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Exclusive Content => Editorials => Topic started by: massadvj on May 26, 2019, 07:14:21 pm
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The Cause Worth Dying For
Victor J. Massad
(Exclusive to The Briefing Room)
I attend a church in rural Pennsylvania in which there has been a Sunday service every week since 1722. For many years in its history, there were enough parishioners to accommodate two or three services, but these days there is only one service, and we light a special candle next to the altar to commemorate the weeks when we have more than 100 in attendance. Most weeks, the candle does not glow.
To my mind, one of the nicest things about our church is its cemetery (pictured above). We have hundreds of gravesites, many going back to the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. On the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, there is published in the bulletin a list of the war dead buried in our cemetery. This week being that Sunday, I perused the list before the service began and noted that there were two Kauffmans -- Jacob and Phillip -- who gave their lives in the Revolutionary War. Then I saw that a George Kauffman gave his life in the War of 1812. The family was apparently one of the few spared during the Civil War, Indian Wars and WWI. But then WWII came. Ray and Warren Kauffman died in that war. The country was still not done with this family. The son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of the son of Revolutionary War hero Jacob Kauffman, a soldier by the name of John M. Kauffman, died in the Persian Gulf War, bringing to six the number of sons this family had sacrificed for the country.
Today our church directory lists four Kauffman families, all presumably related to these honored dead. I sincerely hope that as they sat in church reading the names of their relatives in the bulletin, their pride in the sacrifice their family members made was at least equal to my awe.
Being from California, I grew up unfamiliar with the concept of generational familial continuity, particularly as it related to my country. My father’s father immigrated here from Syria as a 5-year old Christian refugee. Given the number of people who migrated to my state during my lifetime, by the time I was in my 30s it was rare to meet a fellow California native, let alone one whose family roots went back for more than a few generations. Reading about the Kauffman war dead, and seeing their offspring in church today, I was struck with the idea of continuity, and the hope that whatever these Kauffmans and the all the rest died for, they did not die in vain.
What did they die for? During the church service various veterans came forward and read from works about remembering war veterans. Terry Werley read from the poem “In Flanders Fields.†The key line in that poem reads “ If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep.†I take this to mean that we are admonished to remember their cause, although we are not told in the poem what that cause is. Jim Hirko came forward and read “The Gettysburg Address.†Abraham Lincoln makes the cause very clear in his famous speech: “so that government of the people, by the people and for the people does not perish from this earth.â€
So is that the cause we celebrate on Memorial Day? The continuous survival of democracy in the USA?: Is that what all of the Kauffmans died to preserve? So long as the democracy survives, the war dead will not have died in vain? If that is the case, then perhaps I can realign my thoughts about war and death and vanity. I have long held that the soldiers in Vietnam died in vain. No single objective of that war was ever accomplished, and the United States suffered a humiliating defeat. In recent years I have come to feel the same about those who died in The Iraq War. Why did Americans die so that Iran could have a client state? It made no sense.
This is by no means a denigration of anyone who fought in those wars, but rather an admonition to the politicians -- and, yes, also to the people who elected them (including myself who twice voted for George W. Bush) -- who sent our sons to die without knowing even what they were dying for. If there is anything worth remembering on Memorial Day it is that we should take war so seriously that we are unwilling to engage in it for any reason that is not existential to our survival as a country. Unfortunately, every war since WWII has been a war of expediency, fought for the purpose of diplomatic leverage.
Something troubled me about the “government of the people, by the people and for the people†business as well. Lincoln is saying that these honored dead have died for democracy. In Lincoln’s day, that may have been well and good, since the great flaws of democracy had not yet revealed themselves. Today we see that democracy can easily lead to a tyranny of the majority. Without the constraints imposed by a constitution guaranteeing strong individual rights, a political party or movement can cull together a plurality that can bully and rob whoever falls outside their well-defined circle. I see people who are stigmatized for being rich, male, Christian, smokers or believers in traditional values; while people on the left think they live in a world in which people are stigmatized for being LBGTQ, ethnic minorities or women. Both sides are in a desperate tug of war to gather a majority so that their righteous indignation can be manifested into legislation that will stick it to their enemies.
In America, we claim to love freedom, but we have more laws than any country on the face of the earth. Our tax code alone is longer than the entire criminal codes of most other countries. This is the fruit that “democracy†has yielded. Put another way, If Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump represent government “of by and for the people†I am not so sure that is worth dying for, either.
These are my thoughts on Memorial Day. I have great respect for people of positive conviction, whether it be missionaries who put their lives at risk to bring a message of peace to places in desperate need of it, or soldiers who also put their lives at risk to bring mayhem to places lest that mayhem find our shores. Particularly to the soldiers, I am grateful for the opportunities I have had to express freedom in my life, limited as it may have been by those enemies of freedom, both foreign and domestic.
Although it was not read in church today, it is a good day to read Ayn Rand’s 1974 speech to the graduating class at West Point. In it, she makes a libertarian’s case for the US military, complete with the true soldier’s moral justification for dying:
“You have chosen to risk your lives for the defense of this country. .. the defense of one's country means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the conquered slave of any enemy, foreign or domestic. This is an enormous virtue.â€
That is the virtue for which I honor our war dead.
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Beautifully said, @massadvj. Thank you for sharing this.
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Beautifully said, @massadvj. Thank you for sharing this.
Thanks for reading it and commenting.
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I've wondered what preceding generations have sacrificed themselves for given the state of the nation today; how we've frittered away/given away our birthright, and the obvious conclusion is each generation does not fight for posterity as we often hear, it fights for itself.
Past generations of Americans each in turn fought to earn for themselves and their families their liberties, security and way of life.
Now they're gone and we are left to fight for our own. And I do not think that as a nation we're any longer equal to the task.
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Loved it...it's been too long @massadvj
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I've wondered what preceding generations have sacrificed themselves for given the state of the nation today; how we've frittered away/given away our birthright, and the obvious conclusion is each generation does not fight for posterity as we often hear, it fights for itself.
Past generations of Americans each in turn fought to earn for themselves and their families their liberties, security and way of life.
Now they're gone and we are left to fight for our own. And I do not think that as a nation we're any longer equal to the task.
You may be right. I was originally going to discuss how society has been indoctrinated into the belief that we are the beneficiaries of slavery and genocide, and how much that has affected our perceptions of those who fought in the early wars. It obviously also affects the level of patriotism people feel and whether they think the country is worth fighting for.
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:beer:
Loved it...it's been too long @massadvj
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I don't mean to give short shrift to the beginning and rest of your beautifully written article, @massadvj , but will comment primarily on your close:
“You have chosen to risk your lives for the defense of this country. .. the defense of one's country means that a man is personally unwilling to live as the conquered slave of any enemy, foreign or domestic. This is an enormous virtue.â€
That is the virtue for which I honor our war dead.
And in doing so, attempt to address @skeeter 's commentary.
I believe that we have failed as a nation, for generation now, to recognize the domestic enemies, and thus engage and defeat them.
These domestic enemies have purposefully been grinding and tearing down our nation on every front that they believed to be worth attacking: culture, civil society, education, arts, sciences, economy, government, and any others that you can identify. We know how clever, disingenuous, and effective their methods have been.
Why have they been so effective?
Why have we as a citizenry been so "blind" to the presence and actions of these enemies?
I believe that some of it comes from our national ideals which promote "free speech" and free thought to a virtually unlimited extent. I am not sure if that is the complete explanation, or even if it explains most of it.
Perhaps it is also the ideal of "fairness" that permeates our society, to an excess.
But for whatever reason, or set of reasons, we as a nation have allowed these domestic enemies to prosper and flourish in our midst.
(Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.)
We celebrate an amazing host of heroes this weekend, they came from every pocket and segment of this great nation, and gave the ultimate sacrifice to defeat our foreign enemies of all stripes.
Yet generation after generation we watch the damages mount up from the attacks of our domestic enemies, and to this point, we largely sat by without engaging them in battle. Has it yet reached the point that the older generations alive today will no longer acquiesce?
As we see it prosper in our midst, will we dare call it treason?
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You may be right. I was originally going to discuss how society has been indoctrinated into the belief that we are the beneficiaries of slavery and genocide, and how much that has affected our perceptions of those who fought in the early wars. It obviously also affects the level of patriotism people feel and whether they think the country is worth fighting for.
I guess its tough fighting for a nation for which you've been taught contempt.
But I'll bet that if the need ever arises, some crisis or other, there will suddenly be fervent appeals to patriotism from our cynical elites and the traditional American, now their favorite target, will respond. As they always have.
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If there is anything worth remembering on Memorial Day it is that we should take war so seriously that we are unwilling to engage in it for any reason that is not existential to our survival as a country. Unfortunately, every war since WWII has been a war of expediency, fought for the purpose of diplomatic leverage.
Well said @massadvj
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Why have they been so effective?
Why have we as a citizenry been so "blind" to the presence and actions of these enemies?
The opportunistic left has taken our best qualities as a society - tolerance, magnanimity, conscience, introspection, generosity - and used them against us.
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The opportunistic left has taken our best qualities as a society - tolerance, magnanimity, conscience, introspection, generosity - and used them against us.
That's it right there, you said it much better!
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I don't mean to give short shrift to the beginning and rest of your beautifully written article, @massadvj , but will comment primarily on your close:
And in doing so, attempt to address @skeeter 's commentary.
I believe that we have failed as a nation, for generation now, to recognize the domestic enemies, and thus engage and defeat them.
These domestic enemies have purposefully been grinding and tearing down our nation on every front that they believed to be worth attacking: culture, civil society, education, arts, sciences, economy, government, and any others that you can identify. We know how clever, disingenuous, and effective their methods have been.
Why have they been so effective?
Why have we as a citizenry been so "blind" to the presence and actions of these enemies?
I believe that some of it comes from our national ideals which promote "free speech" and free thought to a virtually unlimited extent. I am not sure if that is the complete explanation, or even if it explains most of it.
Perhaps it is also the ideal of "fairness" that permeates our society, to an excess.
But for whatever reason, or set of reasons, we as a nation have allowed these domestic enemies to prosper and flourish in our midst.
(Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.)
We celebrate an amazing host of heroes this weekend, they came from every pocket and segment of this great nation, and gave the ultimate sacrifice to defeat our foreign enemies of all stripes.
Yet generation after generation we watch the damages mount up from the attacks of our domestic enemies, and to this point, we largely sat by without engaging them in battle. Has it yet reached the point that the older generations alive today will no longer acquiesce?
As we see it prosper in our midst, will we dare call it treason?
I wish I could say I disagree with this, but I do not. Unfortunately, I don't believe individual freedom means much to people under 40 today, and ultimately they are the ones who will decide the future of the country. From what I can tell, most of them would prefer to live in Norway.
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This is great thread! Thanks @massadvj! Don't be a stranger! :beer:
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Thanks for the post @massadvj
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1. During WWII 16 million Americans served in uniform, or about ten percent of the population.
Today fewer than one percent serve in uniform.
2. Eisenhower's final speech draft in 1961 was to have warned about the military-industrial-congressionaal complex.
3. From Korea forward we have yet to wage all out war to win.
4 Vietnam may have NOT been in vai, ince it was one of several theaters in the Cold War, overall.
5. What we owe our military people,, is to never use half measures again.
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"Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen."
–Leon Trotsky
The United States of America is not, has never been, and I pray never will be a democracy! LONG live this once great REPUBLIC!
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I don't mean to give short shrift to the beginning and rest of your beautifully written article, @massadvj , but will comment primarily on your close:
And in doing so, attempt to address @skeeter 's commentary.
I believe that we have failed as a nation, for generation now, to recognize the domestic enemies, and thus engage and defeat them.
These domestic enemies have purposefully been grinding and tearing down our nation on every front that they believed to be worth attacking: culture, civil society, education, arts, sciences, economy, government, and any others that you can identify. We know how clever, disingenuous, and effective their methods have been.
Why have they been so effective?
Why have we as a citizenry been so "blind" to the presence and actions of these enemies?
I believe that some of it comes from our national ideals which promote "free speech" and free thought to a virtually unlimited extent. I am not sure if that is the complete explanation, or even if it explains most of it.
Perhaps it is also the ideal of "fairness" that permeates our society, to an excess.
But for whatever reason, or set of reasons, we as a nation have allowed these domestic enemies to prosper and flourish in our midst.
(Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.)
We celebrate an amazing host of heroes this weekend, they came from every pocket and segment of this great nation, and gave the ultimate sacrifice to defeat our foreign enemies of all stripes.
Yet generation after generation we watch the damages mount up from the attacks of our domestic enemies, and to this point, we largely sat by without engaging them in battle. Has it yet reached the point that the older generations alive today will no longer acquiesce?
As we see it prosper in our midst, will we dare call it treason?
:amen: @EdJames ! But it's been for FAR longer than one generation!
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@massadvj
Good to see you here Victor and my hat is off to the Kauffman family! The cemetery here in my little neck of Texas, in which I will one day rest, is much like the one at your Church. The history doesn't extend quite so far back but does go back to the Texas revolution. Many of my ancestors are resting there already and ALL of those who rest there as a result of giving everything for their country, kin or not, have a small American flag adorning their graves today and THEY are what this day is all about.
I have 5 direct ancestors who came here on the Mayflower and members of my family have participated in every war to come along since. Some did not survive the effort and some lost everything they had because they chose to make the effort. Today, as I sit here thinking about them, I cannot keep the tears from my eyes because of what WE have allowed to become of the precious gift that they gave some much to give us.
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@massadvj
Good to see you here Victor and my hat is off to the Kauffman family! The cemetery here in my little neck of Texas, in which I will one day rest, is much like the one at your Church. The history doesn't extend quite so far back but does go back to the Texas revolution. Many of my ancestors are resting there already and ALL of those who rest there as a result of giving everything for their country, kin or not, have a small American flag adorning their graves today and THEY are what this day is all about.
I have 5 direct ancestors who came here on the Mayflower and members of my family have participated in every war to come along since. Some did not survive the effort and some lost everything they had because they chose to make the effort. Today, as I sit here thinking about them, I cannot keep the tears from my eyes because of what WE have allowed to become of the precious gift that they gave some much to give us.
Always good to get your two cents worth, Earl. In this case, it was a lot more than that. The Veterans group here puts American flags and medallions on all the graves of soldiers every Memorial Day and Independence Day. The medallions say what war the vet fought in. The section of the cemetery that houses the Civil War dead is particularly impressive with all the flags.
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1. During WWII 16 million Americans served in uniform, or about ten percent of the population.
Today fewer than one percent serve in uniform.
2. Eisenhower's final speech draft in 1961 was to have warned about the military-industrial-congressionaal complex.
3. From Korea forward we have yet to wage all out war to win.
4 Vietnam may have NOT been in vai, ince it was one of several theaters in the Cold War, overall.
5. What we owe our military people,, is to never use half measures again.
Nice to see you are still posting, Truth Seeker. Thanks for the comments.
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Nice to see you are still posting, Truth Seeker. Thanks for the comments.
Same to you.
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:amen: @EdJames ! But it's been for FAR longer than one generation!
Oh yes, FAR longer than one generation!
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@EdJames
"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague."
Cicero About 2500 years ago
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@EdJames
"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague."
Cicero About 2500 years ago
Thank you for posting that! It has been on my mind since yesterday afternoon...
@Bigun
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Thank you for posting that! It has been on my mind since yesterday afternoon...
@Bigun
You are very welcome! Let's hope it is widely read.
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You may be right. I was originally going to discuss how society has been indoctrinated into the belief that we are the beneficiaries of slavery and genocide, and how much that has affected our perceptions of those who fought in the early wars. It obviously also affects the level of patriotism people feel and whether they think the country is worth fighting for.
Sadly more and more people are being indoctrinated into the belief that this country is not worth fighting for and that patriotism is somehow...a bad thing.
I fear that if something doesn't turn around in the very being of our country that it won't be long until calling someone a patriot will be akin to calling someone a racist. Ilhan Omar has certainly insinuated as much when she disparaged the soldiers who fought in Somalia.
I jsut hope we as a country can turn around this ugly belief about the land in which we live...before it's not jsut the Revolutionary and Civil war monuments the SJW's want to tear down.
Your's was an excellent piece my friend. And we will honor them.
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1. During WWII 16 million Americans served in uniform, or about ten percent of the population.
Today fewer than one percent serve in uniform.
2. Eisenhower's final speech draft in 1961 was to have warned about the military-industrial-congressionaal complex.
3. From Korea forward we have yet to wage all out war to win.
4 Vietnam may have NOT been in vai, ince it was one of several theaters in the Cold War, overall.
5. What we owe our military people,, is to never use half measures again.
"One percent of Americans are touched by this war. Then there is a much smaller club of families who have given all." ~ LTG John F. Kelly
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I wish I could say I disagree with this, but I do not. Unfortunately, I don't believe individual freedom means much to people under 40 today, and ultimately they are the ones who will decide the future of the country. From what I can tell, most of them would prefer to live in Norway.
In 2005 when my oldest son graduated from HS, he and four others on his wrestling team all joined the Navy. Now currently my youngest son has several friends in the military. And none of them prefer to live anywhere than in the Good Ole U.S. of A. My youngest didn't go military, he chose Cyber Security.
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Why have they been so effective?
Why have we as a citizenry been so "blind" to the presence and actions of these enemies?
@EdJames
A couple of wise men once said:
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
We've been blind because while we were busy leading our lives trying to do for our families the best we could...there's been a cancer developing from within with names like "inclusion"..."social justice"..."political correctness"..."speech codes"...and on and on and on...it's eating away at the very fiber of what has made this country great...by indoctrinating generations into believing that everything good about Americans as a people and America as a country is somehow bad and wrong. At first it was easy to laugh off by most because this kind of foolishness was viewed as just a handful of crackpots looking for their 15 minutes of fame.
But to borrow from an old Reagan campaign ad:
There is a Bear in the woods
For some people the Bear is easy to see
Others don't see it at all
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As I have gotten older and a little more cynical,I have came to the conclusion there are a lot more causes worth killing for than there are dying for.
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@EdJames
We've been blind because while we were busy leading our lives trying to do for our families the best we could...there's been a cancer developing from within with names like "inclusion"..."social justice"..."political correctness"..."speech codes"...and on and on and on...it's eating away at the very fiber of what has made this country great...by indoctrinating generations into believing that everything good about Americans as a people and America as a country is somehow bad and wrong. At first it was easy to laugh off by most because this kind of foolishness was viewed as just a handful of crackpots looking for their 15 minutes of fame.
But to borrow from an old Reagan campaign ad:
There is a Bear in the woods
For some people the Bear is easy to see
Others don't see it at all
@txradioguy
Absolutely! I completely understand (though I don't completely let us, including myself, off the hook for not paying attention) that the business of Life has distracted us... and a lot of the distractions are purposefully in place...
But my question was more about the "authorities" that are charged with protecting the nation from the DOMESTIC enemies.... they certainly have seemed to be giving these ENEMIES a pass for quite some time.... :shrug:
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But my question was more about the "authorities" that are charged with protecting the nation from the DOMESTIC enemies.... they certainly have seemed to be giving these ENEMIES a pass for quite some time.... :shrug:
@EdJames I think you already know the answer to that one. They don't view the enemy as a true enemy. They look at them as fellow travelers.
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Letters of Marque as in the Constitution could come in handy sometimes? And a big question mark with that but it is in the constitution.
https://panampost.com/jose-azel/2019/06/03/united-states-why-not-mercenaries/ (https://panampost.com/jose-azel/2019/06/03/united-states-why-not-mercenaries/)
See clause 11 here:
http://www.americanusconstitution.com/article1section8.html (http://www.americanusconstitution.com/article1section8.html)
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In my generation 58,000 young males died in Vietnam. Many drafted, but most enlisted.
In my family since 9-11-2001 only two females enliisted in the military--no males.
The continuous buzz these days is heroin "accidental overdoes" death.
Marriages seem surprisingly rare.
Growing up in America is Not like it once was.
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In my generation 58,000 young males died in Vietnam. Many drafted, but most enlisted.
In my family since 9-11-2001 only two females enliisted in the military--no males.
The continuous buzz these days is heroin "accidental overdoes" death.
Marriages seem surprisingly rare.
Growing up in America is Not like it once was.
Liberal policies that have continued since 1964 have worked to erode the very fiber of family life in America and has succeeded in destroying it for many.