The School of War Reader: Angus MacLean – father, soldier, liberator
Angus MacLean – father, soldier, liberator
Aaron MacLean, Engelsberg Ideas
Angus MacLean, my dad, fought in WWII and loomed large in my life, for the time that I had him. Here's his story which I wrote for Veterans Day -- a reflection on fathers, sons, and the American century:
This young man with his tongue in his cheek and playful attitude had participated in the liberation of Dachau; he had earned two Purple Hearts, one in Italy and one in France; in the latter country, he had received a battlefield commission, becoming an officer. ... He resembles his grandfather much more than he does me. He’s shyer than my father, but girls like him, which fits the pattern. He’s given to fits of barbarism but is notably a lover of rules. Put my son in one of those old-timey sloped hats and photograph him in black and white and you could barely tell the difference between how my grandfather looked in that photo with my father. I hope my son’s 19th and 20th years are easier. His name, of course, is Angus.
America’s European security dilemma is nothing new
Charlie Laderman, Engelsberg Ideas
Laderman details the history of American security commitments to Europe:
For almost a decade, indeed practically ever since Donald Trump descended the golden staircase at Trump Tower, we have been in the midst of a new ‘Great Debate’. Just as in 1950, it has centred to a large extent on questions of burden sharing among allies, and whether the US would be better served focusing its attention on Asia and leaving the defence of Europe to the Europeans. It is a debate that would have continued regardless of who won the election. ... As early as 1987, during a TV interview with Larry King, Trump declared that ‘if you look at the payments we’re making to NATO, they’re totally disproportionate with everybody else’s’. NATO was taking ‘tremendous advantage’ of the US, according to Trump. ... Thanks in part to Trump’s pressure during his first term and, more significantly, due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 23 of the 31 non-US NATO members are on track to meet the alliance’s two per cent of GDP target for defence spending.
America’s Crisis of Leadership
Walter Russell Mead, Tablet Magazine
Walter writes about the decadence of our elites and a solution, should we grasp it: education, in the style of Teddy Roosevelt:
Signs of elite failure are all around us. In foreign policy, the field I follow most closely and one in which I myself have not been error-free, the American establishment fundamentally misjudged the global economic and political situation over the last generation, thinking that the world had entered a posthistorical utopia even as China and Russia laid the foundations for a formidable challenge to the American order. ... More profoundly, the failure of American society to respond effectively to widespread and deeply damaging phenomena like the fentanyl plague reflects the inadequacy of leadership in all walks of life. Spending political capital on affirming trans students by making tampons available in boys’ bathrooms in public schools while the opioid epidemic kills more Americans every year than the Vietnam War killed in nearly a decade strikes many sensible people as a sign of derangement. Are they wrong?
The Greatness of Eva Brann
Aaron MacLean, The Washington Free Beacon
In memory of St John’s College’s long-time dean Eva Brann’s passing, I wanted to share my review of Eva's Herodotus book from 2015. She was a generous teacher and mentor to young people who (in my case) didn't much deserve—but certainly needed—generosity:
Among the important contributions of Brann’s scholarly career has been her insistence on appreciating Plato as a writer who intends such details to have meaning. ... But she is also the kind of conservative who appreciates that, in the 5th century war between Greece and Persia, there was something at stake: had the Athenians lost at Salamis, Herodotus’ Histories would never have come to be, not to mention the entire subsequent literary tradition of Athens, or, indeed, America itself, which is a consequence of that tradition. ... Brann herself admires America for its quintessential westernness, for the way its politics allow for science to flourish—and for the greatness that allowed it to provide a place of refuge for a young Jewish girl who fled a tyrant, then spent a lifetime investigating, and delighting in, her sense of wonder.
Catch our latest episode with Randall Schriver and Dan Blumenthal on an Economic Strategy for China, available to stream now!