Duty, Honor, Country

The recent fiasco involving Nancy Pelosi and her false claim that CIA officials lied to her reflects the sad state of morality among our nation’s elected officials. In recent years a number of politicians have been forced to resign from their positions.

On May 12, 1962, West Point Military Academy awarded General Douglas MacArthur the Thayer Award given each year to a citizen whose service to the nation has exemplified West Point’s motto, Duty, Honor, Country. The speech below is the one MacArthur delivered when he accepted the award.

Duty, Honor, Country. These 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…

The unbelievers will say they are but words…But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.