PBS showed Ken Burns' "The Civil War" this week. I learn something new every time I see it.
After the war when he was president of Washington College in Virginia, Robert E. Lee was asked if he had any regrets. One would expect him to recall some old battle or even that he chose the South over the North, but Lee replied, "I regret obtaining a military education." The narrator noted that when Lee marched with undergraduates during various collegiate ceremonies, he made a point of being out of step. All this from the greatest soldier that America ever produced, the only man to make it through West Point without ever receiving a demerit, a hero of the Mexican War, the man who rejuvenated West Point as its Superintendent, the general who nearly won the war despite being outmanned and outgunned. Maybe Lee was being tongue in cheek, the jokester college president. Or maybe he was saying that a liberal arts education, studying both sides to an argument, and being out of step with the crowd makes better citizens than single-minded devotion to a cause.
A military education,on the other hand, teaches that accomplishing "the mission" is paramount. There will be some collateral damage, but the ends justify the means.
I wonder what Robert E. Lee would think of the current Federal budgetary impasse. "The mission" is to bring expenditures in line with receipts. The "military" procedure is to severely cut the budget (especially those programs you don't like in the first place) and if the government has to shut down and our soldiers overseas don't get paid on time, so be it. General Robert E. Lee might go along with that. But College President Robert E. Lee might take a more reasoned approach, thoroughly analyze the situation and maybe come up with an "out of step" solution.
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