Case in point,
In the military the seemingly arcane concepts of tradition, loyalty, discipline and moral courage have carried the services through cyclical turbulence in peace and war. Their continuance is far more important than the survival of any one leader. It is the function of the military's top officers to articulate that importance to the civilian political process. And an officer who allows a weakening of these ideals in exchange for self-preservation is no leader at all.
Key military officially began making such swaps during the Vietnam War, beginning an unhealthy pattern that still predominates. Too often, gaining high promotion means, hitching one's wagon to a political star, all the while either ducking or finessing politically sensitive issues. Today at the highest levels of the U.S. military one searches vainly for a leader who deserves mention along with the giants of the past. Those who might have reached such heights failed the "political correctness" test and were retired as colonels or junior flag officers.
This reality, more than any other factor, explains the devastating and continuing effect of the Tailhook scandal.. Our ranking admirals have learned full well to bob and weave when political issues confront them. And few issues are as volatile as those surrounding the assimilation of women into the military, particularly since ardent feminists have focused on the military as an important symbolic battlefield. Military leaders are at best passive and most often downright fearful when confronted by activists who allege that their culture is inherently oppressive toward females and that full assimilation of women depends only on a change in the mind-set of its misogynist leaders
http://www.jameswebb.com/articles/nytim ... chhunt.htm
Even though I think he's the real deal, James Webb's almost autobiographical call to awaken populist support from he calls an almost invisible ethnic group is almost too jingoistic for me.
This culture has more power than it understands. it has shaped the emotional fabric of the nation, defined America's unique form of populist democracy, created a distictively American musical style, and through the power of its insistence on personal honor and adamant individulalism has become the definition of "American" that others gravitate toward when they drop their hyphens and join the cultural mainstream. It has produced great military and political leaders, memorable athletes, talented performers, and successful entrepreneurs. it also has the most powerful issue in American politics on its side: simple fairness. Indeed the Scotts-Irish notion of fairness has dominated the most insistent rhetoric about the American democratic system since the days of Andrew Jackson - that the life and acces to the future of every human being has equal value, regardless of wealth or social status. And the Scots-Irish people brought this concept to reality through the frequently bloody, brutally confrontational process of refusing, over and over again, to be dominated from abofe for reasons that benefited only the ruling classes.
Arnold Toynbee took a much harsher view of the Scots-Irish in America:
Obviously this American challenge has been more formidable than the Irish challenge in both its aspects, physical and human. Has the increased challenge evoked an increased response? If we compare the Ulsterman and the Appalachian of today, two centuries after they parted company, we shall find that the answer is once again in the negative. The modern Appalachian has not only not improved on the Ulsterman; he has failed to hold his groundand has gone downhill in a most disconcerting fashion. In fact, the Appalachian 'mountain people' today are no better than barbarians. They have relapsed into illiteracy and witchcraft. They suffer from poverty, squalor and ill-health. They are the American counterparts of the latter-day White barbarians of the Old World - Rifis, Albanians, Kurds, Pathans and Hairy Ainus; but, wheras these later are belated survivals of an ancient barbarism, the Appalachians present the melancholy spectacle of of a people who have acquired civilization and then lost it.
Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History
