[Edited]
Sometimes I’ve thought I needed a separate place to air some thoughts which might not seem to interest most of the readers of this blog. But no, you get the whole package right here.
Anyway the boys have been listening to some old Eddie Arnold music that Frank sent us which includes a song about Little Big Horn. This led to a little encyclopedia reading on Crazy Horse and George Armstrong Custer. When someone read the part in the article where Custer and his command were wiped out, I voiced a calm "three cheers," eliciting wondering and confused stares from all my cowboys. I asked one of them if the government was allowed to come to our door and tell us we had to move away to a place they had chosen to make room for others to live where we lived. I have to say the boy wasn’t too sure, so I figured it was time to quit the encyclopedia, and open the Bible, if I was ever going to explain to the boys why I would ever root for the Indians against the Cowboys.
I read them the story of greedy King Ahab, wicked Jezebel and righteous Naboth and Elijah. Jezebel was an early and unashamed advocate of the might makes right doctrine. And the story is good to show that not only kings, but nobles and elders can be not just wrong, but wickedly wrong. We talked about Naboth’s love for his land, which had been a family possession for generations, and how those with the ability have always been tempted to dispossess others unrighteously. (There is such a thing as righteous dispossession, but that’s not for this post.) I explained that the people we are a part of are very much susceptible to temptations to covetousness and greed, which are a big part of our history.
I then asked who was more likely to be on the right side of a fight: 1) A man fighting in his own country, or 2) A man who traveled a thousand miles to the fight? This seemed easier to get ahold of and I think it’s clear that the army that travels farthest to the war has the greater burden of proof. It’s not that they couldn’t be waging a just war, but they have to prove beyond doubt that they have not only the right but the duty to be there.
I think I need to have these conversations if we are going to continue to live in this country, where shipping young men (and women!) off to distant battlefields has been as much or more a part of our history than that of the Roman Empire, at least so far in our brief history. If we see another major terrorist attack, you can be sure that our government will waste no time in providing for conscription. Better to think things through now.
Of course this is not to say that the Sioux and Cheyenne were superior in every way. I do not believe the myth of peaceful natives living in harmony before the arrival of white people. Neither do I believe in the nonsense of manifest destiny and the unquestioned righteousness of the United States. The unrighteousness of Ahab is a separate issue from the righteousness of Naboth. Had Naboth spent each night drunk on the fruit of his vineyard, Ahab would have been just as wrong. We like to point at the aboriginal people of our country, making much of their primitive and pagan ways, but this is only an attempt to divert attention from our own faults, for which we will be held to a higher standard.
All in all I find the story of the Little Big Horn to be a rare but satisfying defeat of a force bent on government approved thievery. Crazy Horse, notwithstanding the normal native mystical bunk, was an unusual Sioux warrior, quiet and not given to boasting of his accomplishments, in contrast to Custer, a mouthy braggart. I find my sympathies more with those who were fighting on soil they and their fathers had known for generations, than those who were fighting for colonial, imperial aspirations.
On second thought this does not seem so far from the heart of this blog which is, after all, opposed to transience. The need to recognize your home and do your best to stay there applies to armies as well as families.
8 comments:
Excellent points there, James.
I find my sympathies more with those who were fighting on soil they and their fathers had known for generations, than those who were fighting for colonial, imperial aspirations.
As do I, but where the rubber really hits the road is in your final statement:
The need to recognize your home and do your best to stay there applies to armies as well as families.
The challenge is to find a place, stay there, and find a way to keep your children and children's children (and so on) rooted in that place. We have so much individualistic enlightenment thinking to clear out of our minds, it might take a few generations, but like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young sang way back when, "we got to get ourselves back to the garden". Nevermind the stardust and the ten billion year old carbon. You get my drift. :-)
Thought provoking, for sure.
I have read much about Custer and Crazy Horse and finally had the opportunity to visit the Little Bighorn site just last week.
The whole indian wars were a tragedy. We have tended in this country to patronise native americans. They have been treated as "Savages" then we decided they were socialistic, enviromentil progressives, peacenicks.We can't just look at them the way we look at all human beings, fallen people, capable of great nobility,cabable of great evil. I grew up in southern Arizona, land of the Apaches. Near where Cochise was buried.Both he and Geronimo, were great chiefs. Both could be very noble, in thier behavior. But both were guilty of umbelievable brutality at times. Just like all humans are capable of. sin is always at the door. the people I feel the most sympathy for, besides indians and thier struggle, were the ordinary soldiers, who often were ordered to enforce goverment schemes which even they knew were unfair to indians, and they often paid the price with their lives.and you are right Custer was a braggert, and martinet. His men did not like him. He started a fight the indians did not want and he lost.but his stupidity and arrogance cost the lives of his men.
We visited the Little Bighorn site last summer and it really put the battle in perspective. It was so easy to see why Custer and his men lost the battle. The Indians knew the land so therefore had a very good advantage over Custer's men. It was interesting nonetheless and someday it would be nice to go back.
~Karen
Thanks Jon. Peter Leithart has some interesting thoughts on the garden theme in the intro to his forthcoming book, Deep Comedy.
Country and Apron, it would be nice to visit the battlefield sometime, but for now we are finding that traveling is not only more difficult to arrange, but also that it doesn't have the pull on us it used to. Sue and I might get out some after the cowboys are in bigger boots.
Old Hound it seems like the Ozarks is a fine place for expatriate Arizonans. I agree that Custer's men paid a high price, but wars can't be fought without soldiers and I sometimes wonder if we will ever begin to train American boys in wisdom and courage enough to say no to unjust wars. Soldiers who knowingly obey unrighteous orders are not innocent. Frank has been advocating what he calls Selective Conscientous Objection. Even if the government never recognizes the validity of such a thing, I think we need to train our boys in it anyway.
Since I live in Little Bighorn country, I just can't resist a comment. While it's generally true that the U.S. army gradually wore down the natives, they were really done in by illegal immigration and a decided lack of centralized leadership. The U.S. army NEVER won a major battle against the plains tribes. Not one. Without a doubt, the north american plains indians were the finest light cavalry since Ghengis Kahn.
And they still lost the war. They lost their land to wave after wave of european fortune seekers. Some came for Gold, some for God, some for land, some for pelts, some for manifest destiny... and everywhere they fenced out the natives and killed their subsistence economy by slaughtering bison. These europeans brought with them prodigious birth-rates and a mixed agrarian/industrial culture founded on scripture but diluted with mercantile money worship. They brought with them iron, alcohol and diseases the natives had no resistance against. Indian cultures coveted the iron; and ended up with the alcohol and the diseases through trade.
In some ways, they were their own worst enemies. It wasn't just their susceptibility to crooked traders, germs and cheap whiskey.. they fought so much among themselves that the success they enjoyed at Little Bighorn was the first and last inter-tribal military success they ever had. They lacked unity when they needed it most. The plains cultures, too, were not versed in the 'total war' mind-set introduced by union generals Grant, Sherman and Sheridan during the Civil War. The frontier sentiment, 'the only good indian is a dead indian' and 'nits grow into lice' helped justify army atrocities perpetrated on villages filled with women and children. These same decadent generals subdued the confederacy with the same tactics. The South, too, was rarely defeated on the battle field. So, union soldiers burned down the south and made war on old men, women and children as much as they could. Our military today has learned these lessons well; and war has become so horrible that 'collateral damage' is expected today, and even christians just shrug it off.
Now you know why our armies are ALWAYS over-seas. We were the first modern christian nation ever to resort to total war on civilian populations. (let that sink in for a minute!) Now, of course, the whole world fights that way, but we don't want total war happening on our continent. Ergo, we MUST be the aggressor and fight on other continents.
As a christian man I can't support that. I can't set foriegn policy for the country, but for the time being, I can withhold my sons from military service. I do have one son who would dearly love to serve our country in some capacity. I have steered him towards the Coast Guard, since it's mission is still defensive and protective.
I wish he would just bag the whole thing and resolve to stay out of military service, but he's only doing the blindly patriotic things that I helped instill in him. Unfortunately, I haven't always believed as I do today, and since he is now grown, it'll be harder to revise his opinions. But that won't stop me from trying.
I envy you James. Your boys are still young, and your opinions more biblical then mine were when my own were young.
R.G.
Randal, I remember the violent conflict that erupted in my mind when I began to see that our nation has played the leading role in the modern brutalization of warfare. Many ancient pagans would have blanched at things that are now commonplace. I can't understand why people don't see that incinerating thousands of civilians, including the elderly and infants, to save the lives of American soldiers is cowardly. We fail to realize that the unconditional surrender of an enemy is only one option and the destruction of an enemy's military power has often sufficed.
James,
I remember my own frequent justifications of the nuking of Japan with shame. Chivalry is indeed dead when you're willing to sacrifice women and children to save soldiers. God help us. You're absolutely right about the cowardice involved. Not only that, but we unleashed a fearful technology that's beginning to proliferate world-wide. I can't help thinking the mushroom clouds may come home to roost some day. I hope not... but God is not mocked.
Americans often hold up WWII as an example of a 'good' war. The truth is, if we had stayed out of WWI, and had refrained from rubbing Germany's face in it at Versailles, WWII would have never happened. Hitler rose to power on German resentment of Versaille and the subsequent economic chaos that ensued in Germany. Personally, I don't think we've fought a single just war since the Civil war. And in that one, the wrong side won.
When I ponder our nation's history I see much good in the beginning that has gradually gone bad, and no clear repentance in sight. I wish my children were inheriting a more righteous country, but I fear they will be reaping the whirl-wind instead.
But enough gloom and doom. God specializes in making flowers bloom in the midst of manure piles. We must begin where we are and with whatever tools we have and re-build a better country. I think that would include a foriegn policy modeled more on Switzerland's and not so much on Great Britain's.
R.G.
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