Monday, May 25, 2009

The Weekly N&C for May 25th, 2009

Better men

This is Memorial Day in the United States. I've had the day here (in Japan) already. I got to spend the day with some old friends. The hard part was the realization that I can't clearly see their faces in my memories any more.

But it sure sounded like someone was singing "Up on Cripple Creek" in the squad bay, again.

***
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 a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

John Stuart Mill
"The Contest in America," Fraser’s Magazine (February 1862); later published in Dissertations and Discussions (1868), vol.1 p. 26 -- as cited on Wikiquotes.

3 comments:

KC-Fresno, Ca. said...

They will be sadly missed - but well remembered.
God Bless You LDG

L.Douglas Garrett said...

@KC

You are most kind, as always. Thank you.

Purr said...

this was so beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and I am so sorry I just got to read this now--

as this is so much with truth~

You are so cool. LDG--

xxx