I remember the drums. Sometimes they were actual percussion instruments, beating out a rhythmic call to arms. Others were more metaphorical, shouted out from criers, or pulpits, or newspapers, but always- drums. War is an entirely human enterprise and it serves a valuable function in a purely Darwinian sense: both individually and in summation it weeds out the weak, the defective, and the misled. It serves to move vast sums of materiel and wealth across large distances. It mixes the gene pool in a very brutal and straightforward manner.

War brings vast misery and suffering in its wake, particularly when waged by those whose ambitions are grand and personal and vainglorious. War brings peace, prosperity and security in its wake when waged by those whose purpose is clear, communal and preservative. No war, not one that has ever been launched by any nation or any group in all the history of mankind was entirely of one type or another. Not all the Germans in 1939 were Nazis. Not all the Colonial Militia of the late eighteenth century were liberty-loving Patriots. Kahn, Cromwell, Alexander, Suleiman, Mao, Roosevelt, Caesar… In the end it was the aftermath of their actions that led to history’s just conclusion regarding the worth or lack thereof of the characters and actors involved.

Still, there are precedents. There are trends. When Freedom calls her sons to war she has to answer to a people whose very political existence is steeped in the ideals of personal responsibility and Freedom as a birthright. It is hard for many to understand- they have not lived the centuries in between and are caught in the mortal trap of their own contemporary viewpoints. This is not the fault of the living; rather it is the way of natural order. Let history alone be the constraint from the past, and leave the modern at the mercy of its own choices. So it is simple to dismiss the modern Free World as self-absorbed, self-indulgent, isolated and indifferent. It is an easy judgment made by those who purport to gaze down from higher ground upon masses they despise for the very power they wield in a Freedom loving Republic.

The Free World now embarks on a mission that will last a decade, or decades, and require battles fought not only on the fields of martial contest but also upon the merciless gridirons of philosophy: a war of Ideas, and Ideals. The tools of this war are more than physical weapons, they are the razor-sharp cry of the tortured oppressed, those who some feel have not the will or capacity to love Freedom, to embrace Her, to make Her the heart and soul of new, Free, modern nations. But Freedom knows these peoples. Freedom has not turned her back, nor deafened her ears, nor cast her eyes aside. Freedom abides.

Freedom calls her sons to war and will allow history to be the final judge.

Posted on March 18th, 2003 by Zsallia
Filed under: The Present