As the country goes, so does the military.

(source)

WEST POINT, NY - MAY 23: Cadets in the graduating class of the United States Military Academy at West Point participate in commencement exercises on May 23, 2009 in West Point, New York. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave the commencement speech to the 970 graduates at the elite military academy. (Getty/Daylife)



Mr. Robert Hickson has an article in the March issue of Chronicles about West Point and the loss of traditions and decline of standards at the military academy and in the US Army at large: "Don Quixote at West Point."

When I contracted some of my trusted classmates from West Point and told them the entire story, I was told that the problem extends beyond the West Point Military Police. When cadets themselves are 'off duty,' it is often difficult to say who is a cadet and who is a vagrant or suspect gangster. Moreover, a dignified woman in the West Point Post Exchange had told me that the dress and conduct of the constable was representative. Cadets and other members of the military increasingly dress and act in this manner. 'This is not, by far, the way it used to be,' she said. 'But people don't seem to care anymore.' There is a pervading indifference, as if to say: 'I don't care, and you don't matter.'

My classmates informed me that the ethos at the academy is now so changed that a recent superintendent invited a very young, potential financial donor to stay overnight at his prestigious military quarters, while a decorated veteran general from World War II was put up at a nearby hotel. One of my other good classmates--not at all a curmudgeon, much less a pessimist or a fatalist--said, 'Robert, the Corps has, and the Army has'--cadet slang for 'the standards of the Corps and the Corps of Cadets itself have gone to hell, and the Army has, too.' I had not expected to hear these words from such a senior and distinguished man.

In any case, we shall not recover the flower of chivalry, much less its fuller fruits, unless we rediscover and are nourished by its roots, including its deeper religious roots. But as James Burnham writes, 'To be defeated after losing well does not always lose so much as not to have fought.' Don Quixote would agree. (And, along with his courage amid the surrounding mockery and cynicism, he further displayed 'the wisdom fo his naivete,' especially by his prompt and sustaining desire for 'chivalrous magnanimity' and for 'a new order of voluntary nobility.') As Chesterton once said, only a live thing can swim against the stream. Let us not be a drifter, nor a slothful tramp. As my Catholic Special Forces team sergeant once said to me: 'Sir, let us flame out, not rust out!'

Do the cadets still have an idea of what it means to be an officer and a gentleman? How can the admission of women to the academy not erode traditional ideals of what it is to be a gentleman?

WEST POINT, NY - MAY 23: Cadets in the graduating class of the United States Military Academy at West Point participate in commencement exercises on May 23, 2009 in West Point, New York. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave the commencement speech to the 970 graduates at the elite military academy. (Getty/Daylife)


Has the US Army relaxed of standards with regards to behavior and dress in the name of freedom and psychological comfort. Whatever the justification, if its high standards regarding appearance and demeanor are no longer enforced, and it draws its members from society at large, which is in decline, what should we expect except for soldiers and officers who behave no differently from their civilian counterparts when they are off duty?

The inevitable march to radical egalitarianism and the destruction of tradition -- it seems fitting that the Union Army, instrument for the eradication of traditional culture in the South, has fallen to the same disease that it has helped spread in the past. This is not to say that certain members, like the author of this piece, have not been heroic or virtuous, for whom I have much admiration and respect. But I am talking about the institution itself. After all, it serves the National Government.

*Slavery was just one aspect of the traditional culture of the South, and not a necessary part of it. If the South had ended slavery peacefully, we would have seen that this is the case, both in the result and in the originating impulse, which would have come from within the South. Instead the war and the occupation arguably created more animosity and resistance to change. Let us also remember that racism and racial discrimination was also present in the North.