“Duty, Honor, Country” versus Justification

by

Gadfly

           The motto of the United States Military Academy, known more commonly as West Point, is “duty, honor, country.”  General Douglas MacArthur popularized this motto in his famous farewell speech to the West Point Cadet Corps on May 12, 1962.  Here is a recording of his speech.  Here is a transcript.


           MacArthur graduated number one in his West Point class and served as First Captain of the Cadet Corps.  He served in three major wars (WWI, WWII, Korea) and other campaigns, earning the Medal of Honor, three Army Distinguished Service Crosses, five Army Distinguished Service Medals, a Navy Distinguished Service Medal, seven Silver Stars, a Distinguished Flying Cross, a Bronze Star with valor device, an Air Medal, and two Purple Hearts.   These are just the higher ranking decorations.  In addition to these, he earned dozens of others from foreign nations.  MacArthur’s decades of service were punctuated on April 10, 1951 when President Truman fired him.  Five days earlier, Republican Representative Joseph Martin read on the floor of Congress the text of a private letter from General MacArthur that was critical of Truman’s Europe-first policy:

It seems strangely difficult for some to realize that here in Asia is where the communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global conquest, and that we have joined the issue thus raised on the battlefield; that here we fight Europe's war with arms while the diplomats there still fight it with words; that if we lose the war to communism in Asia the fall of Europe is inevitable, win it and Europe most probably would avoid war and yet preserve freedom. As you pointed out, we must win. There is no substitute for victory.

Ironically, Secretary of State Dean Acheson agreed with Truman that MacArthur should be removed, especially for political differences on foreign policy.  Former communist Louis Budenz dedicates a chapter, “The Kremlin in the State Department,” in his book A Cry of Peace.  According to Budenz, Acheson was known (via communications from the ComIntern to worldwide editors of The Daily Worker, which Budenz was in New York) to be a Communist sympathizer and favored China.

Constitutional and profession of arms scholars generally agree that Truman was correct in relieving MacArthur because of the public difference in policy agendas.  On the other hand, scholars are divided on the long-range prudence of Truman’s (and Acheson’s) political position as manifested in issues the United States faces today.  China has emerged as a formidable threat and Europe is already afflicted by socialism.

Truman was not shy about characterizing MacArthur (who was far more popular heroic figure in America’s public sentiment).  Here is how Time Magazine captured Truman’s view: “I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”

With the above as historical context, we now witness an impeachment process where unelected officials disagree with President Trump’s foreign policy agenda.  Unlike MacArthur, Democrats shield a so-called whistleblower, who should be more appropriately characterized as a “leaker,” from any accountability.  Of course, the cowardly whistleblower is not alone.  We are learning more about the unelected political elite that presumes to have more power over the foreign policy agenda than an elected President.

Democrats champion as one of their star witnesses Ambassador Bill Taylor, a West Point graduate who graduated in the top 1% of his class and whose highest decorations include a Bronze Star with valor device and a Purple Heart.  Ambassador Taylor appears to have developed a different understanding of what his oath of office means, especially the part that pledges to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

What Does It Mean to Support and Defend the Constitution?
  

The Constitution of the United States established a republic to balance the tension between (a) protecting our individual unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and (b) the passions of a collective democracy.  Our Framers knew the dangers of democracy, as argued by Madison in Federalist Paper number 10.   The political assault on President Trump is a clear example of the mortal disease of faction in democracies.

  

Thus, the Constitution of the United States delineates a system of governance with powers delegated by the people to a national government.  The power to conduct foreign policy is delegated in Article II to the President, not to an unelected bureaucracy.  Federal departments and agencies are supposed to support the President’s agenda.  Unfortunately, the bureaucracy (e.g., the National Security Council and the State Department) has developed institutional inertia over time and does not turn over with political election cycles.

How About Enemies Foreign and Domestic? 

President Trump is accused of a quid pro quo for allegedly promising military aid for dirt on a political opponent.  My understanding, based on reading the July 25 telephone call transcript, is that President Trump was concerned about the left’s efforts to undermine his presidential campaign and election in 2016.  While the concern may seem to be personal, the real implication is that if a political party can mount such an assault on a political opponent that happens to be a duly elected President, it can happen again in the future.

Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham have now advanced their efforts from an administrative to a criminal investigation.  Meanwhile, the Democrats remain convinced Russia interfered with the 2016 election because Crowdstrike, a private firm hired by the Democrat National Committee (DNC) to examine their computer servers, makes this claim.  The DNC refused to allow the FBI to examine the server.  Crowdstrike’s claim is treated as a fact.  Just like anonymous news reports.  Evidence now also reveals DNC contractors actively sought dirt on candidate Trump in Ukraine.

  

Thus, what we see playing out in Washington D.C. is clear evidence of assaults on our Constitution by domestic and foreign enemies.

Implications

Of all those in the leftist cabal involved in the current assault on a duly elected President and the Constitution, Ambassador Taylor, a West Point graduate, and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a member of the National Security Council, I would encourage them to (a) refresh their understanding of their oath of office and (b) reflect on the moral expectations entrusted to West Point cadets in MacArthur’s farewell address.  This understanding and sense of duty are what conditions authentic heroism, not the political opportunism of unelected political elite.  MacArthur celebrated the heroic profession of arms as the noblest of all professions:

The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training - sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him. However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country, is the noblest development of mankind.

MacArthur also clearly understood the relationship between the profession of arms and the political process:

Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government. Whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as firm and complete as they should be.

These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.

Sadly, contrary to MacArthur’s call to greatness in living the values of “duty, honor, country,” Taylor and Vindman seem pressured to camouflage their political opportunism through acts of justification.  They have acclimated to a progressive globalist political agenda.  In the process, they display an ignorance about the difference between a democracy and a constitutional republic.

Alexis de Tocqueville studied "democracy" in America and published his research in a seminal multiple-volume book with the title, Democracy in America.  Book Four has this title:  "Influence of Democratic Opinions on Political Society."  Chapter VI has this title:  "What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear."  Here is an excerpt from this chapter:

After having thus successfully taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community.  It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.  The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided:  men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting:  such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.  I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described, might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom; and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.  Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free:  as they cannot destroy either one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once.  They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people.  

The leftist elite pushes for democracy, not a republic, ostensibly for the reasons described above.  The non-elite who subscribe to democracy are also described above--"a flock of timid and industrious animals."  Memoirs I have read by former Communist members (Douglas Hyde, Bella Dodd, Louis Budenz, Whittaker Chambers, et al.) all talk about how they pushed for democracy as a necessary precondition for socialism/communism.  Is there any surprise then that 70% of Millennials believe in socialism and a third support Communism?

Quite possibly, Ambassador Taylor and Lieutenant Colonel Vindman may be unwitting instruments in the left’s advance of socialism under the cloak of progressivism in America—something which MacArthur (and others) clearly understood and embraced in their support and defense of the Constitution of the United States.  “Duty, honor, country” is a noble motto/ethos.  Justification is self-serving.