Spirit.

Kurt points to an excellent article exploring Shelby Foote's "aristocracy of spirit" ...

The vocation of the artist, the soldier and the statesman are accessible only to those who can honor and hunger after honor, who, drawn backward into the past and forward into posterity, disjoint themselves from our flat present and its imperatives to egalitarian political correctness or “aesthetic” harmlessness. Perhaps we would be better off without such human types. Certainly we may not want to become them ourselves. It may be too that we ought to speak candidly about them and what their fulfillment requires only in private, and in public to let them assume such guises as, for example, the gentlemanly, avuncular Southerner with a gift for stories about old times—entertaining, interesting tales that can go unnoticed as incitations to honor the teller and those about whom they are told.

Intact.

Lived.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God such men lived.

George S. Patton

Celebrate.

People often ask me about the difficulties of writing about war. They want to know if it’s hard to remain upbeat after seeing so many terrible things.

Truthfully, the answer is yes, sometimes it’s tough. It’s hard to care about the normal, trivial problems of life after witnessing how much people suffer in war.

Sometimes, when the holidays roll around, and the wars go on and on, I wonder what’s worth celebrating.

But I also remember something else I’ve learned over the years from my wartime experiences. War brings out the most beautiful parts of humanity, too. In war, you see instances of total selflessness, of men and women willing to sacrifice everything for invisible ideas like freedom and justice, or to protect their families and their comrades. Sometimes, to protect people they’ve never even met.

Perhaps, in the end, war is as perennial as any holiday and always will be.

But so too are other things, like hope, love, and the unending willingness of good people to stand up against evil.

This Christmas, like any other, that’s something to celebrate.

CONNECT