Wandering Around on Wednesday

Some days I cruise around the ‘sphere and don’t find much of anything that tickles my fancy. Today is not one of those days.

Cassandra is good today, very good. I encourage you to go by her place and read her “Must Read of the Day,” an address by General Michael R. Lehnert, the Commanding General of Marine Corps Installations West, to The Military Affairs Advisory Council in San Diego. Gen. Lehnert begins his speech with…

Eight days ago, I was present in the audience when Tom Brokaw addressed the 2006 Stanford graduating class. After the initial pleasantries and one-liners, Mr. Brokaw said something unexpected.

He told the class that they were the children of privilege, fortunate to be attending one of the finest educational institutions in the country, the anointed because they had both the test scores for admittance and parents who were able to afford their tuition. He noted that they could likely expect rapid advancement in almost any endeavor they choose and that they were destined to lead the most powerful country in the world.

The class was beaming.

And then Brokaw reminded them that the liberties and freedoms they enjoyed were being defended by young people their age that did not have their advantages. That at this time thousands of men and women were fighting, dying and suffering debilitating injury to ensure that the rest of us could live the American dream.

There was an uncomfortable shifting in the seats, followed by slow but growing applause from the audience.

When we sent my son to Stanford four years ago, we filled out a form asking for demographic information. One of the questions for the parents said, what is your profession? After it was a list of about thirty professions including doctor, lawyer, congressman, educator, architect. Military was not listed so I filled in "other"

My son was the only graduate who had a parent serving in the armed forces.

As I was introduced to his friends parents, it was interesting to watch their reaction. Few had ever spoken to a member of the military. One asked me how my son was able to gain admittance with the disadvantage of having to attend "those DoD schools". Many voiced support for our military and told me that they'd have served but clearly military service was not for their kind of people.

This year of the so-called elite schools, Princeton led them with nine graduates electing military service. Compare that with 1956 when over 400 of the Princeton graduating class entered the military. Most of the other Ivy League schools had no one entering the military this year.

I assume the emphasis is Cassandra’s, but no matter. The speech just gets better, and better, and better. I know a speech like this is “preaching to the choir” for you, constant reader, but please: do go read. And share it with your friends.

While we’re on about Cassandra, she also pointed James Lileks to this miserable column by the totally clue-free and supremely irritating Joel Stein. Remember Joel? If the name is faintly familiar, he’s the guy who wrote another miserable little column titled “I Don’t Support the Troops Warriors and Wusses.” (FWIW, I commented here.) This time he’s showing his ass thusly, and on the Fourth of July, no less:

I WALKED out Saturday afternoon to discover an American flag planted outside my house, like the work of some incredibly stupid explorer.

My first panic was that, like the North Pole or the moon, the United States was laying claim to my house. I was finally getting payback for not reading those long, boring articles about eminent domain. But my bigger panic was over what to do with it. I'm not a flag-waving kind of guy, but I knew damn well that I couldn't just throw it in the trash. Throwing away a flag is very, very bad. It's just as bad as burning it, which, I believe, brings 30 years of bad luck to your country, leading it to repeat the same mistakes. Like sending troops abroad to fight in open-ended civil wars.

So I was going to have to keep this flag for the rest of my life.

Much like you, at about this point, my wife, Cassandra, got sick of this conversation. So she plucked the flag out of our planter and threw it away, not even in the recycle bin. This is a woman who hates both political parties.

Mr. Lileks was just a little bit offended and devotes a goodly portion of today’s Bleat to ripping Mr. Stein a new one. The Lileks closes with this:

I suspect, perhaps unfairly, that “I love being American” (ed: Stein’s comment) is as deep and profound a statement as “I love the warm feeling of freedom I get when I pee in the pool.” Not that he would want public urination in a communal locale to be the sole basis of his identity, of course, but that’s how I see him now: one guy bobbing in the water, alone among many, a private smile on his face, thinking: like I’m the only one.

Hanging a flag is a sign of an unquestioning, tribal, us-versus-them, arrogant mentality, eh? FDR would have stood up from his wheelchair just to walk across the room and slap you silly.

That’s “just” the end. Like a lot of other things in life, it ain’t the destination, it’s the journey that counts. There are few better at the art of the takedown than James; once again, do go read.

For what it’s worth, I’ve never met an individual like Mr. Stein, and by that I mean a person who would be offended by the very sight of an American flag on his lawn. Never. Perhaps I move in society’s lower circles, or perhaps I don’t get out often enough. I tend to think it’s neither of those reasons; I’d like to think that Mr. Stein is a member of an incredibly small minority, a minority that gets too much attention from the majority. And I’ve already given that SOB waaay too much of my time today.

About the terrorist attacks in Bombay… The death toll is now 200. The very first thing that crossed my mind was “Why Bombay? What have the Indians done to offend the Islamofascists?” Neo has an answer to my question that is hard to refute. Along with some good links to other opinions and information on the subject.