Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
West Point does not need to be Harvard. America already has Harvard. What it needs—what it has always needed—is an academy singularly focused on producing officers whose primary purpose is to close with and destroy the enemy.
That was 1967. Vietnam was raging. Cadets were not being groomed for cable news panels or Senate confirmation hearings. They were being prepared for jungles, rice paddies, ambushes, and body counts. Humor, especially gallows humor, wasn’t a problem to be solved—it was a survival mechanism. The name “Fighting Cocks” wasn’t vulgar to them; it was irreverent, aggressive, and just juvenile enough to signal that these were young men who understood they were not being trained for polite society. They were being trained for war.
If Alan George had given this guidance at a tribal or family ceremony, it would be absolute gold for the cadets. Conducting any ceremony based on “race” at West Point is wrong.