Some years ago, I was a lieutenant in the US Air Force. I didn't plan on making a career in the military, and it's just as well. I didn't have the right stuff to succeed there.

For one thing, military service isn't what many young civilians think it is. Well do I remember the days when I was an ROTC cadet, eager for the day when I'd get my commission. I thought that I was joining a holy order of knights, all of whom, of course, put duty and honor before every other consideration in life. Most especially, I believed that military officers practiced honor in its highest, most classical sense, eschewing politics in the pursuit of duty, willing to walk into fire for their country, grip white-hot iron and hold it, if necessary, while their fingers disintegrated in flames. In other words, I imagined that the US Air Force of the 1980s was similar to the C.S. Forrester version of the British Royal Navy of the 19th century.

That's what I thought—until I actually got in. Then reality asserted itself. Soon after I arrived on station at Wright-Patterson AFB, two things happened. I handed the first enlisted man who saluted me a silver dollar. And I learned that most officers are basically uniformed politicians. By some sort of bad luck, a good and honorable commander of my organization was being transfered out right as I was coming in. I'm ashamed to confess that I've forgotten this man's name.¹ He'd made General, and the post he'd been commanding was reckoned as being too small for a flag officer.

¹ Watrus! Or Wattrus, or something like that. General Watrus is (or was) an outstanding officer by every account of him that I ever heard. When he left Wright-Patt, nearly everyone in his old organization mourned. I never saw a man as well-respected by his subordinates again until I met Dr. Pierce, many years later. I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to serve in his command.

In early 1983, at an FTD change-of-command ceremony, the out-going General Watrus deliberately broke with tradition by holding his salute to his former subordinates for longer than tradition called for. He held that salute in respectful farewell to us, until a senior General standing nearby gave him a special "order arms." The man had class! It was my misfortune to have just arrived as he was departing.

In his place, there came a politican. A scheming, posturing buffoon of a colonel, not fit to breathe the atmosphere of the same planet as the man whose old job he was taking. In place of honor, this fellow had political ambition. And he strictly observed all the due forms of political correctness. And he used people shamelessly as career steppingstones; you could almost see his shoeprints on the people around him.

Let me give you an example of his pettiness. Every year, my organization would participate in a federal charity drive called the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). Just for grins, I donated $600 of my lieutenant's pay to various charities sponsored by CFC three years in succession. I didn't expect anybody to thank me for it. At the time, I still clung to some hope that there were real officers somewhere in the service to compensate for the social climbers and the politically ambitious official twerps that I could see all around me. I wanted to be like those real officers, who I imagined also gave generously to worthy causes.

But lightning stuck, figuratively speaking. One of my officemates happened to be a CFC "keyworker" during the third year of my four-year hitch, and one day following the close of the fund drive, she stormed up to my desk and ordered me to accompany her to the Commander's office.

"Why?" I asked, getting up and following her. "Am I in trouble?"

"No," she answered. "The Commander wants to have his picture made with a Pillar of the Community, and I remembered that you were one."

A Pillar of the Community was the euphemism for someone who had given more than $500 to the CFC. Indeed, I had qualified for that distinction.

We arrived at the Commander's office through a little security booth where you had to present your Top Secret clearance credentials. The captain announced me, and I walked in correctly, stood before the Commander's desk, and gave him the regulation salute.

It wasn't returned.

After about fifteen seconds, I pretended to have had my salute returned and dropped my arm. The Commander remained silent for perhaps another fifteen seconds, evidently choosing his words. Then he spoke.

"No."

"Not him."

There was a lapse of five or ten more seconds, during which I struggled to maintain the correct countenance, standing at attention with my eyes fixed on a spot on the wall about a foot above the Commander's head.

"His hair is too long."

I'd had a haircut about a week previously. I couldn't figure why the Commander would consider my hair to be longer than regulation, but one didn't question the Commander. Not while one was working for him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the captain who had brought me to the Commander's office almost dying with embarrassment. She apologized to the Commander for her bad judgment and led me back down the hall, to my desk. Then she apologized to me for getting me slapped in the face as my reward for having given money to charity.

Later, I would learn that the Commander's real motive was that he wanted to have his photograph made shaking hands with a Black officer or with a female. As a White male officer, I didn't qualify, after all.

This incident led, evidently, to the captain's being "sensitized" to the new political correctness. Her sensitization led, in turn, to a bit of a ruckus a few months later.

I was ordered TDY to Tullahoma, Tennessee, to take a short course in Infrared Technology. To accompany me were: the White female captain previously mentioned, another (Hispanic) captain, a Black sergeant, and a White civilian woman. We travelled together in the same car. The White female captain was driving.

As we travelled down the freeway, we chatted about many things. I don't remember what all of the subject under discussion were. But at one point, I remember that the members of our party were comparing experiences at having been a victim of crime, or having known someone who was a victim of crime. My brother had been robbed at knifepoint by a Black on his college campus a few months earlier, and so when my turn came to speak, I mentioned this crime. Without laying any special emphasis on it, I said that the mugger had been Black.

The reaction of the White female captain, who not long earlier had picked me for an honor from the Commander, was spectacular; it was a reproof almost hysterical in its intensity. I found myself being accused of racism for referring to the race of my brother's attacker. In fact, the very first time I heard the names "National Alliance" and "William Pierce" were when they were spoken in that car, by that captain. I had not previously known of the organization or its leader. I was ordered to apologize to the Black sergeant who was sitting in the car's back seat, which I dutifully did.

Today, I'm a racist. But back then, I wasn't. I was a liberal. I was a believer in racial equality. I knew nothing about the Black-White differences in crime rates, nothing about the Black-White gaps in IQ test scores, nothing about the higher rates of STD infection among Blacks. I was a complete racial ignoramus, as most young liberals are. The captain had given me way too much credit, though at the time I thought that I was being insulted and unfairly criticized. But there was really no going back. I had been CONDEMNED. When we returned to Wright-Patt, the captain said, I'd be reported to our supervisor for my insensitive identification of the race of my brother's attacker. Even the Hispanic captain sitting between me and her couldn't get her calmed down, though I could see that he was amused by the politics of the situation.