Marine Corps Values
Mark Shields had a powerful column this past weekend, “America Needs More Marine Corps Values.” I thought the piece could be reduced to these two telling paragraphs:
This may best be stated in the hard-and-fast Marine rule: “Officers eat last.” The Marine officer does not eat until after his subordinates for whom he is responsible — the corporals and privates — have been fed. Marines live by the rule that loyalty goes both up and down the chain of command. Would not our country be a more just and human place if the brass of Wall Street and Washington and executive suites believed that “officers eat last”?
The Marine ethic emphasizes responsibility to duty and responsibility to others before self. This is the very opposite of the unbridled individualism that elevates profit and personal comfort to high virtues. The selfish and self-centered CEO or senator who disregards and discards his loyal “troops” would be shunned in the Corps.
I spend my days working to find bipartisan and nonpartisan solutions to complex issues. Too often “politics” get in the way. The reason for that is not the pursuit of wealth, but the pursuit of political power. It’s just as much an incentive to selfishness as greed.
I think it’s this contrast between the selflessness of American service members and the selfishness of so many American leaders in government and business that undergirds, in part, the enduring esteem in which the public continues to hold the military as an institution. We want to be inspired and challenged to serve something bigger than ourselves. We want others to eat before us.
