![]() As the candidates appear to be nearly alike, and as it is difficult to make a selection without infringing the principle of equality, which is the supreme law of democratic societies, the first idea which suggests itself is to make them all advance at the same rate and submit to the same probation. As the paths which lead to them are indiscriminately open to all, the progress of all must necessarily be slackened. In such institutions, promotion becomes a problem because of the egalitarian conceit that one man is just as good as another: More importantly, the military’s seemingly precipitous decline is the outcome of two tendencies that have been eating away at its aristocratic spirit for over a century: egalitarianism and managerialism.Īlexis de Tocqueville, that sharp-eyed observer of nineteenth-century America, was particularly interested in what impact egalitarianism would have on the hierarchies that no society can do without. Attempts to place all the blame with the Obama administration ignore more permissive attitudes in society at large. In the past decade, it has added sweeping changes: the green light for open homosexuality in 2011, the opening of all combat positions to women in 2015, the allowance of transgender individuals in 2016. This sea-change has a particularly bitter taste to those who are being either forced into retirement, not promoted, or downsized (dubbed “force shaping”) because they are the wrong race and the wrong gender, at a time when the military makes no secret of its enthusiasm for affirmative action in recruitment and promotion. That profession, like civilization itself, is a precarious thing: it only takes a couple of generations for the continuity to break down. Members of a dying breed, we sense that once we are gone, the profession of arms will hardly be recognizable. One might be tempted to write this off as the existential crisis of middle age, but it is a sentiment shared by those who have witnessed first-hand the dramatic transformation of the military over the past two decades. And yet I find myself wondering what it was all for. On my mantel rests an Academy saber above it is the Bronze Star I received in Iraq. A few dozen enemies no longer walk this Earth because of orders I have given. That service includes two wars and service in multiple branches of the military across a wide range of specialties. This month I retire from the military after twenty years. Then, after an entire year of brainstorming for a suitably inspiring quote to replace the old one, the Air Force displayed its complete poverty of thought by erecting its bland “core values”: “Integrity first, Service before self, Excellence in all we do.” Workmen with power sanders were dispatched to finish the damnatio memoriae. As it happened, nearly half a century of sunlight had etched the shadow of the letters onto the granite underneath, making the words as legible as before. In 2003, the Academy officialdom deemed those words to be offensively gender-specific and ordered them removed. Each cadet memorized the lines that came next: Up the ramp, they went onto the Academy’s impressive terrazzo flanked by modernist architecture, scene of the next four arduous years. Year after year, incoming classes of cadets would finish their six weeks of basic training by marching under the words BRING ME MEN. ![]() For decades, the opening lines of a poem by Sam Walter Foss entitled “The Coming American” hung in big steel letters at the Air Force Academy.
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