Army Values
By ROBERT WRIGHT
In one sense, I was well positioned to enjoy the summer of love. In 1969, I was living in San Francisco, epicenter of hippiedom, antiwar fervor and utopian hope for perpetual peace.
Circumstances kept me from sharing the spirit. The part of San Francisco I lived in was the Presidio, which was then a military base. I was 12, and my father was an Army officer. I remember my family once driving toward the Presidio’s Lombard Street gate past tens of thousands of protesters who seemed to think my father was part of a very bad outfit.
I was sure they were wrong, and I still am. In fact, the whole, larger stereotype — that the military is a right-wing institution, best viewed with skepticism if not cynicism by the left — is way off. Growing up in, or at least amid, the Army helped make me a liberal — not because I reacted against my environment, but because I absorbed its values. If all of America were more like the Army, it would be a better country.
People think of the Army as hierarchical, but compared with the private sector it’s a bastion of egalitarianism.
. . . I wish some people on the left had a deeper respect for the military, but lately the left isn’t where the most consequential disrespect has come from.
Read more. . .
Robert Wright Liberal Values Iraq Politics News Bush Equality Incompetent Republicans
