Did You Mean It?

While doing some reading about the early American Revolution, I came across a famous sentence I’ve read a dozen times over the years in a variety of contexts.  This time, though, it was as if I were reading it for the first time.  The words belonged to famous patriot pamphleteer Thomas Paine:  These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  The phrase “sunshine patriot” and the circumstances surrounding it struck me like they never had before.  Paine penned those words in December 1776, when then-infant America faced one of its most trying, uncertain times—a time so trying that the very name of the pamphlet that begins with those famous words is called “The Crisis.”  

In August of that year, the Continental Army had lost New York City and twenty percent of its manpower in the disastrous Battle of Long Island.  Washington’s forces only barely escaped complete destruction. The rest of autumn brought more defeats, and by the time Paine wrote his famous words, the Army was hunkered down in Pennsylvania, hemorrhaging manpower as soldiers deserted in the face of defeat, cold, and hunger.  The smart money was that the Revolution wouldn’t survive the winter.

But I think what weighed on Paine’s mind when he wrote of “times that try men’s souls” and “sunshine patriots” was more than just that harsh December.  I believe he was thinking back to the previous summer, those magical times in the summers of 1775 and 1776 when freedom and independence were on everyone’s lips, of the heady days of Patrick Henry’s rousing speech which declared “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”  What Paine seemed to be asking his fellow patriots in “The Crisis” was a simple question—did you mean it?

Did you mean it when you said “give me liberty or give me death”?  Did you mean it when you said you pledged your “lives and sacred honor”?  Did you mean it when you spoke of rights being “inalienable”?  Did you mean it when you stated “these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States”?  Did you mean it only during the summer, when times were easy and the Crown’s forces seemingly far away?  Did you mean itenough to stand and fight even in the cold and dark of winter? 

Today, many of us in uniform have to ask ourselves the same question—did you mean it?  

At first glance, such a comparison might seem absurd.  We are not facing the cold steel of British bayonets, the rattle of musketry, or the bared sabers of Tory cavalry.  We do not work amidst typhoid and tuberculosis spreading through uninsulated winter quarters.  We are not trying to survive the winter on rations of moldy potatoes and bad beer.  Those are not our challenges and that is not our time.  In fact, our life is easy—the prospect of physical danger in the US military is lower than it has been in almost two decades.  Our paychecks keep going up.  We are well supplied by the taxpayers and well respected by our fellow citizens.

All that is true, which makes the thought of selling one’s honor and dignity for a few more baubles or career accolades that much more abhorrent. The patriots of Paine’s time kept their honor and their word to the death.  How then, could I think of abandoning mine in the face of far less?

Every morning, to make sure I don’t fail the lineage my forebearers left me, I try to ask myself that same question—did you mean it?

Did you mean it when you recited the West Point prayer as a cadet, asking the heavens to “make us tochoose the harder right instead of the easier wrong”—or were those words as hollow and empty as the echo in the Cadet Chapel?

Did you mean it when you told your platoon in Iraq that you’d never do anything you couldn’t look at yourself in the mirror for afterward—or was that something you meant over there but not over here?​

Did you mean it when you told your soldiers that the values of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage should be our guiding principles—or did you mean those values only mattered unless your superior asked you to let some of them go?

Did you mean it when you talked about history with your family and friends and said that just because an act was legal didn’t mean it was moral—or was that a truth for history but not for the present day?

Did you mean it when you told your Iraqi counterparts that the great strength of America was that we were a nation of many colors, creeds, and religions, none able to claim to be the “right one” over the others—or was that just propaganda?

Did you mean it when you told your subordinate officers that it was more important to be respected by the men below you than rewarded by the men above you—or was that a goal you meant for them but never intended to meet yourself?

Did you mean it when you gave those classes to your cavalry troop, the ones where you talked about what respect meant, about why it was both morally wrong and harmful to good order and discipline to be prejudiced against their fellow soldiers based on their race, gender, or sexual orientation—or was that just something you said to meet an annual training requirement?

Did you mean it when you prepared to raise an issue with the commander and told your fellow staff officers not to let you chicken out of telling the truth—or was that only for exercises, not for actual events?

Did you mean it when you looked at American leadership failures in Vietnam and said you’d never just go along to get along when it really mattered—or was that just posturing because you never thought you’d have to do it?

Did you mean it when you praised General Shinseki for ending his career by telling a hard truth in public even when civilian leadership didn’t want to hear it—or was that a step you were glad for others to take but never meant to yourself?

Did you mean it when you said it was better to take the uniform off early with a clean conscience than wear it to retirement with a dirty one—or was that a thing meant in the bright youthful days of summer and not for the harder, colder days of adulthood?

I have wrestled with these questions at various points in both my career and my personal life, and I’ve not always made the right decisions.  There have been times I’ve chickened out of telling the truth, have nodded and told my boss I had no issues when I really did.  I’ve sighed and said “it is what it is” when I knew it would always be what it was unless I chose to change it.  I can say with humility that I am not a paragon of virtue or valor, as much as I might want to be.  I look back on those moral failures with a deep sense of regret.

But what I can say is that in addition to my failures, there have been successes, times where I did do the right thing, where I did stand up for truth or honesty or on behalf of a soldier or officer who needed it.  There have been minds I’ve changed, have been errors I’ve prevented, and wrongs I’ve righted.  There have also been times where standing up and exercising moral courage didn’t do any good at all, where nothing got fixed, where my pleas and arguments to superiors didn’t help anything and only hurt my standing with them.  

But you know what?

I’ve never regretted being morally courageous, even when it cost me.  And I think, after over two decades of being in the Army, I finally know why.  It’s because in those times, when Thomas Paine’s question from the bitter winter of 1776 echoes in my ears—did you mean it?—I know the answer.  

I meant it.

About the Author: David Dixon is an Army officer with over twenty years of service in the active and reserve components. His views and the views of this blog do not represent the views of the US Army and Department of Defense.

Cover Image: US Army.

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