Justifying the Sacrifice

Justifying the Sacrifice:

In the film Little Big Man, there is a scene where the Seventh Cavalry destroys a peaceful indian village to the sound of the Garryowen. The music is beautiful, and the carnage horrible. The movie uses the disparity to lay a charge of hypocrisy at the feet of the US military, both historic and -- as this was a Vietnam-era movie -- contemporary.

The charge is that the beauty is a false overlay on something wicked. The truth, I think, is precisely the opposite: that the beauty is real, and the thing that has to be defended. It is not to make you feel better about the cruel reality of war; it is to remind you of why you thought to fight at all.



The Old Guard here captures the objective beauty missing in so much of our modern culture. It reminds us of the achievement of the West, and why we might fight for her.

The world is as we inherited it, both the good parts and the bad. We can neither claim credit for the good that came before us, nor can we suffer blame for the awful truths about the basic nature of our world. It is not our fault that life must feed on other life: we did not make the rules.

What we can do is recognize the beautiful, and defend it.