The American Spectator

Special Report

(Page 2 of 2)

So when is it worth fighting for something? If so many Democrats of the 1860s believed neither the Union nor freedom for blacks was worth the fight, that the carnage visited in three short days in Gettysburg was far too much to ask, why should that not be any less true today?

p>The answer to the Iraq War critics is perhaps best provided by another man from another period of American history. On this Fourth of July it resonates: br> /p>

"Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?...I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past....Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation. ..I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array if its purpose be not to force us to submission?"

The speaker was Patrick Henry, addressing the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1775. He ended, of course, with his ringing declaration to "give me liberty or give me death." But Henry's perceptive understanding about the aggressive intention of King George III was, as with Lincoln's estimate of the necessity of fighting to both save the Union and free the slaves, well grounded in an understanding of human nature.

Confronted by the latest episodes of a "painful truth" on vivid display in Glasgow and London, the biggest enemy America faces is a mindset that relegates the very real horrors of Gettysburg to some facile description of "abolition," and shuts its eyes to the actual costs that made the freedom of every black man, woman, and child in America a reality. It looks at television screens portraying intentionally staged violence in Iraq and flinches.

"Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction?" asked Patrick Henry almost 90 years before the carnage of Gettysburg. "Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies have bound us hand and foot?"

For an increasingly vocal number of Americans, the answer seems to be "yes!"

As we celebrate this latest Fourth of July, all Americans -- both supporters and opponents of the war in Iraq -- could do worse than to reflect on what it really means to pay for the freedom they see all around them. To understand that the horrors that were visited 144 years ago on this quaint Pennsylvania town just down the road from here were necessary to the freedom we wake up to every single day in the 21st century.

And to understand as well that what has happened in Glasgow and London -- and the debate that rages in America right now -- is in reality nothing new at all. Patrick Henry would have recognized all of it, and understood the significance immediately. So too would Lincoln.

Neither would be surprised that as we celebrate this latest Fourth of July, there are still those among their own modern countrymen who, "having eyes, see not, having ears, hear not."

It is a painful truth. And there will be a price.

topics:
Barack Obama, Television, Law, Iraq, NATO, Africa