Well, the answer to that is “survival as what?” A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.

One of the men in the dock, Bert Lancaster’s character, the esteemed German jurist Emil Janning, had basically doomed his reputation, his principles and his humanity when he “first sentenced to death a man [he] knew to be innocent,” because Janning at the time (early 1930s) put national survival above justice. The tragedy was that it turned out the two were not separable. This lesson was at the core of Haywood’s speech.

You can hear echoes of Haywood’s speech in Obama’s passage about values (BTW, when did “values” become synonymous with “principles” – since I don’t see them as the same thing … “values” means literally what is valued by a person or people, and that can change over time and isn’t necessarily even a moral thing; whereas “principles” implies something tied to a fixed [even eternal] standard, an unchanging truth):

Yesterday I visited the National Archives and the hall that holds our Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. I went there because as our nation debates how to deal with the security challenges that we face, we must remember this enduring truth: the values and ideals in those documents are not simply words written into aging parchment, they are the bedrock of our liberty and our security. We uphold our fundamental principles and values not just because we choose to, but because we swear to. Not because they feel good, but because they help keep us safe.

Because when America strays from our values, it not only undermines the rule of law, it alienates us from our allies, it energizes our adversaries and it endangers our national security and the lives of our troops. So as Americans, we reject the false choice between our security and our ideals. We can and we must and we will protect both. And that is just what you will pledge to do in a few moments when you raise your right hand and take your oath.

Except that I think there are important, even critical, points of difference between the two speeches. First of all, Haywood’s guilty verdict is rendered against the advice of the American politicos there on the scene in West Germany, who are worried about losing German support in the Cold War. Note that the story takes place in 1948 and the movie came out in 1962. In neither time frame was American victory in the Cold War assured. In other words, “national survival” is still a question mark, not a guarantee. So Haywood’s insistence upon holding fast to principles knowingly puts national survival on the line, because the “survival as what” (a degraded Horrorland — i.e., the object lesson of post-war Germany) alternative is unacceptable to him.

He knows he is risking. And he thinks the risk is one worth taking.

I think what Haywood says is consistent with what Wretchard has been saying. Yes, you can choose to stick to your principles, but realize that that choice might get you killed; so walk into that choice eyes open. It serves nobody’s interest (except moral preeners perhaps) to be duped or duplicitous about the risk involved in making that choice.

By contrast, Obama seems to be saying that sticking to our values and ideals is the very thing that keeps us safe. That safety and survival are guaranteed as long as we remain the good guys.

This is not realistic, IMO, and pretty much flies in the face of what Wretchard has been saying is the choice and the consequences thereof. That the President of the United States does not understand so critical and fundamental an issue as this is, ahhhhh, enormously disturbing to say the least.

For someone who came up through the Chicago political machine, he displays an astounding lack of hard-headedness on this and other vital matters.