Duty: The Badge of Honor

I remember the day President Ronald Reagan was shot.  I was an 11^th grader, just home from school and watched the now-famous footage of the assassination attempt.  Thankfully, no one died though Press Secretary James Brady was left debilitated by the shot he took to his forehead.

I remember seeing a photo montage of the shooting in Newsweek some years later.  In one of the photos, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy (shown in the above photo) was shown jumping in the air, spread-eagle, making as big a target as he could to protect the president.  He too took a bullet.  Why? Because his duty was to lay his life down for the President of the United States.  And he was a man of honor.

Some time ago my wife and I were discussing relationships and interactions.  We hit upon a characteristic of this generation, something to which we—though older—are not immune.  It is the unrealistic drive to have everything now.

Quantum leaps in technological innovation have taken place over the past thirty years or so, especially with the advent of in-home personal computing.  The upside of these advancements has been the ability to do in moments what used to take days, even years.

But there is a downside.

When you live in an instant, microwave, “I-need-this-yesterday” culture, you become habituated internally to getting whatever you want whenever you want it.  Unfortunately life does not work that way.  The best things still take time.

Here are a few sober earmarks of the “microwave” society:

• Debt.  Easy credit has made it possible for people in their teens and twenties to rapidly accumulate lots of stuff that took their grandparents a lifetime of thrift and prudence to purchase.  And with such rapid acquisition comes a mountain of debt, including compounded interest.
• A monstrous sense of entitlement.  An increasingly litigious society with plenty of social programs as fallbacks has helped to produce a generation of employees who often feel like they are unfairly burdened by the demand to work while on the clock.  The result: Personal service is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  This is a trend.  Thankfully, there are exceptions.
• A disturbing lack of self-control.  We hear often of things being “an emergency” or “urgent.”  But one needs to define the terms carefully.  A cardiac arrest needs to be fixed now.  A plane falling out of the sky needs to be fixed now.  But a teen upset at a parent who says “no” to them does not constitute an emergency.  Nor a thousand other similar “stresses.”

What is the key then to reversing this unhealth?

Duty.

Duty is that sense of personal and corporate responsibility that takes the interest of others and the interest of the group before personal considerations.  It’s not about me.  Or you.

Duty is what has made societies great.  Its abandonment in favor of personal fulfillment—others rights and concerns be damned—is what has eroded the same great societies.  We don’t have to let that happen here.

Duty means that a man who has a wife or children has a sacred obligation to provide for their needs.  And believe me, there is a world of difference between what one needs versus what one wants.

Duty means that an employee gives eight hours work for eight hours pay.  Without an attitude.

Do your duty today.  It is not glamorous but it is a mark of true greatness.

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R-E-S-P-E-C-T

We had a thought-provoking discussion in our weekly leadership/mentoring time today.  A good deal of our interaction concerned the concept of respect.  Respect is something that is often misunderstood, confused with deference.  Let me explain.

Deference is the perfunctory and appropriate behavior we manifest towards position, authority and station in life.  We may not, for example, agree with Attorney General Eric Holder’s behavior this past week as he was called to Congressional account over what he and the Department of Justice knew regarding the Fast and Furious debacle.  But we address him as “Mr. Attorney General” or simply “General.”  That is deference.  It is inappropriate to use a Congressional hearing to grandstand and needlessly demean the AG.  Same goes for White House press conferences.  You may not like President Obama—or any of his predecessors—but heckling him in public is inappropriate and unprofessional.  So is flipping off the portrait of the late President Ronald Reagan.  You defer to the office he occupies and give it due weight.  That is deference.

Respect, on the other hand, is rather an instinctual behavior, like sweating in hot, humid weather.  The gain or loss of respect is predicated on the presence or absence of integrity.  Put another way, deference is given; respect is earned.   It is an automatic response to the practice of integrity.

This is the way of life.  I’ve watched men in high office—political, corporate and ecclesiastical—demand respect without manifesting the kind of behavior that entitles them to respect.  It is unedifying to say the least and breeds cynicism in their constituents.  If you want respect, you’ve got to pay your dues.  They are substantial.  Respect is always earned.

I’ve both gained and lost the respect of people, especially those closest to me, over forty-eight years of life.  This has always been in just proportion to my integrity or lack of it.  It’s no use for me to whine about “not getting respect” if I’ve not dug deep and won it.  There are no shortcuts.

How then does one win this prize, something essential to all human beings and particularly important to males?

• Walk in integrity.  If you profess a creed, certain values and expectations, you must back these up with the currency of consistency.  You cannot keep two sets of books.  Be one person.  Not two or four or a dozen.  What you are in public must equate what you are when you are outside of public view, in the crucible of the secret place.
• When you blow it, admit it. No equivocation.  No excuses.  No blame-shifting.  If you screw up, own it.  All of it.  And say you’re sorry and rebuild.  Apologizing and amending one’s ways with earnestness begins building respect immediately.
• Realize that you cannot mandate an instinctive behavior.  You can say, “I am your father and you will not speak to me that way” to a mouthy child.  That is fair and right.  But when someone calls you out for your failures, you are not authorized to pull rank to avoid dealing with your transgressions.  If you do, you are a fool.  A fool cubed.

This prize is worth fighting for.  Be true, humble, and serve.  You’ll earn more respect than you know what to do with.

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Reagan On Freedom

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

–Ronald Reagan

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Doveryai, No Proveryai

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the INF Treaty

I love languages.  I’ve spent most of my life learning different languages.  Some—French, for example—involved years of school.  Others I learned enough either to transact business or read text with the aid of dictionaries and grammars.   Spanish.  Greek.  Italian.  Hebrew.  Latin.

And Russian.

Nearly 22 years ago, our family took in a family of Ukrainian immigrants.  Six people in all and none of them spoke a word of English.  Settling into an entirely new country and culture must have been frightening for our Ukrainian friends.

While we knew a few people within 50 miles who spoke Russian or Ukrainian, the task of helping this family settle into American life fell largely to our family.  And because I have a love for foreign languages, I took it upon myself to learn to speak basic Russian in order to do day-to-day business.

At the time, I was managing a full-line bakery and had a very full schedule.  But I bought a Russian grammar and dictionary and dove in.  When working, I propped the grammar on my baker’s bench and taught myself to read Cyrillic script and learn Russian words and phrases while making trays full of cinnamon buns and Italian bread.  It was a great learning experience.

The Russians have a maxim that became famous during the 1987 INF Treaty signing between General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan.  Doveryai no proveryai.

“Trust, but verify.”

In the case of the INF Treaty, it meant that the United States and the then Soviet Union would give one another the benefit of the doubt, within reason, that they were abiding by the terms of the treaty, which was designed to throttle back the nuclear arms race between the superpowers by eliminating Intermediate and Shorter-Range missiles.  The treaty included the allowance of inspectors within the Soviet Union and the United States to validate that both countries were abiding by their agreement.

The operative phrase here is within reason.

It is good to be able to give the leading voices in our world—political, economic, media and religion—the benefit of the doubt when they declaim on this or that matter of importance.  But such benefit has limits.

Trust, but verify.  This means, among other things, getting second opinions.  Hearing the other side of any given story.  Checking out references and sources.  Authenticating claims.  Challenging generalizations with penetrating questions, even if it makes the one questioned squirm.

Nobody—and I mean nobody—gets a free pass in this life.  Do your homework.  Check information out.  If you’re a Democrat, read what a Republican says, not what MSNBC says a Republican stands for.  If you’re a Republican and want to know what a Democrat stands for, go to the horse’s mouth—not Fox News.  The best sources are original sources.  I’d rather watch the movie myself  than read the critics.  I bet you do too.

The same holds true in religious matters, economic forecasts and medical diagnoses.  You are not helpless and at the mercy of experts.  Check things out for yourself.  Trust…but verify.

You’ll be glad you did.

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