Forbes ranks West Point as nation’s top college (via Insty):

A report released Wednesday by Forbes magazine ranked the U.S. Military Academy as the top college in the country in their America’s Best College review. “Marked by an intense work ethic and drive to succeed on all fronts, the West Point undergraduate experience also allows graduates to leave without a penny of tuition loans to repay,” Forbes stated in its release.

World War II Memorial -- Washington, DC

Yeah.  You know, I’m on vacation this week — hence the lack of blogging, if you noticed — and I’m in Washington, where it’s hot and humid but priced perfectly for a family vacation.  And at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum today we saw an IMAX film about the Air Force’s real-life “Top Gun” training and simulation program, Red Flag.

And, wow.

The flick is propaganda all the way, but, guess what, so are all films.  But coming away from this, and having attended a number of highly-ranked educational institutions myself, I said to myself and a significant other, my, these guys — the U.S. military as a whole, notwithstanding sad notable exceptions– are the most competent people in the country, aren’t they?

I know.  So many awful things do get done wrong by the military, it seems.  It’s so easy to second guess them, though, given the scope of what they’re tasked with.  But if you sensibly weigh the things they do right with proper consideration of the risks of doing it wrong, both locally and globally, extraordinary mastery of multiple arts and scientists required to execute their tasks, the discipline and focus, and —

Then there’s this.

The members of the military essentially do everything that is physically and technological possible in the pursuit of their missions.  You and I look at, say, the way you would go about rescuing a downed pilot and say, well, if you could rappel down a rope and, uh, I guess…. oh never mind.

They rappel down the rope.  They fly upside down.  Anything a human can do, they find people brave enough and dedicated enough to go out there and DO.

For YOU.

How many Ivy Leaguers does that describe?

The greatest ever Memorial Day words were uttered not on the eve of summer, but in November:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

(Originally posted on Memorial Day 2007.)

UPDATE:

Я не читаю или говорю на русском языке. Таким образом я удаляю все российские комментарии как спам. Ничто персонал, но предположение не против Вас.

Если Вы можете прочитать мой blog, Вы можете прокомментировать на английском языке!