A Salute to Veterans

Today on Veterans' Day, I cannot really do adequate justice on saying how much the veterans who have served in the armed force mean to this county.  So in lieu of taking time myself, I will post some quotes that begin to attempt to explain and frame their scarifices for this country, the greatest county now or ever.

Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address:

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we can not hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.  

G.K. Chesterton on courage (thanks to Peter Schramm):

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying.

Ronald Reagan on November 11, 1988:

We're gathered today, just as we have gathered before, to remember those who served, those who fought, and those who -- those still missing, and those who gave their last full measure of devotion for our country. We're gathered at a monument on which the names of our fallen friends and loved ones are engraved, and with crosses instead of diamonds beside them, the names of those whose fate we do not yet know. One of those who fell wrote, shortly before his death, these words: "Take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own. And take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind."

Well, today, Veterans Day, as we do every year, we take that moment to embrace the gentle heroes of Vietnam and of all our wars. We remember those who were called upon to give all a person can give, and we remember those who were prepared to make that sacrifice if it were demanded of them in the line of duty, though it never was. Most of all, we remember the devotion and gallantry with which all of them ennobled their nation as they became champions of a noble cause.

Hayward on Newt

At Power Line, Steven Hayward, while drawing up a strong argument for the candidacy of Newt Gingrich, ruminates on a very important point:  Newt's focus on bringing back on older style of politics more akin to that of the Founders.  Here is Hayward:

 But beyond handicapping the primary campaign dynamics, Newt is doing something interesting and maybe profound: he is trying to run for president according to an older model that stresses substance over sound bytes and gimmicky, targeted campaign strategy.  (Hence the emphasis on Lincoln-Douglas style debates that de-emphasize the place of the media questioners, among other things.)  It is a bid to see whether presidential politics can still be conducted along the line of the old republic that would be more familiar to the Founders, to the style of public argument more akin to what Hamilton had in mind in talking about “refining and enlarging the public view” through “reflection and choice” in Federalist #1.

Exploring this phenomena is all the more important in an age where the characteristics and traits needed to become president are getting farther and farther from the virtues and principles needed to be a good president.

Hmmm...

On Natural Law and Conservative Judges

In his latest column, Hadley Arkes recounts an ever-present theme in his writing over the years:  the abandonment of natural law by conservative judges.  Here is Arkes:

One of the oddities of our time is how many Catholic lawyers look upon the natural law as a collection of hazy sentiments, hovering in the sky, having little practical bearing on the cases that come before them. They identify the natural law with “activist” judges on the Left, soaring off into the stratosphere, offering high-minded sentiments, untethered to anything in the text of the Constitution.   

And yet, if we can recognize the misuse or abuse of the natural law, that suggests we can tell the difference between a plausible and implausible, rightful or wrongful use. Why not get clear, then, on the rightful use, rather than abandon the natural law altogether?

He then points to the Contract Clause of the Constitution to show an example of the underlying natural law principles inherent in the Constitution:

...The “Contracts Clause” of the Constitution represents one of the deep principles of lawfulness, but nothing in the Constitution distinguishes a legitimate from an illegitimate contract. We are thrown back upon the sense of the community about things that are rightful or wrongful, to the moral reasoning that should ever form the laws.

Only one kind of creature can make a contract – or a law.  For only one kind of creature understands what it means to bear an obligation that may no longer accord with his interests or inclinations. Any serious discussion of the law will have to lead us back to that one creature who must ever be the subject and object of the law. 

It is critical that conservative judges are able to interpret the Constitution in this light, the way the Founders intended.  Without this standard, there is no way to coherently separate the principles from the compromises of the Constitution.

Some Thoughts on Herman Cain

I was on vacation over the weekend, and I missed--thankfully--a lot of the news that occurred, with much of it centering on Herman Cain and the allegations against him that are growing by the day.  I am not sure if he did what the growing number of women allege that he did, but it is obviously troublesome to say the least.  It is not that troublesome that Cain did not seem to prepare for these allegations; Rush Limbaugh said on Monday that it is kind of preposterous to say that Cain should have seen this coming, and he is somewhat right:  most of the women settled with the National Restaurant Association back in the late 90s, and Cain was unaware of the settlement conditions.

The troublesome thing--and somewhat unsurprising thing--is the way the media has come after Cain.  Those politicians on the Left seem to always be given the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and those defending certain politicians--e.g., Bill Clinton--seem to still want to blame the women accusers or redefine the meaning of sexual assault in a Hobbesian kind-of-way (or, in the case of John Edwards, be in constant need of having to wear a neck brace).  Cain and most politicians on the Right are presumed guilty right away.  Those defending Cain should be careful not to so much as defend the man--who may be guilty--but the principle underlying this whole ordeal:  the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven.

Obama's God

President Obama, commenting on a vote today in Congress today affirming the motto "In God We Trust" on all government buildings, said this in response:  "That's not putting people back to work," Obama said. "I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people to work."  Wow, what humility.  I am glad that Obama jobs bill now has the approval of God.  But wait a minute, didn't Obama just give a speech on the evils of relying on things outside the control of the government? 


I am reminded here of Lincoln's God in the Second Inaugural where he talks of the relation of the North and South to the will of a Living God:

Both [the North and South] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 

For Lincoln, God's purposes are mysterious and are out of the grasp of human reason.  The God of the Bible is not directly concerned with positive law--that is left up to us to decide.  But that doesn't mean that the positive law--the laws set down by the people--does not have a standard.  The standard to judge the justness of the positive law is the natural law, which is accessible to everyone capable of reason. 

So at the end of the day, I guess I am just really not sure how Obama knows God's will regarding his jobs bill.   

The Ohio Farmer on the Debates

In today's Letter from a Ohio Farmer, a project of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, the Farmer wonders aloud if the current process of picking a president--with much of it being based solely on debate performances--is worthy of a nation like ours.  Here is the Farmer:

What’s so strange about the growing importance of debates in presidential campaigns is that debating – even defined loosely as appearing poised, serious, imperturbable, and well-informed in what amounts to a competitive group press-conference – doesn't correspond to anything a president ever does once elected.  An American president does not, like a British prime minister, have to defend his policies to critics in legislative chambers.  Presidents talk a lot in public, of course, but always in highly controlled settings that allow them to confine their remarks to the subjects they want to talk about, and address them in ways of their own choosing.  Saying we elected Smith president because he’s such a good debater, then, is a little like saying that we chose Jones to be our quarterback because he's such a good ice skater.

As the Farmer chronicles, debates between presidential nominees became the standard in our politics only after the Nixon-Kennedy debates leading up to the election in 1960. 

But, as an logical extension from the above paragraph, one wonders if the characteristics to successfully become president are the same as those it takes to actually be a good president.  Would today's process make it easier or harder to pick a man like Lincoln, who would look awfully strange, and would have a voice that would be unimpressive?  If the answer is in the affirmative, then that should tell us something about the great flaws of the current process.