On March 11, 2024, The United States Military Academy at West Point abruptly removed the “Duty, Honor, Country” motto from its mission statement. The motto, which was first used in 1898, will be replaced with the anodyne phrase, “Army Values.” This seemingly innocuous action epitomizes the current state of this nation as the ruling and governmental elites have forsaken duty, honor, and country.
The motto of West Point was immortalized by General Douglas MacArthur in a 1962 address to the Corps of Cadets in what is often considered to be among the greatest speeches of the 20th century. Of Duty, Honor, Country, he said:
The code which these words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.
A nation without honor and an attendant fealty to duty is a nation without a future. Today the United States finds itself in a quagmire of ever-increasing self-doubt and foreboding. Chief among the factors that have brought America to this point has been the abandonment of an intuitive knowledge of what is right, just, and true as it relates to the duty imposed by conscience. Honor is being discarded and replaced by duplicity, avarice, self-aggrandizement, cowardice, and an unbridled lust for power and notoriety.
These characteristics are symptomatic of the bulk of the American ruling and governing classes that have increasingly adopted, as their sacrosanct tenet, the concept that the end justifies the means. In their position atop the societal pyramid, they have been devastatingly influential in undermining the morality and integrity of the citizenry.
The decades-old process of upending the Constitution and creating an overwhelmingly powerful central government is the predominant underlying factor in the loss of duty and honor as that process invariably unleashes the base nature of the human race. As Herbert Hoover once observed: “When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.”
Whether in the various state capitals or the once hallowed halls of Congress or the now-tarnished grandeur of the White House, the acquisition and retention of political power by any means possible and the attendant access to ever larger sums of money, either borrowed, created out of whole cloth or coerced from the taxpayers, has become firmly entrenched in the nation’s political psyche. Party identity notwithstanding, in order to achieve this end, nothing is beyond the pale — be it fraud, corruption, outright lies, immorality, or national bankruptcy.
Thomas Jefferson feared: “an irresponsible body… that will become venal and oppressive.” Far too many judges have increasingly allowed their personal biases and ideological beliefs to dominate their decision-making process. They have allowed themselves to be swallowed into the vortex of self-aggrandizement, faux omnipotence, and deference to statist ideology rather than adhere to the Constitution and act as men and women imbued with humility and rectitude.
Can honor and duty once lost be recaptured? Can the nation’s future be rescued? Yes, but it requires virtually all the patriotic and honorable men and women of good will within the nation’s institutions and among the citizenry, who vastly outnumber the ruling and governing elites and their sycophants, to unhesitatingly step forward and be willing to suffer the slings and arrows certain to come their way. They must rally around the now marginalized motto of West Point and the eloquent words of General MacArthur:
Duty, Honor, Country: These three hollowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Image: Randy Robertson
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