by Sarah Palin
He’s a recent high school graduate; he was probably an average student, pursued some form of sport activities, drives a ten-year-old jalopy, and has a steady girlfriend that either broke up with him when he left or swears to be waiting when he returns from half a world away. He listens to rock and roll or hip-hop or rap or jazz or swing and a 155mm howitzer.
He is ten or fifteen pounds lighter now than when he was at home because he is working or fighting from before dawn to well after dusk. He has trouble spelling, thus letter writing is a pain for him, but he can field strip a rifle in thirty seconds and reassemble it in less time in the dark. He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must.
He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional.
He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march.
He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity. He is self-sufficient.
He has two sets of fatigues: he washes one and wears the other. He keeps his canteens full and his feet dry.
He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts.
If you’re thirsty, he’ll share his water with you; if you are hungry, his food. He’ll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low.
He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands.
He can save your life—or take it, because that is his job. He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay, and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed.
He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to “square-away” those around him who haven’t bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking.
In an odd twist, day in and day out, far from home, he defends their right to be disrespectful.
Just as did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over two hundred years.
He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding.
Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood.
And now we even have women over there in danger, doing their part in this tradition of going to war when our nation calls us to do so.
As you go to bed tonight, remember this. A short lull, a little shade, and a picture of loved ones in their helmets.
Some might think this description is overly sentimental, and maybe it is. But since my brother sent this to me, countless military families have recommended it to me and I’ve seen it on dozens of military websites.
Our military families are justifiably proud of their husbands and wives and sons and daughters who are serving. But they’re not naïve. Military families see war close up. They’re not easily swayed by propaganda, be it pro or con. They know the reality of sacrifice, not the theory.
Call me biased, but as the mom of a U.S. Army combat vet, I know that our military families sacrifice alongside our military men and women. They don’t personally experience the danger and the harsh conditions, but they know someone they love is experiencing them. For weeks and months at a time, they often don’t even know where their loved one is, or if he or she is all right. For them, time is measured in the units between receiving those letters and those phone calls. Believe me, I know. The year Track was deployed in Iraq was an eventful year for me, to say the least. I went through a tough presidential campaign and then came home to a transformed—and hyper-partisan—political environment in Alaska. But throughout that challenging year, the days I heard from Track were days when no one and nothing could touch me. Todd and I would think, Okay, Associated Press, New York Times: Write what you want. Take your best shot. It doesn’t matter. We heard from our son today and he’s okay. Nothing else matters.
During the year they spent in the Diyala Province, the Stryker Brigade lost many soldiers. Many souls went home. Many families grieved.
The more than three thousand members who made it back home have returned to their base in Alaska. Like Track, they are figuring out how and where to finish their military obligations. The possibility that they will be redeployed as active-duty members or national guardsmen—maybe to Afghanistan this time—is very real.
In the end, the question of why these young men and women serve is probably best answered by us, not them. The lost soldiers from the Stryker Brigade can no longer tell us why they made the ultimate sacrifice. But more important than their motives is our recognition that they died to preserve something great. And more important than our words of gratitude—however heartfelt they are—are our actions. Abraham Lincoln said it for all time on the battlefield at Gettysburg: “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
Our military men and women fight—and die—to defend our freedom. They do their duty. But we have a duty as well. Our duty is to cherish the great gift they have given us; to honor their service and their memory by preserving what Lincoln so memorably called “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
If you ever have the chance to come to Washington, don’t miss visiting Arlington National Cemetery. For me, there is no more powerful reminder of the responsibility we all have to the men and women memorialized by the acres of white markers. As the poet Karl Shapiro reminds us in his poem “Elegy for a Dead Soldier,” as long as we breathe free, we know the reason for their service—and their sacrifice.
Underneath this wooden cross there lies
A Christian killed in battle. You who read
Remember that this stranger died in pain;
And passing here, if you can lift your eyes
Upon a peace kept by human creed
Know that one soldier has not died in vain.
Three
America the Exceptional
There is a depressing predictability to conversations about America these days. More times than not, if you try to say something nice about our country, you’re accused of being a closed-minded nativist, one of those dangerous hicks clinging to her guns, her God, and her country. The equally unpleasant corollary to this practice is that America’s critics never seem to give her the benefit of the doubt anymore. She’s never merely wrong in their eyes; she’s just plain bad.
I was reminded of this distasteful tendency when Arizona recently passed a law that allows state law enforcement officers to question suspected lawbreakers about their immigration status. Love the law or hate the law, you couldn’t help but notice that the reception it received from its critics seemed designed not just to discredit the statute, but to cast America itself in the most negative possible light. If you relied on MSNBC for your news, suddenly Arizona—and, by extension, all of red-state America—had become the equivalent of Nazi Germany. Even worse was the way the law was portrayed by those who should have known better—including members of the Obama administration and others in Washington—as a sign of the inherent badness of America.
As soon as the Arizona law was passed, the Obama administration shifted into a familiar mode: Apologizing for America before foreign audiences. In talks with Chinese officials (representatives of a regime that kills and jails political dissidents and forces abortions on women, among its many other human rights abuses), State Department
officials called the Arizona law part of a “troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination.” Many members of Congress even shamefully stood and applauded when Mexican president Felipe Calderón spoke before a joint session of Congress and accused Arizona of using “racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement.” This, from a head of state whose law enforcement officials have repeatedly been accused of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses of immigrants on its southern border and does more to encourage illegal immigration to the United States than to see that Mexican citizens can provide for their families by working in their homeland.
The knee-jerk tendency on the part of some to run down America and accuse her fans of being mindless hillbillies is getting old. On the other hand, I’m not interested in closing my eyes to our country’s problems. There has to be a middle ground, a way of talking about America that shows we are proud of her greatness but not blind to her flaws. Of course, we’re not perfect, and the accusation that anyone who chooses to accentuate America’s positive aspects is claiming that we are without blemish is not just tiresome but hurtful. It’s a way of keeping the conversation focused on our flaws. It’s a game of “gotcha” played by people who are either too disdainful of or too insecure about America’s beauty to handle an honest conversation about our country.
You’ve probably heard a term being used by those who believe America is a special nation with a special role in the world: American exceptionalism. It may sound kind of cocky and arrogant to some people. But what do we mean when we say America is an exceptional country? We’re not saying we’re better than anyone else, or that we have the right to tell people in other countries how to live their lives. When we say America is exceptional we’re saying we are the lucky heirs to a unique set of beliefs and national qualities, and that we need to preserve and value those beliefs. We’re saying America is a model to the world, not a bully to the world, or responsible for the world.
In one of my favorite magazines, National Review, Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru explain America’s special character well:
Our country has always been exceptional. It is freer, more individualistic, more democratic, and more open and dynamic than any other nation on earth. These qualities are the bequest of our Founding and of our cultural heritage. They have always marked America as special, with a unique role and mission in the world: as a model of ordered liberty and self-government and as an exemplar of freedom and a vindicator of it, through persuasion when possible and force of arms when absolutely necessary.
The idea of American exceptionalism is older than the United States itself. When Ronald Reagan used to speak of a “shining city on a hill,” he was borrowing from John Winthrop, a preacher who led a group of Puritans to religious freedom in America in 1630.
“We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”
Winthrop, in turn, was borrowing from Matthew 5:14, in which Jesus tells his followers, “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.”
“The light of the world.” “A city on a hill.” These are high aspirations for a people in a strange new land. And it’s one of the more curious things about American history, I’ve learned, that it was the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville who described how America has managed to mostly fulfill this promise. If you pay attention while you’re listening to C-SPAN or reading American history you’re sure to come across Tocqueville. He literally wrote the book on American exceptionalism.
In 1831, Tocqueville spent nine months traveling from Boston to Michigan to New Orleans trying to find out about this thing called democracy in this place called America. The first volume of his book, appropriately titled Democracy in America, was published in 1835 and was an instant success. What he saw in America was a country and a people distinctly different from Europe, and thus exceptional. Tocqueville said that three things—American customs (particularly our religious heritage), law (particularly our commitment to federalism, or states’ rights), and geography combined to make “the position of the Americans . . . quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.”
One aspect of American exceptionalism as described by Alexis de Tocqueville that is particularly meaningful today is our propensity to govern ourselves, locally, without waiting for any central authority to show us the way. He could have been talking about towns I’ve been to in New Jersey, Ohio, Texas, or Alaska, for that matter, when he wrote, “In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.”
Tocqueville’s vision of an exceptional system of government combining with an exceptional people to produce an exceptional country is echoed in the writings of American scholars today. Sociologist Charles Murray explains that even though other countries oftentimes don’t like to admit it, they, too, know there is something different about America:
American exceptionalism is not just something that Americans claim for themselves. Historically, Americans have been different as a people, even peculiar, and everyone around the world has recognized it. I’m thinking of qualities such as American optimism even when there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for it. That’s quite uncommon among the peoples of the world. There is the striking lack of class envy in America—by and large, Americans celebrate others’ success instead of resenting it. That’s just about unique, certainly compared to European countries, and something that drives European intellectuals crazy. And then there is perhaps the most important symptom of all, the signature of American exceptionalism—the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies. It is hard to think of a more inspiriting quality for a population to possess, and the American population still possesses it to an astonishing degree. No other country comes close.
Remembering that humility is a virtue, we recognize and value what makes America unique, but that doesn’t give us an excuse to be boastful. Neither, though, does it demand that we owe the world an apology for our success and our leadership. What so many on the left don’t want to admit is that America has been a force for good, not simply for her own people, but for the world. It is a mystery to me why this is so difficult for some to admit. But these days, it’s like a breath of fresh air when you hear a leader straightforwardly and unapologetically state the facts of American greatness. I came across a recently published letter from (who else?) Ronald Reagan to then–Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev that does just that. It was written when Reagan had just gotten out of the hospital following the 1981 assassination attempt. His presidency was just weeks old. In his letter, written in his own hand in response to what he characterized as a letter of “somewhat intemperate” tone from the Soviet leader, President Reagan made it clear that America would not apologize for its leadership in the world:
Is it possible that we have let ideology, political and economical philosophy and governmental policies keep us from considering the very real, everyday problems of the people we represent? Will the average Russian family be better off or even aware that his government has imposed a government of its liking on the people of Afghanistan? . . .
In your letter you imply that such things have been made necessary because of territorial ambitions of the United States; that we have imperialistic designs and thus constitute a threat to your own security and that of the newly emerging nations. There not only is no evidence to support such a charge, there is solid evidence that the United States when it could have dominated the world with no risk to itself made no effort whatsoever to do so.
When WWII ended the United States had the only undamaged industrial power in the world. Its military might was at its pea
k—and we alone had the ultimate weapon, the nuclear bomb with the unquestioned ability to deliver it anywhere in the world. If we had sought world domination who could have opposed us? But the United States followed a different course—one unique in all the history of mankind. We used our power and wealth to rebuild the war-ravaged economies of all the world including those nations who had been our enemies.
Read that, and tell me you’re not proud to be an American!
Sad to say, many of our national leaders no longer believe in American exceptionalism. They—perhaps dearly—love their country and want what’s best for it, but they think America is just an ordinary nation and so America should act like just an ordinary nation. They don’t believe we have a special message for the world or a special mission to preserve our greatness for the betterment of not just ourselves but all of humanity. Astonishingly, President Obama even said that he believes in American exceptionalism in the same way “the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Which is to say, he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism at all. He seems to think it is just a kind of irrational prejudice in favor of our way of life. To me, that is appalling.
His statement reminds me of that great scene in the movie The Incredibles. Dash, the son in the superhero family, who is a super-fast runner, wants to try out for the track team at school. His mom claims it won’t be fair. “Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of. Our powers made us special!” Dash objects. When his mom answers with the politically correct rejoinder “Everyone’s special, Dash,” Dash mutters, “Which is another way of saying no one is.”
Maybe President Obama grew up around coaches who insisted that all the players receive participation “trophies” at the end of the season and where no score was kept in youth soccer games for fear of offending someone. Because just like Mrs. Incredible, when President Obama insists that all countries are exceptional, he’s saying that none is, least of all the country he leads. That’s a shame, because American exceptionalism is something that people in both parties used to believe in.