Rev. Jonathan B. Leach
Ruling Elder, Reformed Presbyterian Church in San Antonio
At least to my own “Baby Boomer” generation, a Fourth of July parade down the village Main Street stirs the patriotic heart: to see and hear the national color snapping in the breeze, the marching bands, the uniformed citizens ranging in age from the local Cub Scout pack all the way up to the desiccated old veterans—I speak as one of them now!—haunting the local American Legion or VFW post. The nearest National Guard armory likely sent a detachment of volunteers for the occasion, either to march or to man a static display of their unit’s military hardware. It’s all very impressive! As the popular 1930s musical comedy, Soldiers of the King, expressed it, “There’s something about a soldier that is fine, fine, fine . . . .”
And fair enough! Soldiers may be that. But they’re not recruited, and trained, and paid simply to be “fine.” Soldiers—those earning their pay and benefits—fight! As an army—as a team—they fight. And the teams most proficient in the fight—obeying the lawful orders of good officers appointed over them—tend to win.
For twenty-seven years I served in the uniform of a US Army chaplain. I raised my right hand in the last year of the Reagan administration, then went to war under the first Bush administration, and endured—as a good soldier must!—the several subsequent political administrations. I’ve been in a position to witness the changing military culture over a very interesting quarter century, stretching from Desert Storm’s smashing “hundred-hour” victory in 1991 all the way to the abject surrender of Kabul and Afghanistan thirty years later, after nearly two decades of US military occupation and investment.
But to the point. The good soldier fights. In our own context as the United States of America, for the past 250 years the soldier has fought for a set of ideals once considered “self-evident.” That is, these ideals stood on their own; they needed no further apologetic.
For what ideals then did those first US soldiers fight? They fought in order to secure “certain unalienable Rights,” among which—notably the very first one listed!—was the unalienable right to Life.
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