The Seven Deadly Virtues

by Jonathan V. Last

  But then, where do we find such women as Laura Hillenbrand, who wrote Unbroken and Seabiscuit—a triumphant account of equine perseverance—while so crippled by chronic fatigue syndrome that she was unable to leave her apartment? Or Flannery O’Connor, who, while dying of lupus, forced herself to stay awake at the typewriter by immersing her feet in buckets of ice water. Ulysses S. Grant raced against throat cancer in order to finish the memoir that would support his family. He refused pain medicine so as to keep his mind clear. The most majestic example of writerly perseverance is surely Solzhenitsyn. After years in Stalin’s Gulag, he was sent into internal exile with a mortal diagnosis of cancer. Determined to continue documenting the Soviet holocaust, he went on writing, on strips of paper he concealed in a bottle, which he buried to avoid confiscation by the KGB.

  Explorers are conspicuous civilian heroes of perseverance. Sir Richard Burton, Dr. Livingstone, John Hanning Speke, Ernest Shackleton—to name just a handful of doughty examples—occupy spacious niches in this pantheon. But explorers, like soldiers, often don’t have much choice in the matter: it’s persevere or die. Not a lot of choice there. That being the case, does simple endurance amount to perseverance? For that matter, doesn’t perseverance, as a virtue, rather depend on the object of the quest?

  When former president Theodore Roosevelt embarked on his daring expedition down the “River of Doubt” in South America, he was seeking to advance human knowledge. But consider, then, other explorers of that general region, the conquistadores of sixteenth-century Imperial Spain. These armored bravos certainly persevered amid formidable obstacles. But their quest (for gold, slaves, colonies, converts to the One and True Faith) could hardly be called disinterested, much less glorious. Among the terrors that Roosevelt and his people had to contend with as they made their way through a thousand miles of steaming, pestilential tropical soup was a variety of toothpick-sized catfish called the candiru that swim up the urethra and … well … lodge there. Reading William Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico and Peru is apt to make the reader wish candiru up the urinary tracts of these rapacious, sanguinary Spanish capitans so that they won’t persevere.

  On a larger scale, can it be said that evil perseveres? Or does it merely perdure? Did the Soviet Union “persevere” for those seventy-four long years? Or just last? North Korea is now ruled by a third generation of the grotesque Kim dynasty. Fidel Castro is in his sixth decade in office, having outlasted (persevered?) everything the mightiest nation on earth threw at him: the Bay of Pigs, a naval blockade, the U.S. embargo, and multiple Katzenjammer CIA assassination schemes. “’Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,” as Tristam Shandy said, “and of obstinacy in a bad one.”

  And so we come to the knotty question: Is perseverance—in a good cause, that is—necessarily a virtue?

  Ten years after JFK put the phrase “long twilight struggle” into circulation, a disillusioned young veteran went before the Senate and demanded, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” As Vietnam devolved into quagmire, our government was at pains to reassure us that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.” This figure of speech became, first, problematic, then risible. It was code for, “Yeah, right.”

  Neil Sheehan’s epic account of the U.S. experience in Vietnam, A Bright Shining Lie, contains an indelible, tragicomic vignette. It is 1967. John Paul Vann, the American most knowledgeable about Vietnam, has been sent back there by the Pentagon to evaluate the situation. He learns that the situation is pretty damn well hopeless, and he returns to Washington to deliver this news that no one wants to hear. He’s summoned to the White House to brief National Security Advisor Walt Rostow. Rostow listens to Vann’s gloomy report until he can no longer bear any more. He begins to fidget with desk papers. Finally he interrupts Vann to ask if—surely—the United States will be over the worst of the war in six months? Vann tells him, “Oh hell no, Mr. Rostow. I’m a born optimist. I think we can hold out longer than that.”

  Behavioral scientists speak of something called a “sunk cost fallacy.” Once you’ve invested time and money in something—war, a new product, trying to find the South Pole—you’re prone to keep at it even when doing so no longer makes much rational sense. Yet on the other hand, American business books extol entrepreneurs who kept going when everyone around them said to give up. Even so, there are occasions when, really, it would have made more sense to fold the cards. Mark Twain found this out the very hard way when he persisted in pouring his fortune—and his wife’s—into the Paige Compositor. Had it worked, it would have revolutionized newspaper typesetting. But it didn’t work, and Twain was ruined.

  Ernest Shackleton is greatly hailed today for his astonishing feat of perseverance after his ship Endurance came to grief during his Antarctic expedition in 1914. But he should also be esteemed for his pre-Endurance expedition, when he decided to turn back from the South Pole, less than one hundred miles from his goal. That decision has been described as one of the most admirable—and toughest—decisions ever made in the field of exploration. He could have been the first one to get to the South Pole, but as tempted as he was to go for the glory, he realized they’d never make it to base camp. As it was, they barely made it, and he had to rely on “forced march” pills—cocaine—to survive. On the way home from Antarctica, he explained his decision in a telegram to his wife: “I thought you would prefer a live donkey to a dead lion.”

  A couple years later, explorer Robert Scott killed himself and three others with perseverance. While Amundsen was easily skiing and dog-sledding to the Pole—and gaining weight on the trip!—Scott insisted on having his guys man-haul the sleds, and insisted on weighing them down with rocks collected for scientific purposes. They lugged those rocks to the very end. Ironically, the disaster made Scott a national hero. But then, the Brits have always been infatuated with glorious failures.

  A surviving member of the Scott expedition, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, went on to write The Worst Journey in the World, in which he offered this somewhat unfashionable assessment of the British performance:

  I now see very plainly that though we achieved a first-rate tragedy, which will never be forgotten just because it was a tragedy, tragedy was not our business. In the broad perspective opened up by ten years’ distance, I see not one journey to the Pole, but two, in startling contrast one to another. On the one hand, Amundsen going straight there, getting there first, and returning without the loss of a single man, and without having put any greater strain on himself and his men than was all in the day’s work of polar exploration. Nothing more business-like could be imagined. On the other hand, our expedition, running appalling risks, performing prodigies of superhuman endurance, achieving immortal renown, commemorated in august cathedral sermons and by public statues, yet reaching the Pole only to find our terrible journey superfluous, and leaving our best men dead on the ice. To ignore such a contrast would be ridiculous: to write a book without accounting for it a waste of time.

  That line—“Tragedy was not our business”—has been widely cited. It could be engraved as a footnote on all those monuments to Scott and the men he sacrificed.

  Without perseverance, nothing is accomplished. But blind perseverance can lead to tragedy, when tragedy was never the object. Perseverance must march hand-in-hand with her sister virtues. When she does, she is majestic indeed.

  Author Bios

  CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY is an American political satirist and the author of novels including God Is My Broker, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, The White House Mess, No Way to Treat a First Lady, Wet Work, Florence of Arabia, Boomsday, Supreme Courtship, Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, and, most recently, But Enough about You. He was chief speechwriter for George H. W. Bush during his vice presidency and was founder and editor-in-chief of Forbes Life magazine. He is the recipient of the 2002 Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence. In 2004 he was awarded the Thurber Prize for Ame
rican Humor.

  SONNY BUNCH is managing editor of the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the Beacon, he served as a staff writer at the Washington Times, an assistant editor at the Weekly Standard, and an editorial assistant at Roll Call. Bunch’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, Reason, the New Atlantis, Policy Review, and elsewhere. A 2004 graduate of the University of Virginia, Bunch lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

  DAVID BURGE is a hobbyist writer and hot rodder who blogs and tweets as Iowahawk (@iowahawkblog). He is a frequent contributor to Garage Magazine, and his articles have appeared in the Weekly Standard, Middle East Quarterly, the European Business Journal, and Readings in American Government. Native to Chicago, he remains, despite his better judgment, a committed Cubs fan.

  CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL is a senior editor at the Weekly Standard and a columnist for the Financial Times. He is the author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West.

  ANDREW FERGUSON is senior editor at the Weekly Standard. Before joining the Standard at its founding in 1995, he was a senior writer at the Washingtonian magazine, He has been a columnist for Fortune, Bloomberg News, TV Guide, Commentary, and Forbes FYI and a contributing editor to Time magazine. He is the author of Fools’ Names, Fools’ Faces; Land of Lincoln; and Crazy U.

  JONAH GOLDBERG is a syndicated columnist and author. Goldberg is known for his contributions on politics and culture to National Review Online, of which he is editor-at-large. He is the author of Liberal Fascism (2008), a number-one New York Times best seller, and most recently, The Tyranny of Clichés, also a national best seller. He was the founding editor of National Review Online and is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a regular columnist for USA Today and the Los Angeles Times and is a Fox News Contributor (and frequent member of the Special Report “All Star” panel). He was ranked as one of the Atlantic magazine’s fifty most influential commentators in America. He also watches too much TV.

  MICHAEL GRAHAM is a talk radio host, political commentator, former GOP political consultant, and sometime stand-up comedian. He proudly notes that he must be the only person on earth to open for Bill Maher, Chris Rock, and Sarah Palin. Graham’s radio career has taken him up the East Coast from Charleston to Washington, before spending time in Boston and, most recently, Atlanta. The author of four books, including the first major-published book on the Tea Party movement—That’s No Angry Mob, That’s My Mom!–Graham is also a regular Monday guest on NewsTalk’s The Right Hook with George Hook in Ireland.

  MOLLIE HEMINGWAY is a senior editor at the Federalist. She was previously a columnist for Christianity Today and contributor to GetReligion.org. Her writing on religion, economics, and baseball has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, Federal Times, Radio & Records, and Modern Reformation. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Washington with her husband and two children. She enjoys combing flea markets to improve her vinyl record collection and believes that the designated hitter rule is the result of a communist plot.

  RITA KOGANZON is a graduate student in government at Harvard University. She has written for the New Atlantis, Policy Review, National Affairs, and other publications.

  MATT LABASH is a senior writer at the Weekly Standard. His collection Fly Fishing with Darth Vader: And Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys was published in 2010 by Simon and Schuster. He lives in Owings, Maryland.

  JONATHAN V. LAST is a senior writer at the Weekly Standard and author of What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster. His writings have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Claremont Review of Books, First Things, and elsewhere.

  JAMES LILEKS is a columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a columnist for National Review, and author of Tiny Lies, Falling up the Stairs, and Graveyard Special. He has lived in Minneapolis since 1976, with a four-year tour of duty in Washington, DC. He hosted talk radio in the 1980s and ’90s, and curates a number of blogs and websites, including the Institute of Official Cheer, home of the infamous Gallery of Regrettable Food.

  ROB LONG is a writer and television producer in Hollywood, California. As a writer and coexecutive producer for the long-running television program Cheers, he received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations in 1992 and 1993. He went on to have a string of cancelled television series. His current uncancelled series, Sullivan & Son, airs on TBS. In addition to his television work, Long is a contributing editor for National Review and a weekly columnist for the English-language Abu Dhabi daily, the National. His weekly public radio commentary, Martini Shot, is broadcast nationally and on KCRW.com. His two books, Conversations with My Agent and Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke were recently reissued by Bloomsbury. In May 2010 he cofounded a new center-right commentary site, Ricochet.

  LARRY MILLER is an actor, comedian, voice artist, podcaster, and columnist. He has appeared in over one hundred film and television shows, including Seinfeld and 10 Things I Hate about You, as well as several characters in Christopher Guest’s mockumentary films. His other credits include Pretty Woman, The Nutty Professor, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, Law & Order, and Boston Legal. In addition, he’s a contributing humorist to the Huffington Post and the Weekly Standard, as well as the author of the best-selling book, Spoiled Rotten America. Miller hosts the podcast This Week with Larry Miller on Carolla Digital, where he unleashes a barrage of humor about the absurdities of daily life. P.J. O’Rourke is an American political satirist, journalist, and author. O’Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute, writes a weekly column for the Daily Beast, is a regular correspondent for the Weekly Standard, and is a frequent panelist on National Public Radio’s game show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! He is the author of seventeen books, including the New York Times best sellers Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance. His latest book, The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way… And It Wasn’t My Fault… And I’ll Never Do It Again, was released in January 2014. According to a 60 Minutes profile, he is also the most quoted living man in The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations.

  JOE QUEENAN writes the “Moving Targets” column for the Wall Street Journal. Author of nine books, his work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, GQ, Forbes, Spy, the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Guardian. His memoir, Closing Time, appeared on the New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2009. A native of Philadelphia, he now lives in Tarrytown, New York.

  CHRISTINE ROSEN is senior editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society, where she writes about the social impact of technology, bioethics, and the history of genetics. She is the author of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement and My Fundamentalist Education. Since 1999 Ms. Rosen has also been an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Her essays and reviews have appeared in publications such as the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic, the Washington Post, the American Historical Review, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, and the New England Journal of Medicine.

  ANDREW STILES is the digital managing editor for the Washington Free Beacon and a contributor to the Editor’s Blog, where he specializes in political and cultural analysis. His work has been featured in the Washington Post and denounced in countless other publications. Previously, he covered Congress as a reporter for National Review. He lives in Washington, DC.

 

 

 
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