The meaning of Semper Fidelis
By Cam Beck
For my family, Semper Fidelis is more than a fancy slogan. It is truly a way of life. My father retired from 
the Marine Corps in the 90s, after serving over twenty years and more than one tour of duty in a combat zone. Therefore, my two brothers and I grew up in a culture that demanded excellence and loyalty of its members, and it showed. It is partially for this reason, I am convinced, that we all joined the Marine Corps when we were of the appropriate age. Because of my upbringing, it is somewhat difficult to imagine what life would be like, had I not grown up surrounded by living, breathing personifications of “Semper Fidelis,” and I am increasingly beginning to realize that I do not understand the mindset of those who had not. It is this realization that led me to reflect on the history of the phrase, and speculate the reason it holds such weight with the members of the Marine Corps..
The first thing I questioned was the Latin thing. Why not simply make the slogan “Always Faithful,” since that is what the Latin phrase literally means? More people would certainly understand it. Apparently, whenever someone has something important to say, he translates it to Latin, and that lends the phrase credibility and respectability.
E Plurbus Unum. Pro bono. Carpe Diem. Mea Culpa. Sic Semper Tyrannus. The phrases are a part of our culture, but not native to our language. Unless we have been taught what they mean separately from our education in English, we would have no idea. I would wager that Semper Fidelis means more to those who use it than just about any other Latin phrase in use today.
Customarily, though, Latin has also been the language of law. Habeus Corpus, Stare Decisis, and Per Curium are terms one commonly would come across if he did only a precursory exploration of legal decisions. Even the United States adopted the practice of using Latin in its written Constitution, in spite of the desire to create a Constitution that could be easily understood by common people, who typically could not read and write Latin. However, America was a special case. The people had already been governing themselves for some time before the revolution. Unlike today, now that apathy reigns, participation in local politics was almost necessary for survival. That atmosphere of social and political cooperation was one that was replete with Latin phrases. America was unique–set apart from the other countries–for just that reason. It was a province that was governed by the people, not kings–and its people would not relinquish that tradition without a fight.
When doctors started translating ailments into Latin-Greek hybrids, they were criticized for creating a language that only doctors could understand. Of course, that was partly the point. It set apart those who could understand from those who could not–thus both signifying the value that doctors provided as well as creating a group of people who could identify one another by their similar values and education.
The use of Latin in the Marine Corps motto is not bred from a very different motivation. Of course, the Marine Corps has never experienced a mutiny. Marines in England were revered for their loyalty to the crown, just as United States Marines are now revered for their downright fanatical dedication to each other, their service, and their country. Using Latin to characterize this quality represents its legitimization–its codification. Significantly, for Marines at least, it also provides a caste–a group that is separate and unique from any other–a group that has no desire to be like any other.
“It is not
negotiable.
It is not
relative, but
absolute.”What is left unsaid in the motto is also notable. The phrase is “Always faithful.” It isn’t “Sometimes Faithful.” Nor is it “Usually Faithful,” but always. It is not negotiable. It is not relative, but absolute. Who is always faithful, though. and to what, exactly are they faithful? Interestingly, the simplicity of the phrase and the calculated neglect to specify its parameters seems to strengthen it. Marines pride themselves on their straightforward mission and steadfast dedication to accomplish it. Things do not need to be spelled out for them; they know what it means and what to do about it.
Even though Marines are known to swell with pride from time to time (they do, after all, have a noble legacy to continue), they are not snobbish. Even the use of Latin must make them uncomfortable, because they shorten an already-short motto to the more colloquial “Semper Fi.” This does not misrepresent the phrase; it simply symbolizes the ability of common people to become part of a brotherhood that demands more of its members than any other comparable group in the world.
The longer I am out of the service, the more I recognize my draw to and longing for the culture of “Semper Fidelis.” I suspect that reading this will impart nothing significant to Marines, as they already are aware of their glorious charge. It is my earnest hope, however, that it may help others understand the reason Marines hold the Corps in such high esteem. All those references by former Marines, in their new jobs, to “back when I was in The Corps,” will begin to make a little more sense. Marines are imbued with Semper Fidelis, and all it means, and because they lived it for so long, they have difficulty accepting any less from others.
Semper Fi!
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The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Saints play in the South Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL).
The Saints were founded in 1967 as an expansion team and played their home games at Tulane Stadium through the 1974 season. They went more than a decade before they managed to finish a season with a .500 record, two decades before having a winning season, and over four decades before reaching the Super Bowl. The team’s first successful years were from 1987–1992, when the team made the playoffs four times and had winning records in the non-playoff seasons. In the 2000 season, the Saints defeated the then-defending Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams for the team’s first playoff win.
Since 1975, the Saints’ home stadium has been the Louisiana Superdome. However, due to the damage Hurricane Katrina caused to the Superdome and the New Orleans area, the Saints’ scheduled 2005 home opener against the New York Giants was moved to Giants Stadium. The remainder of their 2005 home games were split between the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, and LSU’s Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After a $185 million renovation of the historic stadium, the team returned to the Superdome for the 2006 season. The team played its 2006 home opener in front of a sold-out crowd and national television audience on September 25, 2006, defeating the Atlanta Falcons by a score of 23–3. The victory received a 2007 ESPY award for “Best Moment in Sports.” The club reached the NFC Championship Game in 2006 but lost 39-14 to the Chicago Bears.
The 2009 season was the team’s best season. The November 30, 2009 Monday Night Football game vs. the New England Patriots, in which the team went to an 11–0 record for the first time in franchise history, was the second highest rated cable program to date. After becoming 13–0 with their win over the Atlanta Falcons, it marked the Saints’ best start to a season in its franchise history. The result clinched an NFC playoff berth, a bye in the first round of the playoffs. By winning their first 13 games, the Saints also set the record for the longest undefeated season opening (13-0) by an NFC team since the AFL–NFL merger, eclipsing the previous record (12-0) held by the 1985 Chicago Bears. The team advanced to the 2009 NFC Championship game where they defeated the Minnesota Vikings 31-28 in overtime, sending the team to their first Super Bowl appearance in franchise history.
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The Houston Rockets is an American professional basketball team based in Houston, Texas. The team plays in the Southwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The team was established in 1967, and played in San Diego, California for four years, before being moved to Houston.
In the Rockets’ debut season, they won only 15 games. But after drafting Elvin Hayes first overall in the 1969 NBA Draft, they made their first appearance in the playoffs in 1969. After Hayes was traded, Moses Malone was acquired to replace him. Malone won two MVPs during his time in Houston, and he led the Rockets to the conference finals in his first year with the Rockets. He also took the Rockets to the NBA Finals in 1981, but they were defeated in six games by the Boston Celtics.
In 1984, the Rockets drafted future Hall-of-Famer Hakeem Olajuwon, who led them to the 1986 Finals in his second year, where they lost again to Boston. In the next seven seasons, they lost in the first round of the playoffs five times. They did not win their first championship until 1994, when Olajuwon led them to the championship, and 1995. However, the Rockets did not advance to the finals again, and missed the playoffs from 1999–2003. They did not reach the playoffs again until they drafted Yao Ming and they did not advance past the first round of the playoffs again until 2009.
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The New York Knickerbockers, known familiarly as the Knicks, are a professional National Basketball 
Association team based in New York City. The organization was a founding member of the Basketball Association of America in 1946 and would join the NBA after the BAA and National Basketball League merged.
The Knicks are one of only two teams of the original National Basketball Association still located in its original city (the other being the Boston Celtics). The team was originally known as the Knickerbockers, which it has retained as the official name, as reference to the synonymity between the term and New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Alaska ( /əˈlæskə/ (help·info)) is the largest state of the United States of America by area; it is situated in 
the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait. Approximately half of Alaska’s 698,473 residents reside within the Anchorage metropolitan area. As of 2009, Alaska remains the least densely populated state of the U.S.
The U.S. Senate approved the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867, for $7.2 million at about two cents per acre ($4.74/km2). The land went through several administrative changes before becoming an organized territory on May 11, 1912, and the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959. The name “Alaska” (Аляска) was already introduced in the Russian colonial time, when it was used only for the peninsula and is derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning “the mainland” or more literally, “the object towards which the action of the sea is directed”. It is also known as Alyeska, the “great land”, an Aleut word derived from the same root.
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Penguins (order Sphenisciformes, family Spheniscidae) are a group of aquatic, flightless birds living almost exclusively in the southern hemisphere, especially in Antarctica. Highly adapted for life in the water, penguins have countershaded dark and white plumage, and their wings have become flippers. Most penguins feed on krill, fish, squid, and other forms of sealife caught while swimming underwater. They spend about half of their life on land and half in the oceans.
Although all penguin species are native to the southern hemisphere, they are not found only in cold climates, such as Antarctica. In fact, only a few species of penguin live so far south. Several species are found in the temperate zone, and one species, the Galápagos Penguin, lives near the equator.
The largest living species is the Emperor Penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri): adults average about 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) tall and weigh 35 kg (75 lb) or more. The smallest penguin species is the Little Blue Penguin (also known as the Fairy Penguin), which stands around 40 cm tall (16 in) and weighs 1 kg (2.2 lb). Among extant penguins, larger penguins inhabit colder regions, while smaller penguins are generally found in temperate or even tropical climates (see also Bergmann’s Rule). Some prehistoric species attained enormous sizes, becoming as tall or as heavy as an adult human (see below for more). These were not restricted to Antarctic regions; on the contrary, subantarctic regions harboured high diversity, and at least one giant penguin occurred in a region not quite 2,000 km south of the equator 35 mya, in a climate decidedly warmer than today.
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When my fiancée and I set a date for our wedding, she came to me with a list of demands. As it turned out, I would have to change a few aspects of my behavior if she were to marry me. Of course I was prepared to curtail my habit of carousing and rabblerousing late into the night at the corner bar, but one of her other conditions caught me off-guard.
She insisted that once we moved in together, she would be in charge of the decorating. I would be allowed to maintain a “man cave” in the basement, where I could keep my various NASCAR license plate tin sign, by billiards table and the gigantic flat-screen TV I saved up for all last summer. It was understandable that she wanted to make the rest of the house presentable for company, and I readily agreed to the conditions.