Dr. Gina laments, ‘It doesn’t seem many are really willing to fight’
Feb. 27 marked the five-year anniversary of the birth of the tea party. March 1 marked the two-year anniversary of the death of a patriot in that movement, Andrew Breitbart. And this week marks the annual convention of conservatives in Washington, D.C., Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. This is an appropriate time to assess the pulse of conservatives.
Conservatives often use the hashtag, #War when tweeting about the tyrannical imperialism they believe has overtaken the culture, but is there really a concerted war, or more of a frenzied disagreement?
War is mental
As I watch what is happening, the term that often comes to mind is “playground politics,” which Dr. Paterno and I covered extensively in our book, “Ladies and Gentlemen.” The child-like behavior has become so pervasive in politics, that it has left otherwise perfectly patriotic people perfectly cynical.
Teddy Roosevelt knew war. He addressed it in his speech, “Citizenship in a Republic,” delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910. It seems he knew that most every day enjoyed in the freedom of a republic was likely to be part life, part war.
“The Man in the Arena”:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
War is hell, and though Americans seem to know that on some level, they tend to forget that the battle for the republic will be ugly, painful, unpredictable, tiring, insulting, frustrating, demeaning and that we could lose.