Sad thing is his description of the journalists reaction is all too accurate.

The concept of duty does not exist in their worldview, they don't give to America they take what they can get. They just don't understand that someone has to make their taking possible. The freedoms they take they use to undermine the very troops vouchsafing those freedoms for them.

Very moving piece all the way.

Cordially,

Uncle J

Greyhawk, it looks to me like the trolls started "smelling" the Downing Street Memo, and they're now thinking there's blood in the water. That may explain the feeding frenzy over the "Duty" post, and elsewhere (Watch this post from SMASH over the next day or so ...)

What they're actually smelling, though, is not the reports of that memo, but the rotted chum generated by their own lack of moral and logical discernment ... which ferments undisturbed by morality and reason, in large part because, it seems, no one is ever held accountable for the consequences of INACTION.

Duty wouldn't be a bad "gimmik" for the Army to try. I imagine a TV ad reciting the Emmerson poem someone posted over there, good visuals of discomfort and war and then a series of young people saying seriously, "I can." "I can." "I can."

The thing about sacrifice in relation to duty (or to religion for that matter) is that the more difficult it is, the more that implies the worth of the cause. The message should be that there isn't anything at all fun or pleasant about this, so why then do people do it?

Young people are simutaneously the most self-centered and the most self-sacrificing and idealistic.

There are "power words"... loyalty, belonging, family, duty, sacrifice, justice. They don't need to be sugar coated by grown-ups who think that young people are most interested in fun. Honest... if they had an ad with a soldier showing off his scars they'd probably get better results.

i agree that the Emerson poem should be a recruiting commercial. Better than that "Army of One" campaign.

Show the sandstorms and mud holes and dog tired grunts. Duty will call, and some will say "I can". Those are the soldiers i want.

Well they're not using "duty" to improve the retention rates, they're using "money." Come on, wingnuts, the only hope you have of keeping the volunteer military staffed for this ongoing disaster is to bribe people.

Failing that, there will be a draft. We can do this in one of two ways. First, they could use old-fashioned conscription. That would be a problem, given that the Liar-in-Chief promised during his '04 campaign not to draft. Of course, Bush has lied before so maybe he'll lie again, but the problem is that all of this looks like it's going to come to a head in about a year -- just in time for the 2006 elections. So nix the conscription idea.

The other alternative is to dig deeper into the IRR pool. It's far more preferable, because the IRR has already been trained. Not only that, but most of them are Republicans and they're ready, willing and eager. Look for a big expansion of IRR callups straight into the infantry.

p.s.: This presumes that poetry doesn't work. Emerson is going to fill the gap, huh? Can you people tell me where you get those mushrooms you've been eating? I want to see the colors, too.

I think I need to go take a shower after reading the bile from Willysnout. His snout was shooting bile all over the place, hence the shower.

My son graduated from UT with a degree in journalism; why I don't know, he never pursued journalism as a vocation. In any case, he told me that his way liberal professors insisted that in order to be an effective member of the 4th estate, a journalist may never be loyal to any nation -- only their profession.

With such tripe being taught at colleges and universities, it is no wonder that journalists show such disdain for the United States of America and those who serve her interests.

It makes me sick.

Speaking as someone who joined the Army as a volunteer during the Vietnam war I am heartened and pleasantly surprised that we have so many outstanding young people who understand duty, honor and all those other values that narcissistic lefties fear and loathe. While America's moral grownups try to fight genuinely lethal threats, our C'Moi Brigades of spoiled elitists are instead struggling against family, country, religion, tradition, morality, history and anything else that might inhibit mental or physical masturbation.
For the dedicated narcisso-lefty twit, personal moral duty of any kind always becomes the ultimate enemy. Recycling, low-fat diets, self-actualization and condom use are poor substitutes for duty, honor and country.

Willysnout,

Please work on your courting skills if you have any hope of the military ever seeing the Dems as an option. This 'you're all doomed' approach may make sense in Deanland but in the real world?

Sweetie

"This ongoing disaster"? Been over to Chrenkoff lately, Willysnout?

Bear in mind, will you please, that the American Revolution, in which a group of leaders (another concept not well defined in the journalists' or Democrats' lexicon, both of which seem to equate it with "celebrity" or "demagogue") pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor (another) to their odds-against attempt to bring about a nation ruled by consent of the governed, an effort currently being duplicated by brave Iraqis with the substantial help of American GIs and other coalition forces, did not at any time enjoy majority support. Now, that was a potential disaster. In contrast, two-thirds of Iraqis believe that their country is going the right way.

Fine, Jamie, let the Army put the Emerson poetry on TV and see how well it works. Now, if you're in the mood for some reality -- always a dicey proposition with the species wingnuttus americanus -- you might try reading the following. Seems as if your Liar-in-Chief's war is losing its popularity as the casualties add up. He probably shouldn't have had his advisers tell everyone we'd be greeted with sweets and flowers and that it would cost $2 billion. The "Mission Accomplished" shtick, in retrospect, might have been a dumb idea, too.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-06-12-poll_x.htm

Ah, someone else noticed Willysnout's fallen into Howlin' Dean's schtick.

I try to keep on telling myself that that certain song is sung by outliers. It's hard to tell on the internet, after all, unlike in "real life" where a person can pick up other clues indicating that someone is on the loony fringe.

Over and over and over again I see evidence that people, *especially* young people, resonate with the longing for those Virtues I mentioned. If it's the Frugal Gormet talking about making sit down meals for 60's college students... those supposedly radical youngsters interested in rejecting their parent's values... which, as it turns out, was lots of TV dinners... and finding that what they longed for was the bonding of communal meals. Or if it's high school students enforcing the highest of all possible rules in their world, which is Loyalty to their friends. Or the longing for Family that leads so many young women to have a baby.

If I write a story dealing with those power words, and duty is a big one, I can count on connecting with an audience in a way I could never ever do if I wrote a story about vanity or selfishness. People may not think the Virtues are meaningful, because they are rather out of style, but deep down a great many people want those things to be true. They want to belong to a larger cause, they want to live a life where Honor matters and Loyalty matters and Sacrifice matters.

Solomon said that everything he did to please himself turned out to be pointless. He was a wise man.

The Army should consider it and the Emerson poem would be incredible (and in the public domain ;-)

For anyone who hadn't seen it... Rob posted this at Scrappleface.

"When Emerson published his "May- Day and Other Pieces" in 1867, it included this selection entitled simply "Voluntaries III" as part of 6 Voluntaries:"

III

In an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right,
Who shall nerve heroic boys
To hazard all in Freedom's fight,--
Break sharply off their jolly games,
Forsake their comrades gay
And quit proud homes and youthful dames
For famine, toil and fray?
Yet on the nimble air benign
Speed nimbler messages,
That waft the breath of grace divine
To hearts in sloth and ease.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must ,
The youth replies, I can .

Oh yeah, that'll work. Mushrooms, anyone?