As the Republicans trot out their old "
cut-and-run" slander against the Democrats, it's worth going back to see how true patriots responded when our country really was in mortal danger. The time was late fall 1776, as General Howe's British and Hessian troops pursued Washington's Continentals all the way from New York City into safe haven in Pennsylvania.
During this prolonged retreat Tom Paine sat down at a drumhead, using a piece of wood for his pen, and wrote the following immortal words:
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. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
Published in the
Pennsylvania Journal on December 19 and released as a pamphlet four days later, Paine's essay had an immediate impact on the morale of Washington's troops and on the attitude of the country overall. A contemporary observer noted it was "read in the [Continental Army] camp, to every corporal's guard, and in the army, and out of it had more than the intended effect." According to the historian
David Hackett Fischer, the "troops used its first sentence as a watchword and later as a battle cry."
In a book devoted to reinterpreting the history of Washington's crossing of the Delaware, Fischer makes the following statement:
There is an old American folk tale about George Washington and the Crossing of the Delaware. It tells us that the new American republics nearly failed in the winter of 1776, that George Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night, and that his victory at Trenton revived the Revolution. All of this story is true, but it is not the whole truth. There was more to it. The great revival did not follow the battles of Trenton and Princeton, important as they were. It preceded them, and made those events possible (though not inevitable). Further, the revival did not rise solely from the leadership of George Washington himself, great as he was as a general and a man. He would have been the first to agree that it emerged from the efforts of many soldiers and civilians, merchants and farmers, leaders in the army and members of the Congress. Most of all it rose from the acts and choices of ordinary people in the valley of the Delaware, as Thomas Paine's American Crisis began to circulate among them.
This great revival grew from defeat, not from victory. The awakening was a response to a disaster. Doctor Benjamin Rush, who had a major role in the event, believed that this was the way a free republic would always work, and the American republic in particular. He thought it was a national habit of the American people (maybe all free people) not to deal with a difficult problem until it was nearly impossible. "Our republics cannot exist long in prosperity," Rush wrote. "We require adversity and appear to possess most of the republican spirit when most depressed."
Now, it is really easy to mock Jonah Goldberg's support for other people to fight the war, and the blogosphere has been doing it for over a year now. But let's look back at what Jonah wrote in the Corner back in January 05:
As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.
Compare that reaction to John Rosbrugh, a Presbyterian clergyman in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. Here's how Fischer reports his response to the 1776 Crisis:
[The] militia were turning out. In Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Presbyterian clergyman John Rosbrugh urged men from the pulpit to take up arms. He was sixty-three years old, but when the call went out, he left his young wife and five children and went off to the army as chaplain of the Third Battalion of the Northampton County militia. On December 27, while waiting to cross the Delaware, he seemed to have a premonition that he would not see his family again and put his thoughts in a letter.
"We are going over to New Jersey," he wrote. "You would think it strange to see your husband, an old man, riding with a French fusée slung at his back. This may be the last letter you shall receive from from your husband. I have counted myself yours, and have been enlarged by our mutual love of God.... Pray for us. From your loving husband, John Rosbrugh."
Here's what happened to John Rosbrugh in the second battle of Trenton, on January 2, 1777:
In the confusion, some Americans were left behind, and a few were caught by the oncoming British and Hessians. One of them was John Rosbrugh, the elderly Scots Presbyterian chaplain from Northampton County, Pennsylvania. As the Americans fell back through the town, Rosbrugh was sitting in Trenton's Blazing Star Tavern. The noise of battle increased, and he ran into the street. He found that somebody had taken his horse, and tried to run down the street toward the creek. He was too late. A "party of Hessians" overtook him and obeyed Colonel von Donop's order: no quarter for rebels. The Hessians made it a game. They took his weapons, stole his money, plundered his watch, stripped off his clothing, and began to torment him with their bayonets. As the chaplain fell on his knees and began to pray, they killed him. Rosbrugh's naked body was found in an open field with thirteen bayonet wounds and many saber cuts to the head. British officers, who hated the "black regiment" of the Presbyterian clergy, celebrated his death.
On a day when we mourn PFC Kristian Manchaca and PFC Thomas Tucker, whose deaths in Iraq appear even more horrendous than the torture suffered by Chaplain Rosbrugh in America's first war, we do well to remember the sacrifices borne by those winter soldiers and foulweather patriots, those who rallied, who stood and fought, who brought into being the freedom we cherish.
The fact that Jonah chooses to stay home, to send others to fight and die on his behalf, demonstrates just how clearly our freedom is not at stake in Iraq. This is a war of imperial aggrandizement, fought by honest and honorable men who have been sent to their deaths by politicians who neither respect nor honor their sacrifice.
Thank you, John Rosbrugh. FUCK YOU, Jonah Goldberg.
Support the troops. BRING THEM HOME NOW!