Politics & Power Quote by Virginia Foxx

Foxx’s line does what a lot of wartime political rhetoric is designed to do: make grief manageable by giving it a script. “In times of war” signals emergency, the moment when ordinary moral hesitation is treated as a luxury. The move that follows is almost pastoral: “look to our history,” as if the archive is not contested ground but a steadier compass than the messy present. History becomes a comfort object, not an argument you have to prove.

The key phrase is “loss of their countrymen,” which wraps death in civic kinship. These aren’t merely soldiers or civilians; they’re “our” people, and the pronoun quietly recruits the listener into the same emotional unit as the state. That collectivism matters because it sets up the payoff: “just causes.” The quote doesn’t defend a particular war; it assumes the justice and asks the public to behave as previous Americans supposedly did when similarly righteous violence demanded payment.

The subtext is as much about disciplining dissent as honoring sacrifice. If earlier generations “dealt with” loss in a certain way, then contemporary grief has a correct posture: stoic, reverent, and politically compliant. “Dealt with” is also tellingly bureaucratic, the language of coping and procedure rather than rage or accountability.

Contextually, this is the well-worn American exchange between memory and policy: invoke World War II-style unity, borrow the moral capital of national myth, and turn mourning into legitimacy. It’s effective because it offers people meaning before it offers them details.