I’m exasperated listening to all the Talking Heads bleat about Trump’s bombastic, reckless rhetoric being like nothing ever heard before. The idea of meeting serious threats from another nation with strong talk and a willingness to back it up is nothing new at all. In fact, “peace through strength” is as old as time. If you want your adversary to back down, you need to stand with steely spine and present your points with strong conviction.

Here’s a bit of history that the “pusillanimous purveyors of doom” (love Agnew’s ability with words) yammering all over the media seems to have forgotten:

“Si vis pacem, para bellum,” translated as “If you want peace, prepare for war” has been traced to an author in the late 4th century, while the more concise “peace through strength” goes back even further, attributed to Roman Emperor Hadrian (AD 76-138).

George Washington noted, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”

Truman told the Japanese that “if they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this Earth.”

In 1983, Time Magazine noted, “Public-opinion polls showed that confidence in Reagan’s handling of foreign and defense policies had actually fallen during his month long hard-sell campaign on behalf of those policies” and that some White House officials called it his “Darth Vader speech.” But, in the end, Reagan got what he wanted: the end of the empire in question.

In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy gave the following warning during an address to the nation on October 22, 1962: “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

And just for the record—Washington, Truman, Reagan, and Kennedy prevailed!