Independence Day at Yorktown

This morning our family will set up our chairs at our traditional spot near the Yorktown Victory Monument for the annual Independence Day Parade. It's just a short walk away from the battlefield where the American forces, with French help, defeated the British and won our independence in 1781. There are few other places in America that are as significant to July 4: Philadelphia, certainly; possibly Boston. But I find it very moving to be here where it finally culminated in victory.

My regular commute to work takes me through the battlefield, so every day I see reminders of the courage of America's first Army. Without intending any reflection on Britain today, close and valued allies that they are, histories of the Revolutionary War indicate that America won because of the difference in our leadership. George Washington was a man of principle who was willing to do whatever it took to lead his men to victory. Most of the several British Generals who were in charge of the war at various times had another purpose in mind: impressing the court and the press back home in Britain. For a good read on the Revolution, I recommend Jeff Shaara's historical novels, Rise to Rebellion and The Glorious Cause.

Our family may also decide to visit the Thomas Nelson House in historic Yorktown; it's open for free tours on July 4. Nelson was a wealthy merchant before he signed the Declaration of Independence--which ends:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Nelson gave as he pledged: he spent his fortune financing the militia, and died in poverty.

I've been thinking of him in light of Anthony Esolen's excellent article in Touchstone magazine: "Over Our Dead Bodies: Men Who Are Willing To Lay Down Their Lives Are Truly Indispensable." Caution: it's a dangerous article.

"For God has created us men to be the ones who do not give birth, and who therefore are, as a brute biological fact, dispensable. Therein lies our glory and the claim we justly make upon our wives. A man is indispensable, so to speak, only insofar as he assumes the danger of leading in faith and love. Such a man knows that the breath in his lungs is of no consequence. Lower the rope, he calls to his comrades at the top of the cliff."

Esolen here is speaking most specifically to a man's role in leading his home, but the application extends much further:

"The men of all really thriving cultures know that their lives, if truly lived, are not their own. The samurai was taught to relish each day as one won from death, an unexpected boon: For the moment he swears allegiance to his lord, he must consider his life as already forfeit. Thus, he can lay that life down at a nod, whenever the sacrifice should be required."

I have a double privilege in living where I do: it is not just the battlefield of yesterday that I encounter often, but also the warriors of today. Our corner of Virginia is home to 90,000 or so men and women in uniform. I've known dozens of them. They are men and women of uncommon honor and courage. Esolen, still speaking pointedly to men, says,

"Set aside all questions about the justice of the war. You cannot be a man, you cannot know about manhood, if you can find no answer to that question. You do it because it ought to be done. You do it because you sense that, in the present circumstances, you are not important. Indeed, you are dispensable. The country is important. You do it (and you are probably proud of it, and cannot resist showing it to some pretty young lady) because you acknowledge order and hierarchy: something greater than yourself, to which you pay honor. You kneel, and you hold your head high.

"I need hardly say that if American boys are taught such lessons today, it is by accident."

You'll have to read the article to get the context of the question he's referring to here; it's too complex to capture in a quotation. (The "war" he speaks of here is not a specific one, like today's in Iraq; it is any battle a man faces. Again, that requires the fuller context.)

I've been teaching my children that courage is "choosing to do the right thing, even if it is difficult or frightening." I agree with Esolen: that message is mostly missing in America. Here is one of the reasons I have loved The Lord of the Rings and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe so much: courage shines in both stories. It shines in part because of characters who have a conviction of what is right. That, too, is sorely lacking these days.

There is a rumor afoot that the founding of America had little to do with Biblical thinking. It must take a lot of effort to sustain that belief. Our first great document, this same Declaration of Independence, appeals to God in both its opening and closing sentences. The same sentiment appears throughout the letters and speeches of our Founding Fathers. Some of them to be sure were deists or skeptics, but even they--like Ben Franklin, who appealed for prayer at the Constitutional Convention--acknowledged dependence on God and his guidance.

Without a sense of what is right, where will a nation find its courage? Without the indispensable breed of men who consider themselves dispensable in service of what is good and right, how will we stand?

(Edited 7/5/06 by including a photo from yesterday's parade.)

Posted: Tue - July 4, 2006 at 06:44 AM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Independence Day at Yorktown

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson