Sipsey Street Irregulars: Praxis: On the necessity of training. Copy this, cut it out, and tape it in the upper right corner of your bathroom mirror where you encounter your lovely face every morning. "A people who had to fight to become independent must not relinquish this independence without fighting."

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Praxis: On the necessity of training. Copy this, cut it out, and tape it in the upper right corner of your bathroom mirror where you encounter your lovely face every morning. "A people who had to fight to become independent must not relinquish this independence without fighting."

Henri Guisan, commander-in-chief of the Swiss army and militia during WWII, inspects the troops.

A people who had to fight to become independent must not relinquish this independence without fighting. Those who are cowards and renounce their freedom will not find the strength to gain it back under more favorable circumstances. Those who are brave never think that a war is hopeless. Being brave is not only a matter of an individual's courage when he faces danger but to the same extent a matter of the expertise that he has gained through hard work, pain, and sacrifices to boost his self-confidence. We must acquire this expertise by working constantly and consistently. We lack combat experience. Hence, we shall hold our own against a battle-tried opponent only if we learn what is relevant from developments (in the war abroad) and then apply our insights with extensive training. -- Lieutenant General Herbert Constam, "Instructions on Combat Tactics," January 1941. Quoted in Stephen Halbrook's The Swiss and the Nazis, page 151.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...: The Alamo is not a place, it is a state of mind. It is also the beginning of the road that ends at San Jacinto.

-Rurik; January 25, 2012 at 9:58 AM
Jimmy the Saint said...: @Rurik: Actually, the Alamo was the end of the road for all of its defenders. It's easy to exhort fighting to the last man when you're not there. (Not accusing you of doing so, just pointing out that politicians and speechifiers tend to be more enamored of last stands than the participants - witness the US troops on Bataan/Corregidor, for example. They felt far more betrayed than honored to be a part of such a "noble sacrifice".); January 25, 2012 at 5:23 PM
rexxhead said...: +1 Rurik; -1 Jimmy.

On the 21 April following, the memory of the Alamo urged a rag-tag band of militia to overcome a force twice their size.

Sometimes a loss can be a win.

III; January 25, 2012 at 6:50 PM
Anonymous said...: It would be useful to note that the Swiss general officers gave a standing order that any junior officer which suggested surrender was to be immediately shot.

Surrender is NOT an option to a free people.; January 25, 2012 at 9:35 PM
Jimmy the Saint said...: @rexxhead: "Sometimes a loss can be a win."

Yes, sometimes. If you get incredibly lucky. Of course, the historical instances where that happened are famous precisely because they are so rare. Should you ever find yourself at a last stand, you're far more likely to be a martyr to futility than the inspiration that leads your cause to victory.; January 26, 2012 at 1:50 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Praxis: On the necessity of training. Copy this, cut it out, and tape it in the upper right corner of your bathroom mirror where you encounter your lovely face every morning. "A people who had to fight to become independent must not relinquish this independence without fighting."

5 comments:

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