Memorial Day (cont’d)
Last week, I recommended several readings for Memorial Day, and now, a week later, it’s certainly not too late to take the opportunity to visit the exemplary website on that holiday assembled by Leon and Amy Kass. And here’s something else worth reading: a Memorial Day address delivered last week in the Old Cemetery in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, by Stephen D. Trafton, a Harvard graduate who served as a Marine infantry officer in the 1990s and then returned to active duty in 2005-2006, deploying with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit to Anbar Province in Iraq.
Here’s the text of his remarks:
This year, 2016, we are halfway through the centenary of the First World War, fought between 1914 and 1918. When I was a teenager, I had the great good fortune to go to school in England. Each year my school held a service to honor its war dead, and at that time, nearly thirty years ago, there were still many living veterans of the First World War. On Remembrance Day, which is what the English call their Memorial Day, it was a tradition that some of those veterans, graduates of the school, would return and lay a wreath at the altar in the school chapel.
To do so, the veterans had to walk past a huge marble plaque on the outside wall of the chapel — the school’s permanent memorial to its graduates killed in the First World War. There were 221 names inscribed on that plaque, the equivalent of two entire classes. It was then, as I watched those old men walking past the names on that plaque — the names of their classmates, their teammates, their friends — it was then that I began to understand what a Memorial Day means.
I am struck, as I recall those services, which were an annual part of my school life, that there was never any effort made to romanticize the mud, the barbed wire, the gas attacks, the miserable existence in the trenches, and the horrific and premature deaths of the men whom we had gathered to remember. But by the same token, we were never invited to think of those men as victims, either. Those were stern and somber occasions that filled my young heart with melancholy, with deep respect for the courage of the men who fought that war, and above all with gratitude — gratitude for the fact that their sacrifice was part of the very foundation of my extraordinarily blessed existence.
A few years later, when I was a newly minted Marine officer in training, we had an instructor who started every class, no matter what the subject was, by reading us a Medal of Honor citation. These were almost always posthumous citations — there are few survivors of the sorts of deeds for which that medal is awarded. Although the individual actions described varied, the opening and closing lines almost never did. “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty,” they always began, and they closed thus: “His actions reflect the highest credit upon himself and the United States Naval tradition. He gallantly gave his life for his country.”
We are fortunate that he did. And not just the Medal of Honor winners, but all of the dead whom we remember today, regardless of how each untimely death occurred. They all put themselves in harm’s way in our service. As the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in 1862, reflecting on another war that we remember now, the Civil War: “As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their everrenewing 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.”
On this Memorial Day, let us honor the dead, and be grateful for their sacrifices.
And, of course, not just on Memorial Day…
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MacLean, Mansfield, and Ceaser
And speaking of Marines, Aaron MacLean, who served as an infantry officer in Afghanistan, has a terrific piece in the new Weekly Standard, on “Reactionary Manliness: Donald Trump’s tough-guy act.” Very much worth reading. And speaking of manliness, the recent symposium to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Harvey Mansfield’s Manliness, hosted by the Hoover Institution and the Foundation for Constitutional Government, can be viewed here. Jim Ceaser of the University of Virginia was one of the participants in that symposium. And once you’ve seen the video of the Hoover conference, you’ll want to take a look at a new conversation with him on Conversations with Bill Kristol.
In this Conversation, Ceaser discusses the intellectual roots of contemporary progressivism and the role of progressivism in our politics today. He compares the new progressivism with the early-twentieth-century version and highlights the influence of “postmodernism” on the contemporary left and the effects of progressivism and its relationship to political correctness on and off campus.
This conversation draws on Ceaser’s recent Weekly Standard essay “What’s Next for the Left?”, which is certainly worth re-reading. And when you’re done with that, feel free to take a look at the recent conversation with Harvey Mansfield on Manliness here.
Well, all of that should certainly take some time–which will keep you distracted from the horrific condition of the the 2016 presidential race, where so far we have a choice between two non-choiceworthy candidates. Need more distractions? Watching the Warriors close out one of the great seasons in NBA history–or watching a Cleveland comeback–should keep us all busy this week as well.
There is, Adam Smith said, “a great deal of ruin in a nation.” There are also a great deal of worthwhile ways to spend time when politics gets too depressing. Still, politics remains awfully important. So have no fear! After spending a few hours on the sports section today, and a drink or two, I’ll be hopping back in the political saddle…
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Onward!
Bill Kristol
