E. O. Wilson Quotes
In some ways, I had a traditional 'old South' upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an inoculum of the military ethic that is still with me today: honor, duty, loyalty.
Wilson, Edward O. Naturalist. Island Press, 1994.
Ataturk was a young major at the time commanding troops of a weak and corrupt Ottoman regime. However a combined English and French (the strongest military powers in Europe) invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula threatened to capture the Turkish capital, Constantinople. Ataturk alone rallied the Turkish defenders and fought the invaders to a standoff in long drawn out battle with huge casualties on both sides. Ataturk became a national hero. Although Ataturk thereafter was very reluctant to use military force or endanger troops, the thing he always thought worth the supreme sacrifice (including his own) was the independence and sovereignty of the nation. See {584502} for his continuing belief in this type of sacrifice.
Westmoreland’s critics point to this quotation as an illustration of exactly why he was the wrong man for the job. As Vietnam Supreme Commander, he controlled more firepower than any other military leader in history and yet he had “no room” for thought or reason much less mercy. Subsequent commanders of U. S. military efforts were much more sophisticated like, Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, and Wesley Clark who were leading American thinkers, sophisticated at political and military reasoning and very capable of mercy. The modern American military requires men and women who are skilled at thinking and reasoning.
In 1932 FDR was elected president by a desperate nation in the midst of the great depression. A month before the presidential inauguration an assassin attempted to murder the President-elect, but instead fatally shot the Mayor of Chicago who was talking with Roosevelt:
Recipient of the National Security Medal
They became Company C of the 125th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, and were known as the Huntington Bible Company. See {618057}.
At the height of the Watergate scandal, the president wanted special prosecutor Archibald Cox fired, because Cox was developing evidence against the president. The attorney general, Elliot Richardson, refused to fire Cox and resigned. The chief of staff then turned to the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, who also refused and resigned. Finally, the Solicitor General, next in line of authority, agreed to fire the special prosecutor. These events happened on a Saturday night and became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre”. This event persuaded most Americans that Nixon was guilty of felonies and was desperately trying to cover things up. Congress would include “obstruction of justice” in it’s list of crimes that they would have impeached Nixon for had he not resigned.
Edward Osborne Wilson, usually cited as E. O. Wilson, is an American biologist, naturalist, and writer. Wilson is an influential biologist who on numerous occasions has been given the nicknames "The New Darwin", "Darwin's natural heir" or "The Darwin of the 21st century". His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants, on which he has been called the world's leading expert.
