Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

 If you desire peace, prepare for war.

The modern mantra of "violence is never the answer" is infantile. Tell it to the men who fought at the battle of Thermopylae and shifted the tide of the second Persian invasion of Greece, who paved the way for Democracy's conception. Tell it to the colonists who fought to buck the yoke of the illegal governance of King George which violated the supreme law of the land, the Magna Carta, by taxing citizens without representation in parliament, violating justice by eschewing due process and fair trial, and arbitrarily imprisoning its own citizens. Tell that to the early U.S. Marines who trekked across deserts to free American citizens taken captive by the Barbary Pirates to be sold into slavery. Tell it to the Union soldiers who fought to end slavery in America. Tell it to the 82nd airborne paratroopers who fought and marched through the terrors of war to reach Bavaria and free Jewish concentration camp prisoners. 

Tell it to them, and they would not laugh. They would weep. They would despair to see the "man" that their hard-fought protections had produced through undue coddling. The man who refrains from violence because he is not capable of it is not peaceful; he is merely harmless. True strength is power under control. It is lightning in a bottle, ready to be poured out swiftly and with prejudice onto the heads of those who threaten the weak.

Violence may never be required of you, but know that we live in a time of unprecedented safety which should not be expected to be permanent. Land borders have never been so globally stable for so long. Each day we stand on the ever-thinning margin of probability as we run the odds of ruin and cataclysm once again. We bear no promise from God that America will not be invaded - by his grace, we pray that he would forbid it. We bear no promise of God that global society will not collapse; in fact, it has done since the advent of Christianity at the fall of Rome with the resurgence of Barbarian control of Europe, and it has done prior to that, at the close of the bronze age. Both times, the world was plunged into centuries-long ages of illiteracy and slavery, as wars raged, and violent warlords seized the reins of society.

These dark ages were broken by men of virtue who thought well, and fought well.