(On February 14, 2014, Justice Scalia spoke at the Union League Club of Chicago’s annual George Washington’s Birthday Gala. Illinois supreme court justice Anne Burke, in introducing Scalia, praised him as “a product of the great American immigrant experience unique to our nation” and as someone who “embodies the goals and dreams of the Founding Fathers.” In his speech, Scalia lamented that our country has lost the founding generation’s vision of civic education.)

. . . Washington is my favorite of the Founders—the one I would most have liked to meet. Not just because he was the indispensable man—the man without whom the American Revolution would not have succeeded. But also because he is a puzzlement. He was not a great intellect; indeed, he was quite sensitive about his relative lack of formal education. (He was not even, to tell the truth, that skilled a military tactician, as the New York campaign demonstrated.) And he was surrounded by great intellects, who produced great writings—Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson, to name the most prominent. Washington himself wrote not much of note, beyond his famous First Thanksgiving Proclamation and his Farewell Address. (One is reminded of the response of one college professor to the assertion that Jesus Christ was a great man: “Bah, what did he write?”) Yet all those well-published, intellectual geniuses looked up to, deferred to, stood in awe of George Washington. What was there about the man that produced that result?

[An excerpt from the above referenced section in On Faith: Lessons from an
American Believer (2019), authored by Justice Antonin Scalia.]

   I believe that military service is not only appropriate for Christians, it is conducive to Christian virtue. I know of no other profession where one commits to laying down his life for his friends. I have nine children, whom I have sent to many different colleges. . . . I can say in all honesty that the school which took most seriously, which made a large part of each day’s instruction, the task of moral formation—of developing character, and instilling fidelity to duty, honor, country—was West Point. And training oneself to be a soldier, preparing oneself to make that sacrifice if needed, is not just one more interchangeable way for a Christian to develop good character. Let no one demean it. It is good training indeed. . . .

. . . . On New Year’s Eve, 1964, Marine Captain Donald Cook was taken prisoner by the Viet Cong—and remained their prisoner until his death. For his conduct as a prisoner of war, Cook was posthumously promoted to colonel and awarded the Medal of Honor. His citation for conspicuous gallantry reads in part: