The United States has not lost a major battle since 1950, but it has lost most of its wars since 1945. The fourth article in the Civic Sage War Series examines the eighty-one-year record of American tactical excellence and strategic failure — and traces the pattern back to the institutional incentives Dwight Eisenhower warned the country about sixty-five years ago. The wars are named. The record is read. The reckoning is overdue.

A padlocked meetinghouse. Two nights in a cold room with no food, no water, no fire, no chamber pot. A Lord Mayor threatening to cut a juryman’s nose. A Recorder who said openly he wished England had the Spanish Inquisition. Twelve ordinary London tradesmen refused to deliver the verdict the Crown demanded. They held twelve times in a row. The prisoners they acquitted — William Penn, twenty-five, and William Mead — were jailed anyway for the crime of wearing their hats. The judges who starved them are remembered by no one. The jury is remembered by a plaque at the Old Bailey and by every not-guilty verdict since. Penn took that courtroom lesson across the Atlantic and wrote it into the Frame of Government for Pennsylvania. The Sixth Amendment stands on what happened in that room. William Penn needs to be remembered.

In this personal account, Cold War naval officer and USNA ’64 graduate Charles C. Jett sets the record straight on an untold chapter of submarine history: how his innovations developed aboard USS RAY (SSN 653) and later at the US Naval Submarine School where he taught tactics and Soviet Naval Ship Recognition to prospective nuclear submarine commanding officers— commended by Vice Admiral E. P. Wilkinson and the Secretary of the Navy, and endorsed by Admiral Bruce DeMars and Rear Admiral Albert Kelln — provided Tom Clancy with the foundation for both the character Jonesy and the original Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October. As shipmate Dennis Parker wrote: “A little bit of the Ray, and a little bit of Charlie Jett, lives on in every U.S. nuclear attack submarine since.” At 85, Jett finally places this story where it belongs: in the record.