We Joined, We Serve

Writing from Camp Victory in Baghdad, Sgt. Maj. Sean Metaxas wrote,

It's tough getting to read my hometown newspaper here, but every chance I get I do. And it was with sadness that I read the reaction of some readers to military recruiters opting to stay off the UCSC campus.

UCSC is the University of California at Santa Cruz. Sgt. Maj. Metaxas is vexed because the vocal activists are actively opposed to anything military, including the existence of military recruiters. Heaven forbid that the recruiters have access to the nerve bed of leftist thought, the university campus. Unfortunately, the leftist professors and students have enough political clout to limit much of the diversity of thought, other their own dogma of course. So much for the concept of free speech.

During the Vietnam War, I spent a number of years on college campuses in Northern California and Southern Illinois, including Cal Berkeley, an activist hotspot. I have a fair view of what college kids were like. Most students were self-involved in their own lives and not active participants in the massive anti-war rallies of the day. If they were, it was just so much theater. I suspect that the students of my day were not all that different from those of today.

Sgt. Maj. Metaxas’ main point is that the “great kids” serving in the military should be appreciated by the kids remaining at home. But are they? Sgt. Maj. Metaxas wrote,

So if the 20-year-old kid that's dealing with life and death on the streets of Baghdad or Ad Diwaniyah or Baqubah or Ramadi isn't making some kid at UCSC proud, that's a shame.

The prism through which the military kids and the leftist college kids view the world is the difference between reality and wishful thinking respectively. The majority of the college kids are no doubt uninvolved.

Liberals and leftists like to think of themselves as the compassionate class. Sgt. Maj. Metaxas disagrees and contends that it is his kids who have the compassion.

They're such great kids with more responsibility than most will ever know. They don't live in safe little bubbles, they fully appreciate the human condition, and they understand compassion better than anyone on this planet — lessons you can't get in a classroom and experiences you can't buy with tuition.

A key ingredient missing from the college experience is the concept of military service as a valuable contribution to the continuance of our social existence. Sgt. Maj. Metaxas continues,

We serve for reasons that most can not grasp. We serve to be part of something bigger. We serve for each other. As corny as it sounds we are duty-bound. We came here and whether we like it or not we get the job done.

In the words of Sgt. Maj. Sean Metaxas, “… we joined, we serve.”

That’s a lot more than can be said for the brainwashed military detractors and uninvolved youth populating the halls of education and coffee shops. But, that’s the essence of the cloistered youth coddled and exploited by leftist professors. Youth that has not yet grown up. Some never will. But, one became a Presidential candidate after obtaining a Senate seat on the back of her husband-President.