Mister, why are YOU here?

That’s a question (almost) no politician will ask himself or if asked by anyone else will answer honestly.

But others can not be allowed such a luxury. From Robert A. Heinlein’s 1973 James Forrestal Memorial Lecture delivered at the United States Naval Academy:

Why are you here?

[directed] Mister, why are YOU here?

Never mind, son; that’s a rhetorical question. You are here to become a naval officer. That’s why this Academy was founded. That is why all of you are here: to become naval officers. If that is NOT why YOU are here, you’ve made a bad mistake. But I speak to the overwhelming majority who understood the oath they took on becoming midshipmen and look forward to the day when they will renew that oath as commissioned officers.

But why would anyone want to become a naval officer?

In the present dismal state of our culture there is little prestige attached to serving your country; recent public opinion polls place military service far down the list.

It can’t be the pay. No one gets rich on the pay. Even a 4-star admiral is paid much less than top executives in other lines. As for lower ranks the typical naval officer finds himself throughout his career just catching up from the unexpected expenses connected with the last change of duty when another change of duty causes a new financial crisis. Then, when he is about fifty, he is passed over and retires. . .but he can’t really retire because he has two kids in college and one still to go. So he has to find a job. . .and discovers that jobs for men his age are scarce and usually don’t pay well.

Working conditions? You’ll spend half your life away from your family. Your working hours? “Six days shalt thou work and do all thou art able; the seventh day the same, and pound the cable.” A forty-hour week is standard for civilians — but not for naval officers. You’ll work that forty-hour week but that’s just a starter. You’ll stand a night watch as well, and duty weekends. Then with every increase in grade your hours get longer — until at last you get a ship of your own and no longer stand watches. Instead you are on duty twenty-four hours a day. . .and you’ll sign your night order book with: “In case of doubt, do not hesitate to call me.”

Politicians *spit*–those self-styled elites–view such a service orientation as anathema… of course. But there is a much deeper course of service that transcends even duty, and it is a course that citizens need to at least be aware of, even if they never feel able to embrace it. It’s found elsewhere, but this, from Heinlein’s speech, is a poignant and powerful example:

… no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely. I want to tell about one such man …. no one knows his name, or where he came from; all we know is what he did.

In my home town sixty years ago when I was a child, my mother and father used to take me and my brothers and sisters out to Swope Park on Sunday afternoons. It was a wonderful place for kids, with picnic grounds and lakes and a zoo. But a railroad line cut straight through it.

One Sunday afternoon a young married couple were crossing those tracks. She apparently did not watch her step, for she managed to catch her foot in the frog of a switch to a siding and could not pull it free. Her husband stopped to help her.

But try as they might they could not get her foot loose. While they were working at it, a tramp showed up, walking the ties. He joined the husband in trying to pull the young woman’s foot loose. No luck —

Out of sight around the curve a train whistled. Perhaps there would have been time to run and flag it down, perhaps not. In any case both men went right ahead trying to pull her free, and the train hit them.

The wife was killed, the husband was mortally injured and died later, the tramp was killed — and testimony showed that neither man made the slightest effort to save himself.

The husband’s behavior was heroic, but what we expect of a husband toward his wife: his right, and his proud privilege, to die for his woman. But what of this nameless stranger? Up to the very last second he could have jumped clear. He did not. He was still trying to save this woman he had never seen before in his life, right up to the very instant the train killed him. And that’s all we’ll ever know about him.

This is how a man dies.

This is how a man lives!

Robert A. Heinlein, 5 April 1973
James Forrestal Memorial Lecture
United States Naval Academy

Do go read the entire speech.

(BTW, anyone who knows of a better posting of the speech–the one I found was on a discussion group, split between two postings–please send it my way.)

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, guerrilla radio, McCain Blogs, Adam’s Blog, Miss Beth’s Victory Dance, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Dumb Ox Daily News, Tilting At Windmill Farms, Pursuing Holiness, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.