Over on X yesterday a mutual noted that he was watching Band of Brothers for the umpteenth time and he was wondering – even though he was a combat vet, himself – if he could have done what those soldiers did. I think everyone does wonder when they watch that. And it gets you also thinking of the men who took Tarawa, who sailed the USS Johnston into certain death. Of all those who have done incredible feats of arms in our past.

It is good to point out here that courage is the strongest desire to live combined with a complete willingness to die. It is a paradox; you’re only way to safety is through death. A soldier pinned down in a murderous crossfire has the choice: try to hide and hope he gets missed (unlikely as time goes on) or charge at the enemy and stop him from shooting. Of course, you do present a much better target when you’re charging. But if it works, the danger is over. He who would lose his life shall save it. You remember suddenly the men of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment who crossed the Waal river in canvas boats under murderous fire…and when they got ashore the Germans pretty much ran away, terrified at these demons who seemingly couldn’t be stopped. Do we have that any longer?

Well, another thing which crossed the time line was a report from 2014 that 41% of the newly commissioned Marine officers did not meet the minimum requirements – mental and physical – for being commissioned in World War Two. I can only assume it has gotten worse since then as Woke demands have further infested the military requiring an ever lowering of standards so that various demographic boxes can be checked off. Given this, it is almost a certainty that we do not have an officer like Julian Cook who led those men in the canvas boats…we don’t have officers who can take regular people and turn them into killers that battle-hardened Waffen-SS troops would run away from.

But it gets worse than just the fact that we’ve got substandard officers. There is such a thing as esprit de corps. This is the collective memory and ability of an organization. It isn’t dependent upon any single person but it is dependent upon the overall organism remaining true to itself. If you watched Band of Brothers you know that Captain Herbert Sobel comes off pretty poorly overall as an officer – and in truth he was roundly disliked by his men and appeared to lack combat leadership ability. On the other hand, he made Easy Company into what it became. The intensive training and stern discipline – which Sobel himself learned in officer training – turned civilians into tough as nails warriors who simply would not quit. After the war even some of the men who hated him as a CO acknowledged his part in making them into warriors. Sobel learned his trade from a man who learned his trade who in turn learned his trade and on and on back…and the men Sobel trained passed that corporate knowledge on down and they, in their turn, also passed it on and so the American military organism – in spite of individual failures – retained its ability to engage in combat effectively. But that chain has been cut; at some point fairly recently, the mental and physical requirements of being an infantry officer were dispensed with in favor of other criteria. It is gone; or, at best, almost gone. It is highly likely that our average company commander these days hasn’t the foggiest notion of what being a warrior is, nor how to impart that capability to subordinates. They might know the books; that is, they might know the mechanics of having a company assault a fixed position…but that technical knowledge is worthless if the officer can’t, with a scratch force, improvise an attack and be certain that the soldiers will carry it out.

And it is not just the military. Every area of expertise has suffered a dumbing down. A lowering of requirements in order to make certain demographic boxes are checked off. Have you noticed it? When I went to a doctor with my bum knee the doctor pretty much had no idea what might be the problem even though I described clearly what had happened and offered my informed amateur opinion that it was likely soft tissue damage. Nope. She just went to her checklist – and I was sent to get an x ray even though it was obvious no bones were broken. And after that I get sent for physical therapy. Huge sigh. I mean, I’ll have to do it because that is the way it works these days but what isn’t happening here is an actual physician thinking about my problem and coming up with a likely solution (and there may be no solution; I might just have a bum knee). I’ve heard of people watching their doctors Google their stated symptoms to see what might come up.

We’re breaking the chain. That is, we’re severing ourselves from our collective knowledge because mastering that knowledge is a difficult task which not everyone is suited to perform. But the deal the modern Left offers is that you can be whatever you want. And once the chain is broken it can’t be restored. You have to forge an entirely new chain. That is what the Dark Ages were – it wasn’t that people got stupid; but the late Roman world simply stopped transmitting corporate knowledge to successor generations. Everyone got more concerned with the latest avant garde art, their position at court, the acquisition of money. This is why the Romans pretty much stopped building their famed aqueducts and bridges by the Third Century and when Constantine built his triumphal arch in Rome during the Fourth Century he had to steal parts from monuments built in the Second Century. The Romans had forgotten how to do things. Side note; they also forgot how to build and maintain an army and pretty much as soon as the barbarians worked up the courage they overthrew the form of Roman power which had long since vanished in actuality.

And then they had to start all over again. The barbarians admired the Roman world and were astonished at what they saw around them. But they didn’t know how to maintain it. Neither did the Romans. It all had to be learned again and it took a thousand years to do it. We’re heading right to that. We haven’t entirely lost the ability but those who really know how to do things are rapidly aging out. Before too long there will be no resource to turn to…and people won’t even look for the resource because they won’t know that they don’t know. It could get very bad very fast; and worse than last time because the population has not only lost their skills, but they’ve also been taught that lying and laziness are ok. At least the barbarians who took over Rome knew that you had to put some work in and at least try to tell the truth.

I do think we can arrest this development. I’ve mentioned how in the past – keeping in mind that to love means to will the best for the beloved, the primary way for us to love our neighbors right now is to start punishing – sometimes with exceptional violence – the lazy and the dishonest. They have to be forced to do the right thing. To work. To keep their word. To be brave. Of course they don’t want to. Right now in America you can be the definition of a lazy, cowardly liar and you’ll still get enough food to get fat…and still have your ample leisure time filled with the products of pop culture. But we can’t allow it to go on. It doesn’t work unless nearly everyone works. Nearly everyone is brave. Nearly everyone always tells the truth. The decent can survive deviancy, but a society of deviants will kill the decent.