In his widely acclaimed memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, recounted the way that his service in the Marine Corps turned his life around. He wrote: “If I had learned helplessness at home, the Marines were teaching learned willfulness. … The day I graduated from boot camp was the proudest of my life.” As a Marine, Vance also undoubtedly learned about the core values of the Naval Service: honor, courage and commitment.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Sadly his statements, actions and acceptance of former President Donald Trump’s invitation to be his vice presidential running mate this year negate the laudable values Vance apparently once believed in and reflected.
In 2016, Vance was a “Never Trumper,” called Trump “cultural heroin” and said that Trump was a demagogue leading “the white working class to a very dark place.” Five years later, as Vance contemplated a run for the Senate in Ohio, he abandoned these views to secure Trump’s support. There was no honor, courage or commitment in this.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vance appeared on a podcast and bluntly stated, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” There is no honor, courage commitment in that statement. Honor is an intangible value but one that most Americans understand deeply and intuitively. Courage, both physical and moral, is something most Americans appreciate at our core. Commitment we can easily discern on various levels.
On a visit to the Naval Academy in October 2017, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a 1958 graduate, told the Brigade of Midshipmen that, as a prisoner of war in Vietnam: “I would discover that a sense of honor had been imparted to me here that would speak to me in the darkest hours.” It was a sense of honor that gave McCain the courage — both physical and moral — to stand up to his North Vietnamese captors.
When the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was the commander of American forces in the Pacific, they offered to release him, but McCain refused because he felt that if he accepted he would lose his honor and cowardly abandon his commitment to himself, his fellow prisoners and his country, and give the enemy a propaganda coup. He spent another five and a half years as a prisoner of war.
When he returned from prison in North Vietnam, McCain returned to his beloved Arizona and chose to enter the contentious world of electoral politics, committed to standing up for the values he held dear, even if doing so put him at odds with his own political party. This is honor, courage and commitment.
As Americans, we all need to focus on what values and ideals unite us. We need to recommit ourselves to them if we are to achieve liberty, equality and justice for all members of our society.
Honor, courage and commitment are key values, ideals and personal traits we, as Americans — whether civilian and or military, Republicans, Democrats or independents — should expect our leaders to embody and to demonstrate. If Vance once believed in honor, courage and commitment, his support for a man who in thought, word and deed represents the repudiation of those values demonstrates that he no longer does.
We deserve better. This November, we should show that we not only expect better, we demand it.
Retired Sgt. Maj. Kim E. Davis of Snellville served for more than 30 years in the United States Marine Corps.
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