Legacy Matters

"The U.S. Military Equivalent to Sainthood"

Gerard Vanderleun in a terrific essay "Ain't It Cool?" writes

The American culture of cool has become a nation apart, an alternate-America that looks to the real America as merely some mechanism set up to deliver the many features and benefits of America to the culture of cool without question, by divine right of media.

The American culture of cool is not into giving back anything they have taken from the culture at large. The culture of cool is not a giving culture, it is an taking culture. --
The American culture of cool sees itself as the real soul and real intelligence of America, even as it actually rides on the broad shoulders of America like some strangling old man of the sea that, once taken up, refuses to get down.
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The culture of Camp Pendleton despises the culture of cool. The culture here is composed of deeper, abiding and more fundamental things: Duty, Honor, God, Country and The Corps.

While we're at the mall, some men are exemplifying the best of humanity  and  performing extraordinary acts of valor, the indifference to which is another example as Robert Kaplan points out that
separates an all-volunteer military from the public it defends

Kaplan tells us what it takes to win a Medal of Honor  in No Greater Honor

Over the decades, the Medal of Honor—the highest award for valor—has evolved into the U.S. military equivalent of sainthood. Only eight Medals of Honor have been awarded since the Vietnam War, all posthumously. “You don’t have to die to win it, but it helps,” says Army Colonel Thomas P. Smith

Here are the Medal of Honor Recipients from the War in Iraq.  Inspiring examples of courage, valor and love.