“Considering the natural lust for power so inherent in man, I fear the thirst for power will prevail to oppress the people.” George Mason
Good Morning, I’m Austerity Jones, and this week C Thomas Printer has again zagged when I expected him to zig. C Thomas, what is this game of which you speak?
C Thomas: Good Morning, Austerity. We are releasing this a day early because every December I like to check out the traditional Army/Navy football game and see the pageantry that takes place even if the game no longer has national title implications it once did. ESPN usually sends its College Gameday Crew to the game to honor America’s servicemen and women, but they are skipping the trip this year so we at the C Thomas Printer have picked up their dropped flag and promoted it in their stead. A great sports writer, I believe it was Beano Cook, once said that it is the greatest spectacle in sports. He might be biased since he literally wrote the book on the Army/Navy game, but if he didn’t it certainly sounds like something he would say. The game is steeped in rich football history: the first football helmet was worn in this game in 1893 and the first use of instant replay on television followed a scant 70 years later. The game is attended by many cadets of both military institutions (students in today’s parlance) and they wear their uniforms so the crowd has a very distinctive look and defined lines of rooting loyalties. After the game, the winning team will join the losing team in singing the school anthem to the cadet section of the losing team. Then, the losing team will join the winning team in singing their patronal song to the winning cadet section. This is the birth of the “singing second” catch phrase used by the winners of the game. The game has been graced by multiple Heisman award winners and future professionals including Roger Staubach who we wrote about here in the episode regarding duty on September 11 of last year. Roger went on to have a professional career as did recent Army graduate Alejandro Villanueva, but by and large the game is about competition, respect, and honor. Just about every man that has come through this game in the last 50 years has known that his football career wasn’t going any further, but his career in the military would. The military had developed not just athletes but student athletes, but most importantly men of honor. Which brings us to our word of the week, honor.
Honor- the quality of knowing and doing what is morally right, OR respect from other people OR a person or thing that causes others to respect or admire something or somebody.
All of those definitions fit the men and women that occupy the stadium on game day. Say what you will about the military academies by and large they turn out a much larger than average number of honorable human beings for adulthood. Are they perfect, but then again who is? Despite its flaws, I believe the service academies are some of the finest leadership development institutions in the world, and I am not just talking about the military and certainly not about football. I am talking about a system of training young people with potential and molding them into people of honor. I have read The West Point Leader Development System and attached a link on our website cthomasprinter.com and one of the things that caught my eye was the sections on their expected outcomes for their graduates: Live honorably, lead honorably, and demonstrate excellence. Under each category had a few bullet points, but under the second one lead honorably it listed a poignant sub bullet. Lead honorably by: anticipating and solving complex problems. That is a most applicable use of honor, and something we civilians can apply to our lives.
Honor is a way of conducting your life that the military teaches to its cadets that graduate every year. The Cadet Honor Code is “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” They take it very seriously, have studied it seriously for hundreds of years, and have great success. In their program there is a particularly interesting development framework used to develop the cadets into adult leaders and it is built around the teachings of Robert Kegan, the Harvard developmental psychologist who specializes in professional and organizational development. In stage 4 of this program and the hardest stage in integrating fully into one’s life is The USMA provides both mandatory and optional opportunities to practice this 4th stage. This stage is so difficult to fully integrate into the cadet’s lives that this is considered an ongoing and aspirational goal of the academy. Keep in mind this is after 47 months of diligent adherence to discipline, training, and living this life of honor.
Austerity often chides me about being too negative when I write about our government or our economy and that is a fair criticism as it doesn’t take much honor to be a critic. Although it is not my intention to be negative and frankly, I think there is a reason to be negative mostly because I expect negative outcomes in the future, and I think behaving like a Pollyanna is a fool’s errand. I must accept that criticism and learn from it because the purpose of the C Thomas Printer Cooperative is to make you think, make you remember, and to make you smile. It isn’t to frown, but even as I write I often see little to be optimistic about because it is seldom seen. However, every year the Army/Navy game is played in a stadium full of citizens that have learned about how to live honorably, have practiced living a life of honor, and have set out to put their nation’s interests before their own as they pursue a life of honorable service. It has made me remember that while we have a lot of problems in this economy and this country, every year we have another graduating class of firsties (cadet seniors) that will go out into the world and be walking beacons of honor and in this world those lights will begin to shine brighter and brighter every day. It will be an honor to watch the game and celebrate with them this Saturday and I encourage all of you to tune in and watch today at 3pm eastern, noon pacific. Remember, the entire stadium is full of stage 4 honorees.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
This week’s financial tip
Look at your next pay stub. Look at the bottom and then scroll up past the FICA taxes and employer taxes until you get to the withholding tax. Before you throw up in disgust at how much money is taken out of your check (and no one hates government taxation as much as I do) think about what percentage goes to fund the brave men and women that fight in our armed services. Now think that most of those individuals are being led by the very graduates of the military academies we have discussed today. I am very thankful to support those leaders and to be able to enjoy the safety and comfort that their sacrifice allows me. Now think about how cold it must in December in the Ukraine with no power and no heat in some cases, because every time I do, I think that I am getting a bargain on my withholding tax. Keep saving my friends because there is plenty of wasteful government spending in that withholding tax number that we will investigate soon, but that is for another week because this week is Army/Navy week. Go Navy, sing second!
On this date tomorrow in history
24 years ago to be exact, speaking of honor or in this case a lack there of- President Bill Clinton was impeached in connection to his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. As a side note- 4 of the last 5 presidents did not serve in the military including Clinton.
Also born tomorrow on this date
George Mason, one of the framers of the US Constitution and one of three men who took a stand against popular sentiment and declined to sign the Constitution in 1787 because it lacked a declaration of rights. James Madison would later write, and the country would ratify, the Bill of Rights and his work was based on the state of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights written by George Mason.
“To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” George Mason
Mentioned in this episode: Developing Leaders of Character 2018.pdf (westpoint.edu)