There are good reasons why societies have made their victorious warriors into national and cultural heroes. At stake in great battles is often freedom or slavery for the whole community. Sometimes even life or death.
Perhaps we Americans have been spoiled by our comparatively safe and comfortable history. Compared to Russians and Germans and Poles and Chinese and Afghans and so many other peoples in the world, most Americans have known relatively little of tyranny's terrors and suppressions of the spirit. Perhaps our sheltered history has impaired our ability to envision the full range of possibilities that history can bring. History, we may believe, has promised us a rose garden.
But there is no such promise. It can happen here, as Sinclair Lewis knew several generations ago. It can happen here, as the recent breathtaking collapse of values (the rise of the culture of falsehood, the massive transfer of power to the mighty and wealth to the already-rich, the dismantling of the Constitution and of all structures that might constrain the ability of power to do whatever it wishes, the transformation of America into the nation that tortures prisoners and that frightens its former friends) has shown.
Being now up against the greatest power in the world, we do not have the luxury to give away any of our power. We cannot afford a lack of focus, or an indifference to results, or a refusal to think strategically, or an unwillingness to be organized and disciplined. Whatever we find in our ways of thinking and acting that has contributed to our impotence must be overcome.
We are engaged in a struggle in which there really is no substitute for victory.
Perhaps we Americans have been spoiled by our comparatively safe and comfortable history. Compared to Russians and Germans and Poles and Chinese and Afghans and so many other peoples in the world, most Americans have known relatively little of tyranny's terrors and suppressions of the spirit. Perhaps our sheltered history has impaired our ability to envision the full range of possibilities that history can bring. History, we may believe, has promised us a rose garden.
But there is no such promise. It can happen here, as Sinclair Lewis knew several generations ago. It can happen here, as the recent breathtaking collapse of values (the rise of the culture of falsehood, the massive transfer of power to the mighty and wealth to the already-rich, the dismantling of the Constitution and of all structures that might constrain the ability of power to do whatever it wishes, the transformation of America into the nation that tortures prisoners and that frightens its former friends) has shown.
Being now up against the greatest power in the world, we do not have the luxury to give away any of our power. We cannot afford a lack of focus, or an indifference to results, or a refusal to think strategically, or an unwillingness to be organized and disciplined. Whatever we find in our ways of thinking and acting that has contributed to our impotence must be overcome.
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