Thursday, October 05, 2006
I always enjoy Jay Nordlinger's column on NRO. Here he quotes John Stuart Mill as saying this:
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
I think there's a lot of truth to that and sometimes I wonder if my courage is up to that standard. I'd like to think so. I'm aware that at my age -- well beyond the military entrance limitations -- it's easy to be in favor of the war effort because others will be the ones going over there. Even so, if called, I'd go because I do believe in the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independance, the US Constitution, the Gettysburg Address and so on. Ours is a great country and worth defending.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
I think there's a lot of truth to that and sometimes I wonder if my courage is up to that standard. I'd like to think so. I'm aware that at my age -- well beyond the military entrance limitations -- it's easy to be in favor of the war effort because others will be the ones going over there. Even so, if called, I'd go because I do believe in the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independance, the US Constitution, the Gettysburg Address and so on. Ours is a great country and worth defending.
# posted by goldpython @ 9:26 AM 
