FINE WRITING – OVERNIGHT:  College Fix reviews a fine piece by retired Harvard professor Ruth Wisse in The Wall Street Journal.  Professor Wisse examines a fundamental cause of our loss in Afghanistan.  You will not be surprised by her conclusion, but you will be stimulated by the quality of her argument.  From College Fix: 

Ruth Wisse, a professor emerita at Harvard University, has penned an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that argues the Ivy League institution’s “40-year ROTC ban sent a deeper message: that American civilization isn’t worth defending.”

Citing the Duke of Wellington’s remark that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,” Wisse argues the presence of ROTC inculcates “respect for military service.”

“The qualities developed in those British schoolboys produced the soldiering that defeated Napoleon’s forces. Since armies are typically made up of young people who go straight from school to the battlefield, the traits and habits necessary for winning wars must be already ingrained in those we expect to fight them. Afghanistan was lost in the halls of Harvard,” Wisse wrote.

ROTC’s absence from Harvard taught its students that they “are too good for military service. Leave national defense to the farm boys and those who don’t make it to an elite college. Forty years of such scorn for the military will bring low any democracy.”

“ROTC is back on Harvard’s campus now. But more than mere acceptance is needed. Students must be offered an education that demonstrates the exceptional merits of their country and civilization, and gives them the intellectual tools to defend it,” Wisse wrote.

COMMENT:  A great truth eloquently presented by one of Harvard's best.  When the draft ended in the early 1970s, even Ted Kennedy, no right winger, worried that the all-volunteer military would become detached from the nation it served, and that civilians would lose appreciation for what the military does.  That has happened.  When I grew up, everyone knew a soldier, or even many soldiers.  On my block we had veterans and battle casualties, one guy who served in both World War II and Korea, and another who was the sole survivor of a B-17 crew.  Universities proudly advertised their ROTC programs.  Armed Forces Day was actively celebrated, and few complained that the military flyovers were threats to the environment.   What a different atmosphere we have now. 

Just before his death, Douglas MacArthur commented that the day might approach when Americans would refuse to fight for their country.  We aren't quite there yet, but we see with horror that many schools openly teach that America is a degraded and racist society, hardly one worth saving.  The question must be asked:  How many years of this can we take before MacArthur's prophecy comes true, and the real America is subjugated by ignorance and spiritual degeneracy?  Think about it.

October 13,  2021