James Webb > Quotes

“You know what we've lost, William? We've lost a sense of responsibility, at least on the individual level. We have too many people like Mark who believe that the government owes them total, undisciplined freedom. If everyone thought that way, there would be no society. We're so big, so strong now, that people seem to have forgotten that a part of our strength comes from each person surrendering a portion of his individual urges to the common good. And the common good is defined by who wins at the polls, and the policies they make. Like it or lump it.”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“If they didn't want to know, they shouldn't have asked.”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“Before all else, each of us must take a fundamental risk to be true to ourselves.”
― Jim Webb

“In such a wild, uncharted place the book of God was vital, for it nourished their spirit and laid boundaries for their conduct. Other subjects simply had no relevance. Trigonometry and calculus would not help them find their way among the mountain trails. Adam Smith's economics were of no consequence in the matter of planting corn and breeding cattle. Nor did they need the essays of Plato or the plays of Shakespeare to teach them how to shoot a rifle, or to make clothes from animal skins, or to clear away the wilderness with their own bare hands.”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“Self-discipline is never simple.”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“My war is not as simple as yours was, Father. People seem to question their obligation to serve on other than their own terms. But enough of that. I fight because we have always fought. It doesn't matter who.”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“They have become spoilers because in their view America’s political elites, both Republican and Democrat, have grown together into an almost indiscernible “hybrid royalty” that offers them little to choose from in terms of how the nation is actually being governed.”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“But to tar the sacrifices of the Confederate soldier as simple acts of racism, and reduce the battle flag under which he fought to nothing more than the symbol of a racist heritage, is one of the great blasphemies of our modern age.”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“The consequence of this reality was that in virtually every major battle of the Civil War, Confederate soldiers who did not own slaves were fighting against a proportion of Union Army soldiers who had not been asked to give theirs up.”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“They came with nothing, and for a complicated set of reasons, many of them still have nothing. The slurs stick to me, standing on these graves. Rednecks . Trailer-park trash. Racists. Cannon fodder. My ancestors. My people. Me.”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“the cotton fields and strawberry patches of a much harsher world whose tragedies and daily burdens had blunted her temperament and quelled her emotions. But its most immediate impact on this teenage girl was not the lack of a demure coquettishness that otherwise might have defined her had she grown up in better circumstances; it was the visible evidence of the hardship of her journey. This was not a pom-pom-waving homecoming queen or a varsity athlete who had toned her body in a local gym. My mother never complained, but it was her struggles that had visibly shaped her shoulders, grown her biceps, and crusted her palms—while in a less visible way narrowing her view of her own long-term horizons. Decades later, when I was in my forties, I suppressed a defensive anger as I watched my mother sit quietly in an expansive waterfront Florida living room while a well-bred woman her age described the supposedly difficult impact of the Great Depression on her family. As the woman told it, the crash on Wall Street and the failed economy had made it necessary for them to ship their car by rail from New York to Florida when they headed south for the winter. Who could predict, she reasoned, whether there would be food or gasoline if their driver had to refuel and dine in the remote and hostile environs of small-town Georgia? My mother merely smiled and nodded, as”
― James Webb, I Heard My Country Calling: A Memoir

“The Northern army was most often run like a business, solving a problem. The Southern army was run like a family, confronting a human crisis.”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“My dad loved to drive, but more than that he hated to stop. This made him at best a questionable tour guide. The hours would drone on as we crisscrossed the country in the dank and ever more malodorous car. The four of us would grow restless and cramped in the backseat, perennially arguing with each other and inventing games to fight off the monotony. My dad would press forward relentlessly, trying to make six hundred miles a day, every now and then invoking the three shut-ups rule and lashing out into the noise and cramped restlessness of the backseat. In the front seat my mom would patiently act as his navigator, reading the map, periodically making Wonder Bread and lunchmeat sandwiches, and now and then twisting the dial on the radio to try to find some music and local news. I finally figured it out. My dad’s mind had been shaped by flying a B-29 bomber on long-range missions. As he drove, my mother became the navigator, and we were the crew, although it wasn’t clear whom he wanted to bomb. You could see the business in his eyes. He smoked constantly, the strong odors of his Camel or self-rolled cigarettes or of his weird metal-stemmed pipe piercing our nostrils and often bringing the rear windows down, even in the most brutal heat of the day. His eyes were intent, never leaving the road in front of us. But every now and then an alert for a coming historical marker would pop up along the side of the road, causing my dad to suddenly snap out of his trance and remember that this was not actually his air crew sitting in the backseat. A teachable moment had arrived, giving him a quick opportunity to exercise his parenting skills and a chance to shower us with some much-needed cultural immersion. “Okay, guys, historical marker coming up on the right. I’m going to slow down to forty-five miles an hour. There it is, here it comes! Jim, read the SIGN!” I”
― James Webb, I Heard My Country Calling: A Memoir

“both tariff rates and domestic charges for the use of railroad freight blatantly discriminated against the South, impeding its ability to grow and compete. The rates charged for shipping goods along the nation’s railways had for decades been rigged to protect Northern markets from Southern goods.”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“Radical Reconstruction was an attempt to impose by force the cultures of New England and the midlands upon the coastal and highland south.”4”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“His father peered solemnly at him. “It doesn’t take a martinet. You act like the boy did nothing more than steal a stick of bubble gum from some department store. To my mind, he committed the ultimate crime, Son. He rejected the society that nourished him.” He softened a bit, eyeing his son. “It wasn’t an easy thing for me to do, Will. I like Mark. But I can’t forget what he’s done and I can’t ignore it. He did it willingly, with his eyes open,”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“I just look at you and say, ‘that used to be me. But it isn't anymore.”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“The blood feuds of today’s Ulster— and their legacy in the journey of America’s Scots-Irish— have their roots in a decision made in 1610 by King James I of England, who also reigned as James VI of Scotland, to form a Protestant plantation on Irish soil.”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“His father continued. “He should have known I would do it. In a way, I think he did know. He acted almost as if he expected it when he saw them. The only thing he said was—” “What did he say?” His father smiled faintly, almost daring to be amused. “He said, ‘So it’s time to come and lock the savage up.’ How about that? ‘The savage.’ ” “How could you do something like that, Dad?” Goodrich dropped”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“Until they became the British Empire’s greatest voyagers, indeed its greatest export, settling in odd places all around the world. And for that splinter of them that became my people, the Scots-Irish, this meant the Appalachian Mountains, their first stop on their way to creating a way of life that many would come to call, if not American, certainly the defining fabric of the South and the Midwest as well as the core character of the nation’s working class.”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“Well, so be it. But if they’re willing to accept the benefits of this society—like a Harvard education—they should also accept the burdens.” His father looked up at him. “I’m not happy you went into the Marines, Will. But I accepted it. I wouldn’t have been very happy if you’d refused the draft and gone to jail, but I could have accepted that. But I’d have buried my face in mortal shame if you’d done what Mark did. He ignored the law. He turned his back on the whole structure that binds our society.” Goodrich held his buzzing head in both hands. The world had just succeeded in finding the final little nudge that sent it topsy-turvy. “He didn’t do anything really wrong, Dad. I think I have the standing to say that.” “You were arguing with him when I came in—” “I don’t want him to tell me about Vietnam. But he isn’t wrong.” “You know what we’ve lost, William? We’ve lost a sense of responsibility, at least on the individual level. We have too many people like Mark who believe that the government owes them total, undisciplined freedom. If everyone thought that way, there would be no society. We’re so big, so strong now, that people seem to have forgotten that a part of our strength comes from each person surrendering a portion of his individual urges to the common good. And”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“You know what we’ve lost, William? We’ve lost a sense of responsibility, at least on the individual level. We have too many people like Mark who believe that the government owes them total, undisciplined freedom. If everyone thought that way, there would be no society. We’re so big, so strong now, that people seem to have forgotten that a part of our strength comes from each person surrendering a portion of his individual urges to the common good. And the common good is defined by who wins at the polls, and the policies they make. Like it or lump it.”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“Courage and honor, respect and even pity, justice and, yes, you may not like for me to say it, but let me use the word - love? Do you know these words, Mahn? A love for your children, so deep that you would die for them? Or maybe a love of justice, so pure that it demands that you speak out? These are the feelings that push the world forward.”
― James Webb, Lost Soldiers

“This ever-expanding war had now consumed my personal and professional preparations for more than three years. As the country struggled to resolve what had originally been considered nothing more than a “dirty little war,” its impact on those of us who were serving, and on our loved ones, was persistent and overwhelming. The lieutenant who had been our next-door neighbor when we first moved into quarters at Quantico had deployed to Vietnam only two months before. I now owned his dog. And he was already dead.”
― James Webb, I Heard My Country Calling: A Memoir

“Am I bad?” He puffed angrily on his pipe. “Why does the law create such absurdities?” He snorted. “The law. The law is an ass. Someone famous said that, once. Dickens, I think.” He looked up to Goodrich. “And it is. It doesn’t respond anymore. It’s a straitjacket. What kind of coercion is it when your alternatives are to kill or to go to jail?”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“Well, what kind of hello is that? Besides. You wouldn't want me as a supply officer, Bagger. I'd fuck it up so bad you'd starve.”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“To them, joining a group and putting themselves at the mercy of someone else’s collectivist judgment makes about as much sense as”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“Goodrich eyed his parents with growing awareness. “How did the police find him?” “I called them.” They peered into each other’s faces for a long, mute moment, Goodrich pondering absently that he was looking into a mirror that reflected how he himself would appear in another forty years, if he somehow managed to survive the insanity that Vietnam had brought him and live that long.”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“They fought the Indians and then they fought the British, comprising 40 percent of the Revolutionary War army. They were the great pioneers— Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, and Davy Crockett among them— blazing the westward trails into Kentucky , Ohio, Tennessee, and beyond, where other Scots-Irishmen like Kit Carson picked up the slack.”
― James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America

“And there was another memorable lesson. Such is the power of the written word that the works of a single thoughtful writer—and indeed sometimes just one powerful book—might focus the direction of a young person’s life.”
― James Webb, I Heard My Country Calling: A Memoir