Friday, July 18, 2003
One of the things I love about history is reading about how the complaints of today are echoed in the past.
From John Adams:
Little that had happened through the summer had distressed Adams quite so much as the behavior of American troops and especially reports that Massachusetts men had "behaved ill." "Unfaithfulness" was something he could not abide, and in his spells of gloom he pondered whether the fault was in the times.
Unfaithfulness in public stations is deeply criminal [he wrote to Abigail]. But there is no encouragement to be faithful. Neither profit, nor honor, nor applause is aquired by faithfulness...There is too much corruption, even in this infant age of our Republic. Virtue is not in fashion. Vice is not infamous.-1776
Of course, I bring out the quote not as reflecting the state of our military today (In fact, one of the things Adams was lamenting was the unreliability of the short-term militia call-ups. What he was trying to do was institute a professional army with a decent monetary reward.), more the general lament on the decadence of the populace that seems to be a perenial complaint of the older generation.
