I agree with every syllable of Secretary Gates’s recent lecture at Duke University and with Glenn Reynolds’s New York Post op-ed. The increased separation between our military and our elite institutions of higher education hurts our country. We should be clear about one thing, however. Harvard needs the military more than the military needs Harvard.From a New York Post column:
Simply put, the ideological groupthink at our elite universities implants bad — and even dangerous — ideas in its graduates. Our universities would be better off if more veterans and active members of the military (such as ROTC faculty) were on campus to present alternative — and more realistic — viewpoints.
The US military is the most mature, professional, and effective organization in the US, perhaps the world, and it was made so with little help from the Ivy League. It may well be that the absence of Ivy League graduates helped make it so.
Look at the mess Ivy Leaguers have made of the industries they dominate such as investment banking and the media. While the graduates of the military academies look ahead to incorporate new technology into the military, the Ivy League graduates in the old media are locked in a reactionary struggle against the new media, like cavemen who fear fire. Thank God, these Ivy League bumblers are not running the military lest they demand our troops ride into combat on horseback, fearing the new technologies of tank and airplane.
It is the Ivy League who has the most to learn from the military, not the other way round. There is nothing in Harvard nor Columbia that you can’t learn in hundreds of other schools. However, there is a lot to be learned in the US military that you will never learn at Harvard nor Columbia.
Lefties like to think of military people as automatons--as if just anyone could convince ordinary people to "take that hill".
None of which speaks to the issue which, at this moment, keeps them off harvard's campus.
ReplyDeleteYou can choose to believe that DADT is the reason there's no ROTC at Harvard, but given that ROTC was at Harvard for a lot of years, and was expelled decades before DADT was passed, you would look kinda foolish.
ReplyDeleteLet's assume DADT was repealed tomorrow. Do you honestly think Harvard would instantly embrace the military?
ReplyDeleteThe absurdity is this: DADT was passed by a Democratic-controlled congress and signed by a Democratic president, yet they still swoon for Democrats - AND sign on to every pro-gay bandwagon they can find.
But of course, it's all the military's fault, so let's ban ROTC.
This conversation is giving me deja vu
ReplyDeleteAnonymous -- yes, I do, if only because they would have to or face ridicule. And, while it's true that it was done under a Democratic administration, it was only done as a compromise that seemed better than dishonorably discharging them.
ReplyDeleteNeko, I didn't bring it up, but my objection is the same.
Mike AT, I stand corrected . . .not that that's the issue. Directing me to the website will not change my opinion in this one instance, in which I wholeheartedly agree with *her*.