LM#72--America 250: America Stays Strong When It Fights Only When It Must

Liberty Drums And America At 250

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Those are the drums of Liberty. America at 250 years old. This is part one. Defending Liberty and Carrying the Torch. On this Liberty Minute.

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Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

Thomas Paine And A Desperate Winter

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Hello, I am David, and welcome back to this Liberty Minute. Let's start with Thomas Paine. It was December 1776. Washington's army is falling apart, morale is in the basement, soldiers are deserting. The whole revolution is on the verge of collapse. It's barely been over a year. And Thomas Paine sits down and writes one of the most powerful pieces in political writing in American history. He calls it the American Crisis, and the opening line hits like a hammer. Quote, these are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country. But he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Washington had those words read aloud to his troops the night before they crossed the Delaware on a surprise attack. The night before the Battle of Trenton, and it worked. They crossed, they fought, they won. Vital victory for General Washington.

Sunshine Patriots And Real Sacrifice

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And now here's what I want you to notice about that quote. Payne isn't talking just about courage. He is drawing a line between two kinds of people. The man who shows up when it's easy, the sunshine patriot. And the man who shows up when it cost him something. That distinction matters. It applies directly to how our nation decides to go to war.

Wars America Had To Fight

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Let's be clear about something right out of the gate. Some wars were not optional. Some wars were absolutely necessary. And the men and women who fought them deserve every ounce of honor we can give them and more. They didn't come home to hugs. Some didn't come home at all. Their family was given a flag instead of a hug. The revolution, the American Revolution, obviously, you do not get America without that fight. The nation could not survive permanently, half slave and half free. Over 600,000 Americans died settling that question. It was brutal. It was horrific. But it was necessary. World War II. There's no debate here. Nazi Germany was exterminating millions of people. Imperial Japan had attacked us directly. You do not negotiate with that. You fight. And we did. Over 400,000 Americans gave their lives. The free world survived because of it. We created the post-war world, and we reaped the benefits of it. The Cold War, four decades of standing watch against Soviet communism. A system that already had killed tens of millions of its own people wanted to export that misery to the rest of the world. America had to hold that line. And when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, it came down in part because we refused to blink.

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Those are the best wars of necessity.

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The wars Pain was talking about, the ones that were worth every sacrifice. It's not to say that there's uncomfortable wars, but we gotta be honest about the conversation.

Wars Of Convenience And The Cost

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Not every war America fought for falls into that category. There have been conflicts where the threat was overstated, where the intelligence was wrong or manipulated, where we went in with no clear objective and came out years later with nothing to show for it except a body count and a debt load. But even though he was a mediocre president, I will say Dwight D. Eisenhower, the five-star general, the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe, the man who planned D-Day, looked at a post-war America and issued a warning that we did not listen to carefully enough. And he said, Be careful. The machinery of war can take on a life of its own. The relationship between government, the military, and the defense industry creates pressures that can put and push and pull a nation into a conflict when no conflict is necessary. He did call it the military-industrial complex. He was not being dramatic, he was being eighty years hence probably prophetic. Because here's what happens when a nation starts fighting wars of convenience instead of wars of necessity. Young men and women die for objectives that were not or never were clearly defined. Families are shattered, trillions of dollars that could have been invested at home get spent overseas. And the credibility that America built through a genuine sacrifice, the credibility of a Normandy, of a midway, of a Berlin airlift, that gets slowly eroded around the world. A nation that fights needless wars does not project strength. It hemorrhages it.

Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial Warning

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Now that's not to say that we can live in isolation. We can't. We must not. Not as a superpower. Peace through strength is what we need to adopt. It's what we have adopted during this current administration. But we can't stick our head in the sand and say that we will never be involved in another war overseas.

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Because if you do that, the war is going to come to your shores. You can stick your head in the sand all you want.

Peace Through Strength Without Isolation

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And here's what I keep coming back to as we celebrate 250th anniversary coming up. The Thomas Paine did not celebrate war. He understood it. He understood sometimes it was necessary. I think their generation really understood that sometimes war is necessary. But he was also crystal clear that the purpose of the fight had to be real, it had to matter. He went on to say, We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in. That's the standard. That's the bar. Is the war setting someone free? Is the world keeping the United States free?

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That's an honest debate that we have to have all the time. If the answer is yes, if the answer is a just war, even though the current Holy Father says it's outdated, then you have to go and you have to fight.

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You have to fight with everything you have. Part of the problem in some wars is we fight with one arm behind our back. You gotta fight with everything you have and you gotta see it through. If the answer is no, then you have to find another way. War is hell, wars are messy, wars are immoral, and all their nuances. But sometimes they're necessary. Just like the police department's necessary. We would not have to have a police department if we were all angels. It can be complicated, yes. But our leaders and our citizens have to keep it simple to be able to make good decisions. Good decisions that require honesty, and honesty sometimes is the hardest part in this whole debate.

Reluctant Warrior Standard For The Future

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So here we are closing in on 250 years, and I think the most patriotic thing this generation and you and I can do is not just to celebrate what America has done, but to be honest about the full picture. America is always at its best, and always has been the reluctant warrior, the farmer who picked up the musket because there was no other choice, the factory worker who became a soldier because the world needed saving, the man who came home as fast as he could and got back to something else. That version of America, the one that fights because it must, not because it can, is still the right standard, and that's worth it aspiring to. As Payne put it, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. But the conflict has to mean something. It has to be real, it has to be necessary. So at 250 years old, America has earned the right to be selective about when it sends its sons and daughters into harm's way. Not out of weakness, not out of wisdom, or out of wisdom rather, not out of weakness, out of wisdom, hardfought wisdom, and that we demand peace through strength.

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Wars of necessity, not convenience.

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That's a tradition we can be proud of. That's a tradition worth carrying forward into the next 250 years.

Share The Show And Join Substack

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And that is going to do it for today. If you like this episode, be sure to share with someone else, uh, someone who needs to hear it. Leave a review if you can. If you haven't already, we appreciate it. It genuinely helps more people to find the show. Also, please get over to Substack, that's our main central location now, where we are building out a catalog of writing and book reviews to help you build a full-fledged flourishing life. As always, keep fighting the good fight. And don't be a sunshine patriot.

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Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.