Dr. Maureen Hackett--she of the 'lower-middle class home'--is running for Congress. The photo above comes from her website, showing one sentence from the quotations potpourri otherwise known as The Eden Prairie Veterans Memorial, our ostensibly guilt-assuaging little ransom note of a monument.
This quotation: '"THE SOLDIER ABOVE ALL OTHER PEOPLE PRAYS FOR PEACE, FOR HE MUST SUFFER AND BEAR THE DEEPEST WOUNDS AND SCARS OF WAR." -DOUGLAS MACARTHUR'
Let me confess: I am not overwhelmed with admiration for Gen. Douglas MacArthur. I went to the quotation's source today, and read MacArthur's 1962 Thayer Award acceptance speech, delivered at West Point, entitled Duty, Honor, Country. (The title is Army's motto.)
In the short talk, MacArthur issues forth in a traditional vein--at once mystical and martial-- fetishizing each of the three words in his title, as if each were self-revealing and inherently inextricable from any action in which US soldiers partake. The three words require no explanation; no legitimate debate could divide Americans over their interpretation. Duty, honor and country magically suffuse the American soldier's soul (explicitly including those who fought on behalf of the Confederacy).
MacArthur begins his speech in a reverie, describing the American fighting man in 'platonic ideal' form. 'They died, unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts...' '[T]he soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.'
So the first half of the speech is mostly crazy BS, in other words.
At this point MacArthur takes a number of interesting turns, telling the cadets to stay out of politics and defending political debate among civilians, while not acknowledging the subordination of the US military to civilian management. MacArthur implicitly suggests that the civilian politician and the military leader operate within non-contiguous domains--a malignant falsehood especially dangerous to a democratic system.
In the speech, MacArthur sees war as some discrete obligation handed to the US military without any possibility of illegitimate use, or any temptation to intervene that might tug at politicians persuaded of the very infallibility which MacArthur insists is the US soldier's birthright. Within MacArthur's schema, the military leader plays no role in encouraging or discouraging the decision to go to war--another dangerous error.
So if I should love and admire MacArthur, his Duty, Honor, Country speech hasn't won me over. Were I a candidate for federal office, I can't think of any non-strategic reason for quoting him.
RTWT; let me know what you think, oh masses.
