The Western Cosmopolitan Elites Give Up On Duty, Honour, Country

On the Moral Disarmament of the West & the Loss of the Warrior Ethos

Photo by Xuan Nguyen on Unsplash

Sometimes the smallest changes to the vocabulary we use symbolise a cultural shift of tremendous significance. The disappearance of words – particularly ones that pertain to the domain values- usually signify an alteration to society’s system of meaning.

Recently West Point, the famous American Military Academy announced it would remove the motto ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ from its mission statement[i]. According to Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland, who announced this change in a letter that he penned, the dropping of this motto is not a big deal. He claimed that it is ‘our responsibility to produce leaders to fight and win our nation’s wars requires us to assess ourselves regularly’.

It is far from clear how the demotion of a motto that was first added to West Point’s mission statement in 1898 will help to produce leaders to fight America’s wars. This very old and very clear guiding motto is to be replaced with managerial speak that in a long-winded way states that its goal `to build, educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets to be commissioned leaders of character committed to the Army Values and ready for a lifetime of service to the Army and Nation.’

One does not require a Ph.D. in moral philosophy to understand that this bureaucratic statement about educating leaders in the Army has little to say about the core values embodied by the previous motto. Indeed, it likely that the demotion of West Point’s age old motto was in part motivated by West Point’s unease with wholeheartedly promoting the values of ‘Duty, Honor, Country’.

Duty, Honour, Country are central elements of the Warrior Ethos. Honour, in particular is a key value for the military. As Paul Robinson pointed out in Military Honour and the Conduct of War:

 ‘honour spurs men to fight in two ways: positively, through the desire to display virtue and win honour; and negatively, through a desire to avoid dishonour or shame.” Warriors expect to take risks and make sacrifices to accomplish the mission, protect their fellow warriors, and safeguard innocents’[ii].

The Western world in general and the Anglo-American  one in particular has become risk- averse and its military has become casualty averse and estranged form honour and the ideal of sacrifice.

Western societies have become so obsessed with safety that virtually every human activity comes with a health warning these days. It is not simply children’s playgrounds and schools that are now dominated by the ethos of safety for it own sake. Even organisations such as the police and the army have become subject to the dictates of health and safety. As a result, both of these institutions are increasingly risk averse.

As far back as 2007. General Sir Michael Rose, former head of the Special Air Services (SAS), spoke out about the destructive impact of risk-aversion and the ethos of safety on the morale of the military. He denounced the ‘moral cowardice’ that has encouraged what he describes as the ‘most catastrophic collapse’ of military ethos in recent history[iii] .

If anything, the decline of the warrior ethos is even more comprehensive within the US military. One analyst noted that risk-aversion has undermined the very effectiveness of the American army: ‘As emphasis on risk avoidance filters down the chain of command, junior commanders and their soldiers become aware that low-risk behaviour is expected and act accordingly.’ [iv]

The culture of risk-aversion has emptied the warrior’s value of honour of its moral content. That is why West Point has decided that  since in practice honour has become a negotiable value it is not a big deal to get rid of its old motto. The causal manner with which honour was demoted from West Point’s mission statement indicates that this institution is no longer capable of instilling the warrior ethos to its students. The danger of this development was previously recognised by the American officer, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who observed that ‘the warrior ethos is at risk. If lost, it might be regained only at an exorbitant price’[v].

West Point’s old motto’s focus on country also runs against the grain of the outlook of the outlook of the Anglo-American political and cultural establishment. Many members of this establishment have become de-nationalised and regard people’s identification with their nation and sense of patriotism as an old fashioned prejudice. Politically and culturally, they feel estranged from their own national institutions and affiliations. They often convey the belief that these institutions are an outdated product of a past that is radically different to their world. One of the first commentator to draw attention to the trend towards the denationalisation of the elites was the American political philosopher, Christopher Lasch. He wrote in 1995:

‘Those who covet membership in the new aristocracy of brains tend to congregate on the coast, turning their back on the heartland and cultivating ties with the international market in fast-moving money, glamour, fashion, and popular culture. It is a question whether they think of themselves as Americans at all. Patriotism, certainly, does not rank very high in their hierarchy of virtues’[vi].

Lasch noted that in contrast to their lack of enthusiasm for patriotism, they readily embraced multiculturalism and diversity.

In the domain of public life, one of the most remarkable symptoms of the moral disarmament of the West is its growing indifference to the authority of the nation state. As Andrew Michta observed, ‘the weakening of the consensus that the nation-state should remain paramount in world politics lies at the base of the deepening political crisis in Western democracies’[vii]. Interconnected with this consensus was a constellation of civic virtues – patriotism, duty, service – whose status are today less and less validated by the dominant institutions of society. Typically, the diminishing of the status of civic virtues deprives society’s elites of sense of purpose required to effectively guide society.

The moral disarmament of the west acquired its most striking expression in the sphere of socialisation and public education[viii]. Many educators self-consciously questioned the desirability of transmitting their nations historical legacy. In the United States there has been a veritable crusade designed to de-authorise the status of Founding Fathers and the very act of founding the nation. In British schools too there is a discernible tendency to avoid public expressions national pride. For example, a report authored by Michael Hand and Jo Pearce of the London based Institute of Education argued that ‘patriotism should not be taught in school’ The report based on a survey of 300 teachers concluded that patriotism should only be taught as a ‘controversial issue’. Hand and Pearce went on to claim that Britain, with its ‘morally ambiguous’ history, should no longer be made into an object of school pupils’ affection’[ix]. Their study is not simply a critique of British national identity but also of loyalty to the tradition it embraces. They rhetorically asked, ‘are countries really appropriate objects of love?’ and called for implicit cultural hostility towards ‘national histories’ which are all apparently ‘morally ambiguous’. Their advice is that ‘loving things can be bad for us’, especially when the ‘things we love are morally corrupt’. The message they communicated is that we should morally condemn any attempt to construct a British ‘way of life’.

Nothing illustrates the moral disarmament of Britain more than the contempt with which this country’s flag is held by its elites and many of its public institutions. Last week London’s most famous fish and chips shop the Golden Chippy - was ordered by the local council to remove a Union flag mural painted on its building. The owner of the shop was left bemused after the flag and the slogan, ‘A Great British Meal’ was deemed inappropriate for the area by Greenwich Council[x]. In the scheme of things this incident does not appear as such an issue of historical significance. But when a country’s historical symbol is dismissed as inappropriate for the area by officious local bureaucrats it is evident that something has gone seriously wrong in Britain.

Is it any surprise that the Union Jack is held in such contempt by a significant section of Britain’s population? Back in April 2021 pupils at Pimlico Academy in South London protested their school’s policy of flying the Union Jack. Following the pattern of defeatism of recent decades, the school swiftly caved in to the children’s demand to take down the ‘racist’ Union flag[xi]. What is truly remarkable is not merely the moral cowardice of the school leaders, who refused to uphold and defend this symbol of Britishness but also that the headteacher apologised and praised the students’ behaviour! ‘Our students are bright, courageous, intelligent young people, passionate about the things that matter to them and acutely attuned to injustice. I admire them hugely for this though I regret that it came to this’ wrote Daniel Smith, the headteacher[xii].

It is likely that Smith and some of the other school leaders were aware of serious implication of a state of affairs where a school in England is forced to take down the Union Jack. But instead of addressing this issue, Smith deflected the problem by stating, ‘we acknowledge that this symbol is a powerful one which evokes often intense reactions’! That’s another way of saying that an expression of hatred for Britain is an understandable ‘intense reaction’! In effect, the response of the school to this incident indicated that it is prepared to live in a world where expressions of hatred for the symbol of the nation exist on the same moral plane as that of British identity.

Back To West Point

Back in 1962, when honour meant something really important to West Point, General Douglas MacArthur delivered, what was to be his last  lecture to the cadets at this institution. He stated:

‘Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed 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 to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a temperament of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman. …

Your mission remains fixed, determined, unchanging. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but a corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; but you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country. …

You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense.  From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation's destiny in their hands the moment the call to war sounds’[xiii].

Duty, Honor, Country have dropped out of the vocabulary of our cultural elites.

Were he alive today MacArthur would be  horrified by the loss of authority of the Warrior Ethos in his society.

He would be shocked by the complicity of America’s elites in the moral disarmament of their society.  

How to reappropriate of the traditional values of honour, duty, nation and courage is a challenge that confronts us all! We say this not out of nostalgia for the past but because we recognise that unless these values retain their moral authority cultural decadence will ensue.

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[i] https://nypost.com/2024/03/14/us-news/west-point-military-academy-drops-duty-honor-country-from-mission-statement/

[ii] Cited in https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/preserving-the-warrior-ethos

[iii] ‘J’Accuse! Top General lambasts “moral cowardice” of government and military chiefs’, the Daily Mail, 12 April 2007

[iv] ‘The Casual-Aversion Myth’, by Richard A Lacquement Jr, in Naval War College Review, vol.57, no.1, p.41, 2004

[v] https://www.hudson.org/experts/1274-h-r-mc-master

[vi] Lasch, C. (1995)

Revolt of the Elites: And The Betrayal of Democracy, WW Norton ; New York.

[vii] https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/07/01/losing-nation-state/

[viii] For an elaboration of this point, see Furedi (2021)

[ix] Cited in ‘Patriotism “should not be taught in schools”’, The Daily Telegraph, 1 February 2008.

[x] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/16/award-winning-fish-and-chip-shop-ordered-to-take-down-union/

[xi] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/01/principal-caves-protesting-students-removes-racist-union-jack/

[xii] Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2021/04/01/pimlico-academy-headteacher-vows-to-change-racist-uniform-rules-14339725/?ito=cbshare

[xiii] chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://academyatthelakes.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/DouglasMacArthurDutyHonorCountryExcerpts.pdf