On Secretary Austin’s farewell speech; Jean-Marie Le Pen; Congressman Mike Turner; Japanese ballplayers; the late Marigold Johnson; and more
Lloyd Austin retired from the U.S. Army in 2016, after 41 years. Then, in 2021, he became secretary of defense, for another four years. So, he has given a second farewell speech. This speech contains many interesting ideas. I will quote a little of it.
He said, “American democracy is not a sprint but a relay race.” So you pass the baton.
Austin recalled his first platoon sergeant, Fox Ballard.
He taught me that the most important thing you can do is take care of your people. And that has always been my North Star. Our greatest strategic advantage will always be the talents of the American people.
Getting to maybe the crux of the matter, Austin said,
Ladies and gentlemen, the power of the United States military flows from both our people and our principles. Our capabilities are unrivaled. Our platforms are unmatched. But those are expressions of our strength, not its foundation.
Every military defends a country. But the United States military also defends a constitution.
He continued,
Now, that isn’t some side point. It’s the oath that I swore when I commissioned: “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
That is what we do. And that is who we are.
More:
We defend not just the American people but also the American idea. We are not just any military. We are the United States military. We defend government of the people, by the people, and for the people — and we do not bend on matters of honor, integrity, or law.
The entire speech is worth reading and pondering, and can be found here. For instance, Austin talks about the “paradox” at the heart of “our enterprise”: People who spend their lives “trying to master war” are also the ones “who best understand its terrors,” and its unpredictability.
Maybe I can quote one more passage — interesting in light of the rapid pace of technological progress:
You know, Omar Bradley used to keep a cartoon hanging over his desk at home. It showed an infantryman sitting with a rifle across his knees. And above him was a list of cutting-edge weapons. Yet the soldier in the cartoon is saying, “But they still haven’t found a substitute for me.”
That’s still true. There is no substitute for American troops and for men and women of courage and character.
• Thinking about Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died earlier this month at 96, I have thought about America.
(Le Pen was the longtime leader of the extreme Right in France. He got to be too much even for his daughter Marine, a current leader.)
Obviously, Le Pen hated liberal democracy, and therefore he did not think much of the United States. He called our country a “mongrel nation.”
Now and then, I’m asked about my ancestry, and I usually describe myself as “a typical American mongrel,” having various ethnic strains.
I’m glad to live in a mongrel nation.
(Le Pen referred to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French Conservative leader, as “the foreigner.” Sarkozy has Jewish and Hungarian “blood,” you see. Le Pen said that France should join with Putin’s Russia to save the “white world.” Etc., etc.)
• From a very early age, I knew I didn’t believe in “cultural relativism.” I knew there was right and wrong — not just for me and my immediate neighbors, but for everyone. I’m sure the same is true of you, too.
Anyway:
Every year, women and girls are killed in Iran by relatives who say they are protecting their family’s “honor.” One of them was Reyhaneh, who was killed by her father.#rfe_rl pic.twitter.com/p2uRqZVW3Z
— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) January 14, 2025
• The bad thing is, I’m a broken record. The good thing is, I’m consistent. The first duty of government, I regularly stress, is the physical protection of the citizenry. All the rest — free false teeth and so on — is secondary. (I borrow the phrase “free false teeth” from Bill Buckley.)
Some news from New York: “Gov. Hochul wants a cop on every overnight NYC subway train.” (Article here.) Yes, that’s the spirit — and the obligation.
• I was always amazed that Mike Turner was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. I was amazed that he was even in Congress. He is a Republican, but of the pre-2016 variety. He is anti-Putin and pro-Ukraine. He knows that Putin’s Russia is an enemy of the United States, and that Ukraine is important to the U.S. and the rest of the Free World. He is wise to Kremlin propaganda — which is even repeated “on the House floor,” as he noted last year.
Turner was chairman of the Intel Committee for one term: 2023–25.
Now the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, has fired him. Why? Johnson cited “concerns from Mar-a-Lago,” according to Turner. Johnson denies this — unbelievably. (To read a news story about the matter, go here.)
As I look back, Turner represented a last gasp of the “old” Republican understanding — about dictatorship, democracy, national security, and American values. The new GOP is JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard.
If Gabbard is director of national intelligence, as she is slated to be, she would not want a Turner type contradicting her from the chairman’s seat on the Intelligence Committee.
We are in a hazardous era.
• Headline: “Roki Sasaki says he’s signing with Dodgers, giving them monster Japanese trio in rotation.” Subheading: “The 23-year-old phenom is joining Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the Dodgers.” Article here.
You know what I’m reminded of? The Detroit Red Wings of the 1990s, with those sensational players from the USSR. They were a huge gift to us, in Detroit (and in Michigan at large).
• It was such a privilege to know Paul Johnson, the English historian and journalist. I wrote an appreciation of him in January 2023, here. It was also a privilege to know Marigold Johnson, his wife. She passed away last month, at 92.
She was bright, vivacious, warm, and kind. She was a “people person,” as they say. She made you feel valued and wanted.
From the obit in the (London) Times, I learned some things I never knew. Her parents named her “Marigold” after Winston and Clementine Churchill’s youngest daughter, “who died in infancy.” Her father, Dr. Hunt, was a physician to Churchill.
“Her first serious love was Roger Bannister, a junior doctor preparing to run the four-minute mile.” Gee! I wish I had known that, to talk with her about it!
Another passage from the obit:
In 1956, at a party given by David Wedgwood-Benn, brother of Tony, she encountered a fiery, red-haired young New Statesman journalist. She was smitten: “He looks like Lucifer,” she told Antonia . . .
That would be Antonia Pakenham, as she was born — later to be Lady Antonia Fraser and Lady Antonia Pinter.
And Lucifer? Well, Paul —
who promptly invited her to tea at the Ritz, only to stand her up. She did not speak to him for months. That autumn, at a Suez protest, they met again. Not for the last time, she forgave him.
(A knowing sentence.)
The Times, at the end of the obit, quotes Sir Tom Stoppard: “It has been a privilege to have been her friend.” Yes, yes. Such a privilege.
• Let me throw a little music at you — a review of the New York Philharmonic, in Wagner.
• And maybe I could conclude with something that Baron Friedrich von Hügel wrote to his niece:
Be silent about great things; let them grow inside you. Never discuss them: discussion is so limiting and distracting. It makes things grow smaller. You think you swallow things when they ought to swallow you. Before all greatness, be silent — in art, in music, in religion: silence.
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