Honor still matters

Too often our leaders - from both parties - have forgotten that basic principle. We need to remember it.

Yesterday, I had the chance to visit West Point with a Special Forces officer.

The officer, an Unreported Truths reader, was back for a reunion and reached out to offer me a tour. I gladly agreed. I’ve been to West Point before, but never alongside an active-duty officer.

The United States Military Academy is beautiful in November, the trees holding their last pale yellow leaves, the Hudson River shining in the low-angled sun. The grey buildings loom above the river as cadets step quickly between their classes.

Then there’s this highly polished reminder that West Point is more than just another university and these cadets are more than just students:

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A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.

The cadets at West Point are learning to fight, to kill, sometimes to die — and to order the soldiers they command into danger. The code is the academy’s way of telling cadets: you will have the weightiest responsibilities imaginable, and you need to live with honor.

Yet West Point has seen scandals recently, including a large-scale cheating scandal in 2020 that led the academy to undo a 2015 effort to reduce penalties for breaking the code. Even more troubling was a 2022 case when several cadets overdosed on fentanyl-laced cocaine during a spring break party in Florida.

Some drug use is inevitable in a free society, or any society. But the fact West Point cadets would use cocaine — not in secret, but together, as a group — shows how deeply drugs have corroded our norms.

The Trump administration’s answer to the crisis of drug use has been to blow up civilian ships in international waters that it claims are carrying cocaine. This is murder, plain and simple. It is also precisely the wrong response, for many reasons, including the most basic: the answer to lawbreaking is not more lawbreaking.

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And that’s not just true for drugs.

Yet both parties seem to have forgotten that lesson. Lately, our leaders seem to be engaged in a race to the bottom.

Joe Biden showed unforgivable hypocrisy in pardoning his son Hunter for his crimes after promising he would not. Democrats spent years pursuing lawfare against Donald Trump, seeking to bankrupt and imprison him by any means necessary.

But Trump has responded in kind. He’s pardoned donors and lackeys like George Santos [EDITORIAL NOTE/CORRECTION: Santos was commuted rather than pardoned] while openly targeting Democrats he does not like for prosecution.

And I cannot believe I even have to write this, but serving in Congress, much less the White House, should not be a path to wealth — not for Nancy Pelosi or the Biden family and not for Trump and his family.

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(The truth is the best path to wealth! Well, maybe not wealth…)

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The officer who was showing me around West Point came after the United States invaded Iraq. He knew the risks he might face in the infantry. He signed up anyway.

A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.

Those can’t just be words on a wall. The military expects honesty and integrity from itself. So it should. Soldiers aren’t just armed men. West Point isn’t just a very expensive place for teenagers to learn to shoot howitzers. The military is a unique institution. Soldiers and officers depend on each other for life and death.

But the goals the military sets — honor, bravery, integrity — should matter to all of us. It’s not too much or too late for us to expect more from ourselves.

And our leaders.