The Happy Warrior: Lessons in Self-Control From Colin Powell

Why do people live to take offense? Why is the world filled with beasts and bozos? Have you noticed Progressives posing as Democrats are preloaded for offense, ready to spring?

Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Secretary of State Colin Powell modeled the opposite: quiet self-control. He did not get offended; he was a happy warrior.  Peace requires taking nothing personally, reacting dispassionately. He did that.

“Never let your position get so close to your ego that when your position falls, your ego goes with it,” he would say.  Progressives, trying to hijack the Democratic Party, do the opposite. Their position is their ego; they cannot lose their position, or they lose their whole identity.

Put differently, to them – unsure of why they say what they do, unwilling to entertain alternate ideas- all things are intensely personal; they have to be. They are reflexively defensive, because they somewhere know history is not with them. Humanity wants freedom, not oppression.

When it comes to understanding how to manage the emotional beast, the one that haunts these Progressives, reflecting on human nature helps. Those possessed by an emotional beast need to feed the beast; they beg that food from us by provoking emotion. They lack calm, need chaos.

Interestingly, by not reacting, we deprive the beast of what feeds it; we can wind them down by example, force their fire to recede, force calm by lack of drama, using logic to tame their fear.

In this mild, undisciplined, increasingly offended political climate, self-validation means forcing others to conform – because Progressives fear a parry with logic, facts, and faith; they do not have the strength to think for themselves, to consider other views, so they default to emotional activism.

Disinterested in real freedom, since it requires self-control, intellectual engagement, personal responsibility, discipline, accountability, self-reliance, and strength of character, they deflect. In place of controlling themselves, they flee their fears and try to drag others into their emotional mess.

Great minds have thought on this topic, no doubt seen it before us. Wrote John Wesley, “People who wish to be offended will find some occasion of taking offense.” What does that tell you? It is never about you; it is about them. Said Descartes: “Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.”

That, to me, is how leaders manage pettiness, masquerading as Progressive politics, aiming to take over the once sensible Democrat Party, replacing it with wild-eyed Socialism.

Consider our Founding generation’s can-do views, generations of happy warriors, from Theodore Roosevelt to Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan. Wordsworth’s poem “Character of the Happy Warrior” offers a final word:

“Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he

That every man in arms should wish to be?

It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought

Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought

Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:

Whose high endeavors are an inward light

That makes the path before him always bright;

Who, with a natural instinct to discern

What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;

Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,

But makes his moral being his prime care;

Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,

And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!

Turns his necessity to glorious gain;

In face of these doth exercise a power

Which is our human nature's highest dower:

Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves

Of their bad influence, and their good receives …

…'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends

Upon that law as on the best of friends;

Whence, in a state where men are tempted still

To evil for a guard against worse ill,

And what in quality or act is best

Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,

He labors good on good to fix, and owes

To virtue every triumph that he knows …

Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,

Or mild concerns of ordinary life,

A constant influence, a peculiar grace;

But who, if he be called upon to face

Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined

Great issues, good or bad for human kind,

Is happy as a Lover; and attired

With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired…

Whom neither shape or danger can dismay,

Nor thought of tender happiness betray;

Who, not content that former worth stand fast,

Looks forward, persevering to the last,

From well to better, daily self-surpast:

Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth

For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,

Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,

And leave a dead unprofitable name—

Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;

And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws

His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:

This is the happy Warrior; this is he

That every man in arms should wish to be.”

Hard it is to live life not offended by something, but we are not alone in being vexed. The greats before us confronted their beasts and bozos, wrote for me and you. Perhaps, on their example, we can rise above them too.