondness for bloodshed would have abated somewhat.