When the Going Gets Tough,
the Tough Get Going
Just as Mr. Darcy’s aunt, the overbearing Lady Catherine De Bourgh, held that if she’d ever been taught music she would have been a great proficient, I’ve sometimes had the chumpaciousness to think that if I’d ever learned to draw I’d have been a good cartoonist. These inflated thoughts generally occur when I’ve got a picture in my mind of a cartoon that would encapsulate a certain absurd idea prevalent in the world we live in…. As a matter of fact, I have a cartoon in my head right now, which would illustrate an idea that is pretty popular today among some Catholics.
The idea is that the game’s up. We’ve lost. Christian culture is a thing of the distant past, and we live in a world in which our private convictions about morality have no place in public. For better or worse Christian morality no longer informs our society’s taboos and conventions, as it did in Grandma and Grandpa’s time. It’s wonderful, they say, if you want to live your own life according to the teachings of the Catholic Church. But what you need to understand is that other folks come from different backgrounds. Some people really don’t feel like they’re doing anything wrong when they kill their babies or their parents. Some folks are really incapable of understanding your reservations about all sorts of oddly assorted couples tying the knot. So, with all the delicate courtesy of a hostess of the old school, we ought to put up a magnificent pretense of there being nothing amiss, lest embarrassment arise amidst the company. Oh, you can keep your Christian convictions—but keep them quietly, peacefully, and lovingly; in other words, keep them like a shameful secret, so nobody would ever know you had them. It is time for us Christians and Conservatives to accept that things have changed, and to stop trying to fight a losing battle.
The cartoon I envision to illustrate this kind of thinking is one that shows infantry riflemen on the front line. The picture is done in pen-and-ink, with quick cross-strokes to shade in the curve of their helmets and the shadow of their scruffy chins—imagine G.I.s somewhat in the style of Bill Mauldin.
They’re hunkered down in a sheltered position. Ahead of them a few puffs of smoke and some “bang-bangs” indicate the position of the enemy. One of our guys is bringing up his rifle—but the Lieutenant is twisting his head to look at the kid with an incredulous, outraged expression. The caption for this picture reads: “Hold your fire, Private Doe! You’ll make ‘em mad!”
In the next they’ve set up the radio, and our Lieutenant is breathing into it, with bug eyes and two or three heavy dark lines across his forehead. “Hello, hello? Sir, we’ve encountered the enemy. They show no signs of surrendering.”
There’s a puff of smoke labeled “boom!” way off to the left of them, and the guy hunches so much he almost disappears inside his helmet, like a turtle. “Sir,” he says into the radio, “the enemy continues to advance. Our position is untenable.”
He gets off the radio and issues his orders. “Alright, men, fall back—easy does it! I mean it, Doe; hold your fire or I’ll see you court-martialed.”
The last picture shows our side crawling cautiously away on their bellies with their heads well down, leaving the enemy in command of the field.
That’s not how our soldiers stormed the beaches of Okinawa and Iwo Jima. I know, because since my early childhood I’ve listened to Grandpa’s stories while he sits with a glass of fortissimo at the kitchen table. I know too what Grandpa would say if I asked his opinion about accepting the defeat of basic morality and common decency. First he’d look at me like I just fell out of a tree on my head. Then he’d say the same thing as John Wayne when he drawls in any given western, “That’ll be the day.”
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