The warrior's tale is a simple enough thing. Strong as steel, but fragile as chance. It is the wind in his soul and the wall we build around ourselves to tell us who we are.
Before there were cities or nations, and railways and airports, computers and telephones-- the tale was told around campfires. Acted out in pantomime, dressed up in animal furs and cave paintings. But the tale was the same. The people were confronted with a threat and they called upon the best and strongest of their men to go out and fight it. These were their warriors. What they did in the face of that threat is the tale.
The tale has many variations. Sometimes there are many warriors, sometimes only a handful. They march into the village of the enemy in triumph, or they make a last stand on a rocky outcropping, spending the last of their heart's blood to buy time they will never know. There is the weak man who becomes strong, the strong man who becomes weak, the woman who mourns the man who will never return, and the man who goes off to battle with nothing to lose. These tales have been told countless times in the ages of men, and they will be told again for as long as men endure.
It is not only the warriors who need the tale, or those left behind. Future generations learn who they are from this tale. "We are the people who died for this land," is the unseen moral of each tale. "We bled for it. Now it is yours to bleed and die for."
The warrior's tale tells each generation that they stand on the wall against a hostile world. And that the wall is made not of stones, but of their virtues. Their courage, their integrity and their craft. Theirs is the wall and they are the wall-- and if they should fail, then it will fail. And the land and the people will be swept away.
What happens to a people who forget the warrior's tale and stop telling it around their campfires? Worse , what of a people who are taught to despise the figure of the warrior and what he represents? They will not lose their courage, not all of it. But they will lose the direction of that courage. It will become a sudden unexplained virtue that rises to them out of the depths of danger. And their wall will fail.
It is the warrior's tale that makes walls. That says this is the land that we have fought for, and we will go on fighting for it. It is sacrifice that makes mere possession sacrosanct. It is blood that turns right to duty. It is the seal that is above law, deeper still to heritage. Anyone can hold a thing, but it is sacrifice that elevates it beyond possessiveness. And it is that tale which elevates a people from possessors of a land, to the people of the land.
Universalism discards the warrior's tale as abomination. A division in the family of man. Their tale is of an unselfish world where there are no more divisions or distinctions. Where everyone is the same in their own way. But this tale is a myth, a religious idea perverted into totalitarian politics. It is a promise that cannot be kept and a poison disguised with dollops of sugar. It lures the people into tearing down their wall and driving out their warriors. And what follows is what always does when there is no wall. The invaders come, the women scream, the children are taken captive and the men sit with folded hands and drugged smiles dreaming of a better world.
The warrior's tale explains why we fight in terms of our own history. The Great Swamp Fight. The Shot Heard Round the World. The Battle of New Orleans. Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, Belleau Wood, Pearl Harbor, Heartbreak Ridge, the Tet Offensive, Kandahar, and Fallujah. Generations of sacrifices must be defended. And those who wage war on us must be made to pay.
Universalism demands that war must answer to universal aims and objectives. That there is a universal law higher than war. But this is a children's story. The laws of men derive from their own interests. Those who can rule by force or coalition make their laws to serve their own ends. This is the way of the world.
Those who pretend to live by universalism will still fall to the law of steel. Rhetoric is no defense against fire and lead, and international codes have no defense against those who will break them. The talk may go on, but it is the warriors who will end it. It is still the warrior's tale to tell, even if all others have forgotten it.
The warrior's tale is no happy thing. It is bitter as bile and dark as death. But it is also a grand and glorious thing. For even in its full naked truth, it is the story of perseverance in the face of every agony and betrayal. It is the tale of how we live and why we die.
Even when all others forget their tale, the warriors remember. Even when they are called peacekeepers and turned into an army of clowns for the satisfaction of their political masters. The armies may decay, but warriors still remain in their cracks, on their edges-- men who are not wanted, but are needed because they are the only ones who can do the grim work and do it well. They may only be a hundredth of an army, or a thousandth. A fraction of a fraction. But without them there is no army, only empty uniforms.
When the warrior's tale is forgotten, then they become shadows. Dangerous men despised and feared. Thought of as killers, dismissed as monsters and stared at like beasts in a cage. But the society cannot deny them. It cannot deny that part of them. When the warrior diminishes, the energy is directed elsewhere. Sport becomes an obsession and matches end in bloody violence. Crime increases. Prisons fill up. So do police forces.
As the external war fades, the internal one begins. Barbarians come from without. Buildings burn, mobs rage and there is a savagery in the air.
No law can protect a society that has forgotten the warrior's tale. It will turn outward, and adopt the warrior tales of outsiders. The samurai will replace the cowboy. The sports star will be an outsider. Its heroes will become foreigners. Men who understand the virtue of violence and will do what their own people have been forbidden. Who have the vital energy that a society without a warrior's tale lacks.
When a people give up their own warrior's tale for that of others, they lose the ability to resist them. For each people's warrior's tale says that we are people, and they are enemies. We are warriors and they are murderers. When a people have no other warrior's tale but that of their enemies, they will come to believe that they are monsters. And that their enemies are brave warriors.
The day will come when they are asked who they are, and they will not know. They will point to their possessions and the names of their streets and cities. They will speak of higher ideals and cringe for not living up to them. They will be asked why they fight, and they will say that they do not want to fight. That all they want is peace at any price.
Even the most powerful of civilizations with the mightiest of cities becomes prey when it forgets the warrior's tale. It takes more than weapons to defend a city, it demands the knowledge of the rightness of their use. It is no use dressing men in uniforms and arming them, if they are not taught the warrior's tale. And it is nearly as little use, sending them off to watch and keep, if the men above them discard the warrior's tale as violent and primitive gibberish.
An army of millions is worth little, without the warrior's tale. Strategy is technique, firepower is capacity, both begin and end with the human mind. "Why do we fight," is the question that the warrior's tale answers far better than any politician could. "We fight because this is ours. It is our honor, our duty and our war. We have been fighting for hundreds and thousands of years. This is what makes us who we are."
We are the people, says the warrior's tale. But we are every people, says the universalist's tale. All is one. There is no difference between us and them. And we will prove it by bringing them here. Then the walls fall and it falls to the warriors to make their last stand. To tell another warrior's tale with their lives.
This is the quiet war between the philosopher merchants who want trade and empire, and the warriors who know that they will be called upon to secure the empire, and then die fighting the enemy at home. It is how the long tale that begins with campfires and ends with burning cities goes. The story that begins with cave paintings and ends with YouTube videos. Whose pen is iron, lead and steel. And whose ink is always blood.
We have been here before. Told and retold the old stories. The forest, the swamp, the hill and the valley. And behind them the lie, the maneuver and the betrayal. The war that becomes unreasoning and the people who forget why they fight. And one by one the warriors slip away. Some to the long sleep in the desert. Others to secluded green places. And still others into the forgetfulness of a people's memory. The hole in the heart of a people who forget themselves and become nothing.
The tale has many variations. Sometimes there are many warriors, sometimes only a handful. They march into the village of the enemy in triumph, or they make a last stand on a rocky outcropping, spending the last of their heart's blood to buy time they will never know. There is the weak man who becomes strong, the strong man who becomes weak, the woman who mourns the man who will never return, and the man who goes off to battle with nothing to lose. These tales have been told countless times in the ages of men, and they will be told again for as long as men endure.
It is not only the warriors who need the tale, or those left behind. Future generations learn who they are from this tale. "We are the people who died for this land," is the unseen moral of each tale. "We bled for it. Now it is yours to bleed and die for."
The warrior's tale tells each generation that they stand on the wall against a hostile world. And that the wall is made not of stones, but of their virtues. Their courage, their integrity and their craft. Theirs is the wall and they are the wall-- and if they should fail, then it will fail. And the land and the people will be swept away.
What happens to a people who forget the warrior's tale and stop telling it around their campfires? Worse , what of a people who are taught to despise the figure of the warrior and what he represents? They will not lose their courage, not all of it. But they will lose the direction of that courage. It will become a sudden unexplained virtue that rises to them out of the depths of danger. And their wall will fail.
It is the warrior's tale that makes walls. That says this is the land that we have fought for, and we will go on fighting for it. It is sacrifice that makes mere possession sacrosanct. It is blood that turns right to duty. It is the seal that is above law, deeper still to heritage. Anyone can hold a thing, but it is sacrifice that elevates it beyond possessiveness. And it is that tale which elevates a people from possessors of a land, to the people of the land.
Universalism discards the warrior's tale as abomination. A division in the family of man. Their tale is of an unselfish world where there are no more divisions or distinctions. Where everyone is the same in their own way. But this tale is a myth, a religious idea perverted into totalitarian politics. It is a promise that cannot be kept and a poison disguised with dollops of sugar. It lures the people into tearing down their wall and driving out their warriors. And what follows is what always does when there is no wall. The invaders come, the women scream, the children are taken captive and the men sit with folded hands and drugged smiles dreaming of a better world.
The warrior's tale explains why we fight in terms of our own history. The Great Swamp Fight. The Shot Heard Round the World. The Battle of New Orleans. Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, Belleau Wood, Pearl Harbor, Heartbreak Ridge, the Tet Offensive, Kandahar, and Fallujah. Generations of sacrifices must be defended. And those who wage war on us must be made to pay.
Universalism demands that war must answer to universal aims and objectives. That there is a universal law higher than war. But this is a children's story. The laws of men derive from their own interests. Those who can rule by force or coalition make their laws to serve their own ends. This is the way of the world.
Those who pretend to live by universalism will still fall to the law of steel. Rhetoric is no defense against fire and lead, and international codes have no defense against those who will break them. The talk may go on, but it is the warriors who will end it. It is still the warrior's tale to tell, even if all others have forgotten it.
Even when all others forget their tale, the warriors remember. Even when they are called peacekeepers and turned into an army of clowns for the satisfaction of their political masters. The armies may decay, but warriors still remain in their cracks, on their edges-- men who are not wanted, but are needed because they are the only ones who can do the grim work and do it well. They may only be a hundredth of an army, or a thousandth. A fraction of a fraction. But without them there is no army, only empty uniforms.
When the warrior's tale is forgotten, then they become shadows. Dangerous men despised and feared. Thought of as killers, dismissed as monsters and stared at like beasts in a cage. But the society cannot deny them. It cannot deny that part of them. When the warrior diminishes, the energy is directed elsewhere. Sport becomes an obsession and matches end in bloody violence. Crime increases. Prisons fill up. So do police forces.
As the external war fades, the internal one begins. Barbarians come from without. Buildings burn, mobs rage and there is a savagery in the air.
No law can protect a society that has forgotten the warrior's tale. It will turn outward, and adopt the warrior tales of outsiders. The samurai will replace the cowboy. The sports star will be an outsider. Its heroes will become foreigners. Men who understand the virtue of violence and will do what their own people have been forbidden. Who have the vital energy that a society without a warrior's tale lacks.
When a people give up their own warrior's tale for that of others, they lose the ability to resist them. For each people's warrior's tale says that we are people, and they are enemies. We are warriors and they are murderers. When a people have no other warrior's tale but that of their enemies, they will come to believe that they are monsters. And that their enemies are brave warriors.
The day will come when they are asked who they are, and they will not know. They will point to their possessions and the names of their streets and cities. They will speak of higher ideals and cringe for not living up to them. They will be asked why they fight, and they will say that they do not want to fight. That all they want is peace at any price.
Even the most powerful of civilizations with the mightiest of cities becomes prey when it forgets the warrior's tale. It takes more than weapons to defend a city, it demands the knowledge of the rightness of their use. It is no use dressing men in uniforms and arming them, if they are not taught the warrior's tale. And it is nearly as little use, sending them off to watch and keep, if the men above them discard the warrior's tale as violent and primitive gibberish.
An army of millions is worth little, without the warrior's tale. Strategy is technique, firepower is capacity, both begin and end with the human mind. "Why do we fight," is the question that the warrior's tale answers far better than any politician could. "We fight because this is ours. It is our honor, our duty and our war. We have been fighting for hundreds and thousands of years. This is what makes us who we are."
This is the quiet war between the philosopher merchants who want trade and empire, and the warriors who know that they will be called upon to secure the empire, and then die fighting the enemy at home. It is how the long tale that begins with campfires and ends with burning cities goes. The story that begins with cave paintings and ends with YouTube videos. Whose pen is iron, lead and steel. And whose ink is always blood.
We have been here before. Told and retold the old stories. The forest, the swamp, the hill and the valley. And behind them the lie, the maneuver and the betrayal. The war that becomes unreasoning and the people who forget why they fight. And one by one the warriors slip away. Some to the long sleep in the desert. Others to secluded green places. And still others into the forgetfulness of a people's memory. The hole in the heart of a people who forget themselves and become nothing.
Comments
powerful, read and ponder
ReplyDeleteKeep on fighting. Your words like bullets hit their mark.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the words
ReplyDeleteA beautifully written tribute to soldiers, the best of whom do not go into battle or into harm's way to sacrifice themselves, but to preserve the values that are their country, their wives, their children, and even their right to mind their own business when no longer in uniform.
ReplyDeleteA beautifully written tribute to soldiers, the best of whom do not go into battle or into harm's way to sacrifice themselves, but to preserve the values that are their country, their wives, their children, and even their right to mind their own business when no longer in uniform.
ReplyDeleteIn answer to the question, 'Where do you have your retirement funds set in, stun guns or stocks?,' Mark Steyn says in his 11/08 National Post interview, "I think guns will come in more useful than stocks. And certainly most of my neighbours in New Hampshire have more firepower down in the basement then the average European Union army, and one can well see why they would think that way. But that’s the point. It’s gonna be, you know, it’s not gonna be pretty. It’s not gonna be Vienna after the fall of the Habsburgs. It’s gonna be something much more convulsive." Steyn of course is Canadian and Canada became a country as the consequence of the last breakup of the US following the Civil War, a war which pretty much introduced the world to industrial warfare. I don't think too many Canadians under about age 50 actually know that, however, because their thinking about war begins with Canada's engagement in WWI. And, what they think about that conflict focuses on how the Anglican Church supported Canada's engagement and wouldn't marry gays. Also, the military now should no longer reference Christianity in its oaths and insignia in order not to offend Muslims.
ReplyDeleteInvoking the martial spirit-- in aid of what? The only wars I see being fought mock the idea that anything sacred is being defended-- just the opposite. Sacrifice for nothing makes a sacrilege.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see more fight around protecting the legacy of the founder stock and less about expanding empires for elites. We haven't fought a war that has anything to do with us since WW2. Every war since then has been the result of mindless calls to duty to pointless ends (see: Afghan, Iraq 1 & 2, Vietnam, Korea).
I salute the warrior-- I despise those who use him like a prop.
Ditto this a thousand times over
ReplyDelete"Invoking the martial spirit-- in aid of what? The only wars I see being fought mock the idea that anything sacred is being defended-- just the opposite. Sacrifice for nothing makes a sacrilege.
I'd like to see more fight around protecting the legacy of the founder stock and less about expanding empires for elites. We haven't fought a war that has anything to do with us since WW2. Every war since then has been the result of mindless calls to duty to pointless ends (see: Afghan, Iraq 1 & 2, Vietnam, Korea)."
Do we need to form Sultan Knish Anonymous for those of us who are helplessly addicted to your devastating writing?
ReplyDelete...considering how many comments here already are anonymous
ReplyDeleteWhat an outstanding article, I did not want it to end. That being said, I can't wait to go home, hug my kids, and give them a Warrior's tale tonite. Bravo Mr. Greenfield!
ReplyDeletegood on you Dan
ReplyDeleteVery powerful, Daniel.
ReplyDelete"The invaders come, the women scream, the children are taken captive and the men sit with folded hands and drugged smiles dreaming of a better world."
The West's super-ego has become a LGBTQQIAAP post-modern Mrs. Grundy crushing the western ego while waving in the id of the sacred "other".
Well said,
ReplyDeleteChurchill had the same idea.
“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”
I've been posting as anonymous but enter my name at the end of the post.
ReplyDeleteAm sending this to everyone.
My adopted son, Niall, was one of the warriors who did sacrifice himself.Will the son he left behind live to honor that sacrifice or be taught his father died in vain fighting against the worst enemy of humankind in human history?
Elaine
Bravo!! Your' words bring an ache to the heart of Americans who hold memories of a time when warriors and leaders loved this land and it's people. Much has been lost due to citizen apathy. Deception now rules and is a mighty weapon in deed.
ReplyDeleteW. L. Bradley
The tale of the only two days ago remembered end of WWI where so many of the dead warriors where the volunteering intellectual flower of the European nations to be senselessly killed, pitted in droves against machine-guns on the "field of honor". Their death causing not only the literary brain-drain and with it the beginning of the end of the Western culture and enlightenment.
ReplyDeleteMagnificent. That was magnificent.
ReplyDeleteMy father went to Europe in 1944. He was a kind and gentle man, but he went there to fight.
I believe he did the right thing, and pray that I would be as brave and true.
Most beautiful and moving essay I've ever read.
ReplyDeleteHow do you do it, Daniel? You turn out one great column after another, and never seem to run out of ideas or eloquent words with which to express them. This piece was one of your best.
ReplyDeleteTruly beautiful.
ReplyDeleteAnnie
Daniel, this piece led me to your older piece about the liberal Jewish eunuch. They really go together. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteMeh... seems a bit "Blut und Boden" for me (and I'm not even Jewish). "That there is a universal law higher than war. But this is a children's story." That seems dangerously relativistic. Clearly, there are just and unjust warriors? And can't one acknowledge a higher law without falling into universalism? What is the difference between simple objective morality and universalism? Do we fault mathematics for being universal? Perhaps you meant a universal political law, as legislated by a body like the UN. I'd agree with that, but to say there is no universal, objective morality is not something I agree with.
ReplyDeletephew an awesome read that resonates the truth as the world of lies begins to crumble, the warriors tale shall be told as it is the world of truth, you trully inspire, thank you,
ReplyDeletegarth
Kiplingesq---and that's a big compliment in my world.
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