An essay in Real Clear Defense explains how the motto 'Duty, Honor, Country' morphed under our Woke culture to become 'Duty, Honor, Nothing'.
West Point is dropping “Duty, Honor, Country” from its mission statement, to be replaced with the nebulous phrase, “Army Values.” … West Point leadership wants us not to be alarmed. Just trust the process, they say. The “process” – apparently of erasure and reinvention – began two years ago with removal of plaques and images of Robert E. Lee in favor of “appropriate language and images” … Tweak the colors. Change the fonts. Replace time-honored words for something new, something soft, something “appropriate.”
That 'new, soft something appropriate' is an indefinite, mutable set of values which the essayist describes as Nothing. But to be precise the replacement for the old concept of Country is not actually Nothing but a variable, subject to whatever Washington wants to replace that placeholder with. Currently the actual new motto is Duty, Honor, World. Here's why. When Washington became the Capital of the World rather than just the United States after the fall of the USSR, the object of Duty necessarily had to shift to the new scope of governance. No longer was it sufficient to secure the peace and prosperity of a single nation, but of the entire planet of which D.C. had acquired guardianship. That shift from Country to World created changes in the political processes which are only now beginning to emerge into the open.
One of these changes is that, since Washington's duty is now to the world, it is answerable to foreigners. As a practical matter, the World votes. They vote not just through lobbies, foreign agents, treaties, and donations to the Ivy League; they also vote through "newcomers" who can cast actual ballots without any photo ID. Things are reaching the point where the world could collectively outvote the traditional citizenry. Perhaps that point is already past. This would not be possible if the highest value was Country. So Country has to make way for this broader context to be served.
Whatever injury this might cause to actual citizens, Washington's bureaucracy naturally prefers being an empire over being just an ordinary, if powerful, Union. The Beltway was never so powerful with the Nation as it was with an empire, and they will jealously maintain this. This sea change explains in part why January 6 was such a big deal to establishment Washington. Rightly or wrongly, atavistic Americanism threatened the empire, and therefore the old Americanism had to go.
Washington's new world status also throws light on why the culture wars are so intense. From the standpoint of memes, DEI can be understood as the ideology of empire beating down the parochial model of patriotism. Today's poets of empire do not celebrate, as Kipling did, 'the English' flag. They laud the flag of no nation. In principle, the newly arrived Haitian gangster should be on equal footing with those whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. The empire must be diverse and inclusive and the goodies passed around if it is to be truly global. It must be whole if the imperium is to thrive. Again, this would be difficult if the ultimate allegiance were to Country, for that would divide it into nations.
Related: The Conqueror and the Prophet
Duty, Honor, Nothing as a watch phrase works best for Washington because they can substitute whatever they want for the last term. Right now, that word is 'World.' Yet there are still great difficulties in achieving this goal. Unfortunately for Woke Washington, their universalism has little appeal. Although they have chosen to abandon nationality for universality, few else have. The world as a whole has rather narrow-mindedly clung to its identities, religions, and ideologies. To them, Washington is not the place of their natural allegiance. Rather, it is a rich prize to be seized by their community and subordinated to their own national, racial, or religious flag. It is a place to be sacked, like Byzantium or Rome, by people certain of their separateness.
As if to emphasize this, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have broken out over the most atavistic causes: national identity. Ukraine is not fighting for the World, it is fighting for itself. Ditto Israel. Even the DEI campuses are thronged with crowds chanting "kill the Jews" in mockery of their supposed inclusivity. Despite years of propaganda, the globalists cannot win the DEI. The one rule-based World, which Joe so very much wants to run from Washington, is daily plunging ever deeper into Cold War II.
As a practical, empirical matter, nobody else seems to buy into World Citizenship beyond the Western elite. Outside of Washington and Brussels — and certainly not in Moscow, Beijing, or Jerusalem — there's no interest in Nothing. Rather, there is an increasing focus on what makes them what they are. For Joe, the best motto might be Duty, Honor, One World. But for everyone else, it is still Duty, Honor, Country — with Country replaced by their specific national identity.
If we are ever again to act as one, it must once again be from the many viewpoints certain of their identity, not from the homogenized. Unfortunately, that's how the cookie crumbles. When push comes to shove, no one risks his life for Nothing.
