Pete Hegseth ’03 is quoted, referring to the United States of America as “our sacred homeland,” disclosing the justly jettisoned juvenile vocabulary of an outdated era. That vocabulary of the last century crusaded the tried, tested, and ultimately trashed old trope of “Blood and Soil.” Triumphantly, the hard-fought allied victory of World War II soundly rejected the misleading mendacity of that reprehensibly misguided myth.
We are a nation, a republic, and not a “homeland,” and what is sacred is our freedom and our liberty. These are the Constitutional rights pledged to ourselves that now receive increasingly aggressive threats from our own current government, of which Pete Hegseth is a component.
The referenced PAW article offers the opinion that “After the attacks (of 9/11), war seemed inevitable,” but war is never inevitable and instead only a choice of action. As historians Ariel and Will Durant succinctly summarized in their seminal The Story of Civilization, “One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.”
It is duly recorded that our (evidently lackluster) U.S. intelligence had full recognition and understanding about the Tora Bora caves (the post 9/11 hideout of Osama bin Laden). Yet it took nearly 10 years of extensively exhausted (and apparently largely ineffectual) U.S. blood and treasure before that mastermind of 9/11 was finally brought to justice.
Are we safer as a nation now, than then? Current circumstance safely suggests that the jury, on this count, still remains out.
Pete Hegseth ’03 is quoted, referring to the United States of America as “our sacred homeland,” disclosing the justly jettisoned juvenile vocabulary of an outdated era. That vocabulary of the last century crusaded the tried, tested, and ultimately trashed old trope of “Blood and Soil.” Triumphantly, the hard-fought allied victory of World War II soundly rejected the misleading mendacity of that reprehensibly misguided myth.
We are a nation, a republic, and not a “homeland,” and what is sacred is our freedom and our liberty. These are the Constitutional rights pledged to ourselves that now receive increasingly aggressive threats from our own current government, of which Pete Hegseth is a component.
The referenced PAW article offers the opinion that “After the attacks (of 9/11), war seemed inevitable,” but war is never inevitable and instead only a choice of action. As historians Ariel and Will Durant succinctly summarized in their seminal The Story of Civilization, “One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.”
It is duly recorded that our (evidently lackluster) U.S. intelligence had full recognition and understanding about the Tora Bora caves (the post 9/11 hideout of Osama bin Laden). Yet it took nearly 10 years of extensively exhausted (and apparently largely ineffectual) U.S. blood and treasure before that mastermind of 9/11 was finally brought to justice.
Are we safer as a nation now, than then? Current circumstance safely suggests that the jury, on this count, still remains out.