Posted on 01/08/2015 4:07:53 PM PST by Jacquerie
The service academies are all Potemkin villages, facades with nothing behind them: they don’t teach morals, they don’t make better officers, and they cost you a bundle. Most fundamentally, they combine two incompatible goals: military obedience and the freedom to question offered by knowledge. This is a combustible mixture as students ask why things are as they are and are told sharply that this is the way things are, and are punished if they insist. One day the lid is going to blow.
A confession: I believe in their mission, and so I am a disillusioned former True Believer, as indeed most of the students are. I would give anything if the service academies represented a real alternative to the largely soulless “take one course after another” factories of modern education. Or the only-liberals-allowed prepping for McKinsey.
I wish the academies were the mixture of Athens and Sparta that might solve the problems with today’s academics, the fusion of the Cartesian halves of body and soul. But they aren’t: they’re hollow self-serving grinds where perfectly nice kids suffer.
Still, it’s all paid for by somebody else and the head office assures your parents you’re doing fine. People fawn over you in your spiffy uniform in airports, and thank you “for your service.” Liberals are scared to object for fear of seeming anti-military. And you’re the Ken dolls of the conservatives.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
The country would be better served by abolishing Harvard and Yale.
5.56mm
Salon.com and screed go hand-in-hand.
Could be a loooonnnnnggggg wait.
Add Columbia.
.
I'd say he's seriously burned out.
That’s what I meant. ;)
There are hundreds of ROTC programs. I’ve not seen any quality differences among ROTC, West Pointers, and OCS grads. It’s all dependent upon the individual. I can’t say I disagree with the premise.
I had a few ring knockers around when I was in, my cousin was one ... like the rest he thought he was the s—t.
My brother-in-law (younger sister’s husband) graduated first in his Army ROTC class, which made him Regular Army instead of a Reservist. He retired as a colonel.
USNA '90 and I was lucky enough to never have this idiot.
Lets abolish Salon.
Arnold was, however, hated by many in that day's "Congress."
Given Arnold's near victory over Britain at Quebec, his Naval victory over a British invasion fleet at Valcour Bay, and his victorious leadership at Lexington ... where he violated orders to remain in the hilltop "command" headquarters and was seriously wounded after charging downhill on his horse to prevent what was almost a major American defeat.
Arnold's major issue with congress was their not covering his expenses ... Arnold lost his financial records when his gunboat went down in Valcouer Bay.
Suggested reading ... "Arundel", "Rabble in Arms", and "Lydia Bailey" By Kenneth Roberts.
And then read Kenneth Roberts' amazing "Oliver Wiswell" -- a look at the Revolutionary war from a pro-British "loyalist" viewpoint.
They are books you will never forget.
Clearly I am biased up front...
However, I recently also had the privilege of sitting on the nomination recommendations board for a local representative.
I can assure you that by and large the qualified applicants to the service academies are among the cream of the crop of our youth. It was actually startling in this day and age there see so many who are heavily involved in church, missions, and family programs. Truly a minority within the minority of actual achievers. They are also willing, at ages 18 and 19, to commit the next 10 years of their life, all day every day, to the service of their country.
I also served as an OCS instructor for a tour. There, we also produced some fine officers.
What we need, in my completely biased opinion, is a crecommitment to the rigor that once upon a time provided a vetting to ensure that academy grads were the best prepared junior officers. The problem is not the students admitted, but the watering down of the process. In many ways academics has over-ridden the warrior ethos. The two must must be mutually supporting, and mutually emphasized.
Wow! You actually read the article. You obviously don’t know how the game is played.
As one of my COs once said, “Don’t bring me a problem unless you also bring me a solution.”
This author states the problem very well, but makes no attempt to provide a solution to the problem.
He’s taught at the USNA for 27 years. He obviously isn’t pissed off enough to leave. Sounds like a disgruntled employee. Maybe Professor Fleming was denied being the head of the English department and now he’s bent. We all come across people like this at all of our places of work. Long term employees who gripe and complain about the company they work for. As I read this I had the same thought in mind for him as for other gripers. If you don’t like where you’re at then leave!
Last I heard Harvard’s Endowment fund was plus $30B.
Why aren’t these ‘Progressives’ calling for free tuition from that ivy league institution?
I know, I'm sorry!
Promise to be more superficial in the future...:^)
A liberal like Fleming just has to run his diahrea mouth and intentionally piss off conservatives.
Chester Nimitz Senior, born and raised 35 miles from where I sit, graduated in 1905 from the Navy Academy 7th in his class. Nearly 40 years later he made decisions at the Battle of Midway that were the right ones. Had he made the wrong ones. The US Fleet could have been annihilated by the Japs. Then, there are Patton, Lee, Eisenhower, Bradley, Grant and many others. A book could easily be written on the subject.
If anything, Fleming is still paying on his School Loans and is jealous. He is right about one thing. If we keep going the way we are a military in the US is not needed. This is because if the Liberals retain control and keep writing ROE’s more and more fathers are going to STOP their kids from going in the military as many are today doing.
If anything too, Fleming’s writing proves the service academies need to dial back to all rules in place in the fifties and CANCEL all rules and policies made since then including English Teachers that bad mouth their employer!
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