With a new Douglas MacArthur movie opening this week-end nationwide, Tommy Lee Jones as MacArthur, it's appropriate to remember what William F. Buckley had to say about General Douglas MacArthur in 1964:
MacArthur was the last of the great Americans. it isn't at all certain that America is capable of producing another man of MacArthur's cast. Such men spring from the loins of nations in whose blood courage runs: and we are grown anemic. That is why so many have spoken of an age that would die with MacArthur. An age when, occasionally, heroes arose, acknowledging as their imperative the Duty, Honor, and Country which MacArthur cherished, but which the nation that rejected him has no stomach for, preferring the adulterated substitutes of the Age of Modulation, approved by the Pure Food and Drug Act and adorned by the seal of Good Housekeeping magazine
MacArthur grew up on the American frontier on a U.S. Cavalry post where his father was stationed. His father had won the Medal of Honor in the American Civil War. (As an aside, Douglas loved John Ford westerns about the U.S. Calvary.) The main point is, Douglas was not that far removed from the frontier spirit that created this country. It is therefore relevant that I think that some of the new leaders of the Republican party are Cuban decedents of those who where willing to flee a tyrant and make a new start in America and "in whose blood courage runs...." Too much of present Republican leadership is from the "Age of Modulation". America rejected MacArthur but some times, in times of major crisis, democracies will turn to bold leaders such as England in 1938 turning to Churchill, and will seek those "in whose blood courage runs."
