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“It is better to live one day as a lion than one hundred years as a sheep.”
~ Old Italian saying ~

Europeans Learn the Wrong History Lesson, and Some Americans Too
Scott Rohter – January 2011

War weary Europeans have learned the wrong lesson from their bloody history and from a long line of wars culminating in World Wars I and II. They have come to the rather naïve and incorrect conclusion, as some Americans have, that there is nothing ever again worth fighting for. The correct lessons that they should have learned are these. First, a little friendly competition among nations is good, but it should not be allowed to get so out of hand that it leads to hostilities. Second, little problems between rival nations should be solved quickly, before they grow to become bigger problems!

But to say that there is nothing ever worth fighting for, is to allow the next big bully who comes along on the world stage, to take over Europe, without so much as a single shot, even being fired in self defense! To say there is nothing worth fighting for is to lay down your freedom, along with your weapons, to whoever is strong enough or crazy enough to try to take them away from you! To say there is nothing worth fighting for, is to say that you’d rather live as a slave than die as a free man!

The Bible says, that a living dog is better than a dead lion. This is true. But is a living slave actually better than a dead free man? I don’t think so. Somehow it doesn't have the same inspirational ring to it. I prefer to think upon such inspiring slogans as these:

“Give me liberty or give me death.”
Patrick Henry

“Live free or die.”
New Hampshire State Motto

“It is better to die on our feet than to live on our knees.”
F.D.R.

“We are willing to fight to maintain freedom.”
F.D.R.

“It is better to live one day as a lion than one hundred years as a sheep.”
Old Italian Saying

“Peace will come soon, and come to stay, and come so as to be worth keeping. Then it will be proved that among free men, there is no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet…”
Abraham Lincoln

“There is a time for everything and for every purpose under Heaven … a time of war and a time of peace.”
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
Thomas Jefferson

Over the years, I have seen more than one anti war demonstrator holding up signs that read “War is not the answer” or “War doesn’t solve anything.” They certainly have short memories don’t they? War certainly stopped Adolph Hitler, and it was the only thing that could have stopped him! It ended the Nazi death camps and it stopped the genocide of the Jewish people! It also stopped the Nazi war machine in its tracks and liberated an entire continent from tyranny! War was the only realistic answer that we could have given back to the threat posed by the Nazi juggernaut!

War also put an end to fascism in Spain and Italy by stopping Franco and Mussolini. The resounding declaration of war by our own Congress in 1941, certainly stopped the Japanese Imperial aggression against China, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, and most of the rest of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, not to mention our own westernmost states of Hawaii and Alaska! War between the North and the South, the Civil War, freed the slaves in our own country! And as if I should even need to remind you of the fact that war, the Revolutionary War, led to the very founding of our republic!

Without war, we would still be a colony of England! Without war, there would still be slaves in America! Without war, there would probably be no Jews left in the world, and the people in China, Korea, and the Philippines would probably all be speaking Japanese today! So you see, war sometimes is the answer. Sometimes it is the only answer!

To say that war is never the answer is a rather naïve and simplistic view, that will lead to the ultimate defeat and to the eventual disappearance of all those who have such a world view. If they would say that war is only the answer of last resort, then I would wholeheartedly agree, because NO ONE LIKES WAR, no matter what side of the political issues of war and peace they are on!

As William Tecomseh Sherman said in 1879, “War is hell.”

But as we should all ask ourselves today in 2011, “Peace at what price?”

"The truth, the political truth, and nothing but the political truth.
A journalist has no better friend than the truth."
- Scott Rohter

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