Duty, Honor, Country

Something so few Americans, especially Trump and his supporters, understand.

Video: West Point cadet’s answer makes pollster emotional | CNN

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What George W. Bush Can Teach Us in the Aftermath of Trump's Assassination Attempt

      The Iraq War had been going badly for a couple of years when President George W. Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld and appointed Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense and General David Petraeus as Commander, Multi-National Force – Iraq.  Both men were known not only for professional expertise but also for a willingness to speak truth to power.  Bush deliberately selected who he believed were the best men to solve the problem in Iraq.  He did not choose people who were slavishly devoted to him.  He then approved their new strategy, called “The Surge,” and placed his entire support behind it.       Shortly after this, President Bush gave a speech at the U.S. Naval War College at which he laid out the new strategy.  I was in the audience at that speech.  Prior to it, I had been strongly in opposition to Bush’s Iraq War as much because of the arrogance of the President and his assistants as because of the flaws in his strat...
Read more

Men for Others

        In 1973 in Valencia Spain, Pedro Arrupe, S.J., the Superior General of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) stated the following to a group of Jesuit high school alumni:   Education for justice has become in recent years one of the chief concerns of the Church. Why? Because there is a new awareness in the Church that participation in the promotion of justice and the liberation of the oppressed is a constitutive element of the mission which Our Lord has entrusted to her. Impelled by this awareness, the Church is now engaged in a massive effort to education – or rather to re-educate – herself, her children, and all men and women so that we may all “lead our life in its entirety… in accord with the evangelical principles of personal and social morality to be expressed in a living Christian witness.   Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-for-others; men who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ – for the God-m...
Read more

What the Military Commander of the Vietnam POW's Can Teach Us About Military Leadership and Trump

         Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale was a true naval hero.   A naval aviator who was shot down over North Vietnam, he spent 7 and 1/2 years in prison during which he was tortured 15 times, spent four years in solitary confinement and spent two years in leg irons.   Despite these challenges, Stockdale became one of the military commanders of the prisoners of war (POW's), successfully establishing a chain of command, a means of communication and clearly defined goals that were instrumental to maintaining the sanity and moral courage of those under his command.        During his captivity, Stockdale developed and refined his philosophy of living which was founded on the ancient philosophy of stoicism.   In Stockdale's words, the goal of stoicism is not a good society but a good man.   Stockdale spent the remainder of his life after his release teaching military officers "how to be good men".   This was not done ou...
Read more