My hero.

Yesterday, the day before Memorial Day, MSNBC host Chris Hayes said this:

“Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that’ll be happening tomorrow.  Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke , who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible].  Um, I, I, ah, back sorry, um, I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable  about the word “hero”?  I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.”

   Well, yes, Chris, you’re wrong about quite a lot.

Chris was wrong, for example—as well as disingenuous—to say that “you don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen” and then come out with this insulting and fatuous gibberish that disrespect the memories of the fallen. And to do it on the very weekend when millions of families across the nation are honoring their fallen, or, in the case of my family, a father who braved combat in World War II, was wounded, decorated, and regarded his service in defense of his country the greatest achievement of his life.

Hayes was also wrong, as well as incompetent and unprofessional, to utter such a half-baked and incoherent opinion without having the respect to think it through carefully, express it articulately, and in general without meeting his obligations as a broadcaster to be worth listening to. If a commentator is going to make a statement that he knows will offend and upset grieving families, he should at least know what he wants to say and have the skill and courage to say it clearly. As it was, all he managed to do was to make a gratuitous slur against patriots who put their lives at risk because their nation asked them to, instead of taking morally craven positions from the security of a TV studio that only exists because of the sacrifices such heroes made.

Hayes is inarticulate because he is a pompous hack. He is uncomfortable with calling America’s fallen heroes because he, like so many others, would rather dwell in the imaginary world or rainbows and cotton candy where peace can be willed and evil can be vanquished by reason and understanding rather than commitment and force, because that fantasy world requires no sacrifices from him. Silly people like Chris Hayes, when they have temporarily acquired power and influence, have caused the deaths of untold millions, and as much destruction as any despot or evil-doer who has ever lived. “If we only have love, we can melt all the guns, and give a new world to our daughters and sons,” was how lyricist/translator Mort Shuman put it, in the tear-jerking finale to that Sixties zeitgeist classic, “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.”  Ah yes.  If only.

If America had unilaterally adopted Shuman’s philosophy, Jacques Brel would have been living with a Swastika waving over his head, if he was living at all.

My dad, whose grave at Arlington National Cemetery I will be visiting later today, was also uncomfortable with the term “hero.” although he undoubtedly was one. A long-time lifeguard, he was awarded the Silver Star for diving into a pond, at night, under German gunfire, and rescuing two wounded men who had submerged with their Jeep during combat. He couldn’t find a third soldier under the water in the dark, so he kept diving, again and again, as bullets hit the water around him. Yet he never told me about that incident while he was alive; I only found out about it after his death in 2009, when I discovered his official commendation among his papers. Maj. Jack Marshall, Senior believed that you accepted  responsibility, and did your job, that’s all. If you were a soldier, that meant doing your best to protect your country and your fellow soldiers. He was no more “comfortable” with war than smug and babbling Chris Hayes, but unlike Hayes, he had seen it up close. He saw his best friend shot out of the skies. He saw a man squatting next to him in a foxhole reduced to jelly by a shell. He saw his own foot blown apart by a grenade (though he returned to fight in the Battle of the Bulge.) And he liberated a Nazi concentration camp, an experience he refused to discuss, because it gave him nightmares. My father hated war and guns, but was a student of history and human nature, and understood that the real heroism was doing things you hated to save lives, preserve the values that mattered, and protect the greatest nation on earth, with the noblest mission on earth, the freedom of the human race.

The Chris Hayeses among us, and there are, sadly, a lot of them, many with hosting gigs on MSNBC, don’t have the decency or perception to acknowledge what they owe my father, as well as every single one of the soldiers, fallen, wounded,or just scarred for life, whom they piously resist calling heroes. They take pride in their refusal to accept the reality of evil, and revel in their moral cowardice, taking refuge in platitudes while sneering at those who have died for them and their children. The Chris Hayeses nurture the policy fecklessness that allows the civilian massacres to continue in Syria, as the U.S. joins the corrupt U.N. in denouncing it. I’m sure Chris Hayes is enthusiastic about denouncing. I’m sure he’ll applaud the denouncing when Iran nukes Israel, too. Damn! Now if we could only melt all those guns…

My father refused to get angry at people like Chris Hayes, even when a protesting Harvard student did during the Vietnam war  saw the bar on his lapel, shook his peace symbol placard in my Dad’s face and called him a racist murderer. My father said that I shouldn’t be bothered such displays either. “They don’t know what they’re taking about,” he would say. “They’re idiots. There will always be idiots, son.”

And Ethics Dunces.

Thanks for being a hero, Dad.

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Facts: RealClearPolitics

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.